“Dinner’s ready.”

In the morning, he took pictures of them with their shiny faces, new shoes, and backpacks. And he watched that yellow school bus swallow them up, felt a twinge in his heart.

It didn’t last, but he felt it before he turned to the dog. “It’s just you and me, pal. How about you do the breakfast dishes while I get to work? No? It doesn’t work that way?”

He dealt with the kitchen, listened to the quiet. Yeah, some bliss there, but he thought about them both. The new kids in school. They’d made local friends over the summer, but still, they’d be the new kids.

When they got home, they’d be full of stories—and loaded with forms for him to fill out. So he’d better take advantage of the quiet while it lasted.

In his office, he sat at his drawing board while behind him Jasper sneakily crawled up on what Raylan thought of as his thinking couch.

He’d finished his script, edited it, fiddled, polished. It could and likely would change here and there along the way, but he felt it hit solid.

He’d gotten a good start on his rough panels, and now studied the full spread—two pages—on his board. He had his thought and dialogue bubbles in place, any additional text lettered in. Now, taking up a blue pencil, he filled in more details on the characters, the background. With other colors he highlighted certain details, added shadowing and light.

Now and then he checked the sketches pinned to his board for profiles, facial features, body types.

His villain had a slim build, almost slight, and an artistic, romantic, poetic face with gilded hair waving to his shoulders.

All a thin coating over monstrous evil.

Raylan gave his eyes a slight slant—nearly fairylike. They’d be crystalline blue, until he fed. Then the bloodred of the demon would rise.

Satisfied, he moved to the next spread, the next panels, consulting his script, his template for his layout. By the time he’d measured and marked the panels, Jasper slid off the couch, wagged to go out.

Raylan let him out, then got a Coke for himself.

He started, as always, with the bubbles. No point drawing something they’d cover. More text than dialogue on this spread, he thought, as Adrianna wandered her house, struggling to resist Grievous’s call, then the full-page panel of her surrendering to it to become Cobalt Flame, spear in her hand, grief in her eyes.

Yeah, he had to admit it. She was hot.

As his blues took shape, he built her house, again referring to sketches, to his previous panels for details.

The tower, with her in its long window, looking out at the night. Lonely, he thought. Conflicted. Haunted. Tormented.

Who didn’t love a hero who hit those marks?

Strong cheekbones—not diamond sharp like her master, but strong and defined. He’d have to experiment with his paints to get the right shade of golden, greeny brown. But for now, shape, expression, composition.

He’d just begun the long panel, her transformation, when he heard Jasper howling like the damned and demented.

Dropping everything, he raced to the back door. When he didn’t see Jasper, his heart tripped, but the howls came again.

Following them, he saw his dog, front paws planted on the top of the fence, tail wagging madly, head thrown back in a fresh howl.

He hadn’t heard the car pull up, but he saw it now with Adrian pulling a gym bag and what looked suspiciously like a yoga bag out of her car while Sadie sat patiently.

She swung the strap of each bag on a shoulder before she spotted Raylan.

“Sorry about the noise. I can let her back with him for a couple minutes if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, do that. Jasper, you’re an embarrassment to your sex. And you know he’s …” He made snipping motions.

“Love isn’t always about sex, sex isn’t always about love.” So saying, Adrian walked to the gate. “Go on, Sadie, give the guy a break. I brought you some stuff.”

Thinking of the personalized torture video, Raylan eyed her warily as she came through the gate with Sadie. “You brought me some stuff?”

“There’s more in the car, but I need help with that.”

Jasper raced around Sadie, rolled in the grass, jumped in the air. And Adrian smiled as she handed Raylan the black yoga bag. “How’s the first day of school going around here?”

“Okay so far, but now I’m starting to worry about it.”

She passed him the gym bag, and it proved heavier than it looked.

“Yoga mat, blocks and straps, exercise bands, wrist and ankle weights.”

“Oh. You shouldn’t have.”

“What are friends for? You got the instructional video?”

“Yeah. Yeah, but things …”

She smiled her thousand-watt smile. “Busy, busy.”

She positively beamed amused understanding. He didn’t trust it for a minute.

“Why don’t we take these in, then we can get the free weights out of the car. I can help you take them downstairs—assuming that’s the best area for you. Then I’ll get out of your way so you can go back to busy.”

What, he asked himself, was happening?

“Free weights? You brought me free weights?”

“And a complimentary membership month so you can stream Work Out Now dot com when you’re ready.” She slid right by him into the kitchen.

Smooth as a snake in the grass.

“Oh, Raylan, this looks really nice. It looks happy. Organized and happy,” she added. “The schedule calendar, the board with kid art and snapshots.”

She turned to him. “Can I be a pain in the ass and—”

“You’ve already qualified.”

She just laughed, shook back all that hair. “I can’t deny it. But you said I could come by sometime and see your work. If you’ve got anything done on the new character.”

“Yeah, it’s moving along.” Trapped, he set the bags on the kitchen island. “My office is around here.” He led the way, around the island and through the open glass-paneled doors.

She stopped in the doorway. “Oh, this is wonderful! All the drawings. And it’s such good light—I guess that matters. And so organized, again, with all the pencils and the brushes and an actual drawing board. I guess I thought you did it all on a computer.”

“Some do. Sometimes I do. But I like old-school.”

“This is old-school?” She stepped to the board and the spread on it. “The house, I love it. It looks like ours with a shot of Beetlejuice.”

That not only made him grin, it hit straight to the heart of pride. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

“And she looks so … so sad, so alone. It makes her sympathetic, so even if—when—she does terrible things, the reader will feel for her. And this, you’re drawing her big, full body, in movement.”

“Her transition, yeah.”

“You studied anatomy?”

“Well, yeah, in college. You’ve got to know how things connect to make them come alive on the page. Musculature, spine, rib cage.”

“There’s common ground. You can’t teach fitness, not safely, not well, unless you know how things connect, react. So, I love your setup here, and your happy home, and one day I’d also love you to explain this whole process to me. But you’re working, and I have to get back. Let’s get those weights inside.”