Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (35 page)

“I’d like to see you try.” Not like I really
cared. I mean, it might be okay for Kat to braid my hair, I guess.
But I had a persona to uphold.

“Grayson! Games?” Eric repeated.

Rob looked up from his laptop and adjusted
his glasses. “Can I get games?” It was almost like he didn’t
understand the question. Probably more like he was having trouble
switching gears, switching from whatever communication he used with
the machine to speaking to actual people. I could kind of relate.
“Yeah. I can get anything. But not right now. I’m still waiting for
news and I’m trying to boost reception. It
sucks
down
here.”

“How does that thing work, anyway?” I asked.
“The…wireless thingy. You sure they can’t track that?”

“Naw, it’s cool. It’s a wireless modem. It’s
like a cell phone, right? You subscribe to it but instead of
letting you talk to people, it lets your computer talk to the
web.”

“So…if you’re subscribed to it, then can’t
someone follow your subscription to your device, to you sitting
here in the Warren where we’re trying to hide?”

“They
could
, if they connected the
subscription to me. Which they won’t, because I paid attention to
what you said, Miss Joss.”

I rolled my eyes. “Finally,
somebody
actually listens to me.” I was pretty sure I just got sassed by the
biggest geek in Fairview, but I was okay with that.

I glanced over at Heather who was trying to
hide a grin, and trying to look like she was looking at the
magazine Maddy and Elizabeth were passing back and forth when she
was really watching Rob out of the corner of her eye.
Girl has
it baaaaddd.

Her head snapped to me and she glared.

Hey, I’ve been there,
I thought to
her, glad my friends were back to talking to me again. I guess
however pissed off they were about my inability to behave like a
human or whatever, it wasn’t something they couldn’t overcome in a
crisis. They’d both come around when Jill called, which was cool of
them. And besides it being good to have my friends back right now,
it also would have been hella awkward for us to all be stuck down
here in this little room and them still mad at me.

Rob was still explaining the process he’d
gone through to cover his tracks with the whole wireless thingy
subscription. He was the smartest one here and I kinda felt like I
didn’t need the details.

“This is the most boring-ass skip day ever,”
Eric groaned.

I thought about how, after all that grief
Kat had given me, I’d had to bring him into the Warren anyway,
whether Heather could vet him or not. Because now that everyone
Marco thought of as connected to me was threatened and we were
hiding out here, it’s not like I could leave him outside on some
crazy possibility that he was the mole. I’d never forgive myself if
he got caught up in the arrests and sent to State School while I
was covering my ass and playing it super safe. Using the Warren was
kind of a compromise, because I really did think someone knew about
it who wasn’t supposed to, so I’d be pretty much done with it after
this. Still, it had a few different escape routes, plus the
supplies. It was the best place I had to hide.

“Hold on, I think I’ve got something! Oh,
come on, don’t crap out on me now,” Rob muttered at the thingy,
holding his glowing hand over it. “Okay, breaking news, ‘Fairview
PD announced the arrests—’”

I think my heart fell into my stomach or
something, sure that he was saying I’d forgotten someone, that I’d
left someone on the outside.
Jessica? Raine and Lakota? Tim? Oh
God, I told Tim he couldn’t—

“‘—of three known members of the Banner
Syndicate. The Syndicate, an offshoot of organized crime which
primarily employs ability-affected persons in its operations…’
Yeah, yeah, tell us stuff we don’t know…”

“Yes!” Eric practically screamed, leaping up
from his seat. I nearly jumped out of my skin from the change in
tension. “It fucking worked! I can’t believe it fucking worked!
High five!”

Matt put up his hand with a
what the hell
are you talking about?
look on his face that we were pretty
much all wearing, and Eric slapped it so hard I’m sure he felt it
all the way up to his shoulder.

“‘Mayor Davies, during a barrage of
questions by reporters at City Hall today, commended Police
Commissioner Colin Stuart and the Fairview Police Department for
the arrests but delayed further comment pending a press conference
later this afternoon. When asked for comment, Commissioner Stuart
referred to an anonymous tip delivered to the department early this
morning and promised more details at the press conference.”

“Anonymous tip! That was me! Yeah, baby!”
Eric was practically dancing now as he smacked hands with
Dylan.

Kat jumped up. “Zo my God!! You are so
completely awesome!” she screamed as she threw herself at him.
Naturally a public display ensued that was really too graphic for
my little sister to watch, but we were all still too stunned to do
anything about it. Except maybe for Rob who kept skimming through
the article and reading out the high points.

“‘Superintendent Perkins and Principal Riley
both refused to comment on how a Syndicate member came to be
employed as a nurse at the school, but an anonymous source within
the school board offices reports that a full-scale investigation
into the procedures surrounding the hiring of Vivian Chambers is
being launched.’”

“Is it really wrong that I kinda want to
leave you guys and take my invisible self to the Principal’s office
right now?” Dylan asked, grinning.

“If I could be a fly on the wall, I’d
totally be there,” Matt agreed. “Oh
man,
she is
totally
screwed!
”

“And we’re not,” Heather said, probably
because she got that it wasn’t really about hating the
administration so much as it was about the immense relief that it
was them and not us.

I still wasn’t quite ready to believe
it.

Eric was talking about how he had dropped
Kat off at her house to pack her stuff and then came up with the
idea to use Marco’s plan, but to pin it on the Syndicate instead.
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I mean, I knew it was a long
shot. If I was too late, if the merchants had already gone to the
police, we were pretty much screwed anyway, right? But I just
thought that if I called the cops and said, ‘Look! Talent Mafia!’
they’d fall all over themselves running in that direction.”

“Ugh, I hate that term, ‘Talent Mafia,’”
Elizabeth said.

“A-men,” Rob agreed.

“Anyway,” Eric said, seemingly annoyed
they’d commented during his story, “the important thing is that it
worked.”

“But why didn’t the merchants go through
with it?” I asked.

“Maybe they did and the cops believed
criminals with Syndicate ties over local kids, I don’t know,” he
shrugged. “Maybe they went in to do their thing, the station was
buzzing over the info I gave them, maybe they decided to back off
and wait. ’Cause your dad’s one of them, right? They all know you
and your family and stuff, I’m sure they didn’t
want
to turn
you in.”

“That could be it,” Matt agreed.

“What with you being so enchanting and all,”
Dylan added in my ear. I gave him an elbow in the gut.

“So does this mean we can go home?”
Elizabeth asked.

“I don’t know what we should do,” I said
slowly, trying to reason it out. “I kind of don’t want to leap to
any quick decision, you know? It seems like it’s too early to say
we’re safe. But then if nothing’s going to come of it for us, it’s
pretty suspicious that we’re all missing at the same time. One
day’s bad enough, but…”

Maddy shrugged. “So we’ll stay together
tonight and look at tomorrow tomorrow. We’ll do the all night study
sleepover thing.” At my blank look she rolled her eyes. “We have a
big test we have to study for, Heather’s tutoring us and we’re
sleeping over her house. Except for Heather who’s sleeping over
Kat’s house. And the boys are getting tutored by Rob. And Rob’s
sleeping over Dylan’s house.”

“On a school night?” I asked,
dumbfounded.

“It’s for our education! Yeah, trust me,
this is not a new thing.”

“Yay! We get to have the sleepover even
though we’re not going to jail!” Jill exclaimed, jumping on Dylan.
“Does this mean we can go out for ice cream now?”

“I think ice cream dinner is totally
mandatory,” he told her.

Chapter 16

Joss

Home again. All of us, except Dad. It was
the end of his second day at the hospital and he still didn’t know
what was real.

Do you?

I closed my book, turned off the lamp and
settled into bed for at least the third time, hoping that
third
time’s the charm
thing was gonna work for me because reading
really wasn’t. I didn’t usually need to read to fall asleep, but
every time I closed my eyes it was all instant replay of what
happened with Dad. I couldn’t stop seeing it. Couldn’t get it out
of my head. Couldn’t stop thinking about what I should have done
differently or how it was all my fault.

Now that we were home, Jill was sleeping in
Mom’s bed. I did that last time. All this time I’d thought that I
got to sleep with Mom to make me feel better, but now I was pretty
sure it was just because Mom couldn’t sleep alone anymore.

Crazy how fast you get spoiled by that. Like
sleeping alone is an unnatural state of being or something.

Okay, this is good. Weird, random thoughts
might be a sign of impending sleep.

My phone buzzed under my pillow.
Please
don’t let this be another crisis,
I thought as pulled it out.
I don’t think I’ve got another fight in me.

“I can’t sleep,” Dylan said.

“Try getting off the phone.”

“Were you sleeping?”

“No.”

“Because you miss me.”

“I was reading.”

“Because you miss me.”

I smiled. I don’t know why I wanted to give
him a hard time anyway.

“Tell me what you did while I was at
work.”

“Nothing interesting. I watched Jill while
Mom went to the shop to meet with the insurance adjuster.”

“How’d that go?”

“Jill’s a brat, she’s totally obsessed with
the Barbie thing and determined to drag me down into her evil,
plastic dominion.”

“Aw, you played Barbies?”

“Shut up.”

“So what did the insurance guy say?”

“Basically that he had the initial police
report and was pretty sure we were going to be covered for the
merchandise and the damages to the store itself. He took lots of
pictures and told Mom we could start cleaning out and getting
estimates for the repairs. Stuff like that.”

“Great!”

“Yeah. I don’t know if Mom was actually
worried about it, you know, ’cause there’s been other stuff, but I
didn’t know for sure so it’s good.”

“Any news on your dad?”

“Just that he’s still…not with it. Still
violent. So they’ve got him sedated.”

“Any idea how long he’ll be there?”

“No.”

There was a long silence where Dylan didn’t
seem to know what to say. And I sure didn’t. But still, it was kind
of comforting just to be quiet on the phone with him. To be lying
there in the dark knowing that if I asked him to say something, at
least his voice would be right there next to me.

“I should probably let you go.”

“You don’t have to.” I shouldn’t have said
that. Maybe that was his nice way of getting off the phone. He’d
gone from school to work and was probably tired. “I mean—”

“Can I come over?”

“I—that just seems really wrong right
now.”

“Yeah.”

We were quiet for a few minutes. Still not
awkward, the way it should have been, still kind of nice. I
wondered if we could just leave the line open.

“Could you meet me?” The sound of my voice
surprised me. The content surprised me more.

“Yeah, sure,” Nonchalance over enthusiasm.
“Where?”

“At the Warren.”

“Um…”

“What?”

“Eric and Kat stopped by Casey’s earlier
and…I kinda got the impression the Warren’s gonna be occupied.”

“What? It’s a safe-house not
a…make-out…den.”

“Make-out den?” Dylan laughed.

“I don’t know what you call it.”

“Ummm, how about ‘love nest’?”

“How about not.”

“Yeah, okay, no making out at the Warren.
Anymore? Or by people who aren’t us. We’ll put up signs tomorrow.
Maybe some kind of anti-smoochies logo design.”

“Shut up.”

“I want to see you.”

I almost sighed at the way he said it, all
soft and low. How it made me a little light-headed, just for a
second, and warm down to my toes. I really needed to see him.

“How about at the shop?”

“Your parents’ shop?”

“Yeah. Maybe we could put in some clean up
time.”
You know, to make it seem less elicit.

“Oh yeah, service project. That’s actually
exactly what I had in mind.”

“Shut up. Do you want to see me or not?”

“You know I do. And you know I’ll pick up
trash or whatever you want me to do. Damn you and your feminine
power.”

I was still smiling over that half an hour
later when I got to the shop. Since the lock on the door had been
broken, someone had installed a temporary latch to the frame and
put a padlock on. It hung open.

I went in, concentrating on shutting the
door quietly and not tripping over any of the crap on the floor.
Dylan’s arm snaked out of the shadows, grabbed me by the waist and
hauled me up against him.

I put my arms around him and held on. He was
hard and warm and…so much just exactly what I needed. It was hard
to realize how much. How much I just wanted to sink into him and
forget about everything, and how much I wanted to sob into his
shirt because I couldn’t forget any of it. But I couldn’t do that
either. Not again.