Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (12 page)

“Why are you still speaking? Heather, why is
he still speaking?” Joss wanted to know.

Heather just shrugged and Joss looked away,
like she just couldn’t deal with this kid anymore. Then she
tensed.

“Come on,” she told us. “You too,
Waterboy.”

“What are you going to do?” Tim asked,
coming forward. “I’ll help.”

“No way. Your dad knows you’re here. You
think he’s busy, but he’s watching you. The minute you’re out of
his sight he’ll come looking for you. Just stay here and make sure
no one follows us.”

Tim made a face at Joss. She turned and made
a bee-line through the crowd until she reached Jessie Morgan, one
of the people who’d revealed a Talent during Kat’s epic party. They
put their heads together and had a few words the rest of us
couldn’t hear, and then headed off quickly, away from the fire. The
rest of us hurried to keep up.

Joss led us down an alley two stores away,
and turned down a narrow service road that ran across the back of
the building. It came out into a small, rutted parking lot,
surrounded by buildings on all sides, with just a narrow access to
the next street.

“Not much point in the fire department
trying to bring a truck down here,” she told us as we emerged into
the lot. “No windows, no access. The roads are so narrow, Mr.
Mueller’s delivery trucks had trouble getting through. Then he got
robbed once and decided the safest thing was to have everything
bricked in back here.”

“So what are
we
doing back here?”
Kenny asked.

“Jessie, you sure you want to do this?” Joss
asked her.

“Sure, it’s cool.”

“Okay, the three of you move way back.
Kenny’s going to need a good view. Come on, Jessie.”

Joss and Jessie started toward the
building.

“Hang on,” I said. “
You
go get a good
view. Tell the kid what to do.”
And stay away from the burning
building.
“I’ll go with Jessie.”

I put my hand out before Jessie could get to
the building. I was checking to see if it was hot. I don’t know if
that was dumb or not; I’d never gotten this close to a burning
building before. The wind was in our favor back here, blowing the
smoke toward the spectators and the fire department. Which was
really good, because we would have been choking in that walled-in
parking lot. It seemed fine to me, so I let Jessie do her
thing.

She put her palm to the bricks,
and…
clear
spread from her hand outward, until an area as
tall as I am, and about as wide, was shimmering and
see-through.

“Jessie, can you make it any bigger?” Joss
called out.

Jessie faced the wall and closed her eyes.
The area flowed outward, like someone pouring invisibility onto a
table. In a moment, the whole back wall of the building was
gone.

“That’s great, can you hold it?”

Jessie nodded, but her body was rigid and
her face was contorted with strain.

“She’s got it, but do what you’re gonna do
and hurry up!” I yelled.

Fire burst through an open archway between
the room closest to us and the front of the store. I almost grabbed
Jessie and retreated before I remembered that there was still a
brick wall between it and us. Over the sounds from the front of the
building, I could hear stuff inside now: doors slamming, furniture
scraping across floors. That was Joss, doing her best to move
things by memory that she couldn’t see, trying to shut off rooms
and block out air that would feed the flames.

Then water started to spew. From exposed
pipes that burst in the ceilings of the back rooms, from the walls
in the vacant apartment area above. The spew became a genuine
flood, as more water than ever should have flowed in those pipes
shot out and coated everything. The flames, while not totally
extinguished, started to die down.

“I think we got it!” Joss called, and Jessie
slumped, exhausted, stumbling back from the wall. I caught her and
we walked back to the other three.

“That was so freakin’ awesome!” Waterboy
looked like he was about to explode, talking a mile a minute. “Joss
told me to find the main line in my mind, and follow the path of
the water through the building. And at first, I found the water,
but it, like, wouldn’t go anywhere. And then, it was like someone
turned a valve or something, and I could get it moving through the
pipes.”

Someone indeed.

“And then BAM! BAM BAM BAM! Those pipes just
started popping all over the place! I mean, did you
see
that
shit? Awesome!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “we saw it.”

“You did great, Kenny,” Joss told him, and
he beamed at her. Could he like, go now? “You too, Jessie. Are you
okay?”

“Yeah, thanks, I’ll be okay. I just need to
go home and lie down, sleep it off.”

“Dylan, will you make sure Jessie gets home
okay?”

And leave you alone with Waterboy?

“Yeah, sure, no problem.”
This is exactly
how I wanted to end our evening.

Heather was smirking at me, barely able to
keep from laughing.

Chapter 7

Joss

“You look very nice today, Jocelyn.”

“Um, thanks,” I mumbled at my mom, and tried
to pull my jacket closed. But I was hampered by the seatbelt.

She smiled at me in the rearview. “Anything
special today?”

I have a boyfriend and I’m a complete
dork?
What was I thinking? Even my mom had noticed that I was
dressed differently. Of course she would. Everyone would
notice.

“No.” I had told myself that it was no big
deal. It was just a sweater. Okay, maybe there was the fact that
the neckline dipped lower and than a t-shirt, baring skin that
hadn’t seen the light of day since I don’t know when, and maybe the
way it was kind of shaped so it fit my shape, that probably made it
girly. But it was black. I had told myself that it was just another
black shirt.

Now I knew I looked like I was trying too
hard.

“Well, it’s nice to see you wearing some of
the clothes I’ve bought you, for a change.”

“Your neck is naked,” Jill told me. “You
should have worn a necklace.”

I just grunted at her. Or maybe it was more
like a growl.
Yeah, right, a necklace from my vast collection of
jewelry. As if.
When I had any sense, I moved from the backseat
up to the front when we dropped Dad at the store in the morning.
This morning I’d been too preoccupied and was stuck back here with
Jill until we got to school.

“A necklace would have been nice touch with
that sweater,” Mom agreed.

“Yeah. A girl needs a little bling, right,
Mom?” Jill pushed up her jacket sleeve to reveal a number of
plastic and cheap metal bangles with assorted sparkles.

“Can we just drop the subject of jewelry?
And my wardrobe choices?”

Maybe I could zip my coat up once I got out
of the car.

All the way up to my neck? Yeah, that
wouldn’t look dorky at all.

“I’ll bet Dylan would like you more if you
did stuff like wearing makeup and jewelry. Don’t you think so,
Mom?”

“Shut it, Jill,” I snapped.

“Joss, be kind to your sister. Jill, leave
Joss alone. She’s just fine the way she is.”

We
finally
pulled into the school’s
circular drive. We were a little later than usual—not the fault of
my wardrobe choices, thank you. I had practically no hope of
escaping up to my stairwell this morning, especially since I could
see the knot of my so-called friends, the ones who wanted to hold
club meetings at the Pizza Pit, and for us all to get matching
jackets with our names embroidered on them and a big, honkin’
TALENT logo on the back. Wasn’t it going to be just awesome when we
could all be roomies at State School together?

I blew out a breath as I stepped out of the
car. Being pissed at them wasn’t settling me the way I’d hoped it
would.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do now.
I mean, how was I supposed to act around Dylan? Was I just supposed
to play it cool? Like everything was the same as it was yesterday?
Were we going to tell people we were together?
Were
we
together?

Set the brake on the crazy train, okay?

Dylan detached himself from the group as my
mom pulled away, and strode over to me. He looked troubled and
serious, and it did really bad things for my stomach. He was about
to tell me he’d changed his mind.

“Hey.”

Okay, what could I read into that? He smiled
a bit as he looked down at me, but something was clearly wrong.

“Hey,” I said back, but it came out in that
breathless way that I was really starting to hate.

“I’d, um, really like to kiss you this
morning, but you probably don’t want to make a scene, huh?” He
smiled a little more when he said that, in that crooked way that
made me stupid.

“Um, yeah. I mean, no, kind of.”
Stupider
and stupider.
“You could kiss me, I guess. If you want.”

He reached out, taking my hand to pull me
forward, lacing his fingers with mine. His other hand settled under
my jaw, pulling me up to meet him. This kiss was sweet, restrained,
and there was a lot behind it that I could feel him holding back
from me. Not the
let’s take this somewhere private
holding
back, but something more emotional. Serious.

The kiss ended and I found that I’d been
standing on tip-toe. I rocked back.

“What’s going on?”

His hand tightened on mine, and his thumb
brushed over my cheek as he continued to look down at me. His
expression turned bitter.

“Eric just told me, said he’d gotten from
Kat, who’d heard it from Heather, and who knows where she—”

“Dylan, what?”

“NIAC took Kenny last night.”

“Not another—” Talent, is what I was
thinking, but I broke off as the name registered. “Waterboy,
Kenny?” I moved into Dylan instinctively and his arms locked around
me.
What have I done?

But I couldn’t say it out loud. Not yet, or
I’d just make more of a scene by having a breakdown right out in
front of the school.

I couldn’t draw that kind of attention. Not
now. That might link me to Kenny, make people suspicious. I
probably deserved that, but if they started looking at me, they’d
start looking at Jill, too, because Talents often run in families.
And now,
I swallowed hard, thinking it,
maybe they’d
start looking at Dylan too.

“Joss?” Dylan pulled me back by my
shoulders. “I know what you’re thinking, but there’s no way this is
your fault, okay?”

“He said it himself last night. He couldn’t
do anything. If I’d never been there, he would have just stood
there, watching the fire like everyone else. And he’d be here
today.”

“Yeah, he said it last night. He didn’t know
us, not really, but he just came out and said, ‘I can control
water!’ Who knows what else he said, or who he said it to? The kid
was a big-mouthed idiot.”

“He didn’t deserve—”

“I’m not saying he did, you know I’m not.
I’m just saying that it seemed like he didn’t have the sense to
keep his mouth shut. Maybe he bragged to the wrong person after we
left him last night, or maybe they were onto him even before
that.”

“But I knew he was that kind of kid and I
still just drafted him last night. I mean, yeah, he could have said
no, but we know he wouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have gotten
involved.”

“And if the fire had spread to the other
businesses? Then you’d beat yourself up over that.”

Guilty.
The fact that he knew me made
me want to smile, in spite of everything. “Don’t act like you know
me.”

He grinned. “Oh I’m gonna, Unfathomable One.
It’s my mission in life.”

“You seriously need a hobby.”

“And you’re it, Marshall. Now kiss me again,
before the bell rings.”

* * *

Joss

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“Come on, Kat, stop messing around before
someone sees you.”

“I am not jumping in a sewer!”

“It’s not a sewer,” Heather assured her,
looking around, “it’s like a tunnel. Totally dry, stink free.”

“Now get your ass down here before I yank
you through that hole.” My neck was getting sore from looking up at
the small, rectangular opening above us. I knew this was a bad
idea.

“Your Talent doesn’t work like that. You can
only move objects, not people and stuff, so don’t even.”

“You think I need Talent for this?” I
grabbed the ladder and put one of my boots to the rungs, giving her
one of my more menacing glares.

Kat sucked her teeth, cussed at me a little,
and turned around to climb down the ladder. I stayed close in case
her pointy, slick-soled, sorry excuses for boots slipped on a rung
and she needed catching.

“Okay, here, happy? Hey, okay, this isn’t so
bad, but damn, Joss. I mean, I know you’re really private and
stuff, but come
on!
” The she waved her hand and started
over. “So we walked all the way out here to the
college
—when
we could have waited for Eric to
drive
us, by the way, and
we climbed into your hidey hole or whatever, so dish!”

“That’s not what she brought us here to talk
about,” Heather said, before I could speak.

“What are you talking about? What’s she
talking about, Joss? Don’t you
even
think you’re going to
get away without telling us every single detail of what led up to
that
display
in front of the whole school this morning.”

My face turned bright red and the invisible
cords in my mind broke, letting the grate smack back into place
over the access with a hard clang. Like the sound of a jail cell
lock down.

Trapped.

“I’d hardly call that a display,” Heather
scoffed, coming to my defense. “Not compared to the tonsil
polishing PDAs we get from you and Eric several times a day.”