Tate moved fast, shoving his grandpa and Bugsy behind him. The four kids stood side by side, blocking Luke.
Foster took half a step forward. Wind followed her, lifting her wild red hair ominously. “I will blow that little hand fire of yours up your ass if you try that shit with us.” The sky above Foster darkened as air rotated around them, blowing out Luke’s twin flames like candles on a birthday cake.
“Oooh, so angry! So passionate! Father’s going to love dealing with you,” Eve said.
“Too bad he won’t get the chance,” Foster replied.
“Oh, sister. That’s just one of the many things you’re wrong about.” Then Eve lifted her foot and stomped. Hard.
The earth beneath them shivered as if they were standing on a plate of Jell-O, knocking Foster to her knees. Tate was there in an instant, taking her arm and helping her regain her feet.
“Get off me!” Foster jerked free. “I can handle her myself.” Undiscovered rage coiled in her gut. Her father had sent the Four. He’d put her and Cora through the anguish of losing him and the panic of running from his sick creations, and for what? So he could send the children he deemed worthy of his love to capture the only one who truly knew him as father?
Foster understood how he saw her.
She wasn’t deserving.
Message received.
Now she’d send a message of her own.
It started with her hair—the air lifting her long, wet strands as if gravity had stitched itself between the clouds. Currents blazed to life around her, snapping snake-like at the unrelenting rain as her arms lifted and her heels rose weightless from the sand.
“Cyclone,” Bastien breathed, and Foster tilted her chin toward the heavens.
The clouds were cement, pouring a thick, gray funnel above her like ice cream. Foster’s spine frosted and her feet settled against the earth.
Her hate would kill them.
Eve’s laughter filled the angry wind. “That’s right! Call the cyclone. Show us your power and tear up this pathetic excuse for a town.”
Tate’s hand slipped over Foster’s. Gently prying open her clenched fist, he wove his fingers between hers. “Not with anger, Foster. That’ll only bring more death—more sadness.”
“Anger’s never the way.” G-pa’s gruff voice sliced through the wind, opening a conduit directly to Foster’s heart.
“Shut it, old man,” Luke said.
“Yeah, you’re just jealous that anger’s doing all of this.” Matthew’s arm swept up at the malevolent funnel swirling above Foster. “Check it out, you fossil. This is real power.”
“No. This isn’t real power.” Charlotte was suddenly there, standing beside Foster. “Anger’s not the way because hate isn’t the strongest emotion.”
“That would be amour—love,” Bastien said, stepping up beside Charlotte.
“No, that would be childish bullshit,” Eve said. “But enough of this. Here’s the truth, precious little Foster. It’s your turn to act like a real daughter and be there for Father. At his side. Where he needs you and your powers.”
“Be there for him? Or be complicit in his crimes and madness like you’ve been?” Foster shot back at her.
“You know nothing, child,” Eve said.
At that moment Eve seemed to speak Cora’s words and Foster’s breath caught in her throat. As she stared at Eve, seeing the familiar stranger within her expression, Foster’s anger snuffed.
“I know the difference between right and wrong—helping and enabling. I don’t know what broke you, Eve, but I pity you,” Foster said.
Eve’s dark eyes flashed with something that might have been embarrassment, but it was gone too fast for Foster to truly name it. Then the older woman shrugged. “No matter. Being a good daughter is a learned behavior. Time for you to go to school, Foster.”
Foster’s grin split her face and had her laughing with amusement. “School? No thanks. Never liked it. I prefer to think for myself.”
“That’s enough. Matthew, Mark, Luke, back me up! Time to end this now!” With every other word she stomped her foot. The earth flinched and quivered in response.
Charlotte’s wet fingers found Foster’s. “What can we do?”
“I’ll fry you crispy!” Luke lunged forward, flames shooting from his glowing hands.
Foster didn’t hesitate. She leaned forward, anchored to the ground by Tate and Charlotte, and blew a calming, soothing exhale. Wind crashed into fire. Luke groaned, his feet digging trenches in the sand as his flames suffocated.
“It’s love, right?” Charlotte shouted excitedly over Foster’s breath.
Luke fell to his knees, and Matthew rushed to his side. They had moments, seconds to work out a way to stay free, to survive.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Foster asked.
Charlotte held her free hand out to Bastien. As he twined his fingers with hers, she cleared her throat. “I love being a girl!” The thrashing waves changed direction, pulsing closer to shore, closer to the Fucktastic Four as Charlotte turned to Bastien.
“Liberté!” he hollered. Salt water rushed forward and pushed Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Eve’s feet out from under them. The Four splashed against the rapidly deepening water in a jumble of legs and arms and curses.
“And I love my grandma Myrtie!” Charlotte added. The ocean surged then, filling an invisible bowl and surrounding the Four in a bubble of good wishes and water.
“I love strawberries!” Tate winked at Foster, a small laugh twitching his lips as the Fucktastic Four beat against the skin of the slowly spinning circle.
Hand in hand, Foster led Tate, Charlotte, and Bastien to their creation. Beads of air shot from Eve’s mouth as she floated, kicking and screaming. Compassion twitched through Foster as she met Eve’s wild eyes.
Does who you love, love you back?
Foster wet her lips and took a deep breath. “I love my mother, my Cora. Now, Tate,” she glanced at her Clark Kent, his shirt billowing behind him, a bit cape-like, in the strong gusts. “Let’s make them fly.” They lifted their joined hands and flicked their wrists as if shooing a bug. The rippling ball surged up, then out, out, out, a liquid meteor arching past the horizon to disappear against the clearing sky.
* * *