Lonely Hearts Club

Radiance #4: the alleged girls' night out episode, ft. do-it-yourself lightning storms and small mercies in unexpected places.

Radiance is a (mostly) lighthearted fiction serial about one of Earth's darker timelines. It takes place around 2013 in a world where atypical abilities have become increasingly common, with the storyline following a group of minor-league superheroes based in Washington, DC. Our protagonist is Lady Radiance, former teen sensation, aka Christabel Jones, professional ray of sunshine—or, at least, she's trying her best.

Previously, Lady Radiance witnessed some of Hades’ inner darkness and began to feel the pressure of her double life. This time, she starts to wonder if she really made the right choice.

Listen to the Spotify playlist here.

<#3 // To #3.5 || Directory || To #4.5 // #5 coming soon…>

iMessage: Marissa Cotlin

Marissa: hey

Marissa: any plans tonight

Christa: Not really. What’s up?

Marissa: absolutely nothing. we should hang out

Marissa: my place? prob wont go anywhere but bring a going out top n flats anyway

Christa: Sure! Send me your address and I can be over in a minute.

“Thanks for having me over,” Christa said, glancing around as she came in. It was a nice place for how small it was, but it was clear nobody spent much time here. She was used to Marissa’s workspaces, clean but generally cluttered, with half-completed projects everywhere and a mosaic of photos taped up around the desks. The condo’s living area was dusty, the plant on the kitchen counter was dying, and a stack of framed posters still leaned against a wall in hopes of someday being put up.

Marissa walked a few feet to the couch and flopped down on her back, feet hanging over the arm. “Hey, do you know what I was doing before you got here?” she said. “Trying to use logic to identify my frozen-food nemesis. That’s what I was doing with my Friday night.”

“I thought you were going to work on the blog, since so much happened last week with Halloween?” Christa said, closing the door behind herself.

“I was, but the Internet sucks. Somebody started a ship war over Ravenite’s villainess Red Lotus, and now Claire’s inbox is full of gross anons because Chained Li…heh, your face. You’re not even in this one.” She gestured loosely over the back of the couch into the kitchen. “Anyway, take a look at that and tell me what you think.”

Christa stepped into the kitchen area and picked up the chart she was pointing to, drawn up on a legal pad. Every name but one had already been crossed out. “There’s not a lot of people on here.”

“Well, there were only so many people who were around the first time it happened,” Marissa said, ticking them off on her fingers. “Sebastian, Jacob, you, Dr. Marcos, and Hades. You have no motive, so that was an easy one.”

“Thank you,” Christa said. She sympathized with the idea of getting junk that wasn’t really food out of Marissa’s diet, but she was hardly going to take it herself.

“Of course. Then the pineapple-laced English muffin pizzas I put out as bait disappeared too, which rules out Lautaro because he’s allergic enough that I would have noticed.”

“Plus Jacob won’t eat pineapple on pizza…” A thought occurred, sparking a grin. “Oh, is that why you got that Hawaiian for movie night? You were gathering clues?”

“Darn straight,” Marissa said, turning around to slouch across the back of the couch. “That by itself wasn’t enough to cross him off, but he has a solid alibi for theft number five—I have him on camera testing the duration of Formula 86. And as for Sebastian, while I still would put nothing past him, he was in Pennsylvania for his day job when those Bagel Bites disappeared from the lab freezer.”

“Oh, yeah! I remember that…” Christa considered this, looking at the chart again. “And you’re sure he couldn’t have taken them before he left?”

“Nope. I saw them when I went to pull something else out at ten. Then he called me at eleven-thirty from a diner in, what, Shippingsburg, to see if I’d noticed that badge switch he pulled the day before. I was gone for ten minutes double-checking that I could still get upstairs, and that had to be when they were stolen…besides, now that I think about it, I’m not sure he could have pulled off the Halloween theft, either.”

“Why, did he have an alibi?” Christa asked.

Marissa rubbed her face as if her eyes had betrayed her personally. “Yep. Me.”

“Oh,” she said, mentally agreeing that that was about as watertight as it was going to get. “I guess your thief could have an accomplice.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Marissa sighed. “If they do, I’m never going to figure it out like this. Maybe it really is Lady Radiance’s goth boyfriend.”

Christabel dropped the pad onto the table in surprise, blushing. “Marissa!”

“Sorry!” She had a hand over her mouth. “I don’t ship—I mean—well, that’s what Jake calls him.”

Jacob. The traitor. Christa thought of his unusually laid-back amusement any time the topic of Hades came up, and blushed even harder. “And what else does Jake say about my…Lord Hades?” she asked, pouting a little.

Marissa tried an apologetic smile as she got up from the couch. “That he reminds him of somebody called Todd.”

“Oh, geez,” Christa groaned into her hands. It all made sense now. “Of course he does.”

A cabinet opened and a cork popped in the background, and then Marissa nudged a glass of wine into the edge of her hand. “C’mon, you can’t leave it at that! Spill.”

“Ughhhh, fine. I’m surprised you don’t know already, with the fan stuff,” she said, taking a sip as she watched Marissa pour another for herself. “We dated on and off for a couple of years while I was working on Radiance. Jacob liked to tease me that I shouldn’t be going out with anybody who wore more makeup than I did—”

Marissa choked for a second. “Oh, god, what?”

“He was in a band!” Christa protested. “They had this, I don’t know, decaying-aristo vampire aesthetic. Emo metal, or neo-visual-kei or something. Todd was basically nocturnal by that point, and I was getting up at four when we were shooting anyway, so he used to come hang out with me after shows. It made me feel special.”

“I love it. Please tell me you remember the band’s name,” Marissa said, pulling her phone out.

Christa didn’t care to drink much, but she hadn’t had nearly enough wine yet for this. “Bloody Velvet Wedding,” she mumbled into her glass.

Marissa snickered as she scrolled. “All right, well, you get off easy this time. I haven’t found them yet,” she said after a minute. “So what happened to Todd? Did he go on tour and leave you?”

“No…” She sighed, thinking back. “It was me that ended up finally breaking it off. I was doing everything under my stage name, legally, so…he had no idea who I was. I never felt like we truly had anything together, because I never found it in me to trust that he would like the real me as much as the public face I’d put on.”

“Oh,” Marissa said. “Okay, I was going to say I had no dating advice for you, but—maybe don’t do that again.”

“I would say I’m trying, but I did kind of paint myself right back into that corner with Lady Radiance, didn’t I,” Christa said, shaking her head. Any man who fell for the Lady was going to have to learn to put up with Christabel, and vice versa. She’d only been doing what had seemed right at the time…but see where that got her. She looked over hopefully. “You really don’t have any dating advice? I mean, you have to be doing better than I am.”

Marissa smiled ruefully. “You super-people are so far out of my league, babe, it’s not even funny. I mean, the last time we met up for lunch, the law students at the table behind us were arguing over which of them should get to ask for your number. You noticed, right? Men look at you. I’ve been assuming you just aren’t interested.”

Christabel felt herself blush again; she hadn’t noticed it happening at all. “I guess I’m interested,” she said, looking away. “I don’t know. Every time I think I know what I’m going to do with my life, something happens to shake it up.”

“You’ve got some time,” Marissa said, shrugging as she finished her drink.

“I don’t know,” Christa said again. She spun the glass by its stem for a moment before deciding to confess what had been eating at her. “I was in the used bookstore the other day, and, um—this five-year-old came up and asked if I was the real Lady Radiance.”

“Oh, but that’s cute, right?”

“Sort of. She recognized me because her mom was a huge fan of the show, and they have all the DVDs. Her mom who is my age.” Christa sat back heavily in her chair. “I mean, I don’t even have a boyfriend, and—"

“Ohhhh, no. Don’t you go there,” Marissa said, taking away her empty glass and heading back to the sink. “Do not bring baby fever into this house. I do not need that in my life, and neither do you.”

“Come on. I’m not that young,” Christa said, her frown deepening reflexively as she suddenly regretted bringing up the subject.

The other woman was pulling down a couple of drinking glasses and straining on tiptoe to reach a Brita pitcher. “Yeah, but—well, can you even have children? ’Cause so many of my female subjects have serious fertility issues, I wouldn’t want you to get your…” She trailed off as she looked back, catching the look on Christabel’s face. “Um. No one talked to you about this?”

“No,” Christa said. She’d tensed up so much that it came out more like a squeak.

Marissa took a deep breath. “Ooooookay. Well. I will have some words with Dr. Marcos, and we will deal with that…not tonight. Right now, I’m going to take my big foot back out of my big mouth, and you’re going to drink this glass of water and go get changed. Because we’re going out.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. You dance, right?” Her ringtone sounded suddenly from the kitchen counter, and Marissa glanced back and swore under her breath as she saw the caller ID. “Okay, you’ve got a minute. But seriously, drink that… Hey, Mom, what’s up?” she answered, her voice abruptly jumping an octave. “Oh. No, I must have just missed your texts, sorry…”

The bedroom door closed behind her, and Christabel let herself slouch a little. With Marissa out of the room, she had lost all her cues for how she was supposed to feel, and she wished she’d had even a minute more to try to get some guidance. Was it normal to worry about her future, after hearing something like that? But, then, maybe was that stupid, since there was so much that Lady Radiance could be doing instead. If she could be a hero, didn’t she have a duty to do so?

Had she ever wanted to marry a lawyer, buy a townhouse across from a dog park, and send their two kids to Georgetown, or did that only sound appealing because some alternate version of herself had waved back from a train she might not be able to catch?

She’d always been happy to be different. How could some part of her still want to be like everyone else?

Christa drank the water slowly before shuffling to the bathroom to change her top. The new one was a vintage piece, bell-sleeved and flowy with a cropped waistband that tied in a side bow. It had been a good choice; she felt young and pretty, a thousand miles away from anything that might have consequences she cared about. She spent another few minutes converting her makeup look from day to night, going heavy on the glittery eyeshadow just because she could. Then she fluffed her hair again, pulled it back behind a thick knit headband, and sashayed out to see if Marissa was ready to go. Her friend had changed and put her hair up, but was still on the phone, pacing back and forth in the kitchen.

“Yes, I have a dress,” she said. “I—yes, it fits.” She mouthed sorry to Christa, crossing the room again to get some space. “Why does it matter what size…Mom. Mom, look, if you’re that worried about it, I don’t have to come. Cut me out of Mallory’s wedding pictures, airbrush me down to an 8, and Photoshop me in.”

Christabel awkwardly poured herself a little more water and tried her best, unsuccessfully, not to eavesdrop. Since she’d never known her mother, she was habitually curious about others’ relationships with theirs, but this one didn’t seem to be going well.  

“I am not being difficult, you are letting the stress get to you. Don’t take it out on me. Tell Morgan she can go one day without being a freakin’ overachiever and making the rest of us look bad—” Marissa pulled her phone away and checked the screen. “Oh, good, she hung up on me.”

“Good?” Christa ventured.

“Yeah, good. I hate when she makes me be the reasonable one.” She dropped her phone into a battered crossbody purse and grimaced for a moment at her reflection in the sliding glass door to the balcony, trying to tug her shirt hem down flat over her pencil skirt. “My little sister’s getting married in December,” she said. “Mom’s losing her mind because it’s the last wedding she expects to do, so it has to be perfect.”

That didn’t add up. “But what about you?”

“Me? Heh.” Marissa shook her head. “You know how it is. Mal’s the smart sister, Morgan’s the pretty sister, and I’m…well, I’m in the middle. It’s no big—not like anyone else notices me either.” She seemed to know she hadn’t sounded convincing, because she came over and took Christa’s water away instead of letting her respond. “Come on, that’s enough of that. We are going to get tapas while we wait for the good clubs to open, and then we’re going to dance with some low-rent foreign spies and charm somebody with a badge into buying us drinks. Because we are hot, and it will be fun.”

✨✨✨

It had been fun. Right up until the point of a wall crashing in under a laser blast that cut a furrow straight through the DJ’s mile-high hairdo.

Lady Radiance was currently shimmying into the last pieces of her costume behind the ladies’ room counter, grateful she’d made sure it packed down small enough to take everywhere, while Marissa had given up on going through her bag and dumped the contents out next to the sink. “Tell me you brought yours,” she said as she snatched up bobby pins and tampons to drop them back in.

“My what?” Lady asked.

“That bracelet...the panic button. Mine’s a keychain, but the stupid D-ring broke and I bet it’s in my other purse. You’ve got yours?”

She held up her arm. “Yes, of course. Marissa, it’s fine—I do this all the time now.”

“Yeah. Sorry, I know. Gotta earn my ‘professional damsel in distress’ badge somehow.” Marissa flashed her a tense smile. “You’ll do great.”

“I’ll make sure Jacob picks you up,” Lady said, touching her arm in reassurance as she went to leave.

Marissa shrugged, reaching for the half-finished Red Bull she’d managed to bring with her. “Yeah, no rush—”

Laser-light cut through one wall and out the other, punching through the can and releasing a flood across the dingy counter. Lady Radiance had already grabbed her and dragged her down to the floor, where they watched the slow drizzle over the edge.

“Okay, maybe a little rush,” Marissa said.

Lady grinned at her and punched up her aura to a shield as she ran back out, hitting the button on her bracelet as she went. Any attempt to try to work out when her friends might show up was immediately replaced by the struggle to navigate the dance floor. It had emptied of people but was already overrun by cat-sized, laser-wielding robots with more legs than necessary, which seemed to be both moving and firing at random. As one of the blasts hit her shield, she felt the impact more dimly than expected—it had absorbed the energy. She could work with this.

“Now whose noise complaints are discriminatory and close to legally constituting harassment, Darryl?” a man screamed from on top of the laser-pitted bar. Lady Radiance turned to him in surprise, taking in the clearance-aisle rubber mask and threadbare bathrobe. “You want harassment?! I’ll give you—”

He crashed through the bar as another robot cut through the last support beneath him, and Lady shook herself. Obviously, nobody was going to stabilize the situation if she didn’t step up. She was still using the laser blasts to slowly expand a larger, dome-shaped shield around more and more of the robots when Spacewalker and Chained Lightning popped in. The walking electric fence cackled and ran off without saying hello, lighting up the center of the room in a column of shivering bolts that went straight to the ceiling. Well—that was new. Spacewalker slipped through Lady Radiance’s shields and gave her a one-armed hug. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this? I thought you went to Marissa’s.”

“I did,” she said. “She should still be in the ladies’ room, if you can give her a ride out of here.”

“One of these days I’m going to start charging you for taxi service,” he said before he disappeared into the ether. Since Chained Lightning was making short work of the bots, Lady Radiance stayed focused on keeping the remaining ones inside the shield, one eye on the part of the ceiling that was beginning to shed rubble. If they’d already made it over here, the official responders shouldn’t be too far behind…

Speak of the devil. Crystal Falcon dropped in through the hole their villain had entered by and hovered there on translucent wings, looking over the scene uncertainly. Lady Radiance shot him a dazzling smile and then dropped the shields as she turned around. “Rendezvous?” she called.

“Four,” Spacewalker called back, already back and heading to grab their friend. Lady nodded to him and took off, blowing Crystal Falcon a kiss for show as she flew over his head and accelerated out into the darkness in a now-practiced streak of light.

Rendezvous point four was a specific rooftop in Columbia Heights with a façade that blocked the view from the street. Lady Radiance dropped onto it to find the other two waiting for her.

“All right?” her brother asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, glancing around. “Where’d you leave Marissa?”

A glove descended heavily on her shoulder, and suddenly she was facing the other way, her vision taken up by Chained Lightning’s face. “Run that by me again?” he growled.

Just as suddenly, Jake was in between them, using his height to his advantage as he pushed the other man away. “I took her back to the office, because I knew you’d do this. She is fine. Calm down, man.”

“I am calm. You don't have to get onto me.” She couldn't see him, but somehow she didn't think that was true; her skin was tingling like the time she'd stepped too close to a Tesla coil. That was new, too. “The hell was she doin’ in there?”

“We were out together,” Lady said, easily leaning around Jacob.

Baz pushed his dark glasses back, presumably to glare more effectively. His whole face was tense. “Yeah, I figured, but we only got an SOS from you. What happened? Why couldn't she send her signal?”

“Nothing happened,” she said. “She just didn’t have it.”

“She didn’t—” He took a controlled breath and turned back sharply to Jacob. “And you said I didn’t even need to come.”

Jacob looked relaxed, but Christa felt a telltale shift in his energy. “Yeah, well—” Pop.

“I hate when he does that,” she said, looking up into Sebastian’s face.

He shook his head, the voltage fizzling out. “Well, if you can manage it, I'm still gonna need a ride back to the lab. I can’t get the suit off until I deal with this.” He raised his left arm, showing her what looked like an injury from falling debris. The armor’s frame had been crushed, pushing chunks of metal and chainmail straight through his skin. Large, dark circles dotted the cement underfoot, trailing his steps in a long arc back to the spot where they’d emerged.

“Oh! Oh, no, of course I can.” Christa reached back and unclipped her capelet, wrapping it loosely around his arm to keep the blood from continuing to drip. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“I've had worse,” he said.

She held her arms out. “That's not what I asked. Come on.”

✨✨✨

As she came down the stairs from the roof, Christa looked in on the second floor and saw Jake stepping out into the hall.

“Down here,” he said, gesturing back toward the exam rooms. “Marissa said she’d see what she can do without getting Dr. Marcos out of bed.”

“Bolt cutters’ll be fine,” Baz said as he passed them. “I can handle the rest.”

“Heh. Good luck telling her that, she’s in a mood.”

Christa didn’t get to ask what kind of mood that was before he opened the door and Marissa started in on him. “You still can’t think anything through, can you? Getting hurt like that, how—I mean, what do you think you are, Iron Man?”

“Oh, I can’t think—” The rest was muffled as the door slammed behind him.

Jacob turned back to her. “Is it just me, or are they getting a little old for this kind of thing?”

“It is a little juvenile,” Christa said reluctantly. “But you've known them longer than I have. Has it always been this bad?”

He smirked. “No…it's definitely gotten worse recently.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah,” he said, handing Christa her bag back. “Well, I'm done here. Let me know tomorrow whether she stabs him, or they forget about you and start making out.”

“Wait, what?” She felt her eyes widen—she was probably pulling that scandalized expression again that amused everyone so much. He couldn’t be serious, though. “It’s not like that, is it?”

Jacob stopped to roll his eyes as he pushed the elevator call button. “You really need to pay more attention, Chris.”

“But…” She did pay attention. She’d spent enough time with Marissa to hear Baz introduced more than once as “Sebastian Grimes, the bane of my existence”, and to have noticed that his flirting annoyed her far more than the pranks and insults did. She’d come to mentally file it all under the same category of mean-spirited things they did to each other while, for reasons obscure and perhaps unknowable, somehow remaining friends. If there was any attraction between them, she should have seen it by now.

A sudden distraction saved her from having to give the matter further thought. “Uh, Jake? Your pocket is bleeding.”

He looked down at the dark stain spreading down the left side of his pants. “Oh, so it is. Well, we’ve got a first aid kit at home too, so—”

Christa tugged on his elbow, and Jacob allowed her to pull his hand out of his pocket. The end of his little finger had been heavily bandaged, but the tape had come loose while they were talking, leaving room for blood to seep out from under the gauze. “What did you do?” she demanded.

Jacob sighed. “I clipped the side of it, is all.”

“What do you mean?” Christa said. “With what?”

“With the wall. When I was coming out of interspace that last time.” He kept his eyes on his hand. “I missed the target by three feet, and ended up with a layer or two of skin on the other side of the paint. That’s all—it’s fine.”

The room suddenly wobbled in front of her. “But you never do that. You’re so careful…”

“I know. I am. But I’m having to recalculate on the fly right now,” he said. “They changed something for Formula 86 to dial it in on the weird-physics set. It’s not a complete suppression, and it’s not working for everyone…I mean, you saw it kind of backfired on Baz. But not much’s ever worked on him—”

“Jake. What did it do to you?” she insisted through the fear.

Jacob looked away now. “It’s wearing my abilities down slowly. I can still get into interspace, but I can’t control where I’m going that well anymore. If I’m going to keep using them, it’s not safe to do long jumps or take passengers anymore—which, yes, Marissa told me I needed to discuss with you, okay? But I figured tomorrow would be soon enough.”

Christa felt her grip tightening around his arm, and forced herself to loosen it again. “Okay,” she said, somewhat distantly. She felt sick. “Sure. At least let me get that fixed.”

“I can do it,” he said, but he let her hold the gauze back in place while he rewrapped it. She had to fight to keep out the horrible intrusive thoughts of how much worse it could have been—there shouldn’t even be an if he continued to use his powers. She just couldn’t seem to get the words out.

“Are you going to get it looked at properly?” Christa asked when he was done.

Jacob shrugged. “Only if this keeps up. There’s not much else a doctor could do, anyway.”

“Okay, then,” she said again, feeling absolutely helpless. Lady Radiance could have said something to make a difference, but even though she hadn’t taken off the costume, she’d turned back into Christabel—tired, small, and still too proud to fight him if it meant admitting she was scared. She let Jacob leave, and then went to change into her street clothes and scrub her hands in the bathroom sink until she no longer thought she saw his blood on them. Outside the bathrooms was a bench with vinyl cushions that looked too thin to fall asleep on, even if she did put her feet up and rest her eyes.

Christa didn’t find out how deceiving those looks were until she opened her eyes again to voices down the hall and a painfully stiff neck.

“You take care of everybody, Rissa, but who takes care of you?” That was Sebastian, of course. At least she hadn’t slept straight through to Saturday morning. Marissa was trying to interrupt him, but got cut off. “Nobody, ’cause you don’t let them.”

Christa got up and made her way toward the source of the sound, hoping this wasn’t about to be awkward.

“I don’t need taking care of,” Marissa snapped from around the corner. “I’m a grown woman, all right, I—” Oh, that sounded like she’d just walked into something. “Don’t laugh. Don’t you dare laugh at me! I swear to God, sometimes I think I’m just a joke—”

“Hey…is everything okay?” Christa said as she poked her head around. The other two looked back at her from their positions near the exam room door, three feet apart. Baz, arms crossed, was giving off that energy again that made her want to back up right now, before he decided that she might constitute a threat. Marissa had one hand on the opposite shoulder, fresh from smacking it into the door frame, and looked like she was holding back angry tears.

“Christa,” she said, slightly hoarse. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were still here.”

“Yeah. All my things are at your place,” she said apologetically.

Sebastian turned, shrugging off the storm, and started pulling on a jacket to cover the bandages on his arm. “Take her home, Christa.”

“Excuse me?” Marissa said sharply. “I know where I live. I think I can make it there by myself.”

“You couldn’t even go out with Lady Radiance without findin’ trouble. And what if she hadn’t been there?” he said, looking back at her with a sudden scowl. “No. Either she’s takin’ you home or I am, and I don’t think you want me to do it.”

“Oh, you picked that up, did you?” She leaned down and got her keys from where they’d fallen to the floor, wobbling on a broken heel but drawing herself up straight anyway. “You can go to hell, for all I care.”

“Prob’ly will,” Baz called after her as she stormed past them both. “But nobody’s dyin’ on my watch, you got that?”

Marissa was gone around the corner, and didn’t answer. Christa shifted uncomfortably on her feet, wondering if she should have followed. “I’m sorry about all this,” she said.

He sighed, pulling a wry smile out of nowhere as usual. “No, you did fine. I don’t worry about you.”

She wanted to say something more, but Marissa’s voice echoed from the direction of the elevator. “CHRISTABEL! WE’RE LEAVING!”

“Go on,” he said. “I’ll lock up.”

Marissa maintained a sullen, fuming silence until after they’d landed in one of the darker corners of the park and were hiking up the stairs of her building, faces tingling after being in the cold outside. “I hate when he’s right,” she said. “I hate it.”

Christa felt more useless than ever. “No, I mean…he’s just…I’m sure he means well.” 

“You can’t be sure about anything with him. I’ve known Sebastian almost five years now, you know?” She’d started struggling to get her bag open. “I spent so long just figuring out how to get him to smile. I mean a real smile, not that ironic look how much I don’t care grimace. I never knew if I’d really see him the next week, or if he’d turn up dead in a ditch. And now he’s going to pretend he gives a damn about—ugh!” The zipper tab had snapped off in her hand.

“He’s a lot better now, isn’t he?” Christa said cautiously. This side of the story was news to her. By the time they’d met, her impression was that Baz was the only friend of Jacob’s who actually had his life together; adding vigilante heroism hadn’t even seemed to slow him down. The man was as stable as anybody could get under the circumstances.

“Yeah, he really is. I guess at least there’s that.” Marissa was picking at the zipper, trying to peel the halves apart with chipped fingernails. “Sorry…sometimes I feel like all this is my mad scientist origin story.”

“What is?”

After a long silence, she said, “We don’t have to talk about it. The experiments bother you, right?”

“Yes,” Christa admitted. “But that’s my problem. I still like you.”

“That’s good. I’d have to seriously reevaluate my life if you didn’t.” Finally, Marissa got the bag open and extracted her keys. “This day sucked so much, and all I did was drag you into the middle of it. Thanks for coming tonight. I mean it.”

“I just want to help,” she said quietly.

“Babe, you do.” Marissa stopped in the doorway to hug her tightly. “You’re a good friend, Christa. That’s enough.”

Was it? Was that enough, really?

As she collected her things and went downstairs to wait for the bus, she couldn’t shake the sinking suspicion that what she really wanted was something too selfish to put into words. If she could help people and be of use, then of course they’d care about her. And if she couldn’t, then…well, it was only fair if they didn’t. That was why she was here, and not in LA. A girl like her was easy to discard.

If a world existed where she wasn’t—it didn’t, of course, but if it did—then maybe she’d have been happier there.

When Christa came in the house, avoiding the clock out of dread for what time it might now be, she was caught off-guard by a dim, flickering glow from the living room corner that she thought of now as her Lord’s. A little bed of embers sat banked up on the floor, and a small envelope floated above them, rotating slowly but showily as if to make sure she didn’t miss it.

Tension flooded away as she broke into a smile. It was all the welcome-home she could have wanted, and for a moment she forgot that Lord Hades was the Lady’s sworn enemy and not, actually, someone Christabel should look forward to hearing from. She plucked the envelope from the air, darkening the room as the coals dissolved beneath it, and began reading by the light of her aura while she was still walking up to her room.

My Lady Radiance.

You cannot imagine the depths of disappointment in which I presently repose. I take no issue with what you might do on your own time, but I don’t recall our agreeing to see other people professionally…am I not wicked enough for you? Do I not exhaust the limits of your strength? What reserves are you holding back from me, that you still find it in you to fight another day?

Yes, I’ll sulk if I like. I thought that we had something special. I don’t go around causing trouble for anyone else but you, after all. Should I start?

Distraction bears consequences, my innocent. Remember you can’t be everywhere at once, and neither can your allies. Don’t forget that Death is jealous and unashamed.

I’ll call you again tomorrow. Answer this time.

xxx LORD HADES

<#3 // To #3.5 || Directory || To #4.5 // #5 coming soon…>

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Thanks so much for reading!

Up next in the Radiance universe, we’re flashing back a week for This is Halloween, a slice-of-life one-shot from Jacob’s POV. Expect that August 29. Then, Radiance #5, Master of Puppets, is scheduled to post on October 10. Why the wait? Because of something I’ve been teasing for a while now………

Science! Girl & Chained Lightning.

Marissa leaned over and pushed a fingertip into his chest. “You’re the one who has the problem with this,” she said. “You can come with me.”

His eyes narrowed into a curling smirk. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“Yeah? I don’t have to show up without a plus-one; you ensure I’m not abducted and/or murdered; I’m not sure I see a downside.” Blatant lies. She was staring at the downside right now. But if he could pull this kind of nonsense, then so could she.

It refused to be a one-shot, so it’s a limited serial (rom-com setup with family drama and belligerent sexual tension.) Pretend to be Nice, Part One, will post on September 5, and the other 2-3 5 parts¹ will go up during September as well.

If you enjoyed this installment of Radiance, you can show it by leaving a like or comment, sharing this post, or just continuing to read. :) Everyone’s welcome in the fan club!

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✨ Commenters: the halfway point nears, and the story is about to take a further turn toward the serious. Before I wrap up this subplot next week, who would you accuse as the pizza thief—or thieves? I want to see if anyone picked up the clues I’ve been dropping… ✨

1. I still can’t believe I ever thought I could avoid turning this into its own novella.