NOVA FOUND HERSELF LOITERING on the edges of the tent, watching the party with a mix of delight at seeing the children’s innocent enthusiasm, but also a fair amount of pity when she thought of how very misplaced that enthusiasm was.
Renegades, she wanted to tell them, they’ll break your heart in the end.
Except she couldn’t convince herself that this Renegade would.
The birthday boy had been wobbling on his bike for several minutes now and had even managed to lift his feet from the ground and take half a turn around the tent before he panicked and crashed into a table—unhurt, thankfully. And as soon as the other kids saw what Adrian could do, they began plying him with requests. Draw me a teddy bear … a lollipop … an airplane! Until the tent was full of gifts, all in matching canary yellow pulled straight from the walls of the canvas tent.
Adrian never said no, not even when the requests became more and more outlandish (now a tree house … a tree house with cannons … a tree house with cannons and also a moat being guarded by a robotic shark!), and he never seemed annoyed, even as the kids pressed in around him, leaving him little space to actually draw the things they wanted.
“Excuse me?”
Nova glanced down. The birthday boy’s older sister, perhaps eight or nine years old, stood at the table beside her.
“Don’t look at me,” said Nova, lifting her hands. “My abilities are negligible compared to his.”
The girl blinked, and it occurred to Nova that she probably had no idea what the word negligible meant. She was trying to come up with a synonym when the girl asked, “I was at the trials.”
Nova blinked. “Oh. That. Right.”
“You were amazing,” said the girl, a little breathless. “You didn’t even use superpowers!”
“No. No, that’s the thing, my power is … not…” She glanced at Adrian. “Not showy, like that.”
“Yeah, but that’s what was so great about it.” The girl’s ears had gone pink. “I’m not a prodigy, but … seeing you, it sort of made me think that maybe I could be a Renegade, too, you know?”
Nova opened her mouth, but hesitated, unsure how to respond. She doubted the Renegades would ever recruit someone who didn’t have at least a little bit of a superpower, but Danna and Adrian had both suggested that she could stay on the team even if Max had stolen her ability. And if that was possible, maybe a non-prodigy could someday be accepted too.
She thought back to her conversation with Adrian. He thought they were inspirations to the people. He believed that the existence of superheroes could encourage everyone to be more heroic. Nova had been adamant that he was wrong, but seeing the way this girl was looking at her now, she had to wonder.
So instead of rejecting the girl’s dream, she leaned forward. “Can I tell you a secret?”
The girl inched closer, nodding giddily.
“You don’t need to be a Renegade to be a superhero.”
The girl’s head listed to one side. “That sounds like something my mom would say.”
Nova laughed. “Sorry. I mean, it’s true, but … it’s also sort of a cop-out, isn’t it?”
“Did you get any cake?”
Startled by the change of topic, Nova shook her head. “No, but I don’t—”
“I’ll bring you some! My mom made it. It’s really good.” The girl scurried off before Nova could decline the offer.
Nova watched her go, bewildered, when she heard Adrian’s voice cutting through the giggles. “Absolutely not. No one’s getting a life-size pony. I’m drawing the line, kids!”
He was holding his marker overhead as if it were the prize the children were grabbing for.
Despite the fake annoyance in his voice, he was grinning.
No—he was beaming, lit up from the inside.
He caught her eye, and Nova’s insides clenched. She had been aware that he was handsome from the start, but something about him in that exact moment went far beyond handsome. She told herself it was the lighting in the tent. It was half delirium because she hadn’t eaten any lunch yet. It was … it was just Adrian. With that ease that Nova couldn’t comprehend. A brightness that seemed at odds with everything she’d ever known.
“Here you go!”
A piece of cake appeared in front of Nova’s nose and she gladly diverted her attention, her cheeks burning. Never had she been more grateful for a piece of cake that she didn’t actually want. “Thank you,” she said more effusively than might have been necessary. She took the plate and stuffed a bite of cake into her mouth.
She checked the time on her communicator band. Ingrid would be in position soon.
She glanced back at Adrian, who had looked away from her, and was, of course, drawing a pony onto the tent walls. “Um … we actually have to go,” she said, shooting a smile at the girl, then gobbling down one more bite of cake, which was, in fact, delicious. “Thanks again.”
She rose from the bench and made her way through the cluster of children. Adrian spotted her and paused with the pony half finished.
“First,” said Nova, “you might want to check with the parents before giving any of these kids an actual pony. Second, we should probably move on?”
“First,” said Adrian, “you missed a sprinkle.” He reached out and brushed a thumb across the corner of Nova’s mouth. She froze, the touch sending a quiver through her insides. When he pulled back, a small orange sprinkle was resting on the pad of his thumb, which he popped into his mouth, eyes teasing. “Second, you’re absolutely right.”
He turned away and finished sketching the pony, but when he pulled it from the tent wall, it was not a living creature, but a simple toy horse. “And we’re calling that my big finale, kids,” he said, capping the marker and moving away from the tent walls to a chorus of disappointed groans.
“I know, I know. But heroism awaits!” He paused to wave at the birthday boy and the parents, thanking them for their hospitality, before grabbing Nova’s wrist and pulling her from the tent, laughing.
“You’re welcome,” said Nova, still a little shaken, her cheek tingling where he’d touched her.
He beamed, shaking out his wrist. “Much appreciated. That was fun, though.”
“It’s hard not to have fun when you’re so popular, I expect.”
He scoffed. “Like you wouldn’t know.” He imitated a girly voice as he squealed, “It’s Insomnia! She beat Gargoyle! We love her!”
Rolling her eyes, she smacked Adrian in the arm. “Hey, where’s the Dread Warden?”
“I gave him to the birthday boy. Did you know, he really likes superheroes?”
“Truly? I couldn’t tell.”
He grinned at her, and against all her better judgment, Nova found herself grinning back. When she managed to look away, Nova saw that they’d reached some of the kiddie rides—tiny choo-choo trains and dinosaur-themed roller coasters on each side.
“Somehow,” she said, “I don’t think we’re going to find Nightmare here.”
Ignoring her, Adrian asked, “Which ride did you operate?”
“What? Oh, um. A lot of them. We would rotate.”
“Have you seen anyone today that you used to work with?”
Gulping, Nova glanced at the ride operators. According to her paperwork, she had worked here as recently as a couple months ago. Surely, if that story were real, she should have recognized lots of the employees here.
“Not really,” she stammered. “I, uh … didn’t usually work Thursdays.”
They circled around to the back corner of the carnival, where the old, deteriorating structures of the park could be seen beyond the chain-link fence. Nova’s jaw tensed as she stared at the weedy walkways between carnival games, at the roof of the funhouse looking like it was close to caving in.
“Are you hungry?” said Adrian.
She nodded.
But they had come too far. All the food stands were back toward the more popular areas of the park.
Dragging in a breath, Nova pointed. “There’s a popcorn stand this way. Past the…” She licked her lips. “Past the gallery.”
The gallery was a long wooden tunnel that divided the children’s corner of the park with the faster, more adventurous rides on the other side. The paneled walls of the tunnel were hung with old photos of the carnival’s history, from when it had first been founded nearly seventy years ago. As they entered the tunnel, Nova gravitated toward the first collection of photographs, feigning curiosity as she read the caption beneath a photo that showed a clown posed behind a group of kids. The next photo showed the horse statue at the park’s entrance from back when it was brand-new. The third photo, a woman in a paper hat handing a cone of cotton candy to a man in a suit. It was all very old-fashioned, very quaint. Before the Age of Anarchy. Before the rise of the Renegades. A different place, a different time.
“Amazing it’s lasted this long, isn’t it?” said Adrian, strolling along the opposite wall.
Nova stayed where she was, hoping he would see it. Hoping he would find it on his own …
“Amazing,” she breathed. She continued down the row of photos. Slowly. Expectantly. She was no longer seeing the photos—she’d seen them plenty the night before, anyhow. Happy families boarding the rickety old roller coaster. Happy couples stepping into the gondolas in the Tunnel of Love. Happy children waving from the carousel.
“Nova.”
She knew immediately by the tone of his voice that he’d found it.
She stilled, closing her eyes, and exhaled.
“Nova, look.”
She turned and found him staring at the picture. The picture, the one that had taken her three hours to alter, using a photograph Honey had of the fun house, taken during Winston’s time. She had carefully put it in the place of the original photograph the night before, when the carnival was silent and still.
For seventy years, the fun house that had been abandoned and left to rot in the back acre of the carnival had been called, simply and uninspired—THE FUN HOUSE.
But here, in this photo, painstakingly edited, the name had been changed.
Nova came to stand beside Adrian, peering at the framed black-and-white photograph, and the letters over the yawning entrance. Not THE FUN HOUSE, but THE NIGHTMARE.
“Coincidence?” said Adrian.
“Maybe,” she responded.
“It’s just called the Fun House now, right? I wonder when they decided to change it.”
She said nothing.
He looked at her, and she could already see the conviction there. He did not think it was a coincidence at all. “Do you think we should go talk to your old boss about it? Maybe he could tell us when the name was changed, or…” He trailed off and it was clear he was grasping for any sources that might lead to a real clue, no matter how tenuous the evidence was.
“I doubt he would know much,” said Nova. “It was the Fun House during the Age of Anarchy, so the name must have been changed a really long time ago.” She swallowed, before adding, “I think we should just go check it out.”
Adrian did not hesitate for long before he nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
“Are we supposed to call for backup?”
“We haven’t found anything yet,” he said, sounding almost—but not quite—amused. “But we will, at the first sign of trouble. Agreed?”
She curled her fingers at her sides. “Agreed.”
As they left the gallery, Nova could sense that everything had changed. The lightness and ease that had been emanating from Adrian all day was replaced with tension and renewed focus. She saw that he was holding his marker again, almost like a weapon, though she wasn’t sure when he had grabbed it. She found her own hand curling around the hoops of her belt, though why she should be anxious made no sense.
She knew exactly what they were about to find.
There was no gate that they could see along the perimeter of the chain-link fence, so Adrian clamped the marker between his teeth, clawed his fingers through the wire mesh, and climbed over. The metal rattled from his weight, but he was a nimble climber. He dropped down to the soft dirt on the other side and glanced back to check on Nova, but she was already to the top herself, perched delicately on the metal crossbar.
“Look,” she whispered.
Adrian did. His body stilled for only a moment, before he walked forward and crouched down beneath a patch of soft dirt. He pulled back the weedy grass at its edges, revealing the crisscrossing paths of boot prints. The treads of thick rubber soles denoting a clear pathway between the far corner of the fence and the abandoned rides in the distance.
It had been the last clue Nova had decided to leave, early that morning, not an hour before the park was meant to open. Wearing the boots she’d found remarkably comfortable as Nightmare, even if she had to admit they were not on par with the footwear she’d received as part of her Renegade uniform, she had trudged back and forth, back and forth, hoping to suggest a path frequently traveled.
Nova hopped down to join him.
He took the marker from his teeth. “They’re fresh,” he said, standing and peering toward the fun house. She could see the debate evident on his features before he lifted his wrist toward his mouth. “Send team communication. Insomnia and I are at Cosmopolis Park. We think there might be a connection between Nightmare and the abandoned fun house on the back acre. We’re going to investigate. So far there’s been no sighting of the villain, but we’re preparing for an altercation and might need reinforcements.”
He ended the message and let his arm hang. “Do you think she’s in there?”
“It would be a good place to lay low.”
Adrian started trudging through the overgrown pathways. They passed a graveyard of broken-down rocket ships and cars from one of the original roller coasters, now with prickly blackberry bushes sprouting around their metal carcasses. Though their paint was faded, the bright colors were still at odds with the dreariness of this corner of the park—the rusted tracks and mechanical gears, the broken bits of fence rails and food carts.
Adrian paused at a ticket booth that had once been white but was now so covered in filth and water damage it was difficult to tell. He sketched two sets of handcuffs onto the wood siding. He handed one to Nova and tucked the other set into his pocket. It occurred to Nova that if this day had really been about finding Nightmare from the start, he already would have had these with him. She stared at his profile as he set the point of the marker against the ticket booth again.
“Adrian?”
Hand stilling, he turned his head to look at her.
She swallowed. “Was this a date?”
His lips parted, at first in surprise, but then in hesitation as he searched for a response. Pulling the marker away from the booth, he used the capped end to scratch behind his ear. “Well. This was the first time a girl’s ever won me an enormous stuffed Dread Warden doll, so … you tell me.”
Her cheek twitched. “That wasn’t a real answer.”
“I know.”
They stared at each other, and Nova’s heart started doing acrobatics inside her chest.
“Would you have said yes,” said Adrian, “if it was?”
No, her brain said. Emphatic and aggressive. No.
While something else whispered back … Maybe.
But Nova, suddenly a coward, looked past Adrian’s shoulder and plastered a startled frown to her face. “I think I just saw something.”
Adrian spun around, simultaneously reaching his arm out to tuck her behind him, which was so obnoxiously gallant Nova found herself wanting to both shove the arm away and also take his hand into hers. In fact, as she stared down at the fingers that were just barely brushing against her own, she had the most absurd notion to lace her fingers through them and lift his hand to her mouth, to place one single kiss against those knuckles.
The flash of fantasy paralyzed her.
“Where?” said Adrian.
“Inside the fun house,” said Nova, the words feeling robotic and rehearsed. “Oh, wait. I think it might have just been that creepy doll up on the balcony.”
She lifted her eyes to the remains of a mannequin on the second floor. It was wearing a sodden clown costume—though someone had long ago taken its head.
They watched, unmoving, for a long while.
“Maybe we should go inside and look around?” she said.
Adrian nodded. “If we do see Nightmare, you know not to let her touch you, right?”
She shivered, looking again at his dark skin, his lithe fingers—touching her, but not really.
“I know,” she murmured, and moved back just enough to break the hesitant contact.
Reaching up, Adrian began to draw onto the side of the ticket booth again. Nova closed her eyes while she waited. She focused on her breath, trying to drown out the surge of sensations flooding her body. She needed to stop thinking about handsome smiles and small touches and kisses and dates. If Adrian liked her—really liked her—it was only because he didn’t really know her.
He would never like the girl beneath the lie. He would never like Nova Artino. And it didn’t matter to her anyway, because she could never fall for a Renegade.
That word shattered the cloud of doubt that had gathered around her, and she opened her eyes, solid again in her resolve.
He was a Renegade.
He was her enemy.
He might have come here today with ulterior motives, but then, so had she.
“Ready?” he said.
She started, her skin prickling with apprehension. He had drawn himself a gun.
On closer inspection, she realized it was a tranquilizer gun. This alone might have given her pause, except she had so recently seen him shoot. She doubted she had much to worry about.
She gave him a fierce nod.
“I’m ready.”