Super by Matthew Cody

at him shyly and smiled, causing Daniel to go an instant burnt red. Now she was back to flirting with him! Things were going terribly.
    Fortunately, the billiard room was at least bearable, and once they’d settled in, Mollie’s competitive instincts overrode the spell cast by Theo’s looks and charm. After getting soundly thrashed three games in a row playing pool, Theo dropped the wink. Meanwhile, Rohan and Eric were having a contest to see who could hold the most pizza in his mouth.
    It seemed as good a time as any to do a little spy-work.
    No one seemed to even notice when he announced he was going to the bathroom, and for a moment Daniel worried that his friends had forgotten the plan. But on the way out he caught Rohan crossing his fingers for luck, which Daniel assumed was meant for him and not the pizza-eating contest. Herman’s study was up the stairs from the basement game room and just down the hall, past the grandfather’s room. As he tiptoed quietly past the old man’s door, Daniel could hear him snoring away. He must be napping. Daniel couldn’t picture the old man’s evil twin, Herman, napping in the middle of the day. The Shroud had probably been too busy plotting, pulling at his webs, to ever sleep.
    The study door was unlocked, so Daniel didn’t wait for Louisa. Inside, it looked just as Daniel remembered. The air in there was stale and smelled of musty paper. Of all the windows in the house, these had stayed shut, the curtains drawn. Stacks of books were balanced upon more stacks of books. The well-worn reading chair sat empty against a wall covered in framed sketches, ink-and-brush illustrations of Herman Plunkett’s comic-book heroes and villains. Among the drawings was a picture of a man in a black domino mask: Herman’s most memorable creation, Johnny Noble. Of course, Johnny had been both Herman’s real-life nemesis and his greatest work of fiction. The stone pendant that gave the Shroud his power-stealing abilities had come from the same meteor that had made Jonathan Noble into a superhuman. Although the historical Jonathan Noble had disappeared in a dreamlike blur of childhood hero-worship and town folklore, Daniel knew that the real Johnny was the one person Plunkett feared. The old man had taunted his enemy in the pages
of Fantastic Futures, Starring Johnny Noble
, replaying their rivalry in four-color, nine-panel grids. He recast their roles as those of superhero and supervillain.
    The most twisted part of it all was that, in the real world, Herman truly thought himself the hero. He had deluded himself into thinking he was saving the world from a generation of reckless and dangerous super-kids. It was only in the pages of his own art that the truth came out and his villainy was exposed.
    Being alone in that old study brought back too manydisturbing memories, and Daniel was glad when Louisa stuck her head in the doorway.
    “Mollie’s telling stories about the Old Quarry,” she said.
    But when she saw the alarmed look on Daniel’s face, she quickly added, “Not
those
kinds of stories. Old ghost stories and stuff. I think she’s just showing off for Theo.”
    “I guess he is sort of good-looking. Or whatever.”
    Louisa smiled. “He is, but it kind of wears thin after a while. To get out of there I used the bathroom excuse, but I don’t think he believed me. I warned you, I just hate lying.”
    “Sure he believed you,” answered Daniel. “He has no reason not to. After all, why would you sneak off just minutes after I left? Why would we want to be alone together …?”
    Louisa raised her eyebrows at him.
    “Oh,” said Daniel. “You think he thinks that we … I mean you and me …”
    Louisa didn’t say anything. He wished she would say something.
    Daniel cleared his throat, but even that sounded awkward to his ears. This was not part of his plan. Detective work and ungainly romance did not work well together.
    “Let’s get to it, then,” he said at last. “The