A superhero.

He calls me a superhero. He rests his arm on my shoulder, his flame tattoos flexing over sinewy, defined muscles, and though our skin never meets, I can feel the heat of his body through my hoodie. And it makes me shiver.

This is the metaphorical weight of a superhero's cape, I think, the pressure of someone you saved clasped around your shoulders. All up and down the arm, white inked feathers flutter in branches of white fire. I stare.

Gideon is still shaking, still sweat-soaked from his near kidnapping, and I don't think I'm helping, because I'm silent with each step, staring squint-eyed at Chip's boots. I never noticed the long white scuffs on the toes, the cobweb crosses the laces make over the ankles. The purple-sharpied hearts. My eyes sting as he speaks. "You're not from around here, are you?"

I shake my head as the alley narrows and dirty gutters and bright graffiti frame my vision. Dull grays, contrasted with vibrant blues and blacks. Two ten-foot long koi fish swim on the wall right of us, one black, one white, tails crossed and bodies curling to make a heart. I tug my hood down and draw in a sharp breath that I choke on. Cinnamon candy and cigarette smoke. Inhale, the musty, faded smell of the stolen hoodie and the city's burning-oil reek, exhale, let the pain escape my chest in a soft puff of dry air. But my chest is still smoldering with that violent energy. Even though my feet are blistered and my muscles are all rubbery, I'm wired. Eyes pinned open wide, heart still slamming in my chest, my knuckles in my mouth. I'm sucking the taste of blood off my skin while he talks.

"That's okay. I'm warning you, man, I don't have a lot of space, and I don't know if you're going to try to kill me or something, but, kid, you gotta be crazy. I think you crushed that guy's sternum."

"I've crushed a few sternums in my time," I say, staring back at the graffiti with my head craned. I wonder about the dark fish, with its ink black body. I wonder if fate is something you make or something you run from.

"What?"

"Nothing."

There are no skyscrapers here. No glittering steel and perfect yellow square windows like in the comic books. There are narrow streets behind crumbling storefronts, and potholes the glitter with melting ice.

The apartments crouched on the horizon are lopsided, brick splashed with mold and fungus. He walks me toward them, lowered eyes shifting to follow us from outside the stoop. Gideon just walks past them, his fingers digging divets into my skin. I crack my knuckles. I'm not the intimidating type. Scruffily approachable, that jazz. Even in Chip's clothing, I'll never make an imposing bodyguard. I figure I just look like an anime sad boy.

But we're not bothered by them. One person takes a long huff of whatever they're smoking and the smell leeches to my hoodie. This isn't like the comics, the city all glitter and smiling heroes.

What I see is darkness and an overworked hero who will probably have her powers torn out of her by someone like me and kids being kidnapped in alleys and people turning blind eyes. A city like this isn't a haven, it's going to eat me alive.

And with a deep breath, I decide that I'm okay with that.

The lobby reeks of mold and damp, the carpet torn up from the slats. It's dark, the only light cast in harsh white circles. Something scurries over my boot, little feet and little claws, squeaking horribly.

"You scared of rats?"

I shake my head, though I can feel stale cheese and crackers churning around and around in my gut. Gideon leads me up the stairs, fumbling with his keys, phone.

"I swear to God I'm crazy," he says. "I don't even know you."

"You don't." I shrug. "But if I'd wanted to harvest your powers, I would've kidnapped you ten minutes ago in the back alley where no one would've heard or cared if you screamed."

"Jesus." He signs something over his chest, and in the darkness, I can just make out the white of his tattoo flexing and falling. "You're edgy."

I crack a smile that aches across my face. The keys jangle and the lock clicks. The door swings open, and the first thing I notice is light.

Gideon keeps his blinds open. The skyscrapers on the horizon look like a smile full of diamonds. It makes his little apartment dazzling, which consists of a mattress on a steel frame, a stove, and a plastic fold-out desk. Besides an ancient computer that's all scratches and dents, he keeps a shrine. It's the first thing I wander to. A six-inch porcelain figurine of a skeleton in black robes, two unlit black candles resting on either side of it. Glossy photographs of a smiling couple lie before it on a bed of bleached quarters and candies in wax wrappers.

I turn around and Gideon's folding his apron over his arm, crisping every crease with his fingertips. For the first time, I get a good look at him. Dark eyes, hair that falls into his face and curls into tight waves near the base of the neck, square jaw. Not He keeps his voice soft. "You can leave if you're scared—"

"I'm not." I nod to the figurine. "I'm fine."

"Oh." He smiles nervously. "You're a believer?"

I stare out at the view. Everything in Gideon's room is clean, the bed made, the window polished so it's so clear you'd think it open. He even has Christmas lights strung up over the headboard, which casts a warm, flickering fairy glow, and the room smells like vanilla. I don't want to look him in the face, because the question hits me like a gut-punch, because I'm not thinking about the skeleton in black robes. I'm thinking of those fish on the wall outside, my question about fate. Do I believe? What do I believe in?

"I don't know," I say. "Who's the shrine to?"

Gideon sits on his bed and pulls off his shoes, shiny penny-loafers with the vinyl soles crooked and peeking out under the ball. "I'm a practicing Catholic," he prefaces. Big gulp of air. "But when I got my powers and after my parents...you know...I began to pray to Santa Muerte sometimes."

"Cool." I have no idea what he's talking about. "Neat."

"It's not occultist!" He waves his hands, penny-loafers stripped. He throws back his head and steps up to the stove and mini-fridge. "And everyone's all: if you're not occultist, then why do you use black candles? And all the time, I'm all like, my parents are dead and I have superpowers and people are always trying to kidnap me. What do you expect?"

The fridge door flies open with a BANG! and I watch him, bent over and scrounging through the shelves. I can hear plastic scraping and aluminum banging. "Uh-huh. Sorry for your loss."

He doesn't acknowledge me. "Do you expect me to put up red candles, for love? I don't need love. I don't need gold for money, or green for health, and before, before everything, I used to light a brown candle, for wisdom and stuff. Because, you know, wisdom is good. If I was that guy who had to pick whichever goddess was prettier, I would've picked Athena, because screw love, right? Infinite wisdom is way better." I still have no idea what he's talking about, except for the part about the beauty contest between the goddesses that supposedly began the Trojan war. When your best friend is named Persephone, Greek mythology is just something you end up knowing, yeah? But otherwise, I can barely keep up with the galloping cadences of his sentences. Candles. Prayer.

The fridge door slams shut behind him, and he rises with an egg carton balanced over his arms. He flings two bags of tortilla and potato chips onto the counter. Slams a burnt skillet onto the stove. Shakes a lock of hair out of his eyes. "But now, I need black. I use black candles because I don't pray for money, or love, or any of that. I pray for protection. That's what those candles are meant for, for protection."

I unzip Chip's hoodie. The scent of him is already fading from the fabric, from my skin. I draw in deep breaths, desperate for cigarettes and cinnamon. But all I smell is vanilla and the metallic sting of dried blood. It makes my heart sink down into my knees.

"Oh. Cool." I plop down on Gideon's bed, smoothing his flowery sheets under my knee. Though the room is splashed with light, all at once it feels dark and foreign, like a cave.

Glances back at me, an egg raised over the frying pan. He tips his head toward the figure on the desk, then back at me. He breaks into a toothy smile, then turns back to the stove and starts to hum, cracking one egg, then two.

I don't get it at first, not until I unravel my laces and stare down at my black boots and black skinny jeans. Not until I turn the words over in my head. The black candles in front of the skeleton-saint in her black robes. Gideon's prayer for protection.

Me, swooping in and saving him from a back-alley kidnapping, crushing sternums and running the gutters blood-red, asking if I could live in his home, asking if I could protect him.

My hands begin to tremble. "Gideon?" I hate the way my voice comes out, all weak and burbly, like I'm scared. "Do you believe in fate?"

No, not the usual question to ask a stranger. But I feel like a pawn, like a strange sort of angel. It's a weird fear, but I'm not human, right? I'm bound up in the chains of something supernatural, is that it? Sinking farther and farther into some black sea, some fate I can't escape.

"Yeah. Of course, I do," he says over the sizzle of egg and the crackly-crunch of frying chips. "Why else would you be here?"

That's not the answer I was looking for. That's the opposite of what I was hoping for,and it makes me cold from the inside. I want to stop my shaking hands. "What powers do you even have, dude? That you're getting kidnapped and can't fight back?"

"Lie down," he tells me, still bent over the stove. "Take off your shirt."

"What."

He waves a hand over his shoulder. "You can crush my face in if I get weird— if that makes you feel any less freaked out about it."

He has a point, though he doesn't make me feel less freaked out. If anything, he makes me go even tenser. But I don't see any reason to protest, so I roll my tee—also black—over my injured shoulders. Because it's turned inside out, I can see the rusty stains left by my wounds, and I'm wincing through my teeth. I lie across Gideon's bed, legs dangling, arms clasped behind my head. Aside from how I can feel the coils, if I close my eyes, I can imagine I'm still at home. So I keep them pinned open wide, staring at the shifting images the water stains make on the ceiling.

Minutes pass, and then the stove clicks off. And then I can hear his feet shuffling on the carpet, and he's standing over me, eyes black and full of glitters, like chips of granite. His lashes flutter, feathery thick, then he's muttering and pressing a hand to the wound the bullet nicked across my bicep. Warmth seeps under my skin, down deep into my muscle. I'm tired of memorizing all the pores in Gideon's face, the bump on his hooked nose, like it's been broken. So, I let my eyes fall shut. But it's not home I imagine. It's a field of golden grass, the sun arcing overhead and sheathing my body in warmth. Out of the corners of my conscience, I can just feel his fingers slipping over the knife slash. And then he's running the inside of his thumb over my newly-healed arm. There's a jolt of pain, a thousand points in my bones shifting back into place. I snap upright, flinging Gideon off of me with a hard push. He lands on his butt in the carpet, blinking rapidly.

I touch the knife slash, which should be a swollen, ropey scar.

Smooth. As if I'd never been cut.

I touch my bullet wound, touch what should be a groove carved deep into my muscle.

Skin.

I clench my fist. Muscle surges to my skin painlessly.

"This is amazing," I whisper, staring at him, studying him. The stoop of his shoulders, the pull of his muscles straining against his shirt. Because all at once I know I've stumbled over something, someone, precious. And I'm cocking my head at him, feeling what you feel when you stand in front of some great piece of art or some natural wonder, like the Mona Lisa or a cavern of diamonds, something like reverence. Like I shouldn't be here. Like I'm scared of breaking him.

He scrambles and sits up on the bed beside me. "I saved someone after death. That's not something you should be able to do, they said." Gideon hands his head, fists wound up in the sheets. "And they'e after me now."

"Who's after you now?" I don't talk like this usually, voice all warm and honey-dripping. But he deserves it. 

Gideon's lashes flutter shut and he hits the mattress with a scream of coils. Clasps his hands behind his head, curly hair flung back against the posie-patterns on his quilt.

"Have you heard of a cult called Everyman?"