Blue Noon (8 page)

“Jess, I don’t
want
you to be in trouble,” Beth whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. “I just want to know what’s going on with you.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Jessica paused, as if struggling for words. “But I need to get out of here
right now,
and I can’t explain why.”

“And you’re going to sneak out right in front of me?” Beth crossed her arms. “So I’ll be in trouble too when you get caught?”

“That’s
your
fault, Beth. I told you to leave half an hour ago.”

“Can you at least explain when you come back… in eighteen minutes?”

Jessica sighed. “Sorry, Beth, I’d love to. I just can’t.”

“Got your flashlight?” Jonathan said, one foot already out the window.

She thumped a bulge in her jacket. “Yeah, right here.”

They slipped out, dropping to the soft earth of the garden. Jonathan heard one last complaint cut off by Jessica’s sliding the window closed and thought again how he couldn’t wait for midnight gravity to arrive. Finally he would be unstuck from Flatland, able to fly again, and all little sisters would be mutely frozen.

And the darklings will come to life, he realized, checking his watch as they jogged toward the car.

Midnight was coming, all right. Way too soon.

“Why did you have to say that?”

“Say what?”

“That thing about eighteen minutes exactly,” Jessica said. “It was kind of obvious, don’t you think?”

Jonathan shrugged. The clock had said 11:42, and he could fly Jess back here by the end of the secret hour, midnight on the dot. He did see her point, though. Maybe he had been a little too precise about exactly when Jessica would return.

He sighed, watching a flattened armadillo flash past on the road. Listening to Dess talk math all afternoon had crowded his brain with numbers. “What’s the difference, anyway?”

“Beth’s starting to figure out that midnight’s important.” Jessica was staring out the passenger window. “She’s noticed that I’m always getting ready to leave around twelve, and she’s started showing up just before the secret hour starts. If I kick her out, she’ll probably just go get Mom and Dad. It’s like she
knows.
Ever since that night I shoved her in the closet—right at the stroke of midnight.”

Jonathan chuckled. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t shove her in closets.”

“You’re lucky—nobody but your father, and no hassle from him.”

He winced a little at that and took one hand off the wheel, reaching out to her. She was nervously playing with Acariciandote, the bracelet he’d given her, and he stilled her hand. “That was my mom’s, remember?”

“Oh. Sorry, Jonathan.”

“It’s okay. She ran off all the time, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when she didn’t come back. But you’re lucky to have family.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Yeah.”

Jonathan wished he hadn’t brought it up. Talking about this kind of stuff never helped. “Anyway, Beth probably isn’t going to guess that time freezes at the stroke of twelve and a secret blue world full of monsters appears.” Jonathan laughed. “She might be smart, but she’s not that smart.”

Jessica turned toward him. “You don’t really mind her that much, do you? You
like
her.”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

“Yeah. But she’s my sister. I sort of have to.”

Jonathan chuckled again. “Listen. You guys used to get along before you moved here, right? You will again, once Beth gets used to the weird ways of Bixby. And yeah, I
do
like her. Since you introduced us, I feel like less of a stalker when I’m sneaking around.”

Jessica drew closer, leaning her weight against him. “Yeah, it’s been better since she got to know you. I think she trusts you. At least, she doesn’t think you’re a serial killer anymore.”

Jonathan smiled, but the expression faded as he glanced at his watch: only ten more minutes before the blue time fell, and they were about that many miles from Jenks. He stepped on the gas, the old car shuddering as it accelerated. They had more important things to worry about tonight than little sisters.

They zoomed passed an old Chevy that was lumbering down Creek Turnpike. This far out of town the roads were almost empty, which meant that his father’s car would be easy for his old friends in the sheriff’s department to spot. He was sure that by now, they’d recognize it from halfway across the county.

Jonathan didn’t know what he’d do then. Get stopped for breaking curfew, maybe go to jail again, and risk Cassie Flinders disappearing forever? Or do a grand theft auto, get the cops into hot pursuit mode, and get Jessica and himself into more trouble than Beth could ever have imagined?

Not a great choice.

Jessica cleared her throat. “Um, I hope you’re not planning on going this fast when time freezes. Don’t want to fly through the windshield, personally.”

“Midnight’s not for ten more minutes. Unless there’s another eclipse.”

She pulled away, sitting straighter in her seat and checking her seat belt. “Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me. Midnight can come at any time now.”

“Yeah. Cool, huh?”

“Uh, no, Jonathan.
Not
cool. What if it keeps happening?”

He shrugged. “Then we get to fly around more.”

She sighed. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

“What?
More
midnight? The whole world belonging to just us five? Less time in Flatland? Sure, I would.”

“But we don’t understand what’s happening, Jonathan. On the phone Dess said something about the blue time changing completely. And today we didn’t know if the eclipse was ever going to stop. It felt like the world had ended.”

“Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen.” He snorted. “And anyhow, look at it this way: if the world ends, you won’t have to worry about Beth anymore.”

Jessica just turned away, staring out the passenger window and not saying another word.

Jonathan frowned, wondering what he’d said wrong now.

Melissa’s eyes rolled back in her head, her nose wrinkling. Rex saw a shudder pass through her body from toes to fingertips.

“What, did they stop already?” Rex asked.

She shook her head. “No, Flyboy’s still got his pedal all the way down. They’ll get here in time, more or less. But the flame-bringer’s not in a very good mood.”

Dess glanced up from her GPS device and snorted. Rex shook his head. Great time for a lovers’ quarrel.

He swept his eyes across the railroad tracks again. This place was wrapped in Focus, inhuman marks corrupting every piece of gravel in the rail bed, every blade of grass shooting up through the wooden cross-ties. Darklings and slithers had danced here. Even the steel spikes in the iron rails bore the traces of their claws and snouts and slithering bellies.

All this Focus couldn’t have been laid down in twenty-one minutes. They must have come here before the eclipse.

Of course, Rex thought, there were always a few midnight places on the outskirts of town. Perhaps it was only a coincidence that this weak spot had been visited before.

He knelt to take a closer look at a slitherprint, a sinuous line that wound down the railroad tracks as far as he could see. It didn’t look especially fresh, not like a trail left only fifteen hours ago.

But Rex frowned; his new hunter’s nerves were twitching with all the metal around him. Why would a slither travel down a railroad line that reeked of iron rails, steel bolts, and buried telegraph lines? Most darkling places on the city’s edges were open fields and empty back lots, places where little patches of the wild still clung—stands of native plants, snake holes, or small creeks not yet erased by buildings and concrete. But this iron path was an artery of the rail system, an old and powerful symbol of human cleverness and dominance. Only a hundred years ago it had represented the highest technology that humanity possessed, yet the darklings had embraced this spot. They must have come here with a purpose.

Rex saw how far the Focus stretched up and down the track, how it trailed off into the brush and extended even to the ramshackle houses backed up against the right-of-way. He wondered how far into the mesquite trees it went. The small town of Jenks was close to the Arkansas River, and the scrub in these parts was impenetrably dense, hiding much of the landscape from his new predator’s eyes.

But old darklings had been here, of that Rex was sure. He could see deep, clawed footprints in the soil and a broad tree branch that had almost cracked under the weight of something huge and winged. There were slither burrows scattered throughout the underbrush; darklings young and old hid from the sun out in the deep desert caves, but some of their little minions nested closer to town, buried under the earth.

It took time to layer a place with this much Focus, this many signs. They must have begun months ago, maybe a lot longer than that. Melissa and Madeleine had felt their celebrations out in the desert: the darklings had somehow known that the eclipse was coming and exactly where it would happen. Which meant they’d probably also known what Dess had discovered today, that this first tear in the blue time would spread like a rip along the seam of an old T-shirt.

Maybe it had always been their plan that the blue time would one day come apart. But what would happen then?

Suddenly something caught Rex’s eye. One of the railroad track cross-ties stood out, a halo of red surrounding it. He looked closer and smelled the inherent strangeness of the spot. The blue time was paper-thin here.

The old wood of the cross-tie was marked with a sliver of Focus, looking out of place here among the stains of darklings. He drew closer and saw in the half-moon shape the distinctive tread of a sneaker.

That was why it looked different—that
other
kind of Focus clung to it, the kind Rex had only learned to see over the last couple of weeks.

“Prey,” he said softly.

“Five minutes,” announced Dess, nervously rocking the long piece of steel pipe that rested on her shoulder. “How’s the flame-bringer doing?”

“Close,” Melissa said. “But they’re slowing down. Wimps.”

“Not everyone appreciates the subtle pleasures of flying through a windshield, Melissa,” Dess said.

“They’ve got five whole minutes before midnight, and Flyboy’s already parking it!”

“How far are they?” Rex interrupted.

“A few miles.”

“Not good.” He followed the trail of human Focus with his gaze. The glimmering footprints left the rail bed and headed down into the dense undergrowth. “She went this way. On foot, not being dragged.”

“Who? Cassie?” Dess asked.

Rex nodded.

“You can
see
that?”

“I can see the traces of humans now,” he said, pointing at the trail. “And these footprints look like they were made in the blue time. Cassie must have left them during the eclipse.”

Dess’s face twisted into a skeptical expression. Other than Melissa and Madeleine, none of them yet understood how different he had become.

Rex knelt on the tracks and sniffed. He could smell the uncertainty of the lost girl, could see her fear in the tentative distance between the steps. It made his mouth water, his palms sweat. This was a young one, weak and ready to be cut from the herd.

“Get a grip, Rex,” Melissa said softly.

He shook the hunting thoughts from his head. “Okay, I’m going to track her. She might still be close by. You guys stay here. But yell out a countdown for the last thirty seconds, Dess.” He slid down the loose gravel bank of the rail bed and plunged into the thick bushes.

“Rex!” Dess shouted. “There’s only four minutes left! Get back here.”

“Quit showing off, Rex,” Melissa called. “Once midnight falls and her brain starts up again, I’ll find her right away.”

Rex glanced back. The two of them were standing inside Polychronious, a large and complex tridecagram that Dess had laid down on a patch of clearing, using a spool of fiberoptic cable stolen from Oklahoma Telecom a few midnights ago. The cable smelled bright and buzzy to Rex, like cleaning detergent fumes going up his nose, and the thirteen-pointed star Dess had woven with it made his head spin. They would be safe from darklings inside it, even if the flame-bringer was a few minutes late.

“Just give me that countdown,” he called back.

“Rex!” Dess wailed.

He noticed that she and Melissa were standing as far apart as they could inside the tridecagram, like two rival cats locked in a small room together.

Whatever. They’d live.

Rex pushed his way deeper into the underbrush, fighting the bare, brittle branches of mesquite. He could see in the dark better than ever now, and the spaces between leafless trees and scrub seemed to open up before him. He soon realized that his prey’s slender marks of Focus followed a narrow path, probably an old animal trail.

As Cassie’s footsteps went deeper into the brush, they began to grow more sure and purposeful, as if after the first few minutes of confusion in the blue time, she’d headed for someplace where she felt safe.

A branch caught Rex, bending taut, then whipping backward, leaving a long rip in his shirt. The girl must have grown up around here to move so easily through this overgrowth. He could tell she was much shorter than him—from her footprints, she had walked almost upright underneath branches that he was forced to crouch beneath.

Her footsteps grew farther apart; moving more swiftly now, as if coaxed forward by some goal. Rex swore—he wasn’t going to find the girl before midnight fell. She’d had twenty-one minutes to get wherever she’d disappeared to, and he had only…

“Thirty seconds, Rex!” Dess’s voice called through the trees.

He paused. To make it back to safety, he should turn around now and start running. Inside Dess’s ring of protection, they could wait for the flame-bringer. In the blue time Melissa would be able to taste the lost girl’s thoughts even if she were miles away.

Of course, Cassie couldn’t have actually gotten that far in twenty minutes unless the darklings had swooped down and carried her off. And if that had happened, she probably wasn’t alive and certainly wouldn’t survive the long minutes it would take Jonathan and Jessica to reach her.