I Died When the Sky Fell, Now I Wake Up Holding Lightning novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Dry Run

Greta tests her power in the parking garage and burns out her dash. Hollis is waiting and asks what she heard. A county list shows her name crossed out of the shelter.

I walked out of the lobby without letting my eyes stay on him.

My car was on the third level of the parking garage, and I took the stairs two at a time.

The sky had rung in the lobby, and nobody but Hollis and I had flinched.

That meant I wasn't crazy.

It also meant he had been waiting for it.

I got into the car and shut the door.

The garage was empty, gray and echoing, and the light above my space buzzed on and off.

I held my right hand over the dashboard and opened it.

Nothing happened.

I tried again, harder, and my palm tingled hard.

Blue light ran out over my fingers and jumped to the steering wheel.

The dash screen flashed white and went dark.

The radio went off with a small, final pop.

"Damn it," I said.

I pulled my hand back and shook it.

The light vanished.

I had not decided to do that.

It had come on its own, and I did not know how to make it stop.

Someone tapped on the window.

I jumped, and the car's interior lights flickered through every color.

Hollis stood outside with his hard hat under his arm.

I rolled the window down with the manual crank, since the buttons were dead.

"Your hands are smoking," he said.

I looked down.

Thin gray wisps were curling off my knuckles.

I put them in my lap.

"It's a short in the dash," I said. "Nothing to do with me."

"Okay."

He did not sound convinced.

He stood very still, and I noticed that he was not looking at the car.

He was looking at my hands.

"What did you hear in the lobby?" he said.

My stomach dropped.

"A fire alarm," I said. "Someone tested it."

"It wasn't an alarm."

"Then what was it?"

"You tell me," he said. "You turned your head before I did."

I started the engine, and it caught on the first try.

I felt a stupid flood of relief.

"Is this a pickup line, Rennick?" I said. "Because it's the worst one I've heard."

"It's not."

"Then why are you in my garage?"

He thought about it.

"The lobby panel needed a part from my truck," he said. "Third level."

His truck was parked two spaces from mine.

It was a white co-op pickup with a ladder rack.

"Fine," I said.

"You quit," he said.

"I did."

"Good."

I stared at him.

"Good?"

"Lorraine Pruitt isn't someone you should be sitting beside for the next two weeks," he said.

"I've worked for her four years. She brings me coffee."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

He rubbed his jaw with one scarred hand and said nothing.

His forearms were covered in old burns, pale and pink, the kind linemen get from arc flashes.

I wanted to ask him how he knew about the coffee.

I wanted to ask him a lot of things, and I found I was afraid of the answers.

Because I had a question of my own, the real one, and if I asked it out loud it would sound like a breakdown.

Do you remember it too?

"Go home, Greta," he said.

It was the first time he had used my first name.

"I'll see you," I said.

I put the car in reverse and pulled out.

In the mirror he stood there until I took the ramp.

I drove to my bank first and withdrew most of what I had.

It was forty thousand dollars, which was all I would ever see of my father's life insurance.

The teller counted it twice and asked if I was in trouble.

"Not yet," I said.

My phone buzzed in the parking lot.

It was an email from a friend at the Center, with no message and an attachment.

The attachment was a spreadsheet called Shelter Four July 8.

It listed four hundred and ten county employees in one column and a number beside each.

Most of the numbers were ones.

A few were twos.

At the bottom, in a column marked Notes, someone had typed in the same flat font: PAID.

I scrolled to the M's.

Mullaney, Greta, was struck through in red.

Beside it, in the same neat font Lorraine used on every memo, someone had typed: Removed. Do not admit.

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