Chapter One

Wyatt sat at his drawing table and worked on a panel for his latest comic book series. Elec Tric, his super hero, had been hit by an otherworldly bolt of lightning one sunny day. Twice. Since then, he’d been able to generate his own electricity. Even stranger, an unseen world of demons and super beings had become visible to him from that day forward. Tric had been forced to make a choice: join the forces of evil who intended to reign supreme over the innocent inhabitants of earth, or join the forces of good who kept the evil at bay. “Join me, Tric, or I will destroy you,” commanded Delilah Diabolical, the demon queen. “Never! One demon down; three to go.” Tric pivoted to shoot a bolt of deadly electricity at his archenemy. He couldn’t destroy her, but he managed to send Delilah reeling, which bought him enough time to obliterate her remaining minions. ZAP! SIZZLE! ZAP-ZAP! Gone.

Wyatt finished inking in the bolts of lightning shooting
from Tric’s hands and eyes to where the superhero had
reduced another pesky lower-level demon to a pile of glowing
embers and ash. Then he moved on to the next panel, and a
new challenge for his superhero.

Elec Tric once again rushed to rescue the Mysterious Ms. M,
which gave the superhero pause. Why did fate keep throwing
the pretty blue-eyed blonde in harm’s way? In his way. Was
she another distraction sent by the evildoers to keep him
from finding out what they were really up to? If not, what
did the demon realm want with Ms. M?

Cue dramatic foreshadowing music. Da-da-duhhh.

Wyatt grinned. Sometimes his stories played through his mind
like cheesy movies, and when that happened, he was in the
zone. Nothing made him happier than working on his comic
books while in the zone.

Noise at the back door leading to the parking lot pulled him
out of his imaginary world. He rose from his stool and moved
to glance out the window. There she was, the blonde who
lived in the apartment above his—the pretty neighbor who’d
been his inspiration for the Mysterious Ms. M. Her little
boy carried a jug of laundry detergent, while K. Malone—he’d
read her name on the mailbox more than once—lugged two large
plastic tubs full of laundry, one stacked on top of the other.

K. Malone did her laundry every Saturday morning. Wyatt knew
this because he took the opportunity to observe her as she
left. And every Saturday morning he wondered the same thing:
How would she react if he ran downstairs and out the back
door to help her with her heavy load? Would she turn her
thousand-watt smile his way, introduce herself and ask if
he’d like to get together with her soon? He wished. Oh, how
he wished.

Longing stole his breath, and he moved back from the
window—as if K. Malone might be able to see him watching her
from his apartment. “Curse this wretched shyness,” he
muttered in his best cartoon character voice.

He wanted so badly to talk to her, to introduce himself and
maybe ask her out. He’d even tried a few times, but the
words stuck in his dry mouth, his face turned to flame, and
his lungs refused to do their job. He was a hopeless mess
when it came to women. Hell, he was a hopeless mess when it
came to people in general.

He peered out the window until mother and son drove off to
the laundromat. Letting loose a heavy sigh, he returned to
his drawing table and immersed himself in his made-up world
of alter ego, heroic deeds and feats of superhuman strength.
It sure beat losing himself in his usual diatribe of
self-castigation.

A couple of hours later, Wyatt got up to stretch. He’d
finished the panel he’d been working on, and his stomach had
been grumbling “feed me” for the past fifteen minutes. He
walked to the kitchen to make a turkey sandwich, when he
smelled . . . smoke? A second later, the fire alarm went off
in the kitchen above his. “Cripes.” K. Malone’s apartment
was on fire.