An excerpt from Flight of Fancy

Amelia touched the doorknob, but then froze, not from the cold this time, but because there was a sound on the other side.

Second after second ticked by with no other noise. Finally Amelia let herself move again, silently assailing herself with a whole list of curses due to the stupidity of not thinking things through when one was attempting to do covert investigations, and for not realizing the utter lack of usefulness of superheroes when one didn't let them know when and where one was going to encounter peril, even when one was not allowing the thought of superheroes into one's mind at all. Of course, it was true that Amelia was the only one of them that would have had any idea what to make of anything she'd found in Max's office, so the whole thing had been worth it, from one perspective. But as Amelia's heart beat so hard that she was afraid it would leap out of her and run down the hall a full ten yards ahead of her all the way to her car, she wasn't thinking about chemistry or earning a place on Simon's team. She was thinking about the museum. She was thinking about that thin, black gun that had come so very close to her that night.

But she was no seventeen-year-old girl anymore.

"Come on," she whispered to herself. "What are the chances an armed thug is going to be keeping an eye on Max Jordan's office all the time? I mean, that's plain ridiculous for a lot of reasons. It's a waste of manpower, and it's a big assumption that anyone could really find anything damaging in here with it all in code. And to top it all off, it makes absolutely no sense to assign someone to guard an office which is not kept locked."

With that pep talk fresh in her ears, Amelia turned the knob and slowly opened the door. There were no sounds from the hallway and she took a quick look, the bright lights harsh on her eyes at first, but she saw no one. So she slipped into the hallway and closed the door behind her. "Okay," she whispered. "And now—"

The sound of footsteps in the stairwell next to her sent Amelia jumping so high she almost grabbed onto one of the pipes running along the ceiling. Without any more thought, her feet began to fly under her and she ran toward the end of the hallway and the other stairwell as fast as she could. There was an exit to the roof just one flight up and Amelia headed for it, just wanting to get out of sight as quickly as possible. Thankfully, that door was not locked either, and she pushed through it and took deep breaths of cool night air, then checked herself over to make sure that she had not left any shoes or actual feet behind in the building.

"Okay, it's good," she breathed to herself, walking over to the edge of the roof to look down. "I'll just stay here a while and then go home. Yeah." She focused on the sidewalk four stories below her with some relief. At one point in her life, Amelia had been a little nervous about heights. Before Simon, of course. And Amelia was glad of her peace with heights at this moment, because the last thing she needed was something else to scare her—

"Amelia!"

She jumped so at the sound of her own name that she almost couldn't process that that was what she'd heard. Or maybe that was just because she did know who'd said it. Amelia turned around, very slowly, and there, in the darkness, he stood. Well, it's going to be very difficult to erase him from your mind with him four feet away, isn't it, Amy?

"Simon," she breathed. Black mask and all. God in heaven...

She wasn't sure what she expected to see in his face, but if it was guilt or shock or embarrassment, she'd been wrong. It was anger. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

Amelia found herself frowning, her feet planting themselves firmly on the roof. Yeah, angry seemed like a good choice all of a sudden. "This is my school."

He took two steps toward her, but he didn't come anywhere close enough to touch her. "Stop it. This is dangerous."

She didn't even bother to be surprised that he'd figured out what she was doing. "Max Jordan is not Will Clark," she reminded him in a heated voice. "He's a chemistry professor with woman issues. And besides," she added, her tone softening a bit, "I found "you your compound drug proof."

Simon paused for a second, obviously not expecting that, obviously interested, but she could see he wasn't going to let it pacify him. "You should not be doing anything on your own, Amelia—"

"I'm not a little girl anymore!" she exclaimed. "You can't tell me what to do. This is my school, chemistry is my field, and you need me."

"We have had this discussion. I need you alive. Carl Smith already knows whose daughter you are, and if you're mixed up in this now—"

"Oh, khes, Simon, you can't possibly tell me that there is danger in walking around a campus building at night!" Sure, Amy, when he says it, it's not true. "I'm perfectly safe—"

When the gunshot split the end of her sentence into fragments, Amelia was not really certain what she did. She knew she was scared because she could feel the fear in her like a cold, cloying taste in her mouth. But it was not her that she saw in her mind, bleeding and falling. No, it was always him.

There were two more shots, and then all Amelia could register was that Simon was beside her, and his arms were around her, and they were not on the roof anymore. The wind was icy against her face, just for a second, and then she felt his feet touch the ground again, some other solid surface beneath his shoes, darkness everywhere and the sudden silence painful in her ears. Waiting, waiting for another shot to come, she jumped at the sound of nothing.