Young Writers Society

Tuesday, 15:00, route 40 eastbound

Somehow, years of being taciturn are not enough to keep Martin’s worry from surfacing. The moment his dad lumbers onto the bus, he notices Martin’s mouth is crooked just so and his hands hover over the pocket of his backpack where he stores his cell phone. Martin stares at his surroundings instead of getting lost in a book, and he sits with his back arched instead of straight.

“Something’s wrong,” Martin’s dad says, still standing. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Later. Probably.”

Pursing his lips, Martin’s dad turns to the window. His faded reflection looks back, eyes widened slightly in a cocktail of confusion and his own worries. “This, uh… this is new,” he says. “Do you think, once all the chaos of turning into a vampire wears off, you might explain?”

Martin shrugs, and under his palms, he feels the tingling vibration of a text reaching his phone. “You’ll probably find out about it before I get the chance to explain myself.”

Then his dad breathes out a dry, resigned chuckle and slouches, falling into a seat across the aisle. “That’s the worst way for a parent to find out what their kid is up to, but if that’s what you think is best, Martin, I’ll trust you.”

Feeling somehow guilty already, Martin unzips his backpack, watching each pair of teeth unlock and listening to the individual clicks of the plastic. His phone rattles again, and he is about to grab it, but the grating clatter of metal armor on the bus floor buzzes in his ears, and he freezes.

“Martin!” Mellie exclaims. Her red hair is particularly frizzy today. “You’re actually here. After the thing at lunch today, I thought you’d have gone home with your friends.”

“What thing at lunch?” asks Martin. Moments later, his dad echoes the question.

Swiping at stray hairs falling across her forehead, Mellie raises an eyebrow and blinks in surprise. “You two didn’t hear? I definitely thought it was your friend on the phone with some tip about the serial car accidents”—this she says with her fingers in quotation marks—”but maybe I was wrong.”

Martin has a hunch she is right, but he chooses to remain vague and shrugs. “We don’t share the same lunch hour. I have no idea what my friend would have said.”

“It just sounded like a dragon situation, you know?” Mellie says. “Most people don’t go vigilante and send supervillains after thieves. Even if the item in question is expensive, mercenaries are a bit extreme.”

A quiet buzz shakes Martin’s phone again, though the bus’s engine kicking into gear almost drowns the phone’s vibration. Martin gives up and removes his hand from his backpack. “I wasn’t aware Drake told you he was a dragon.”

“Oh, right.” Mellie nods and reaches for a handrail, armor clinking as she shuffles on the floor. “Actually, we looked him up on Friday, when you had the whole… turning thing.” She makes a swiveling gesture with her wrist, and her leather gloves squeak. “There are only two dragon families in the city, and your friend is the only dragon his age for a fifty-mile radius, so it wasn’t hard to figure out who gave us the tip, even though it sounded like he wanted to be anonymous.”

Mr. Stevenson frowns and scratches the back of his neck. “And is he still anonymous officially, at least?”

“Of course he is,” Mellie says, leaning back onto the handrail. “As a fellow powerful folk, I respect his privacy rights.”

The adults continue their conversation on their own, and Martin looks out the window to angle his ears away from them. The old Talisman Estate is smothered in a maze of wooden pegs and metal fencing. Already, a few bulldozers have begun their slow, arduous trek from the borders of the estate to the center, and bright green spray paint marks the highway every few hundred yards to show where new streets will intersect.

Finally Martin pulls his phone from his backpack and checks the several texts he has just received. The line of icons accompanying the messages are all the same blue rabbit, eliciting a grunt of surprise from Martin. Willow only texts about Drake and her biology homework, not Divinity’s latest spying missions.

“Really?” Martin mutters. “Is that even safe?”

As though sensing his concern, Willow sends a text describing in great detail a recent surge in spectral energy. Then she asks for Martin to please tell Drake and Divinity to go somewhere safe while she investigates on her own.

“Leave it to Willow to take everything upon herself.” Martin looks up from his phone with a sigh, and his gaze is attracted to the front window. The internal debate between his curiosity and his cautionary, instilled-by-dad voice fall to the back of his mind.

On the right side of the highway is a line of vehicles so long it evokes the image of an endless cargo train, full of dirty, matte metal and cars so close together they might as well be linked. Red and blue police lights twinkle at the entrance to town. Martin taps into his hearing and smell, but Mellie and his dad have switched into confused and hopeful theories, and he isn’t close enough to the accident to snatch whiffs of blood. Besides, smoky engine exhaust overwhelms most of the minor scents in the vicinity.

Martin’s phone buzzes, and the screen lights up with an update from Drake.

“Oh boy,” Martin breathes, letting out a dry laugh identical to his dad’s. “I wonder if either of those two realizes what Willow is actually up to. She’s a screamer, not a fainter.”

His phone is silent for the long minutes it takes for the bus to inch towards the accident scene, but Martin is too restless to read. The closer he gets to the police cars, the longer the tang of iron lingers in the air. His dad has the slight waver of terror in his voice, and Mellie is stomping her steel-clad feet on the floor. Her clomps are deafening.

“It was supposed to be over!” she seethes. Her hair begins to smoke. “Now what do I think? Is the tip wrong, or was the tip right, and now we have an insane supervillain on our hands?”

Mr. Stevenson stands. “Calm down, Mellie. You’re setting yourself on fire.” Trying a smile, he looks to Martin. “Picking up on anything there? Smells? Visuals? You’ll see, Mellie, Martin probably knows something that’ll show this isn’t the same case.”

The bus is a snail as it passes the accident, and the acrid smell of burnt hair inundating the bus keeps blood from reaching Martin’s nose. However, one fact is undeniable, and Martin can do nothing to keep it from surfacing. The body on the ground has long blonde hair sprawled around her head like a halo. Even Rick can see it, plain as day.