The Trouble With Heroes.... by Jo Beverley

of them about Dan.
    If his closest friends didn't care, what
could she do, especially when she knew better than any that Dan
could be changed, would be changed. Not into a vampire or a ghoul,
but in power. He’d begun the shift before he left.
    Wild magic.
    Then a screen section closed in on the long,
severe face of Alice Cotrell. Jenny rolled her eyes. Mrs. Cotrell
was a great one for drawing up petitions and addressing
committees.
    "I speak for over a hundred citizens of
Anglia -- the names are here, Alders, if you wish to verify." Mrs.
Cotrell waved some sheets of paper. "We wish to make it clear that
many Anglians do not wish to see Dan Fixer back within our walls.
While duly grateful for the service the fixers have done, we
believe that his home, the home of all the fixers, is the Gaian
Center for Investigation and Control of the Hostile Amorphic Native
Entities."
    How interesting that she used the full and
formal name.
    "It is intact," Mrs. Cotrell went on, "and
suitable for habitation. As Dan Fixer claims there are only a small
number of fixers left, there is plenty of accommodation...."
    "There are others alive?" Jenny whispered to
Gyrth.
    "Apparently. It might be best for them to
gather there to figure out what to do in the future."
    “ True,” Jenny said. But Dan wanted to
come in.
    He wanted, she suddenly realized, to come
home.
    Alice Cotrell was listing the many possible
dangers a fixer might now present to normal people.
    Normal, thought Jenny.
    Alderwoman Sillitoe interrupted. "He seems
perfectly normal, Mrs. Cotrell. And he was born and raised
here."
    Alice Cotrell stood straighter. "We do not
understand his sort, any more than we understood the hellbanes. Who
is to say that the fixers themselves won't turn wild on us one
day?"
    A murmur rolled around the room, but Jenny
couldn't tell if it was shock or approval. She'd not thought of
that. When a predator is eliminated, the prey often takes over as
pest. She followed the debate, no longer certain what was
right.
    In the end, she grabbed onto one thing.
"Listen!" she said.
    They all stared at her.
    "If everyone's afraid of what Dan might be,
then someone has to go outside and find out. Yas-"
    "Oh no!" Yas raised a hand. "We weren't that
close."
    "What?"
    "Not when he left. I don't know who he was
rumpling with then."
    Jenny turned to Tom, hoping the dim lighting
hid her blush. "You're a good friend."
    He turned his beer glass in his hands. "I
don't know, Jenny. It's not that I'm afraid of Dan," he added
quickly. "I don't think he'd deliberately hurt any of us.”
    "Tom!"
    "You know better?" Yas demanded. "Why has he
pretended to be dead for weeks?"
    That was the overwhelming question. "I don't
know,” Jenny said. “I just know that someone has to go and find out
why he's here and what he wants…" The resistance around the table
dragged her words to a halt. "All right. How many here want Dan
back home?"
    Eyes shifted. Perhaps some hands twitched,
but none went up.
    "It depends..."
    "We can't decide yet…."
    "I need to know..."
    "My, my. The committee really is in touch
with the mood of the voters, isn't it?"
    "If you're so set on this," said Yas, "why
don’t you go and find out what's come home from the war."
    It was a challenge, one Jenny knew Yas
didn't expect her to accept.
    She turned her attention to the screen,
hoping for something that would save her. No. They were consulting
some expert about the place of Hellbane U in Gaian society.
    She didn't want to do this, but she had to.
She’d remembered what she'd said when she'd parted from Dan. "Come
back," she'd said. "That's an order."
    And he'd replied, “If I possibly can."
    She took a deep breath then looked back
around the table. "I will, then, on one condition."
    After a stunned moment, Tom said, "You don't
have to-"
    "If no one else will, I will. But on one
condition. I'm your representative. If I come back and say Dan's
safe, you all support that."
    "What good will it do?" Rolo asked.
    "If