New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

When Ford joined us, I let him know Kurt was going to try to catch up with him on his rounds at the college. I wasn't surprised they hadn't made contact yet. For all his love of gizmos, Kurt didn't like using his cell phone. Maybe he didn't trust what passed for security on anyone's phone. With something building up on WBC's campus, he was especially touchy about the wrong people (or things, or forces, or entities) accessing or interfering with messages. Since I had time, with no classes until just before lunch, I agreed to get the girls into the program, so Ford could look for Kurt.

Stephanie thanked me with a hug when I returned to the snack bar. The team of students who were supposed to close up the night before had left a couple messages about problems with inventory and changing the oil reservoir on the fryer, and she needed to get those problems taken care of before the first hungry customers of the day showed up. Heaven forbid she be unable to deliver baskets of fried cheese sticks and batter-fried veggies within seconds of being ordered. Miller's Diner had a reputation to uphold, after all. I told her about our fly-over of the dormitory and what Kurt had detected, what we had theorized, but it took me about five installments between customers. She was alone for the first hour the snack bar was open, but once the first shift of work-study students showed up, the traffic trickled down to almost nothing, and she could step out from behind the counter. We went over to a quiet corner of the snack area, partially hidden behind some particularly pitiful silk fig trees, to talk.

"Whatever you three picked up on, I'm not getting any warnings," she said, after we had settled down with berry smoothies. "No dreams, no vibrations, no sickening smells, or even smells that don't belong wherever I am." She muffled a chuckle, and I guessed that my expression showed just how confused I was by that last bit of information. "When I was pregnant with Bethany, every sense seemed to cross over into a smell. Noises that were too loud generated a smell like the dumpster behind Punderson's grocery last summer, when it was so hot and they dumped that entire order of dairy that had gone bad before it even arrived." Another chuckle bubbled out of her when I reacted.

That was one of the most noxious smells I had ever endured. It put texture in the air. Since Punderson's was near the offices for the Neighborlee Tattler, those of us who worked there had to put up with the stench that clung to it even after they had the dumpster steam blasted clean and sanitized. Some of us swore the light changed in that area behind the grocery store. If anything truly evil was going to tear the fabric of reality and invade from another dimension, that would be the weak spot, where reality had been scorched thin.