Page 77 of Supernova

Nova peered into the bottomless pool of shadows beneath Phobia’s hood. His attempts to psychoanalyze her usually filled her with irritation. It felt like a violation of her privacy, for him to be poking around in her head that way, searching for her deepest fears, uncovering her best-kept secrets.

But it didn’t seem to matter so much this time. She was afraid to fail again. She was afraid to let everyone down—not just Ace and the Anarchists and this unexpected new group of allies, but also Adrian and the friends she’d made at the Renegades.

Yes,friends.The word was foreign and almost unbelievable, but she had faced the truth in that prison cell. The realization was too stark and painful to ignore. She had fallen in love with these people, who had taken her in and trusted her. And yet she betrayed them. To know that they would go on despising her for the rest of their lives left her feeling almost as hollowed out as the knowledge that Ace would never again look at her with beaming pride.

“Yeah, I am afraid that I’m going to fail again,” she said, still peering into the nothingness of Phobia’s face. “But one cannot be brave who has no fear.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THERE HAD BEENmany times since Adrian and his dads first moved into the old mayor’s mansion that Adrian had the nagging thought that it was far more space than the three of them needed. Not only because there was a formal parlor, formal dining room, and four guest rooms that had yet to welcome a single guest, but also because three grown men simply had no use for seven—count them—seven bathrooms.

Each one, of course, came equipped with a mirror. And that wasn’t even considering the mirrors in closets or the one hung over the fireplace mantel in the parlor, and probably some he hadn’t even thought of yet. It seemed reflections were everywhere he looked these days.

Adrian unscrewed the mirrored medicine cabinet from the wall of the third bathroom on the main floor, thinking for the umpteenth time that he hadn’t given enough credit to Narcissa Cronin’s power when he first met her at Cloven Cross Library. Sure, travelingthrough mirrors had seemed like a neat party trick, but now he was beginning to fully appreciate what a useful ability it could be.

There were mirrorseverywhere.

It was almost like having a skeleton key to nearly any door in the world.

It drove him nuts every time he stopped to think about it. He had been in the same room with Nightmare that day at the library. She had beenright in front of him,and he had been completely oblivious. It made him sick to think how she must have been laughing behind his back.

Realizing what a tedious job it was going to be to get rid of all the mirrors in the house, he’d been tempted to simply smash them to bits, or maybe just drape them with heavy cloths. But he didn’t think his dads would be too happy coming home to a house full of glass shards, and he didn’t know enough about Nightmare’s mirror-walking ability to know if a heavy cloth would be enough to keep her out.

And so, they had to be taken down.

The final screw fell into his palm and he pried the cabinet from the wall. He hadn’t bothered to remove the toiletries inside and he heard them sliding and crashing into one another as he carried it down the hall, down the steps, and into his basement bedroom. Past his bed and TV, past the desk where he had spent hours sketching in notebooks and, more recently, giving himself tattoos, and into the room that had once been deemed his art studio.

The room that had of late been converted into a living jungle.

He hadn’t entered the room in the days since Nova’s arrest. It held too many memories that were soured by his belief that Nova was his most loathed enemy. Memories of her head tucked againsthis shoulder, her face tranquil in sleep. Memories of her surprise when she saw the mural Adrian had painted on these walls, then watching her unspeakable awe as he brought the trees and vines and exotic flowers to life.

Since that night, the jungle had begun to fade, just as Turbo was. Adrian’s power didn’t include immortality. His creations would wilt and die, just like things in real life. Faster, actually, than things in real life. Now, when he entered this room, the one-time aromas of perfumed flowers had been replaced with the smell of decay and rot. The vibrant colors of the flowers faded to grays and browns, their silky petals drooping and papery crisp. The vines that hung from overhead tree branches became brittle to the touch, and a number of them broken, disintegrating on the mossy ground that was, itself, dying to reveal the plain concrete floor underneath.

Only the statue that stood at the far end of the room appeared untouched—but then, it had never been alive to begin with.

Adrian set the mirror against the wall with the others that he had already removed. He figured that if Nightmare did come through one of them, she’d be so confused by the dying flora that she’d think she took a wrong turn in mirrorland, or however that worked.

As an added precaution, he set up a couple of booby traps throughout the room that would alert him to an intruder—including a net that would fall down from the tree canopy and trap her inside. He really hoped she would set that one off. It would serve her right, he thought, remembering the bazooka-like gun she’d once used to trap him, as the Sentinel, inside a similar net.

Just thinking of their battle at the parade set his teeth on edge. Nightmare had embarrassed him enough times. Though he was happy—overjoyed, really—that Nova wasn’t the villain after all, hewas more frustrated than ever to know that the real Nightmare continued to be one step ahead of him.

“Okay,” he muttered, surveying the mirrors and the traps he’d set. “Five down. Just thirteen more to go.”

He was passing through the foyer when the creak of a floorboard overhead made him freeze.

Hot adrenaline rushed through his veins as he listened for any more signs of life in the old mansion, but there was only silence. Pulling his marker from his back pocket, he crept toward the staircase, his heartbeat suddenly the loudest thing in the house.

With a faint memory of his mom once scolding him for scribbling with his crayons on the wall of their apartment, he took his marker and started to draw a quick weapon on the white wainscoting. Not a gun—he’d always been a terrible shot. Instead, he drew what vaguely resembled a fireplace poker, with a vicious spike at each end. He exhaled as he pulled the weapon from the wall, clutching it in one hand and keeping his marker at the ready in the other. Hopefully it would keep him from having to resort to his Sentinel powers. The last thing he wanted to do was release a fireball inside his own house.

He started up the steps, knowing where to place his feet to prevent the stairs from creaking as he ascended. Pausing just shy of the landing, he scanned the hallway to the right, but all he could see were shadows and closed doors.

The double doors to his dads’ room were parted, and unable to remember if they’d been open before, he slipped inside. There was a sweater thrown over the back of a chair. Some books and newspapers left on a nightstand. Knowing there was a full-length mirror in the walk-in closet, Adrian prepared himself to see his own reflectionmoving among the suits and boots and capes, but the sight still made him jump. He doubted he would ever look at a mirror the same way again.

Nothing seemed out of place.

He shut the closet door, then drew a small bell to hang around its door handle, so that if Nightmare came in through that mirror and tried to open the door, he would know immediately. He did the same on the door to the master bathroom, not yet having removed the mirrors above the double sinks, then stopped again to listen.

Silence.

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