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“Oh em gee!” She actually spells the acronym out. “Are you there?”

“What?” I say, unsurprised at how groggy I sound. After working all day and a late-night therapy appointment that made me feel considerably worse than I had expected it would, I stayed up way too late crafting emails to Roland Casteel that flirted with the line between apology and additional beratement.

I currently have a three-page masterpiece, cut down from the twelve-page dissertation I initially wrote, idling in my drafts folder. I don’t plan to send it without drinking a bottle of wine in its entirety first. Unfortunately, it’s midday now and a little too early for wine, considering I spent the entire morning working and am only just getting breakfast.

“At the skate park in Memorial! Some kids are filming your boy! Apparently he had the COE accounting department up all night setting up a school savings account for each of the kids who helped you out yesterday and put ten grand into each of them! The kids’ parents got notice this morning, and some of them even came to the skate park crying with how grateful they are! Please tell me you’re there. This photo op cannot be left to the videography skills of a horde of excited preadults!”

Putting Margerie on speakerphone, I hop over to the vintage burnt-orange corduroy-covered stools pushed in underneath the breakfast bar next to the window with bright-yellow trim. I take one and sit. “Is it on social media?”

“What? It’s everywhere. And now he’s skating with them! You didn’t tell me he could skateboard. That wasn’t in his file anywhere.” I wince thinking of files, their paper wings filling my stomach. “Whoa. Look at him go.”

“Is he live?”

“Yeah, a few times. I reposted a few of the lives to his account. Check them out.”

Pulling out my work cell—grateful I have one given that my personal was damaged beyond repair in my fall—I’m already there, tracking the live footage back to their various sources. I see excited faces pressing in on the camera in between flashes of parents holding up their phones, showing the education savings accounts with $10,000 balances.

“Margerie, there must have been over twenty kids he collected names from ... and he hasn’t even cleared his second paycheck with the COE yet. They pay the Champions in installments. That might have been his entire first check.”

“Oh em gee. My ovaries,” she coos.

I snort. “How is he paying his rent?”

“Is he? I thought he was living with you.”

Guilt kicks me in the skull, and I clear my throat. “No. No. He, uh ... hasn’t come by yet.”

“That so?” she says, sounding appropriately suspicious.

The camera for the live footage I’m watching now pans back up the half-pipe. The Wyvern is standing on a skateboard that’s actually his size—bigger than average—which makes me wonder if he actually had one or if he bought a new one for the occasion.

As the camera swivels around, I don’t miss the flash of a brown face I saw yesterday with hair down to her low back, a boy who looks just like her with his arm protectively looped over her shoulders. He’s pointing up at the Wyvern, and I smile, so glad that they both made it back to see him. The little boy was so excited.

“You ready?” he asks the crowd. They all screech and cheer.

The Wyvern drops into the half-pipe easily, and as he comes up the other side, he takes off into the air in a blaze. The kids lose their minds. The camerawork leaves a lot to be desired, and I snort and realize that I’m such a chump, and I’ve got snot in my nose and burning in my eyes. I switch out of the video and scroll. Even in his normal feed, all the videos of him were taken by children under fifteen years old.

“He skated with them for almost an hour. Looks like he just left. And you weren’t there?” Margerie says, making me jolt when I realize she’s still on the line.

“He didn’t tell me he was going.”

“Funny, because when I saw him in the office this morning, he said it was your idea, you planned the whole thing, and the only reason you weren’t going was because of your foot.”

I gape down at the phone. “That’s entrapment.”

She laughs. My doorbell rings, and I hobble over to it. I have a vague suspicion of who it might be, but that doesn’t at all soothe the pattering of my heart as I wonder if it might be him ... No. Memorial Park isn’t that close. He couldn’t have gotten here yet. Why would he even want to come here after what I said to him? I don’t even want to see him after what he said to me. But ...

I pull the door open to see Margerie standing there holding a tray of four coffees and an enormous handled paper bag. “You two need to get your story straight.”

I feel a blush on my cheeks. “What are you ...”

“Why are you standing up? Your boyfriend warned me you’d be trying to move around on that ankle. It’s the size of a bowling ball, Vanessa. Go sit down. I’ll bring you all the cinnamon rolls your heart desires, just sit. Shoo!” She shoves me into the house and back onto the living room couch, where I have essentially been living for the past twenty-four hours.

“I should probably shower,” I say on a yawn. “Also, he’s my fake boyfriend.”

“That’s what he said you’d say. Trouble in paradise?”

“You could say that.”

She gives me a once-over. I’m pretty sure that’s a Chanel logo on her tweed suit jacket. She’s paired it with jeans and literally looks like a runway model. Her sunglasses are pushed up onto her head, and she gives a big sniff in my direction. “You smell fine. Besides, we have work to do. Did you see the email from Mr. Singkham?”

“Yeah.” The COE is planning to send the Wyvern on his first mission. In two weeks, the forest rangers are planning to do controlled burns over twenty-one acres in Vermont. The US Forest Service has asked the COE for the Wyvern’s help. They think he can help spread the fire, but his powers are also in controlling flame. He can put them out after and ensure they don’t spread beyond the designated boundaries. It’s a great idea.

“I should be healed enough by then to be able to be on-site with him,” I say, just as my front door opens and Garrison and Vanya come in carrying what looks like an entire office’s worth of supplies. Garrison trips over a loose cable, and Vanya tries to catch his arm, but the box of pens she’d been carrying goes flying, and pens go shooting out like throwing stars.

“Oh my gosh, are y’all okay?”

Garrison and Vanya are laughing, so I take that as a good sign. Margerie starts off toward them, and together they get things upright. “Are you sure you want to go?” Margerie says as she and the marketing team completely take over my dining room table. It’s an open-plan space, more or less, and I can see through the wide archway from my living room to the dining room easily. Past that is the kitchen.

“I’m not the best photographer, but as the, um ... Lois Lane, it would be good to show support.”

“We’ll have an on-site photographer with you,” Margerie says. “No worries.”

“You found one?”

“We poached Monika,” Vanya squeals from the dining table.

“You did not!” I gasp, doing my best to sound incensed, though inside I’m elated. “What did you have to pay her for her to leave Vayne?” Vayne is an online journal that we’ve had run-ins with in the past. Its CEO is a sexist pig, but unfortunately it’s one of the largest online news outlets and the most consumed e-journal by Gen Z and millennials.

“Ask Jeremy,” Margerie says. “But she’s coming on next week.”

“We’re never going to get placement with Vayne again. You know that, right?” I’m still grinning. My team is amazing. Monika is one of the best reporters in our industry.

With a background in war journalism, she’s deeply underutilized at Vayne. Working with our team, tagging along on the Wyvern’s missions, she’ll get the best of both worlds. It’s a good move for her too.

“Luckily for us, we work with the COE now. Vayne has a contract with them for a minimum number of placements a month,” Garrison adds, opening up his laptop.

I kick my feet, giddy. “Yeee!”

The other two laugh, but Margerie comes over and slaps me with my own ice pack. “This isn’t even cold anymore,” she huffs. “We’ll book your flights with Monika and the Wyvern then, if you’re planning on going to Vermont.”

“Does he want me to go?” I say, feeling strangely exposed as Margerie returns from the kitchen with an ice pack that’s as chilly as her expression.

“What? You two have a fight or something?” Her voice is casual. Too casual.

I shrug, wincing when she drops the ice onto my leg. “I’m not a good Lois.”

“He’s not a good Clark. You know, you don’t have to go, but I will say ...”

“Don’t be shy, Margie. Just tell her.” Garrison is grinning over at me, the natural curve of his cheeks turning his eyes into crescent moons. He looks as giddy as I feel about our newest team member, and that makes me decidedly nervous.

“What?”

“Somebody’s got a crush on you,” Garrison says, making his voice go up and down in a way I definitely don’t enjoy.

Vanya throws a pen at him. It hits him in the chest. “What are you, five?”

Margerie is laughing and shaking her head as she resumes her seat at the table with them. She opens her computer, all of her actions way, way too casual. Way too casual. Way, way, way too ... “The Wyvern was in a piss-poor mood at the office this morning, but he did come in early. At seven.” Margerie yawns.

“What did he want?” I stammer, annoyed that she’s being so vague and keeping me in suspense.

“He wanted to talk to us about the reporters responsible for your fall yesterday ...”

“We had to tell him that it wasn’t okay to melt people’s organs,” Garrison adds. “Did you know he could do that?”

Vanya shrugs, staring at her screen. “Sounds cool. I’d have given him the go-ahead.”

“Luckily for the reporters, the rest of us talked some sense into him. He was pissed though,” Margerie says, looking at me quickly, then away.

“So ...” I should be doing work or at least eating the breakfast burrito Margerie brought, but my laptop is still sitting open, screen black, on the ottoman, the burrito still wrapped sitting beside it. I reach for the coffee, still hot, and wrap my hands around it. I hold it under my lips as I lean back into the pillows stacked on the arm of the couch behind me. It’s not a Viennese, is the thing I notice on my first sip.

“At the end of the meeting, before he left to meet with design, he asked the women at the table what they liked from their partners when they’d fucked up,” Vanya says. “We told him we like melted organs as a sign of affection. Ideally wrapped in black bows ...”

“We told him that there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, but that if he messed up with a woman, he should try talking to her about it,” Margerie adds. I sip on my coffee hurriedly, because when Margerie looks at me, she sees straight through me. “And if the woman in question isn’t exactly a talker, then he could try a nice gesture.”

“I told him diamonds. Or a car. Can’t go wrong with shiny stuff.” I snort at Garrison’s response and shake my head.

“I’m not sure all stuff is fixable.” I’m not sure I’m fixable. I reach for the burrito, though it’s difficult not to grab the cinnamon roll first. I know the cinnamon roll won’t be as good as the ones my dad makes, but a cinnamon roll’s a cinnamon roll. I’ll take it. Unfortunately, Elena’s voice is in the back of my head reminding me that, between the two, the burrito is the only one with some substance. Ugh.

“What did he do?” Garrison says out of the blue after we’ve been working in near quiet—as quiet as my team of bickering creatives gets—for another half an hour or so.

I debate whether or not to tell them—or rather, what. “He ... read my file. Redacted information. My therapy notes. Everything.”

A small silence simmers across my staff before Garrison breaks it. “Gonna take a lot of diamonds then, huh?”

“Where did he get the file?” Vanya asks.

“He stole it.”

“Shit.”

“That’s not cool.”

“For fuck’s sake. Is he a stalker or what?” Vanya says, leaning back from her computer as my employees all talk over each other.

“Maybe.” I shrug.

“Well, I hope you let him have it,” Garrison adds.

I nod, smiling. “I did.”

“Good.”

And then Margerie’s voice, too quietly, too ... openly ... says, “You did?”

I look up, and her expression is thoughtful. I feel myself blush as I nod. “We got into a bit of a screaming match.”

“He yelled at you?” Vanya shouts at the same time that Margerie says softly, “You ... yelled at him?”

I nod.

“What a fucker,” Vanya continues.

“Agreed,” Garrison says. Margerie, meanwhile, says nothing. She just smiles softly at me before turning back to her computer screen while Garrison continues, “Good thing he’s not moving in with you then, huh?”

I frown. “Last I heard, he was supposed to be moving in today.”

“He told the COE he changed his mind, but they’d already packed up or sold his stuff for him. I think tonight he’s staying in a hotel while they get him a new apartment.”

I swallow hard and then shove down the guilt I feel and nod. “It’s probably for the best. Moving in here would have been a tight squeeze.”

“It’s a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot town house. How would it have been tight?” Vanya says on a dry laugh. Her bluntness and dark humor are my two favorite aspects of her personality, but not right now.

“Well, I never really planned on having a roommate, so when I redid the rooms, I didn’t set up a guest room. I tried telling him a couple times, but I kept getting interrupted. There’s only one bed in my house.”

“Oh shit. Sounds like the start of a porno.”

“Garrison!” Margerie scoffs. “That’s your boss!”

“Sorry. Did I say that out loud?” He actually has red in his cheeks, even though his smile shows no contrition at all.

Vanya throws three pens at him at once and a balled-up sheet of paper she’d been scribbling notes on. “Men are imbeciles. Correction—males are imbeciles. Whatever he said when he was yelling,” Vanya says, waggling a pen threateningly in my direction this time, “don’t forgive him right away. Make him suffer.”

“He’s my client, people, not my boyfriend!” I remind them shrilly.

They all smile and chuckle, sharing laughs that I wish didn’t feel so incriminating. Vanya just shrugs, seemingly unaware of how her words turn my stomach into a dreidel, and says glibly, “He sort of is.”

I snort and don’t answer. I just simmer in my blush as I go back to my coffee and my laptop, feeling strangely warm despite the ice on my ankle, and content despite the heaviness in my heart. I should talk to him ...

I open my drafts folder and read the start of my email twice before deciding I’d rather throw myself down stairs than send this off. I’m going to have to talk to him in person . Ugh. I scroll through my contacts and land on his name. Roland Casteel. But I don’t dare place a call or send a text. The problem is that I’ve never yelled at a man—male ... er, superbeing—before, and while my therapist and I agreed that this could be seen as a small measure of success for me, we didn’t talk about how to proceed. And I don’t think I’m up for another eleven p.m. emergency appointment ...

“Time to go. Ms. Boss Lady needs rest, and so do we,” Margerie says. I sit up abruptly, absorbed as I’d been in my laptop for the past ... five hours? Good grief. “We’ve been working too hard these past weeks. Five p.m. is closing time. Go, go, go!”

“But it’s just getting good,” Vanya says, pointing up at my TV from the armchair she’s relocated to, her laptop on her lap, a beer in her raised hand. I glance up at the snowy mountain scene and the news reporter covering the catastrophe. “They sent Pele in, but she’s making a damn mess trying to use her laser sight as well as actual lava to get the people out of the snowdrift.”

“Shit, I’m seeing it here,” Garrison says, pointing at something I can’t see on his laptop. “She just caved the area Fema carved out, trapping thirty-some odd members of their team.”

“Chyort ...” Vanya curses in Russian, her native tongue, before grabbing the remote and flipping through channels, finally landing on 48 Today , which specializes in coverage of the Forty-Eight.

“... incredible to see. The scene here in Whitestone Pass is absolutely unbelievable. Lightning struck the peak of Whitestone during a blizzard that raged overnight. The blizzard came on too quickly for the majority of guests to evacuate. While several of the hotels and ski lodges have been able to communicate to Fema and the local police departments that their guests are all accounted for and safe, three hotels near the mountain’s peak have lost electricity and connectivity. Fema and local law enforcement had been working to dig them out, but that’s not where our current concern lies.

“At seven fifteen this morning, the self-service cabin rental management company Northwest Luxury Cabins reported that forty-two guests inside of thirteen cabins have been out of contact since the storm hit and that sixteen individuals, who reportedly rented out the largest cabin on-site, were actually outdoors at the time of the avalanche. They are believed to be trapped beneath the snow directly, most fearing them dead ...”

Shaky footage shows rescue teams attempting to bore holes into the snow to reach a cabin. A man dressed in a massive red coat and labeled on-screen as an executive from the rental management company shouts over the sound of the storm raging around them. “We think that this group of university students was outside trying to evacuate. They must have left too late and gotten lost in the snow. There’s a chance they’re trapped in their cars. All we know is that one of the girls, a Ms. Mallory Zhu, has an SOS app on her phone, and it hasn’t stopped pinging local police since ten fifteen. The GPS on her Find My iPhone app hasn’t moved either.”

Another interviewee, this one from Fema : “We just can’t get to them.”

And then the reporter flashes back onto the screen—a woman dressed in a dark-blue puffer coat that makes her blond hair stand out like a torch against the darkness of the world surrounding her. It’s supposed to be two, the time zone making it only three hours earlier there, but it looks like night.

Wind is whipping her hair about, and there’s still snow falling in harsh droves all around her, forcing her to shout. “The Fema team was met with another challenge. Fema enlisted the help of world-renowned Forty-Eight Champion Pele, named for the Hawaiian lava goddess ...”

“She’s an ancestral deity,” Margerie corrects.

“... who attempted to use her laser sight to carve a pathway through the snow. The cave that the Fema team had already dug out collapsed, sealing thirty-six members of the rescue team within. Twelve have been dug out so far, but there’s very little hope for the remaining ...”

I cringe. “That’s terrible.”

“Not a good look for the Forty-Eight, either,” Margerie says with a grimace. “We’ll need to put out a press statement.”

I nod. “I’ll work on a draft and send it to y’all in an hour.” Margerie opens her mouth to try to stop me; I can feel it. I jerk my thumb toward the door. “I’m not tired.”

She frowns. “Well, I’m ordering you dinner at least.”

“No, don’t. My brothers are coming over tonight. They called for a mandatory movie night. They’re pissed I didn’t tell them about my ankle.” I wave my phone at her by way of explanation, and, begrudgingly, Margerie sighs and leaves, dragging Vanya and Garrison with her. I turn off the TV.

I work on the press release draft and have just sent off some notes to Margerie, Vanya, and Garrison when the doorbell rings and my brothers flood my house, street tacos in tow. My stomach rumbles and my mouth waters as my brothers grunt and rage and annoy the crap out of me about my ankle—like they haven’t all broken bones before or been in even worse accidents. Vinny was in a helicopter that malfunctioned once and had to be in the hospital for a week, but my brothers didn’t react half so dramatically as they do to my little swollen foot.

“So, what’ll it be, Vanny?” Charles says after tacos have been devoured and dishes have been put away. He plops down onto the other end of the couch and moves my feet into his lap. He hands me a bowl of Elena’s homemade dulce de leche ice cream, made with actual dairy this time; she must really feel sorry for me tonight.

My brothers scatter around the living room, each moving like a synchronized swimmer to his respective station. Only Luca shakes things up, taking the armchair instead of the window seat since Vinny isn’t here but is flying to Europe.

“Yeah, what’ll it be? Some stupid show about baking or a true crime thriller?”

“I’m a girl. Sue me.” I stick my tongue out at him. “But it’s fine. Y’all can pick tonight,” I insist, a little tired of being babied.

Luca and David don’t hesitate before launching themselves at the bookcase, where they proceed to knock three of my neatly arranged figurines of Miyazaki characters onto the floor in their battle to the death over the remote. David wins. Luca skulks off with a scowl.

Charles and Mani argue over whether or not a new blockbuster sci-fi movie that just released is better than the original movie while I add snide remarks about how sexist the book is and how none of them should ever read it—not that they ever would. Vinny’s the only one who ever reads anyway, and that’s only because he flies so much.

I sit smiling as I check my emails, looking for an update from Margerie on whether the press release was sent to outlets for tomorrow’s papers or posted in part on our socials. I’m annoyed she hasn’t responded yet. I know she’s not a machine, but ... she kind of is. More than annoyed, I’m actually kind of worried.

I scroll over to text her when I get a surprising call. I clear my throat and make wild hand gestures at my brothers to turn off the volume as I answer. “Mr. Singkham.”

“That the president of Cambodia again?” Luca shouts.

I gesture angrily at him, and David throws a navy-blue velvet pillow at him. Luca laughs and throws a pillow back, almost knocking David’s ice cream out of his hands. Charlie’s not helping at all but sitting beside me laughing.

“Mr. Singkham?” I say, surprisingly out of breath.

“Yes, did I catch you at a bad time, Vanessa?”

“No. Not at all. Just wrapping up dinner.” I hold my finger to my mouth to encourage my brothers to shush the hell up, which they more or less do.

“Sorry to call you after hours again, but I wanted to let you know that the Wyvern has been deployed to Washington state to assist in the extraction of the trapped skiers and now the emergency rescue team.”

Shock. I sit up bolt straight and set down my bowl of ice cream before it topples onto my rug. “They requested him directly and think he can help?” My heart is pounding. Oh my gosh, this is huge ... and dangerous.

“I ... was apprehensive to send him. His gifts aren’t in the realm of ice and water at all, and I worried that sending him could result in more collapse, like with Pele. We don’t need another firestorm—figuratively or literally.” I’m nodding along, but I freeze when Mr. Singkham clears his throat and says, “But the Wyvern assured me he could extract them easily. He volunteered. It was so out of character for him, I didn’t really feel I could say no. I just got off of the phone with Fema , who got approval from the president.” The president of the United freaking States? Oh my gosh!

“I wanted to let you know we’re sending his handlers—COE security trained to support him in these types of situations. They are boarding the plane now and should be in Washington in five hours, weather permitting. Is there any essential person you’d like to include on board ...”