After an hour or so of being a normal teenager—which felt like longer than it actually was—Abel needed to escape the noise.
He found a quiet balcony on the third floor of Sean's house, tucked away in a small activity room that most people didn't even know existed. It wasn't big, but the view was good. The city stretched out below, lights reflecting off the water in the distance. It was one of those rare places where things felt genuinely peaceful.
Abel poured himself a glass of wine from what he assumed was Sean's parents' collection and settled onto one of the sun loungers. The cool night breeze felt amazing after hours of being packed into rooms full of people. He closed his eyes, tipped his head back, and just... existed.
This was nice. When was the last time he'd just existed without calculating something? Without planning? Without thinking about spells or potions or magical politics?
For the first time in months, Abel felt like he was actually seventeen years old. Not a sorcerer. Not someone navigating dimensional magic and sorcerer politics and the birth of the superhero age. Just a teenager enjoying a party with his friends.
He could get used to this.
He was lying there, squinting at the stars and trying to remember what it felt like to not have something urgent demanding his attention, when the sound of raised voices filtered up from the garden below.
Abel's eyes opened. He didn't move at first, just listened. It sounded like a confrontation—people arguing, tension escalating. For a moment, he considered just ignoring it. Let people have their drama. It wasn't his problem.
But his training had made him aware of everything around him, and something about the situation felt off. He got up and walked to the edge of the balcony to look down.
Four girls in the garden. Three of them together on one side, one girl standing alone on the other.
The three girls, he recognized. They were the type—social butterflies who moved easily through Midtown's social hierarchy, the kind who'd once tried to get his attention. He'd shut that down quickly enough, and they'd moved on without much fuss.
The other girl he didn't recognize immediately, though something about her felt familiar. One of Sean's other invitations, probably.
"Tessa, give me an answer today!" one of the three girls—Angela, he thought—was saying. "Can't you just leave Kane alone?"
The lone girl, apparently Tessa, just smiled. There was something strange about that smile. Too calm. Too confident in a way that didn't match her physical situation—three against one.
"Angela, I'm not the same person I used to be," Tessa said softly. "Your threats don't mean anything to me anymore. Kane follows me because he wants to. If I left him alone, he'd just keep following me anyway. As for you..." She tilted her head slightly. "I don't think Kane would even look at you."
It was a dismissal. Clean and absolute.
Angela's face went red. She raised her hand to strike, and that was when things got weird.
A guy—Kane, apparently—suddenly appeared and grabbed Angela's wrist. His hand was firm, controlled, but his voice when he spoke was cold in a way that made Abel actually sit up straighter.
"Angela, what are you doing to Tessa?"
"You're hurting me!" Angela protested, pulling against his grip.
"What. Are. You. Doing. To. Tessa?"
There was something in Kane's voice that made Abel's skin prickle. That absolute obedience. That total lack of agency.
And then Tessa spoke. One sentence. "Kane, stop."
Kane's entire demeanor changed instantly. The anger that had been radiating from him just... evaporated. He released Angela's wrist gently, almost apologetically, and walked over to stand beside Tessa like a dog returning to its owner.
Abel's wine glass nearly slipped from his hand.
No.
No, that wasn't—
Angela started screaming. "It really is! It really IS! You've done something to him! Hypnosis? Witchcraft? Drugs? You despicable bitch, I'm going to expose you! Everyone's going to know what you did!"
Tessa's expression didn't change. "Angela, who's going to believe anything you say? But since you seem determined to make this a problem..."
She said something quietly to Kane—something Abel couldn't quite hear—and then she gestured at the two girls standing behind Angela.
The two girls suddenly lunged forward and started attacking Angela like they'd been possessed. Their faces were blank, their movements mechanical, like they were operating under remote control.
Angela screamed as the other party guests noticed and rushed over, pulling the two attacking girls away. But even as people were dragging them off, the girls kept trying to continue, their expressions empty and vacant, like they were waking up from a nightmare they didn't understand.
By then, Tessa and Kane had already left. Abel watched them disappear around the corner of the house, and his entire body went cold.
That wasn't possible.
That wasn't possible because Abel had killed the person with those exact powers. He'd confronted Kilgrave on that rooftop months ago. He'd used Levitation to hurl him into the air and let gravity do the work. He'd watched the man hit the pavement.
And yet.
Those powers were unmistakable. The way Kane's entire personality had shifted with a single word. The way those two girls had gone from normal to violent automatons instantly. The way Tessa had wielded control with the casual confidence of someone who'd been doing it for years.
Those were Kilgrave's powers.
Kilgrave's powers were real. Kilgrave's powers were active. Kilgrave's powers were in the hands of a girl at a high school party.
Abel set down his wine glass with enough force that the stem actually cracked.
Kilgrave was supposed to be dead. Dead and gone. And yet somehow, impossibly, someone else had the same ability. Either Kilgrave had come back, or he'd passed his powers on before Abel killed him, or—
Oh god, Theresa.
If this girl, this Tessa, had these powers, and if she decided to use them the way Kilgrave had...
Abel's fear turned into anger. Real anger. The kind that made his hands shake. The kind that made every instinct in his body demand he do something.
He stood up and walked across the balcony, staring in the direction Tessa and Kane had gone. Around the side of the house, toward the street presumably.
The peace he'd felt just minutes ago was gone. Evaporated. That brief moment of being just an adolescent enjoying a night out had ended the moment he recognized those powers.
He was done being normal. He was done pretending he could just have one night off.
Abel abandoned his wine glass and headed back inside, moving quickly through the crowded house toward the exit. He barely acknowledged Sean calling his name, barely registered people asking where he was going. All he could think about was that girl, that impossible girl with Kilgrave's powers, and what she might do next.
Someone needed to find out what was happening. Someone needed to figure out if Kilgrave was back or if his powers had somehow survived his death.
And if either of those things was true, then someone needed to stop it before it became a problem.
That someone, apparently, was him.
END CHAPTER 17