Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star-crossed Love

Bestseller Carrie Vaughn is the author of a wildly popular series of novels detailing the adventures of Kitty Norville, a radio personality who also happens to be a werewolf, and who runs a late-night call-in radio advice show for supernatural creatures. The Kitty books include Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand, Kitty Raises Hell, and Kitty’s House of Horrors. Vaughn’s short work has appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Wild Cards: Inside Straight, Realms of Fantasy, Paradox, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and elsewhere. Her most recent books are Voices of Dragons and a new Kitty novel, Kitty Goes to War. She lives in Colorado.

In the clever tale that follows, she demonstrates that the line between dreams and reality can be a thin one—and that sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’ve crossed it.

Rooftops

The wires were obvious, strung with LED lights that switched on the moment the hero launched upward, illustrating the fact that no one had yet figured out how to get a real flight-capable superhuman to act in a play or movie or anything.

“Well?” Otto Veck, acclaimed director, looked at Charlotte.

The stage was a mess. A chain-link fence formed the backdrop, supposedly suggesting the shadows of a forest. A pile of stuffed black garbage bags made a castle shape. A woman in a white bustier, panties, fishnets, and a black garter with a cute little bow clinging to her thigh lay at the foot of the tower of trash as if she had just thrown herself off it, to her death. Nearby another body lay, a twisted man dressed in a three-piece suit with a tire iron sticking out of him, suggesting a sword at the end of a duel. The hero, a handsome man with a clean-shaven face, wearing an alluring amount of leather, had been kneeling beside the woman, hand to his chest, overcome by the wretchedness of the world. Then he flew away, straight up into the rigging overhead, vanishing into the heavens.

The scene was supposed to look a mess, but it didn’t match the picture Charlotte imagined. She winced. “Can we make it a little more… I don’t know… pretty?”

Otto tilted a thoughtful head, as if regarding the stage from a slightly different angle. It was Marta, the actress, who sat up, appalled. Fred, who played the fiendish villain/bureaucrat, stood and set aside the tire iron as he stretched muscles and groaned. Harry, who played the tragic hero too late to save his lover, but not too late to exact revenge on the fiendish villain/bureaucrat, slowly descended, hanging passively in his harness as the stage crew lowered him back to earth. Out of character now, he looked tired.

“Pretty? You want this to be pretty?” Marta said. “What happened to the terrors of modernity? There’s nothing pretty about modernity.” She had her hands on her hips and glared with the air of an offended artist. The truth was, she looked good in the lingerie and knew it, and was probably afraid that “pretty” meant putting her in a floor-length gown.

Charlotte thought she had said something along the lines of wanting to recast classic gothic narratives as a vehicle for alienation—the terrors of postmodernity expressed as the sublime. They had the terrors of postmodernity down pat but seemed to be missing the sublime.

The last dress rehearsal was a little late to be rethinking the project. Was it too late to cancel the whole thing? It had all seemed so much more clever when she wrote it.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

“Maybe the lighting,” Otto said, trying to be helpful. “More of a halo effect upstage.” He put on his headset. “Bob, is it too late to change that last lighting cue?”

She sat in her squishy velvet seat in the middle of the house and pondered. This was supposed to be her big break. Her jump from the bush leagues to the big-time, with a director like Otto, an award-winning actress like Marta starring, in a theater that didn’t seat its audience in folding chairs. Charlotte couldn’t help but feel that her career was already over.

Her phone rattled, and she dug in the pocket of her jeans for it.

The screen showed Dorian’s text: “Wrk late, won’t make dinner, sry, make it up to you.”

She quelled her disappointment and instead decided to admire Dorian’s dedication. An up-and-coming assistant DA like Dorian Merriman didn’t win cases like the one against the Midnight Stalker by going on dinner dates with struggling playwrights.

Otto and the three actors were all looking at her, and she might have blushed.

“Everything okay?” Otto said.

“Fine,” she said, putting her phone away.

“Are we done, Otto?” Harry said.

“We’re done. Call’s at five tomorrow.” Otto and the actors disappeared backstage.

Part of her wanted to curl up right here for the next twenty-four hours, until it was all over. Maybe she could sleep through it.

Instead, she found her coat and bag and went to catch a bus home. It was early summer, still daylight, still warm. She could have walked the whole way, scuffing toes on the sidewalk and thinking of everything that could go horribly wrong tomorrow night. She didn’t even have to go on stage and she was terrified.

As an alternative to going home and stewing, she decided to take herself to dinner. Just because Dorian couldn’t go out didn’t mean she had to stay home. She had to celebrate either the beginning of her career or mourn its incipient demise. She had a favorite place, a hillside café with a rooftop patio, perfect for watching the urban neon sunset. And it arranged its wine list by price, which she thought was postmodernly classy.

SHE DIDN’T PLAN for the jewelry store next door to the café to get robbed while she was there.

She had just ordered a salad and a glass of zinfandel. Something to take the edge off while she stared at the hazy city sky and reminded herself that she was lucky and she had a great boyfriend when he was around, and her dream was coming true and the play really was okay and no one was going to write wretched reviews calling her names. Everything was going to be just fine.

Alarms started ringing, clanging mechanically, vibrating through the floor. The police sirens joined a minute later. A dozen customers and waitstaff crowded along the patio rail to see what was happening. Charlotte was already sitting there and had a pretty good view of the street. But like many others, she also looked up and around at the sky and rooftops, wondering which hero would swoop in to save the day: Breezeway? The Bullet? Captain Olympus himself?

The police sirens approached, howling, then a half dozen Commerce City PD squad cars roared up the street and screeched to cinematic halts, skidding to angles that blocked the intersections. Uniforms bounded out and pointed guns at the building. Out came the bullhorn, and one of the officers called through it, “Come out with your hands up!”

Shouting echoed up the stairwell that led to the roof. Six men wearing purple Kevlar vests, fatigues, and ninjalike masks appeared. Two held heavy metallic briefcases, no doubt filled with something nefarious and stolen. Four held what had to be ray guns—plastic, streamlined, with parabolic dishes where the barrels should be. They made quite an impression.

They must have planned to jump to the next rooftop and keep running until they found a ladder to shimmy down while the police were still racing up the stairs after them. The police were a little too fast, and the thieves were a little too desperate, because they went for hostages.

The two gunmen pointed their weapons and yelled, “Freeze!” which nobody did. Instead people screamed and tumbled out of the way, covering their heads, falling to the floor, scrambling on top of each other. It was a pretty good strategy, because if they stayed in a mob and the gunmen fired, it would probably be somebody else who got shot.

Astonished, Charlotte just kept sitting there, back to the railing, instead of fleeing with the others. So one of the guys grabbed her, arm around her throat, and held her against the rail, purple parabolic dish to her temple.

Her captor shouted the obligatory “Nobody move!” She thought the other gunman was standing at the top of the stairs, pointing his weapon at the oncoming cops, preventing rescue. So much for a nice evening out.

Staring back at the gun, which had become very large in her vision, she wondered if the weapon would incinerate her or simply make her vanish in a stream of light. She wondered which one would hurt more. Maybe she wouldn’t have to go through opening night after all. Maybe Dorian would avenge her, after standing forlornly over her poor broken body. Would he feel guilty for missing dinner with her?

The tableau froze: heroine and villain, random crowd huddling like a Greek chorus, henchmen wreaking chaos. Time stopped, her heartbeat stilled to a moment of perfect silence, a universe holding its breath.

She didn’t know where the newcomer entered from, but the gun left her head and pointed at something else, and there he was in the middle of the patio, hands on his hips. He was also wearing a mask, and that may have been what set the gang of jewel thieves most on edge. One more variable must have been too many to handle.

The thieves had an out, and they took it: Her captor tipped her over the railing.

Charlotte gasped a breath as the sky spun past her feet. She was falling—then she wasn’t. She jerked to a stop, hanging two stories over the sidewalk. She didn’t even have time to scream.

She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she could see how it ended up: The masked man, the hero, gripped her hand and held her dangling thirty feet up. She swayed and came to rest against the concrete wall. His other hand held the railing. He must have dived over the edge as she fell, faster than a heartbeat, faster than a blink. He must have grabbed her, grabbed the railing, and stopped her mid-plunge. Her shoulder throbbed with the pain of being wrenched. His must have felt worse. Now they hung there, looking at each other.

“I’ll need you to climb up,” he said, voice tight with strain.

“What?” she squeaked.

“I’m fast. Not all that strong,” he gasped.

He lifted her partway until she could grab hold of his jeans, then his shirt, then his shoulder, panting and panicked, too shocked to be scared, unbelievably remembering not to look down. She used him as a ladder, until she put her arms around his shoulders. He swung his leg up to hook it over the railing, shrugged to hint that maybe she should make her way to the railing as well. She meant to dig her fingers more tightly around his shirt, but she got the muscle of his shoulder. He only flinched a little. She managed to slide over, hook her elbow over, then her leg, and the two of them rolled onto the patio together.

The ray gun–toting thieves had used the distraction to flee.

Charlotte and her rescuer looked at each other. He was nondescript, but the mask made all the difference. Without it, she’d have glanced at him once, maybe admired the muscled shoulders under the almost-too-tight T-shirt. No uniform, just T-shirt and jeans, plain black boots, well worn. But he wore a mask, a length of black cloth with eyeholes over his head and tied in back. She stared at his eyes, brown, rich. With the mask, it was like looking at someone through a window. She wasn’t sure she could really see him. He held her arms—maybe she looked like she was going to faint, falling backward, making him rescue her all over again.

Imagine it—her, rescued at the last second by a real-life hero! Just like one of her plays. Unbelievable. Thrilling.

He was breathing hard. The feat hadn’t been easy for him; sweat shone on his neck.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I should be asking you that,” he said, smiling. He had a very nice smile.

“No… well, yes… but you—that was amazing.” She sounded a little breathy. “I’m fine. Are you?”

“Just fine,” he said. He never stopped smiling.

Then, just as a crowd of police trooped up the stairs, he ran—and yes, he was fast. He sped to the other side of the roof, to the back of the building, where a fence gave him a chance to jump off, climb down, flee, and vanish—all in seconds. She couldn’t see movement, arms and legs pumping, just this shape that flowed away. Then it was dusk, and she couldn’t see anything.

“AND YOU HAVE no idea who he was?” the detective asked again.

“No. I have no idea.” When she arrived at the police station, someone put a blanket over her shoulders and a cup of coffee in her hands. Then she started shivering. She hadn’t realized she was cold.

The detective stared at her, annoyed, because she was clearly making his job more difficult. Sighing, he pulled over a three-ring binder, opened it in front of her, and started turning pages. “Are any of these the guy who rescued you?”

This looked almost like the binders the theater got from agents—catalogs of actors. The first round of cattle calls. Instead of headshots, the detective’s pictures mostly showed blurry full-body action shots of the masked vigilantes. She recognized a lot of them from news clips and reputation: the Invincible, dressed in red, white, and blue, who as far as anyone could tell really was invincible and could fly to boot; Black Belt, who dressed like a ninja and could shoot laser beams from his hands; Quantum Girl, a woman in a silver leotard and spike-heeled boots who could teleport; and more. There were maybe two dozen of them—more than she’d realized. No one knew much about them, where they lived or what they did when they weren’t out fighting crime. Maybe they had secret identities. Maybe they had secret hideouts, like Gothic castles. Maybe they were robots who only emerged when there was crime to be fought.

In her play, she had assumed that her hero was a person with a heart to break like everyone else.

She flipped through the whole book and shook her head. “He wasn’t anybody I recognized. He didn’t even have much of a costume, just a mask. Shouldn’t you be going after the thieves instead of him?”

“I need all the information I can get for the report,” the detective said flatly.

She finished making her statement, which she couldn’t see being very useful to any investigation. All she had seen was a swarm of masked men running around performing some mystery play.

“Charlotte!”

Dorian Merriman, hot-shot assistant DA, on the fast track after that Midnight Stalker trial—front-page stuff. She hadn’t called him about what had happened. He had just known, probably through one of his connections in the police department.

He rushed to her side, heroically even, but she was a little too wrung out to be impressed by the feat.

“Are you all right? What happened? I came as soon as I heard. Are you hurt?” He turned to the detective. “Is she hurt?”

“She’ll be fine,” the man said. He straightened the pages on his desk, signaling that they were done.

“Hi,” she said, her smile weak.

He knelt by her side, smoothed back her hair like she was a child, and she beamed back at him. “Now let’s get you home,” he said.

Dorian had brown eyes.

Reporters had arrived at the police station, snapping pictures and demanding answers. Word had gotten out about the masked man, a new rooftop hero in the city, and they kept asking: What was his power? His name? Had he talked to her? What did he say? They already knew who she was; a witness at the restaurant had told them everything. She wondered what the papers would make of it; she’d been right there and she didn’t know what had happened. The detective told her not to say anything, so she didn’t.

In Dorian’s car on the way to her apartment, she got a second wind.

“You should have seen it; it was amazing, I don’t know who this guy was, and the way the cops were talking I’m not sure if they want to catch the thieves or him. You know, I’d have expected him to be wearing some suit or armor like the other ones do, at least maybe spandex, but no, just jeans, and you know how you joke around because you don’t think those flimsy masks would really hide anyone’s identity? But I can’t for the life of me remember what he looked like. I just saw the mask.”

“You weren’t scared?” He glanced at her.

“Well, yeah, sure.” But she let the thought fade. She only wanted to remember amazing.

Charlotte shared an apartment with several other starving-artist types in too small a space, an arrangement that worked because most of them were gone most of the time, at their theaters or band rehearsals or projects or day jobs. The place was in a part of town that in another ten years would be hip and gentrified, and they were all hoping they’d have made their fortunes by then so they could afford to stay.

He guided her inside, made her put on pajamas, tucked a cup of tea in her hands, and apologized.

“I have to get back to work. I want to tell the DA about this. We’ll get those guys. We won’t let anything like this happen again.”

Well, that wasn’t nearly as romantic as him rushing to the police station to tend to her emotional wounds. But Dorian was a very dedicated assistant DA. She didn’t feel quite right complaining.

“But… but I’m not sure I want to be alone right now.”

He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t an emergency. Call me if you need anything, anything at all.”

And there he went, saving the city again. She sighed.

She couldn’t sleep, so she made another cup of tea and sat in a chair by the bedroom window. She half expected to see a shadowed figure running across the rooftops, pausing to strike a heroic pose against a backdrop of city lights. She fell asleep, wrapped in a blanket and leaning against the window, dreaming strange dreams, until one of her roommates came home, nudged her awake, and put her to bed.

HER PHONE RANG early. She had to scramble for it; it was still in the pocket of her jeans, on the floor somewhere.

“Hello?”

“Have you seen the news? Was that really you? Are you okay?”

“Otto?”

“Charlotte, are you all right?”

Muzzy-headed, she rubbed her face. Hadn’t it all been a dream? “Wait a minute. What? How did you—I mean, yeah, I’m okay. How did you hear about what happened?” It was the only conceivable reason Otto would be calling this early in the morning.

“It’s all over the news, hon,” he said. “They’ve been calling the theater. You’re a genius, Charlotte.”

“What are you talking about?”

“As publicity stunts go, this is over the top. I love it.”

“But it wasn’t—”

“I know. I’m teasing. You’re really all right?”

“I—I think so.”

“I know it’s opening night, but if you’re not up to coming out, don’t sweat it.”

Opening night. Almost as terrifying as dangling off a roof. “I’ll be there, I think. I gotta go.”

She clicked him off and went to the computer, to find two roommates already there, ogling over her. And Otto was right, the story was everywhere. Someone had gotten a cell phone picture of the guy in the mask—and Charlotte, looking flustered and windblown. It was all fairly dramatic. The more sedate Web sites had facts and figures, what had been stolen—a shipment of loose diamonds—and what the police knew, sparsely delivered news. Including Charlotte’s name, her association with the theater, and her profession—playwright. There it was in the news; it had to be true, right?

Her phone rang three times in five minutes, friends wanting to know if she was okay, really okay. She put them off as quickly as she could, which probably convinced them that she really wasn’t all right. They’d call again in an hour.

Then Dorian called. “Honey, are you okay?”

“I think so. Hey, do you have time for breakfast or lunch or something?” Anything?

“Well, not really, I’m afraid. I talked the DA into giving me the case. At least, when there is a case, I’ll get it. Isn’t that great? I have to get to the precinct and find out what they’re doing. They’d better not screw this up. This could make my career.”

I almost died, she wanted to mew. Her phone beeped to tell her of another incoming call. She checked—it was her mother this time. She canceled the call. “But you’ll be there tonight, won’t you?” she said to Dorian.

“Tonight?”

“The play, opening night.” It must have seemed like such a small thing to him.

“Oh, right. Of course I’ll be there. I’ll meet you at the theater.”

“And don’t forget about the party afterward. Otto rented out Napoli’s.”

“Of course I’ll be there.”

After Dorian hung up, the phone rang again, a reporter this time. She told the woman to call the police. Then the police called, telling her to tell reporters to call the police, which was a relief.

Mostly, though, she read everything she could find about what had happened.

THE MOST HELPFUL source was a Web site called “Rooftop Watch.” It tracked superhumans and masked vigilantes and villains, recorded sightings, and gleefully spread all manner of gossip. Her masked man had been seen two previous times. In both cases, he’d foiled residential robberies by racing in, shining a high-powered flashlight at the would-be burglars as they were breaking into the back doors of houses, then racing out before the thieves could react. Their cover blown, the burglars ran, and so did the masked man, but by then the owners were awake and on the phone with the police.

They were calling him Blue Collar, which seemed rude. It was a commentary on his wardrobe rather than his powers or personality. Nothing like Speed or Blaze or Comet. There was a lot of speculation about who he was, what he was doing. Most commentators in the know figured he was new and starting small, foiling robberies and break-ins. He’d work up to bigger feats—like snatching young playwrights from certain death. Maybe he’d even get a real uniform someday.

The cell phone picture of him standing with Charlotte was too good not to post all over the Internet a billion times. She hoped someone was getting rich off it. The possibility of prosecuting the case was certainly making Dorian happy.

She arrived at the theater two hours early and crept backstage, unsure if she should gather everyone together for a manic pep talk or hide in a closet. Unable to decide, she paced along an out-of-the-way section of wall backstage, while stagehands and tech crew bustled.

She’d gotten her dress at a fancy consignment shop, which meant she looked much richer than she actually was. Red, sleek, slinky, strapless. She’d even found the heels to go with it in the right size. She’d been in one of her good moods, thinking of the glamorous life and her possible place in it. Now she felt a bit like a dyed poodle. Unnatural, vaguely humiliated.

She’d been in a good mood when she met Dorian at a fund-raising party for an arts-in-the-schools organization. She was there helping run the party, and he was there to rub elbows, see and be seen, and all that. She liked to think that they swept each other off their feet with their mutual romantic notions.

The actors swooped in, Marta last of all, carrying on, and backstage got loud after that.

Marta even rushed over to stage-hug her. “Charlotte, I can’t believe you’re even here after what happened! My God—what happened? Are you all right? If it were me, my nerves would be shot, I’d be traumatized, I’d be in bed for a week, how are you even here? Oh, where’d you get that dress? Nice. Oh my God, what time is it—” And she rushed off again.

Charlotte wondered—should she be more traumatized by what had happened? It really did seem like a dream.

Otto had slipped in earlier, unseen, phantomlike, working his director magic backstage. When he found Charlotte he asked, “Are you all right? Are you really all right?” She glared.

“You look great, by the way.”

She still glared.

A half an hour before curtain, she didn’t dare peek into the house to see if anyone was actually there, if anyone had actually deigned to come. And Dorian was going to be late. She had his ticket. They were supposed to sit in the back, cuddled together, watching her big debut. She’d had it all planned out.

But she couldn’t honestly be surprised when her phone buzzed, showing Dorian’s number.

“I’m really sorry, I’m going to be stuck at work for at least another hour. I’ll come see the show another night. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Can you at least come to the party? It probably won’t start till eleven or so.”

“Sure, I’m sure I can make the party. I’ll meet you there. Napoli’s, right?”

“Right.” And he hung up.

Ten minutes before curtain, Otto ran from the wings, beaming. She nearly stumbled away, the sight was so shocking.

“It’s all right,” he said, coming up and taking her hand. “It’s going to be all right.”

“What? What is?”

“We’ve sold out. The house is full. It’s your adventure last night. You’re famous. They’re here because of you.”

That didn’t make her feel any better.

Otto continued backstage to the dressing rooms to tell the cast and jolt them into more spirited performances. Or greater heights of anxiety.

She couldn’t stand it anymore, so she crept to the edge of the curtain and peeked out. And it was true. The house was full, only a handful of empty seats left scattered as the last people filtered in. And those two empty seats in back meant for her and Dorian. The murmurs of the crowd hushed over her.

The theater was full. But what if no one liked it?

Because she couldn’t bear to watch, she waited backstage, pacing. Everything went well, she supposed, but all she heard from the faint voices reciting her lines on stage were the mistakes, awkward phrasing she should have fixed a long time ago, bad delivery that she couldn’t do anything about. From backstage, applause sounded muted and lackluster.

Then it was all over. At last. Otto came at her, grinning and nearly shouting. “There you are! Come on, get out front!”

“What?”

“For the curtain call!” He took her hand and dragged her.

Opening night, of course the director and playwright would come out on stage as well.

“Smile!” he hissed. She scrounged together what poise she could.

Then they were under the stage lights, the cast around them applauding. Otto gestured, offering Charlotte to the audience, or the audience to her. They were on their feet, the whole audience on its feet, clapping and cheering. Someone pressed long-stemmed roses into her arms. She cradled the bundle like it was an infant.

They must have liked it.

She was still dazed as the curtain closed at last and the cast fell to laughing and embracing. Champagne appeared and Marta herself popped the cork—after shaking the bottle—letting the contents spray everywhere. The stage manager wouldn’t be happy about that. People came to hug Charlotte, and she held them off with the shield of roses and tried to be gracious. She was suddenly exhausted. All that pacing backstage. But everyone else was buzzed and manic as squirrels, and the night was just starting.

She realized that she hadn’t thought this far ahead. It was enough to have her play finished and actually staged, and she hadn’t dared think any further than that, except to assume that it would all be a dismal failure. But, by all appearances, the play was a success. Shouldn’t she be happy?

IF THE PLAY had been a failure, the invitation-only opening-night party would have been a wake, and they could have mourned in peace without having to talk to anyone but themselves. Since the play had been successful, it would be the most sensational and sought-after party of the month. Tonight would be a celebration. Charlotte tried to ignore a growing sense of foreboding.

Otto had reserved the restaurant, but Marta had rented the limo for them all to arrive in, them being Marta, the actors, Charlotte, Otto, and Otto’s young actress wife, Helen. Part of why Otto was a good director was because he didn’t automatically cast Helen in everything he did.

“Where’s your handsome lawyer? I didn’t see him at the theater,” Helen asked, and Charlotte blushed.

“Working late.”

Helen acknowledged this happily enough, but Otto gave her a sympathetic, almost pitying smile.

Otto had Helen on one arm and Marta on the other as he swept them up the sidewalk to the door of Napoli’s. Harry and Fred tried to sweep Charlotte the same way, but she resisted, extricating herself from their grips in the restaurant’s lobby.

“Dorian’s meeting me here,” she said, faking confidence.

“Wait for him inside,” Harry said, pouting.

“Just another minute.”

More and more people arrived, passing through the restaurant’s lobby, checking their coats, hugging and kissing cheeks. Many were already drunk, all of them cheerful. There were reporters here, and photographers. Otto would get all the publicity he could hope for. It was fabulous. Charlotte paced. Her steps dragged, and the maître d’ kept asking if he could get her anything. She almost gave up. She almost lost faith.

Then there he was, in his sweeping overcoat and intense face, a man with purpose. He held a bundle of roses.

“You came!” she said, maybe a little too brightly.

“Of course I did. You look wonderful.” He pressed the roses into her arms and leaned in for a quick kiss on her cheek. He’d rushed, she could tell. He was still catching his breath and a faint sheen of sweat lay on his neck. “I’m sorry I missed the play. I’ll make it up to you. How did it go?”

She took a deep breath. The thrill was finally starting to build. “It was amazing. It was brilliant, it was—” She sighed. “Come inside, help us celebrate.” She took his hand and tried to urge him in.

“Honey, that’s wonderful. But I’m not sure I’m up for a late night with all your theater friends. Wouldn’t you rather have a quiet evening? We could celebrate in private, just the two of us.”

Her heart melted at that, a little. But she might only ever have one big successful opening-night party. She couldn’t be expected to pick between her dashing boyfriend and her opening-night party, could she?

“Just for a little while. Please?”

He finally slipped off his coat and gave it to the check clerk. Charlotte held the roses with one arm and him with the other as they entered the main dining room.

The room was full. She hadn’t realized so many people were here—the cast and crew and all their significant others didn’t account for everyone. How many invitations had Otto given out? He probably hadn’t expected everyone to come. But the show was a success. They were hip and cool. Who knew? She recognized a handful of celebrities, the deputy mayor, a popular news anchor. And was that the masked hero Breezeway, in uniform, posing with some of the cast? Maybe her own rescuer would be here. But she looked and couldn’t see him.

She could smell champagne as if it flowed from fountains. The place was in chaos, people sitting on tables, shouting across the room, accosting waitstaff bearing platters of finger food. No one should have noticed Charlotte and Dorian slipping in late. But they did.

“Charlotte!” Otto called from across the room, where he held court at a round table covered with a red satin cloth and a dozen champagne bottles. He was loud enough to draw the attention of the others, who turned to look.

“To our playwright! To the genius!” Otto raised a glass.

Marta, at her own table with a dozen fawning admirers, took up her own glass. “To the genius!”

And everyone raised glasses and cheered and applauded all over again. This was more than Charlotte had expected, more than she had imagined. She could only bask, silent. The playwright, wordless.

Beside her, Dorian looked at her and smiled. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

“Congratulations,” he whispered, posing for pictures with her, making sure the reporter spelled his name right.

The party went until dawn, but they left early. He brought her home to his place this time and made love to her more attentively than he had since their first weeks together.

BY MORNING, TEN different people had e-mailed Charlotte a photo going around the news Web sites of the masked hero on surveillance footage thwarting a convenience store robbery yesterday evening, the same time she’d been pacing backstage. The photo was black-and-white, grainy, and showed him standing with one foot on a guy who sprawled in front of the checkout counter. A gun could be seen nearby, as if it had fallen and skittered away from the would-be robber’s gloved hand.

Is this the same guy? everyone wanted to know, and how would she know because all she saw was the mask. But she thought it was the same guy. He kept himself busy. She tried to put him out of her mind.

But she recognized the convenience store, on a corner a few blocks away from the theater. He’d been right there, almost.

The reviews of the play were all right, which was more than she’d hoped for, and while they didn’t sell out again after the opening, the house was mostly full every night. Maybe that first night had sold out because of the novelty of her instant fame, if people were just coming to see the play written by that woman who was rescued by that Blue Collar vigilante. But if that was all the play offered, ticket sales would have bombed soon after. Which meant that maybe she knew what she was doing, and maybe everything was going to be all right. Weeks passed, and the play continued its respectable run.

Then people starting asking, “How is the next play coming along?”

And it wasn’t. She stared at her laptop for hours, took her notepad to the park, the coffee shop, the library. She thought she had characters—another woman, another hero, another subversion of traditional gothic narratives, etcetera. But every line she wrote sounded just like what she’d already done, and the words didn’t fit anymore.

She’d sit in her chair by the window all night—even the nights she spent at Dorian’s—make notes in her notebook, and watch the sky grow light. If she was at Dorian’s, he’d wake up, see her sitting wrapped in a blanket, staring instead of writing, and try to be helpful.

“You’ll get there,” he said. “You did it before, you can do it again.” Like it was just a matter of arguing a case.

One morning at Dorian’s, she’d made it to bed and was still there when he was nearly ready for his day.

“The DA wants to come see your show. I told him I could get him tickets.” Looking in the mirror, he straightened his tie. “You can get tickets, right?”

“Sure,” she said, emerging from blankets. “For when?”

“For tonight.”

“That might be kind of tough.”

“Come on, honey, surely you have some pull. You guys always hold a few tickets back, right?”

Maybe, but she didn’t run the box office. She still had some of her comp tickets left for the run, but there might not be anything for tonight. “I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not a superhero.”

“Great. Text me when you get them, all right? Don’t forget to lock up on your way out.”

“Have a good day, Dorian.” He gave her the appropriate kiss on her forehead and then was gone.

THE BOX OFFICE did have a pair of tickets for that evening. They were even decent seats. Charlotte was very apologetic, promising she’d have more notice next time, and that this was an emergency, and she was very grateful. On the other hand, the box office manager outdid herself apologizing in return, making sure the tickets were the best ones possible, and thanking her for the opportunity to be of service.

Dorian would have known what to do in this situation. The problem wasn’t that Charlotte didn’t have pull. The problem was she didn’t know what to do with it.

The manager filed the tickets with Will Call, she texted Dorian, and went to her favorite coffee shop to write.

Then she saw him.

She was at a sidewalk table, chin resting on her hand, staring at the traffic moving along the tree-lined street, because staring somewhere else wasn’t any less productive than staring at a blank page. She caught movement. It might have been the flickering of a set of leaves at the top of one of the trees, but it wasn’t. It was a person on the roof across the way. Jeans, dark T-shirt, and a mask.

He seemed to realize that she saw him. He stood and ran, disappearing to the back of the roof.

She stood, jostling the table and tipping over her coffee, which streamed to the edge and dripped to the sidewalk. Grabbing her notebook and satchel, she ran across the street, dodging cars like a creature in a video game. At the first alley she came to, she ran to the back of the building to look, but of course he wasn’t there. Just trash that hadn’t made it into the Dumpsters and puddles from the last rain filling cracks in the asphalt. The back doors of various businesses, shut and blank.

Maybe if she waited here until after dark, she’d get caught by muggers, and the masked man would come to rescue her. She didn’t want to leave, she didn’t want to pretend that he was a ghost, that it hadn’t happened, that she could move on.

“Hello?” she called. Her voice rattled in the empty space and no one answered.

DORIAN WAS WORKING late again and asked her to bring dinner—Thai takeout—to his office.

“He’s a crazy superhuman vigilante. You know what they’re like,” he said when she told him the story.

She felt the need to defend the superhero. While not offending Dorian. “You’re both working so hard to catch these guys, maybe you should work together. Pool your resources. Collaborate.” That was a theater word. She should have used another.

He gave her a look, appalled and amused at once. A “yeah, right” and “don’t be ridiculous.”

That night, back at her own apartment, she tried to sleep, couldn’t. She collected her notebook and sat by the window. Still didn’t write a word, but sitting with a pen in hand at least made her feel productive. The moon was full; she could see every detail of the street, the apartment blocks, the row of shops and Laundromats with steel grates pulled over the doors; at night, all the colors washed out to various degrees of half-tone shading.

On the roof of a row of shops, a figure moved. Monochrome, like the rest of the scene. Black T-shirt. Charlotte couldn’t see his face.

He was watching her. He was. And her heart fluttered at the thought.

SHE HAD SEEN him at all hours. Mostly on rooftops. She couldn’t predict where he’d be, unless maybe she staged a convenience store robbery. But the odds of that ending badly were very, very high, so she didn’t.

Instead, she went to the top of a parking garage on the fringes of downtown with a set of binoculars and scanned the surrounding rooftops. She might have become a vigilante herself, searching for crime, because if she found crime, she’d find him. She didn’t see anything.

For another night, she sat at her bedroom window, wrapped in a blanket, waiting for a shadow to race across rooftops and strike a dramatic pose.

And she started writing. Just a few lines in her notebook.

Dorian took her to a charity banquet and introduced her to the mayor. She wore the red dress she’d worn on opening night, met the mayor, accepted compliments from the DA, and Dorian beamed. The evening was a strange echo of the first night they’d met, but different. She was different. An accessory instead of a novelty. She should have been thrilled—this was part of her dreams of a glamorous life, wasn’t it? But she was distracted. It all seemed shallow.

For real drama, some disaster would strike the banquet. Some villain or group of thieves—maybe the same gang that had robbed the jewelry store—would storm the hall, divest the women of their jeweled necklaces and the men of their gold cufflinks, along with wallets and platinum cards and stock portfolios. They would take Charlotte hostage. The red dress made her stand out.

Then he would arrive, an epic battle would ensue, there’d be flames and bullets, she’d be trapped behind a burning door and he would—

“What are you looking for?” Dorian asked her.

“Oh. What? Nothing. Nothing.” She’d been craning her neck, looking at the doors and windows for impending drama.

“You writers,” Dorian said, squeezing her hand.

SOME NIGHTS, SHE went to the theater to take in the atmosphere, but avoided Otto because he always asked about the next play. She watched the old play from the house once, but otherwise sat backstage, well out of the way, and made notes. She was like an observer on a rooftop.

The text messages from Dorian continued. “Sry. Work ran late. Will make it up to you. xoxo.”

So again, she took herself to dinner, to the same favorite café with the rooftop patio. It was raining, but she asked to sit on the patio anyway.

“But it’s raining,” the host said.

“I have an umbrella,” she said.

She dried off a chair with a napkin and sat in a sheltered spot near the wall that housed the main part of the café, under her umbrella, drinking coffee. The petunias and daisies in the large planters at each corner drooped, and the sky grew grayer.

And there he was. He didn’t seem to mind the rain. The T-shirt molded to him a little more, and water dripped off his arms and the edges of his mask. Quickly she stood, then thought maybe she shouldn’t—she didn’t want to scare him off. But when he didn’t run, she didn’t sit down.

“Hi,” she said.

A moment passed. “Hi.”

He seemed nervous; he kept looking away. So he was shy. That made sense. He had secrets to hide, no one could know who he was—it was all very romantic, she was sure. Beautiful, even right down to his jeans, to his ungraceful boots.

Then he said, “I have to go—”

“Wait!” But for what? For her? How did she talk a masked avenger into waiting for her? “Who are you?” She winced. So obvious.

He gave her a lopsided smile. “I can’t say.”

“But—” And what excuse would she give, about why she was different? Why was she any different, except that he’d once plucked her out of the air? “Why are you following me?” she said, surprised to say anything, even the first thing she thought of. She’d expected to let him flee.

“To make sure you’re safe. That gang—they could come after you again.”

“Really?”

He averted his eyes. So the answer was no. She hadn’t thought so.

“If you’re looking for them, trying to catch them, you should talk to Dorian. He’s my—” She didn’t want to say the word. She didn’t want to shut the door. “My friend, he’s an assistant DA, he’s got the robbery case if it ever goes to trial. He’s working with the police. He may have information you can use. Maybe you could work together.” It seemed reasonable.

“I don’t think so.”

“Is it just because of the mask? Because you’d have to tell them who you are? I mean, do you really have to hide who you are?”

“It’s traditional,” he said, and now he sounded apologetic. The only expression she could see under the mask was a flat-lipped frown, a gaze somewhere between determined and resigned.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t pry, but it’s just—I’m sorry.” It’s just that he was strange, and she wanted to help him.

“I saw your play,” he said then.

She wondered, How? Was he in the audience? In the rafters? How had she missed him? But what she asked was, “What did you think?”

“I liked it.” What a sweet smile. He turned bashful again. “I’d never seen a play before.”

“Really? Really? Oh my God, mine shouldn’t have been your first play ever! How could you have never seen a play?”

“I guess I don’t get out much,” he said, which seemed ironic.

They just kept standing there in the rain. She lifted the umbrella and stepped closer to bring him under the shelter—he stepped back, as if afraid.

She tried not to be hurt. Tried not to take it personally. She swallowed her pride.

“I don’t know anything about you.” A statement containing all her questions. “I mean, where do you live? What do you do? Do you have a day job? A… a girlfriend? What’s your name?”

He might as well have been an alien, a character, a face on a billboard. He seemed uncertain, pain in his eyes—biting his lips. He seemed to consider. When he returned, taking back the step he’d moved away, closing the distance between them, she thought he’d tell her everything. He moved quickly, with the reflexes that had saved her from crashing to the pavement. Touched her chin with gentle, calloused fingers.

She closed her eyes, waiting for that kiss, and so didn’t see him run away. Only felt a draft on her face where there should have been warmth.

“Wait!” She saw a shadow fleeing through the mist, then he was gone, and she was alone, the only one stupid enough to stay on the rooftop in the rain.

THE NEXT EVENING, Dorian’s text message about working late came later than she expected, but it came. It rained again, and Charlotte imagined the masked man out there in it. She watched the news for an hour, looking for signs of him. But he didn’t seem to be busy tonight, or if he was, the network wasn’t showing it. They were more interested in the flashier heroes, the Invincibles and Red Meteors, who had a sense of style and public relations. And she thought of Dorian in his courtroom attire, which was just as alluring as a vigilante costume, in its own way.

Then she wondered. Dorian had been so busy lately.

The masked man had brown eyes, Dorian had brown eyes. They were about the same height, and their chins—chagrined, she realized she couldn’t say that she had ever noticed Dorian’s chin before. It was a nice chin, average. She noticed the hero’s chin because the mask drew attention to it.

The masks were deceptive. They seemed like they shouldn’t be able to disguise anything, but it was more than a mask, it was a distraction. She had never, ever seen Dorian in jeans and a T-shirt. His version of casual involved Dockers, polo shirts, and loafers. Boating or golf attire. He always had a bit of polish because, as he said it, he never knew when he might run into someone who needed impressing. She could never imagine him standing out in the rain, wearing a T-shirt and a goofy smile.

Maybe that was the point. She had seen Marta in half a dozen shows, playing ingenues and dutiful daughters, unrecognizable from one role to the next.

Later that week, they didn’t meet for dinner, but she came over to Dorian’s place anyway, late, to spend the night. Dorian was in the kitchen, pouring himself a tumbler of scotch.

“You’ve been working late a lot,” she said, watching for his reaction.

“Yeah,” he said, in a mock long-suffering tone.

“What exactly do you do?” She winced because it sounded accusing.

“Paperwork, mostly, believe it or not. I meet with people all day so the paperwork gets put off. And the police work late. I like to keep track of them.”

“Ah. I guess I’ve never had a sense of what goes on in a real job.” She quirked a smile, trying to make it a joke.

“That’s why you have writer’s block. You need to get out in the real world and then you’d have something to write about.”

She tried to remember how the masked man had smelled. She’d been close enough to smell his skin, his sweat. Maybe she could tell if he and Dorian smelled the same. But all she remembered from him was the smell of rain on fabric, and the sensation of warmth when he touched her.

Get out in the world so she’d have something to write about. Yeah.

WHILE DORIAN SLEPT, Charlotte was about to go sit by the window when Dorian’s phone rang.

He seemed to be ready for it. “Hello? Yeah?” He rolled out of bed and took his phone into the next room. Sitting very still, she could hear.

“You got them? They’re cornered and not surrendering… Of course I want to be there. Give me fifteen minutes.” He came back into the bedroom and dressed quickly—he didn’t even bother with a tie.

“What?” she said.

“Never mind. Go back to sleep. It’s all right.”

“But—”

He was out the door. He’d never even turned on the lights.

Something was happening. Or was about to happen.

Charlotte got up and went to the next room to turn on the TV, but whatever was going on, the news hadn’t picked up on it yet. Dorian’s laptop sat on the desk, and she went there next, fired it up, and checked “Rooftop Watch.”

A dozen updates had been posted just in the last ten minutes. “It’s those jewel thieves, the cops are there.” “Any supers?” “On the lookout for supers.” “The police seemed to be centered on 21st and Pine.”

She was turning into one of those superhero stalkers who haunted Web sites like this and posted conspiracy theories. She didn’t care.

Then she read the latest post: “Blue Collar’s been sighted! Just for a second!”

Charlotte found her phone and called Dorian. Waited, and waited, but got no answer. And maybe that was her answer. She called a cab while getting dressed, reached the curb just as it pulled up, trundled into the backseat, and told the sleepy-looking driver the address.

“And hurry!” she said, like this was some spy movie. He sighed.

They didn’t get there. The police cordoned off the area a block away. A dozen squad cars parked, flashing lights reflecting off the concrete walls of body shops and warehouses, red, white, and blue, fireworks and Christmas at once.

The driver glared at her like it was her fault. She paid him and left.

She ran, just to see how far she’d get until someone stopped her, which turned out to be pretty far, because no one was looking out to the streets for crazy women. They were all looking inward, to the unfolding drama. She joined the inner circle, the edge of the stage, and watched.

Six masked jewel thieves sprawled in a heap on the ground, their purple outfits streaked with dirt, their ray guns in a neat pile a few feet away, as though someone with superspeed had snatched them away and placed them there.

And there he was, her rescuer, standing over them and looking worn out rather than particularly heroic. His arms hung at his sides, and he seemed to be trying to catch his breath. A couple of suited men who might have been detectives stood across from the thieves, who seemed like prey that he’d caught and delivered to them. Also with the detectives was Dorian. Dorian and the masked man were looking at each other.

Then the masked man saw Charlotte. When he turned to look, so did everyone else. The jig was up.

Dorian called, “Charlotte! What are you doing here?”

The uniformed cops on either side of her looked her over and glared.

She didn’t say anything, hardly noticed that the tableau had unfrozen, and police were now collecting the thieves, putting handcuffs on them, and shoving them into cars. That left Dorian, the vigilante, and Charlotte.

“I told you you guys should work together,” she said lamely.

“Charlotte—” Dorian exclaimed again, a word that was a question, demanding explanation.

“Are you having an affair?” she asked him, because it was the only other thing she could think of.

“What? No! For God’s sake, what gave you that idea?”

He was indignant enough that she believed him, but she also wasn’t sure she’d be able to tell if he was lying. She watched actors on stage all day, and actors on stage did nothing but lie while convincing her they were telling the truth.

“It was all those late nights,” she said, and tried to explain all at once, to both of them. “All those broken dates and the evasions and I thought, I thought something must be going on. Then I met him”—and she still didn’t know his name—“and I thought, I don’t know what I thought. You both have brown eyes.”

He looked at the masked man, looked at Charlotte, and sounded a little forlorn when he said, “I told you, I was working late.”

“And how many men have said that to how many women? It’s like something out of a bad play.” She stopped. Here they were, three on the stage at the close of the curtain, a gothic postmodern shambles. The police lights flashed and didn’t seem real. She knew exactly what gels would make those colors on stage.

She walked away, upset at how disappointed she was and how foolish she felt. This all seemed so plain, so messy. Couldn’t we make it… prettier, she had said to Otto.

She got to the end of the block when the masked man appeared in front of her. That was what it looked like, he just appeared, after a blur of motion.

“The thing is,” he said, “I can’t take you out to dinner. I can’t be there for the openings of your plays. I can’t answer the phone every time you call. I can’t do any of that. But I can still… I can still try.”

She could have a hero, or have someone who was always there to take her to dinner, but not both.

He took off his mask, and she didn’t know him. He seemed young, but the faint stubble and even fainter crow’s-feet—laugh lines—gave him rough edges. He was handsome. He was sad. She knew nothing about him.

One thing he could do, though, was stand over her broken body, striking a pose and looking tragically bereft before he flew off into the night. And it would be pretty, dramatically speaking.

She leaned in, hand on his chest. He stood still, body tense. She felt his heart racing—much faster than a normal person’s. Faster than Dorian’s. He still smelled like rain. She brushed her lips against his, which trembled in response. Barely a kiss. More like an apology.

Then she walked home, and nobody tried to mug her. She was almost disappointed.

CHARLOTTE AND DORIAN split up. Dorian prosecuted the jewel thieves and talked to the press about putting in for DA in a couple of years. He started dating a painter whose gallery shows were making news.

Charlotte finished the next play. Otto liked it. Marta liked it. It needed some work. She would have been worried if it hadn’t.

This one was straight realism, which was a departure for her, and which meant not stringing the wires with lights when they flew the heroes in and out. She still had to have heroes, but this time she imagined what they said to each other when they sat on rooftops looking for jewel thieves. She imagined they talked about the weather and the girls they liked and how to avoid getting ID’d by the cops. The only non-superhero character in the play was the cop who was trying to figure out who they were. She never did.

A week into rehearsals, she sat on a chair at the edge of the stage, watching Otto block actors, listening to lines, following along in her copy of the script, making notes when she thought something else would sound better. She’d think something else would sound better long after the play had had its run and closed.

Otto had been on the same page for half an hour and was on his fourth try, arranging actors, repeating lines. In a minute he’d do something off the wall and unexpected and that would be the version that worked. All she had to do was wait, and wonder how it would all turn out.

Leaning back in her chair, she looked up into the rails, ropes, chains, and lights of the fly system, distant ladders and rafters lost in shadow, and saw a masked face looking back at her, smiling.