had been your idea.”
The audacity of his words hit her like ice water.
“Don’t you remember? You said I could help make a difference.” His reflection smiled broadly. It was a good smile. “And so I have. I send my power out, and it gives each mind it touches its own version of paradise. Those people aren’t unhappy, Joan. Far from it.”
“No, they’re just stripped of their free will.”
“A small price to pay for paradise.”
She wanted to tell him he was wrong, that the price was much too great. But that wouldn’t reach him. So instead, she fed his ego. “How are you doing it? A device to amplify your ability?”
The smile gave way to bemused laughter. “No, Joan. That’s just me. Oh,” he said, perhaps in answer to Jet’s gasp of surprise, “even I’m not strong enough to broadcast widely for very long. And then it takes me the better part of a day to recharge enough to send out another signal. The mind is willing,” he said, grinning, “but the body is weak. For now. After I rest, my strength will be greater. And then I can travel the Americas, giving everyone, human and extrahuman alike, their own personal utopia. Think of it, Joan!”
She did, and it made her want to vomit.
“But don’t you see?” she said, a note of desperation in her voice. “It’s not utopia. You’re stealing their lives. You’re making it impossible for them to make this world, the real world, a better place.”
“Because they’ve done such a marvelous job of it already,” he said, his mouth twisting into a sneer. “They pollute the sky and land. They attack each other with words and fists. I may be stealing their lives, Joan, but they’ve been stealing from one another for centuries! Money. Power. Love,” he said, his voice breaking. “They steal, and they don’t care who they hurt.”
“That’s not everyone,” she said. “Some, yes. But not all.”
“There are only two kinds of people, Joan. Those who steal from others, and those who’ve had things, people, stolen from them. They stole your mother, Joan.”
In the mirror, Jet and Hypnotic disappeared. In their place was a woman a little smaller than Jet, wearing a sparkling white skinsuit and flowing cape, her sunlit hair playful around her face. She had a breathtaking smile.
Her mother.
No. Jet’s fists clenched so hard her hands shook. Not real.
“They stole your love.”
Next to Angelica, Samson appeared, so big and broad and full of life.
Jet squeezed her eyes closed, turned her head away. “Stop it.”
“I didn’t take them from you,” Hypnotic said. “But I can give them back to you. Why wouldn’t you want that?”
Her voice a whisper, she said, “Because it’s not real.”
Hands on her shoulders, turning her around slowly. “Honey,” a silky voice said, one that made her tingle, “I can make it so real that you’d never know there’d been anything else.”
She opened her eyes and saw Bruce Hunter standing before her, hugging her, his bright blue eyes wicked, his sensual lips set in a hungry smile. His hands flowed over her back, pulled her close.
“Holly,” he murmured, leaning down as if to kiss her. “I’ve missed you so.”
No.
Her power sprang to life, flowing through her and around him, wrapping him in a lover’s embrace. She squirmed out of his grip and stepped backward, watching as the Shadow lulled him. She raised a shaking hand to her mouth. Her mother and Sam were dead, and Light, she missed them so. But having Bruce—not Taser with his smug, hidden grins and cocksure attitude, but Bruce Hunter, the man she’d taken to her bed—so close to her had almost been her undoing.
Hormones really were going to be the death of her.
The Shadow-wrapped man collapsed to his knees and slowly fell to the floor. She called her power back, touching one of her belt pouches to take out a pair of stun-cuffs.
As the Shadow seeped into her, she realized that she hadn’t felt Hal’s light—that she’d blanketed him, but she hadn’t sensed the man beneath the Shadow.
A crushing pain in her back, a blow that sent her to her knees.
“That,” Doctor Hypnotic said, “was incredibly rude. And after I’ve done such nice things for you.”
She rolled and came up on her feet, her power pulsing through her. “I told you before, Hypnotic. I’m duty-bound to this world. The real world. You can’t buy me with your version of paradise.”
A smile crept over his mouth. “Maybe I should unlock the Shadow voices once more. Let them