Page 44 of Victorious

And that’s exactly what she did.

The sound split the night, a whip-like crack, and Victor flinched, bracing for the bullet.

It never came.

He blinked, the shot still ringing through his ears, but Sydney was gone. And he knew, with creeping dread, as real as she’d seemed, she’d never been there.

Too late, Victor felt the nearness of the other body, the fingers skimming his skin.

He rounded, catching Xavi’s wrist with the other. He didn’t need his power—he knew where and how to press down, and the kid whimpered, half in pain and half in fear.

“What did I tell you about touching me?” said Victor, shoving him away.

He had warned Xavi, the night they met, what he would do if the kid ever tried to use his powers against him. Now Xavi’s eyes widened. “I would never,” he stammered, looking wounded as he rubbed his wrist. “Sorry, I said your name a couple times. But you were really somewhere else.”

Xavi looked past him, into the empty road. “You good, boss?”

He bristled at the question, the look of worry on the kid’s face.

“I’ll be in touch,” said Victor, tossing him a roll of bills.

Xavi brightened as he caught the cash. He flashed a smile and a mock salute before turning on his heel and jogging off into the night.

Victor lingered, then glanced back into the empty road where Syd had been.

In his coat, his fists were clenched, his knuckles white.

What gripped him in that moment wasn’t anger.

No, this was different. So foreign he almost didn’t recognize it.

Fear.

Victor Vale had never been ordinary. Even before his near-death experience, he was the smartest in the room, the top of his class, three steps ahead in every game he played. And after, he was uncatchable.

Not because of his power, but because of his mind.

His mind, which could map the human body, nerve by nerve, and cleanly carve a problem down into its incremental parts, find patterns, and solutions, no one else could spot.

His mind, which was now playing tricks on him.

Making him see and hear things that were not there.

What worried Victor wasn’t the fact the phantom had called out to him.

It was the fact that, for the first time, he’d spoken back.

XVIIINOW. THEN.

A FEW NIGHTS LATER

DOWNTOWN PORTSMITH

XAVI stood, bouncing lightly on his toes.

He looked down, admiring the pristine white of the sneakers before he checked the tag. Two hundred bucks. He’d never dropped that kind of cash on a pair of shoes, and wasn’t about to start now.

“These are great,” he said. “But can I see them in a twelve?”