The Tacony Music Hall looks different.

  I mean, obviously it looks different - there's been three months of construction, a whole new coat of paint, signage that says TACONY COMMUNITY CENTER in big friendly letters. But it's more than that. The building used to feel like ours, like a secret, like something hidden. Now it feels... public. Official. There's a stage set up out front with a podium and folding chairs. There's a banner that says GRAND OPENING with the city seal on it. There's a table with refreshments and a sign-in sheet and name tags.

  Name tags.

  Maggie finds me before I can spiral about the name tags. She's in full Flashpoint gear - red athletic padding, helmet that covers most of her face, the works. She looks like she's about to run a marathon through a warzone, which is honestly not far off from how these events usually go.

  "You came," she says, sounding relieved.

  "I said I would."

  "Yeah, but you also said you'd come to church with me in November and then you got 'food poisoning.'" She makes air quotes with her gloved fingers.

  "I did have food poisoning. Fake food poisoning is still food poisoning if you commit to the bit hard enough."

  "That's not how food poisoning works."

  "That's exactly how food poisoning works, actually."

  She laughs, which was the goal, and some of the tension in her shoulders loosens up. Maggie's been carrying a lot of the public-facing stuff since I retired from Bloodhound. Press interviews, community outreach, the whole song and dance. She's good at it - better than me, honestly - but it's a lot for a sixteen-year-old. Even a sixteen-year-old who can generate force fields.

  "Where's everyone else?" I ask, scanning the crowd.

  "Lily's helping with setup inside. Tasha's around somewhere - I think she's avoiding the cameras. Amelia's..." Maggie pauses, frowning. "Actually, I don't know where Amelia is. She said she'd be here."

  "She'll show. Probably making sure her whips are camera-ready."

  "She has whips now?"

  "She has whips now. Did you forget during the whole Marathon thing?"

  "Right. The Marathon thing."

  I shrug at Maggie.

  Maggie processes this for a second. "That's kind of terrifying."

  "Little bit, yeah."

  The crowd is filling in - maybe sixty, seventy people so far, with more trickling in from the street. I spot some faces I recognize. Mr. Feldman, our landlord, looking pleased with himself near the refreshments table. Clara Parker from the DVD's legal team, talking to someone in a suit I don't know. A cluster of neighborhood folks I've seen around but never talked to, the kind of people who've lived in Tacony their whole lives and have opinions about what's happening to it.

  And near the back, Maxwell, near his own beaten up car that's been sitting on our street for the past like month. Or however long it's been since he almost got assassinated. But he's here, representing the Delaware Valley Defenders, making this thing official. I figured he'd be staying at home, on our couch... guess not?

  I try to think about the calculus. No, you're right, Max. They wouldn't try to get you at an event this public. It'd be federal suicide.

  I catch his eye. He gives me the smallest nod.

  I nod back.

  "Councilman's about to start," Maggie says, nudging me toward the front.

  Right. The speech.

  Jamal Davis takes the podium looking like he hasn't slept in a week, which, knowing him, he probably hasn't. He's wearing his good suit - the charcoal one he saves for important votes and funerals - and there's a folder of notes in front of him that he doesn't look at once.

  "Thank you all for coming," he starts, and his voice has that particular quality politicians get when they've said the same words a hundred times but still mean them. "Today marks the grand opening of the Tacony Community Center, a project that has been months in the making and represents something I believe is genuinely new in how we approach young people with extraordinary abilities."

  I tune out for a second to scan the crowd again. The news crews are set up on the left - I count three cameras, plus a handful of phones recording. The civilians are mostly in the middle, some sitting in the folding chairs, some standing in the back. A few cops on the perimeter, looking bored.

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  No sign of Maya yet.

  "--for too long, our only answer to powered youth has been to put them in costumes and send them into danger," Jamal is saying when I tune back in. "We called it mentorship. We called it training. We told ourselves we were keeping them safe by making them soldiers. But we weren't keeping them safe. We were keeping everyone else safe, and using children as the buffer."

  That gets a murmur from the crowd. I see a few people shifting uncomfortably. This isn't the usual ribbon-cutting speech.

  "I was part of that system. I signed off on it. I believed in it." Jamal's voice is steady, but there's something underneath it - not anger, exactly. Grief, maybe. "And then I watched a teenage girl get hunted by a man who should have been in prison, and I realized we had failed. Not just her - all of them. Every young person we put in a mask and told to fight."

  He's talking about me. About Shrike. I feel Maggie glance in my direction, but I keep my eyes forward.

  "This center is an attempt to do better. Not a pipeline to superheroism - a genuine support system. Counseling. Education. Vocational training. A place where young people can learn to live with their abilities without being asked to bleed for them." Jamal gestures at the building behind him. "We're starting small. A pilot program, a handful of participants, proof of concept. But if this works - and I believe it will - we can build something that actually serves these kids instead of exploiting them. We have social workers from the best institutions in the city and some of the smartest youth psychiatrists in the nation as part of the planning board..."

  He goes on for another few minutes - thanking donors, acknowledging the construction crew, all the standard stuff. But the core of it is done. The indictment has been delivered.

  I'm watching a news camera pan across the crowd when I see her.

  Maya Richardson.

  She's coming up the sidewalk with two staffers flanking her, dressed in a charcoal pantsuit that probably cost more than Crossroads' medical bills. Her hair is perfect. Her makeup is perfect. Her smile is the kind of thing they teach in political training - warm enough to photograph well, empty enough to mean nothing.

  She doesn't go to the front. Doesn't try to get on stage or interrupt Jamal's closing remarks. She just... arrives. Positions herself near the edge of the crowd where the cameras can see her. Shakes a few hands. Accepts congratulations for something she had nothing to do with.

  It's a masterclass in showing up without being present.

  Jamal finishes his speech. There's applause - genuine, I think, from most of the crowd. The ribbon-cutting happens. Scissors flash. The banner comes down. More applause.

  And then Maya's moving through the crowd toward us.

  "Flashpoint," she says, extending her hand to Maggie first. "So good to see young heroes taking an active role in community development."

  Maggie shakes her hand because what else is she going to do. "Thank you, Councilwoman. I didn't realize you knew my name,"

  "I try to keep appraised of what's happening in my district." Maya's eyes slide to me. "And Bloodhound. I heard you'd retired."

  "I did."

  "And yet here you are."

  "Here I am."

  We look at each other. Three seconds. Five. Her smile doesn't waver. Neither does my helmet.

  I know what she is. She knows I know. And we're standing here in front of cameras and constituents and cops, and neither of us can do a goddamn thing about it.

  "It's wonderful that you're supporting Councilman Davis's initiative," Maya says, pitching her voice just loud enough for the nearby reporters to catch. "This kind of cross-generational mentorship is exactly what Northeast Philadelphia needs."

  "Yeah," I say. "It is."

  She waits for me to say something else. I don't.

  After a beat, her smile tightens almost imperceptibly. "Well. I should make the rounds. So many people to thank." She turns to one of her staffers. "Make sure we get photos with the community board members before we leave."

  And then she's gone, gliding through the crowd like she was never really here at all. I track her for maybe thirty seconds - handshake, photo, handshake, photo - before she reaches the edge of the gathering and slips away toward a black SUV idling on the street.

  "That was weird," Maggie says quietly.

  "That was Maya."

  "She didn't even try to take credit for anything."

  "She didn't need to. She showed up, she was seen, she left before anyone could ask about the shapeshifter thing." I watch the SUV pull away from the curb. "Now the story is 'Richardson attends community center opening' instead of 'Richardson dodges questions about criminal conspiracy.'"

  "That's... actually really smart."

  "She's good at this. That's the problem."

  The crowd is starting to disperse now, some people heading inside for tours of the facility, others drifting toward the refreshments. The news crews are packing up. The cops are checking their phones.

  It went well. By any objective measure, it went well. Jamal gave a good speech. The building looks great. Maya didn't cause a scene. Nobody got hurt.

  So why do I feel like I'm waiting for something bad to happen? I'm looking through the crowd. I catch Zara. I catch Liam. There's Alex. And there's a hoodie that's probably Jasmine.

  What else? I'm waiting for the shoe to drop. I see their families milling about, indistinguishable from average Tacony citizens.

  Where's the sword? Where's the thread? Or is it just PTS--

  "Sam." Maggie's voice is different now. Tighter. "Three o'clock."

  I turn.

  There's a group forming at the edge of the parking lot. Maybe a dozen people, give or take. They're wearing blue jackets - not matching exactly, but close enough to be a uniform. Yellow bandanas around their necks or tied to their wrists or sticking out of their pockets.

  Songbirds. And they have signs. They're starting to raise them, and slowly, slowly, starting to circle the crowd, while everyone is too busy oohing and aahing over Councilman Davis's project.

  I can't read them from here, but I don't need to. I know who these people are. I know what they want.

  "Get Tasha," I tell Maggie. "Find Lily. Tell them we might have a situation."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to go see what they want."

  "Sam--"

  "I'm not going to start anything. I'm just going to talk." I'm already moving toward them, keeping my pace casual, my hands visible. "But get the others ready. Just in case."

  The Songbirds see me coming. A few of them point. One of them - a guy in his thirties with a beard and a megaphone - steps forward from the group. He flashes an ugly smile and raises his sign a little higher, like he's daring me to read it.