“Hang on!” Teia shouted. “I got this!” She gripped the rail, her arms braced, her whole body tensed with effort. A trail of leafy frost edged away from her hands, then shot out in speeding, winding patterns of ice around the railing, crawling both up and down. The air grew cold, then it grew colder. The frost reached Anna’s hands, but she didn’t dare let go. Her breath fogged, and the cold stung her face.
Teia reached up, blasting a sheet of frozen air particles up the center of the stairwell, past the upper landings, toward the oncoming wall of fire. The approaching jets of flame sputtered, and for a moment, Lady Snow had the advantage, sending wave after wave of cold toward the fires, which fought to stay lit, to continue progressing downward like some burning avalanche.
A drizzle began falling down the stairwell, a mist of droplets as Lady Snow’s cold met the fire, vaporized, and became rain. The next set of jets lit, and the droplets turned to fog, more frost dripped off the railings, and the heat won out.
Drenched with water, Teia shouted out in frustration. The air was steaming.
Arthur said, commanding, “Analise. Typhoon. You must do this.”
“I can’t!”
“Then we burn.”
Anna had never heard her father sound so … otherworldly. Cruel, that was it. She had to keep reminding herself, this was Dr. Mentis now. The hero thing, it wasn’t just a costume you put on and took off. This was what people meant when they called it a persona.
Growling through set teeth, Analise turned away and braced against the railing, looking eerily like her daughter when she did. Her back tensed, her shoulders bowed and trembled, as if a great weight settled onto them.
Anna had crept closer to Arthur, who somehow found her hand and gripped it.
The rain began to fall in earnest. What had been a mist turned to drops, then sheets.
The sprinkler system must have been shut down—not surprising, considering the booby trap that had been put in place. But the pipes behind the walls still held water, and sprinkler heads still projected into the stairwell, giving the building a semblance of normality.
Analise pushed off from the railing to lean against the opposite wall, clawed her fingers as if she would break through the drywall with her bare hands, tipped back her head, unmindful of the water falling on her.
Suddenly, the sprinkler heads burst, and jets of water sprayed out to compete with the blasts of fire. The stairwell filled with falling water. Not just rain, but a powerful waterfall. Water ran in a river down the sloping ramp. The fires sputtered, struggling to keep the gas jets lit, and finally the flames died.
Analise fell, and Arthur caught her, leaning her against the wall and murmuring in a comforting tone as the sprinklers and pipes ran dry and the rain stopped.
“I thought it was gone,” she said, her eyes shut and head bowed.
“No, you only put it away for a time,” Mentis said.
He might have used his powers on her, gone into her mind and tweaked whatever mental dam was keeping her from reaching her abilities. Anna thought that was possible—until she remembered that his powers were blocked. If she had stopped using her power because she was afraid it had killed someone, the only thing that could bring it back was saving someone. Saving all of them.
From a flight above, Teia and Lew stared down, amazed. Maybe a little terrified.
Analise held her hand up. Water dripped, pooled in her cupped palm. Brow furrowed, she studied it a moment. The surface of the tiny pool trembled, and the vibrations increased until the water contracted, collected together into a spherical drop, which rose an inch from her hand before splashing back against her skin, scattering.
Sighing, she closed her eyes. Rubbed water from her face, not that it did any good. They were all soaked and dripping. But at least they hadn’t cooked. When Analise looked up, Teia was sliding down, skating on the wet stairs while balancing against the railing, and pulled up short before crashing into her mother’s arms.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Teia muttered into her mother’s shoulder.
“Same reason you didn’t tell me, baby,” Analise said back. “I didn’t even tell Dad.” They hugged, and Lew slipped down to join them, and they might have stayed like that all day.
Arthur absently reached out to rest a hand on Anna’s shoulder. She didn’t know what to say.
“We’ll find her,” Arthur said. Which was exactly what she’d been thinking.
“I thought you said your powers were blocked.”
“And somehow, I knew just what you were thinking anyway.”
“Sorry to interrupt. But we have to keep moving,” Paulson said, nodding up the stairs.
They hauled themselves up the slope, a task made more difficult by the water running down the concrete. But they made good time, clinging to the railings, because they had no desire to see what the next booby trap involved.
Anna didn’t let herself think for a minute that she couldn’t do this. She didn’t have a choice, and that was that.