Love, and Other Supervillains by Reilly Cold

Author:Reilly Cold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: superhero romantic comedy
Publisher: Cold & Cove Publishing
Published: 2024-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Issue #4

The Red Raven: Origins

Chapter Ten

The bus to Vancouver is oversold. Again. Which means another stupid day in the stupid city with the stupid feeling of being so trapped she can hardly breathe.

"I'm really sorry, honey," the ticket agent says with an honest frown. "Maybe if you had ordered online like everyone else or come a little earlier...?"

Rachel doesn't bother telling him she was here when they opened because she slept on the floor in the terminal again, because that isn't the kind of thing you tell people.

"Is there anything else I can get you?"

She frowns at the large board marked with destinations and shakes her head. Her dream is to be Vancouver-bound, even if the fates conspire against her. More than slightly dejected, she walks away from the ticket booth and into the crowds. If she's going to be stuck in Jasper another night, she needs food, and she'll be damned if she spends another night on a cement floor that reeks like urine and stale popcorn.

A dip here and the ghost of a touch there, and Rachel's got a tidy enough parcel of wallets and coin purses to buy herself a sandwich and a room for the night in the dingy motel across from the transit station. She dumps the empty wallets in the lost and found on her way out.

If someone asked Rachel right then why she steals, if she was inclined to answer at that moment, she would tell them she does it to eat. She'd be right, of course, but she would also be lying.

Rachel steals to eat and to get by, but also because she doesn't know what else to do. Stealing is easy, and it makes sense. It's like something coded into her genes. She's a kleptoparasite. That's a word that means any animal that steals food from another animal. Rachel doesn't steal food, not usually, but she steals money, watches, and earrings, and that's almost the same thing. Rachel learned the word 'kleptoparasite' from a book she stole from a science teacher's briefcase while looking for his cell phone.

(Rachel also likes to steal words. She hides them and waits until the perfect moment to bring them out into the sun.)

She doesn't realise any of this, though. She just thinks she is stealing because it's the only thing she can do.

When she crosses the street to the motel and walks into the main office, the woman behind the counter talks with a tall man in a blue jacket, they haven't seen her yet because she makes sure the bell on the door doesn't announce her. That's another trick she learned, along with all the stealing.

Even if the blue jacket wasn't a dead giveaway, there's something about how the tall man stands that sets off almost every alarm bell in Rachel's head. She turns and leaves just as quickly and quietly as she'd come.

"Change your mind, sweetie?" asks the ticket booth guy when Rachel reappears at his window.

"Yes," she says. "One ticket, please."

"Where to? Tickets to Vancouver are sold out for the day.

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