Excerpt: LIVING PROOF (that no good deed goes unpunished), Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 4

 Saturday morning,Felicity came over to show me all the loot she had dragged home from shopping.When she was in super-shopper mode (not one of her superpowers, no matter howamazingly fast she moved) she was definitely a Felicity, rather than what wesometimes called her: Zap. Thinking of her as Zap, unable to control herpowers, helped me ignore the fact she was gorgeous and looked like she was interminal ditz mode, with those big, Bambi-wide eyes, coffee-and-cream skin, andall that curly hair. Currently she had it tinted amber, but it could be jetblack tomorrow and platinum blond the day after, without her resorting to abottle of dye.

I groaned, but didn'teven think of complaining, when she spilled all her shopping bags on thekitchen table. And into the TV room. Mi casa es su casa.

I had to bite mytongue while she enthused about all the bargains and treasures, andcontradicted herself every three or four sentences about who would get whatgift. There were an even dozen presents in the pile of loot she had bought forme, to give to people. Gotta love having a shopaholic at my beck and call.Especially when I hated shopping. And not just because I loathed going intocrowded malls when I couldn't see over people to navigate. The malls generallystruck me as a ski slope obstacle course. The problem was that the poles movedwithout warning, and they had a tendency to scream when I hit them.

"How about thisfor your mom?" Felicity held up a neon green-and-purple sarong withmatching foam-rubber sandals. "They're still in Bermuda, aren'tthey?"

"Probably."I caught myself twitching, trying to reach back and scratch that tender spotbetween my shoulder blades that always seemed hyper-sensitive when there wassomething wrong with the person I had just been thinking about.

Uh oh.

"What'swrong?" She paused in folding the sarong to put back into the gift box.Felicity might have looked like Lobotomy Barbie, but she regularly out-thoughtthe Prime Time TV detectives and would have been a millionaire if she everauditioned for Jeopardy.

"They missedtheir last two check-in calls." I shrugged. "You know how Mum and Popare when they're tracking down the strange and unique. They forget there arepeople back home who want to make sure they're still alive. But it's not like we'relittle kids, left home with the babysitter."

"They never leftyou home with a babysitter when they went hunting down the inexplicable.Remember those pictures, jumping over Stonehenge? You always had the bestfamily vacations." She giggled. "You could make a mint gettingimpossible photos, getting past all those no-fly zone restrictions."

"Could have. Past tense." I grinned,remembering all the stunts I had pulled as a kid, thoughtless tricks that evenSuperboy wouldn't have thought of. I had done them just because I knew I could,or wanted to find out if I could.