Scott Westerfeld Read online

  “What’s life? Having Rex tell you what to do?”

  “No, needing help. Getting stuck with other people.”

  “Like being stuck up here with me?”

  “Yeah, exactly. Like you being stuck protecting me.” Jessica stood up on the narrow strut. She took a few steps away, glaring out over the dark city.

  “I didn’t mean—,” he started, standing himself.

  The two were silent. Jonathan took a deep breath, trying to figure out when this conversation had turned into a fight. He did feel trapped now. Not by Jess, or even the darklings who were after her, but by the words they’d said—by not knowing what to say to make it better.

  It was strange not touching Jessica, not sharing his gravity with her. The midnight air seemed cold, as if the space between them had filled with ice. When they flew, everything was so easy. Over the last four nights they’d stopped saying out loud where their next jump would take them. They communicated through their hands much better than with words.

  And now they were stuck up here—not flying, not talking, not touching. It felt to Jonathan as if daylight gravity had come already and was crushing him.

  He looked down through the rusty framework that held up the Pegasus sign to the rooftop of the Mobil Building forty feet below.

  “Jess?”

  She didn’t reply.

  He reached out. “You should hold my hand. It’s dangerous up here.”

  “It’s dangerous everywhere. For me.”

  The fear in her voice chilled him. Midnight should have been so beautiful for her, an infinite playground, but it seemed as if something—Rex and his lore, the curfew, the darklings—was always screwing it up.

  “Jess,” he said. “Just hold my…” He trailed off as something hit him—maybe the reason she was upset with him, the reason he’d been missing. “I’ll be out there tomorrow night. At the snake pit. You know that, right?”

  She turned to look at him, her green eyes softening. “You will?”

  “Yeah, of course. I mean, I’m not going to let you guys have all the fun.”

  Her face broke into a smile.

  “I’ll even let Rex give the orders,” he said. “This might be one of those things where you’d actually want to read the manual.”

  “Thanks, Jonathan.” She finally took his hands again, and he could feel midnight gravity reconnect them.

  Jonathan grinned back. “Jess, I wouldn’t let you…”

  But before he could finish the sentence, she leaned her head toward his and kissed him.

  Jonathan blinked with surprise, then let his eyes close. Jessica was warm against him, even in the summer-night air of the secret hour. He put his arms around her, feeling her feet come lightly up off the ground in his embrace.

  When they parted, he grinned. “Wow. I think we found your talent.”

  She laughed. “It’s about time, Jonathan.”

  “That we kissed? Yeah, I was going—”

  “No. That you said you were coming out to the snake pit.”

  “Jess, of course I’m coming. I’m not going to let Rex get you killed.”

  “You should have told me right away,” she said.

  “You should have asked me.”

  She groaned, pulling him against her again in a too tight hug. “You shouldn’t be such an idiot,” she whispered.

  Jonathan frowned, afraid to say anything. Staying close to her, he reached up and undid the clasp of his necklace.

  “Here, take this for tomorrow night.”

  “Your necklace?”

  “It’s called Obstructively: thirty-nine links. It’ll take me about ten minutes to fly out to the Bottom from my house. You might need it before I get there.”

  Her fingers closed around the metal links. “But then you won’t have anything to protect yourself.”

  “Maybe Dess will give me something. She’s been making toys all week. I want you to have this, though.”

  “Thank you, Jonathan.” Jess’s face was lit up by her smile. “Tell me, have you ever kissed anyone be—”

  “Duh.” He saw her frown and swallowed. “I mean, yeah.”

  “As I was saying,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “have you ever kissed anyone before in the secret hour?”

  He blushed, then shook his head. “Not until now.”

  Jess’s smile brightened. “Then you haven’t done this.”

  She grabbed him around the waist and bent her legs. He barely had time to prepare before she jumped, carrying them both straight up into the sky.

  “Oh,” he said.

  And then they were kissing again.

  22

  10:31 P.M.

  DRESSED TO KILL

  “Well, what do you think, Jess? Are we ready to go?”

  Jessica stared at herself in the mirror. She recognized the red hair and green eyes, but that was about it.

  Constanza had spent the evening doing a makeover on them both. She’d taken one look at Jessica’s party outfit and decided to lend her a jacket. Then some makeup. Then a dress.

  Spending a few hours trying on Constanza’s clothes had turned out to be a lot of fun. There were two closets full of them, and a whole wall of her bedroom was covered with mirrors. Most of her things seemed to fit Jessica, and everything was beautiful or at least expensive looking. Constanza absolutely loved every outfit Jessica had put together. It was like being a regular teenager again, getting ready to go to a normal party instead of a snake pit full of evil creatures. Constanza played CDs and Jessica played dress-up, and it had been the first night all week that she’d been able to forget what time it was and what would happen when the clock reached twelve.

  Now, looking at the whole ensemble, Jessica was surprised how little she looked like herself. In Constanza’s thigh-length leather jacket, with just an inch of red dress visible below the hem, and the matching dark red lipstick, she looked more like Jess Shady than Jessica Day.

  “Are you sure I don’t look…too dressy?”

  “Too dressy?” Constanza said. “As in too beautiful or too gorgeous?”

  “As in too silly.”

  “Jessica, you don’t look silly at all. You’ll knock them dead.”

  “Who’s them again?”

  “The guys at the party. And these are Broken Arrow guys.”

  Broken Arrow was the next county over, where the boys were cuter, the grass greener, and curfew nonexistent, at least according to Constanza. And everyone was a senior, apparently.

  Jessica felt weird dressing up like this. She never particularly thought about what she wore to school or even to go flying with Jonathan. She knew she didn’t have to worry about that with him.

  “So, do these guys have names?” Jessica asked. She was still a bit nervous about the regular-time dangers of a late night party full of strangers.

  “I guess so.”

  “I mean, how well do you know them?” Jessica pushed.

  “Rick, who invited me, is a friend of Liz, who’ll be there.”

  Jessica sighed, reminding herself that the main point was getting out to Rustle’s Bottom. Surviving the snake pit and finding out why the darklings were after her was the only thing that counted.

  “Okay, I guess I’m ready. You look great too, by the way.”

  Constanza was wearing a houndstooth jacket and skirt with high-heeled boots. She clearly wasn’t planning to run away from any darklings tonight.

  “Yeah, not bad, if I do say so myself.” Constanza swept her car keys from off the makeup table and headed out, calling good-bye to her mother.

  Jessica dug into the pockets of the jacket she’d brought with her, fishing out a small flashlight, a compass, and a carefully folded piece of paper. Dess had given her the compass and drawn her a map of the Bottom to help her find the snake pit. After a second warning about stepping on snakes in the dark, the flashlight had been Jessica’s idea. Around her neck she was wearing Obstructively, Jonathan’s thirty-nine-link chain.

  “C
ome on, Jess!”

  She took a deep breath. Jessica hadn’t mentioned the party to her parents and wasn’t sure what would happen if Mom called after she and Constanza had left. Well, the worst they could do was reground her. Forever.

  She looked at herself one last time in the mirror and practiced her tridecalogism of the night.

  “Serendipitous.”

  On the way out to Rustle’s Bottom, Jessica looked out of the car window to see a roll of razor wire passing by. She realized that they were driving along the fence around Aerospace Oklahoma.

  “Hey, my mom works here,” she said.

  “You said she designs planes, right?”

  “Just wings.”

  “That’s so funny that your mom works and your dad doesn’t.”

  Jessica shrugged. “Dad gave up his job in Chicago to come down here. He’s always switching jobs anyway.”

  “That was pretty cool of him, though.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I think he’s wishing he hadn’t.”

  Jess sat up straight. A tall structure was looming ahead of them, alight and unfinished. It was the new building where she and Jonathan had taken refuge from the darklings. The construction was going late tonight, it seemed. The grid of steel was brightly lit, big lamps hanging from every girder, swinging in the autumn wind. It looked almost like it had in the secret hour, when the moon was setting and the whole building had suddenly ignited with white light, driving the slithers and darklings away.

  “Hey, any new buildings at work?” she murmured softly.

  “What?” Constanza asked.

  “Nothing. Just something I forgot to ask my mom about.”

  Jonathan and Jessica had talked a couple of times about what had happened that night and about what might have saved them from their pursuers. Jonathan figured the building must be built of some new kind of metal. Jessica had told Rex and Dess the whole story, but they were busy planning the snake pit expedition and hadn’t come up with any answers. Apparently Rex didn’t know everything about the rules of midnight.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to Mom about her new job,” Jessica continued. “But she’s so busy there, I haven’t been able to.”

  “Yeah, my dad’s the same way,” Constanza said. “Not that I’d want to talk to him about his job. Oil futures or whatever.” She pointed ahead, her smile brightening. “Congratulations, Jessica, you are now leaving Bixby.”

  The town limit flashed by, and Jessica’s stomach tingled. They weren’t just leaving Bixby—they were headed out to the badlands.

  “Next stop, the snake pit,” she said to herself.

  She checked her watch. Fifty-seven minutes to midnight.

  23

  11:03 P.M.

  COORDINATES

  Rex and Melissa were late.

  Dess looked at her watch. Only three minutes past, but the timing for getting out to the snake pit was getting tight. Melissa’s rusty old heap could only get them so far. They’d have to walk the last half mile across the Bottom.

  The three of them had gone out to the snake pit after school to set up her hardware. Dess wished now that they’d stayed there; coming home and waiting for all the parentals to go to sleep had been a dumb idea. Getting in trouble with Mom and Dad was nothing compared to getting caught by hungry darklings halfway across the Bottom.

  But Rex had to make sure his crazy dad was in bed before he left. As if taking care of Melissa weren’t enough.

  Dess counted to thirteen, forcing herself to relax. She reached into the guts of Ada Lovelace’s music box and pulled out a few gears, rearranging them and visualizing the resulting choreography. She gave the mechanical ballerina a windup and watched her dance, checking her predictions.

  Ada jumped into motion, always ready to dance, but the new steps didn’t come out as expected. The final, stuttering lift of her left arm went forward instead of back. Dess shook her head. She could see it now: she’d turned one of the gears around the wrong way.

  It was Rex and Melissa’s fault she was so anxious. If they’d been here on time, Rex would be the one getting all nervous, and she and Melissa could rag on him and be the calm ones. They’d be on their way to the snake pit, where Dess’s masterpiece in metal would draw oohs and aahs from all concerned as slithers burned themselves to cinders.

  She looked out the window again. Still no crappy Ford cruising to a stop in front of the house two doors down, the usual spot for premidnight rendezvous.

  Dess kicked her duffel bag, and it made a reassuring metal clank. All ready to go, filled with state-of-the-art antidarkling weaponry, backups in case the defenses around the snake pit failed. And she’d left a very special new toy on the roof for Jonathan to pick up on his way out. She’d done her bit.

  So where were Rex and Melissa?

  Dess itched to call, but that would be totally stupid. Melissa’s parents let her do whatever she wanted, but Rex’s dad was a major psycho. If Rex was creeping out his window this very moment, it would be a bad time for the phone to ring.

  Besides, they’d better already be on their way.

  Eleven-oh-six. In forty seconds it would be exactly forty thousand seconds after noon. More importantly, it would be a mere thirty-two hundred seconds until midnight. Dess could feel the blue time—full of darklings—rushing toward her at a thousand miles per hour.

  Okay, she thought. A bit faster than that, really. The earth’s circumference was 24,860 miles, and a day was twenty-four hours. So midnight would have to move at about 1,036 miles per hour to make it all the way around the earth once per day.

  She’d seen it on the Discovery Channel, from cameras on the space shuttle: the terminator line, the edge of darkness that marked dawn or sunset, sweeping across the earth. True midnight must work the same way, an invisible edge cutting across the world, bringing the blue time.

  Right now midnight would be about nine hundred miles east of here, in the next time zone. Of course, as far as any of them knew, there weren’t darklings or midnighters or blue time anywhere but Bixby. Rex had never figured that one out. Dess wondered if a little less lore and a little more math might solve the puzzle.

  She looked out the window. Still no Rex and Melissa.

  For a horrible moment she wondered if they had left her behind. Just taken off for the snake pit without her. The old feeling of isolation gripped her.

  It was all Melissa the Mindcaster’s fault. She’d tracked Rex down when they were both eight years old. Dess was only a year younger, but it had taken Melissa another four years to find her. Melissa’s excuse was that Dess lived too close to the badlands and that back then all the darklings and slithers had confused her unformed talent.

  That sounded like a load of crap to Dess. Melissa could pick Rex up from a mile away even in daylight; in the blue time another midnighter was like a flare on a dark horizon. She’d found Jonathan and Jessica within days after they’d arrived. But for the four years that Rex and Melissa had been alone together, all Dess had known was slithers, the lonely surety of math, and Ada Lovelace.

  She reached into Ada’s box and switched the errant gear around, wound her up again. “Dance, my pretty.”

  Dess was sure that her isolation in those early years had been purposeful. Melissa had played for time while she and Rex explored midnight together, grew up together. The scheme had worked. By the time Melissa finally “found” Dess, Rex and Melissa were so tight that nothing could ever come between them. And Melissa’s psychic hold on Rex made it impossible for him to even think about what Melissa had done.

  Dess swallowed and stared out the window.

  They wouldn’t dare leave her behind tonight. Even with the snake pit already set up to repel darklings, they needed her in case something went wrong. When it came to steel, only she could improvise. Without her this whole mission would be impossible.

  It wouldn’t be so bad if Jonathan Martinez hadn’t been such a disappointment, flying off to his own little world instead of bringing the group together.
Maybe Jessica would bring him around, once the two of them reappeared from the couple zone.

  Dess shook her head. She had to stop thinking about this stuff before they got here. She didn’t want to give Melissa the satisfaction of knowing she felt this way.

  As she always did to hide her thoughts, Dess let the numbers take over her brain. “Ane, twa, thri, feower…”

  Seconds later something pinged in the back of her head: another mathematical mistake. “Two in one night,” she muttered.

  Midnight wasn’t coming toward Bixby at 1,036 miles per hour. It would only move that fast at the equator, the one line of latitude that went around the earth’s true circumference, like a tape measure around the widest part of a fat man’s belly.

  Dess could see it in her head now. The farther north you were, the slower midnight (or dawn, or whatever) swept across the earth. A mile from the North Pole the daylight would move as slowly as a sick turtle, taking a whole day to crawl in a small circle.

  She looked out the window. Still no rusty Ford, and midnight 2,978 seconds away.

  Now it was really bugging her: How fast was midnight moving toward Bixby? Why wasn’t her brain just telling her, giving her the answers like it always did?

  She counted to thirteen, relaxing and letting the calculations move into the conscious part of her mind. Of course: to figure it out, she needed to know how far away from the equator Bixby was.

  She turned from the empty window and pulled her social studies textbook off the shelf, opening it to the back. Flipping through it, she found a map of the midwestern United States. A postage stamp like Bixby wasn’t on it, of course, but she knew the town was just southwest of Tulsa.

  This was easy: a latitude and a longitude line crossed right where Bixby would have been if anyone had bothered to put it on the map. Thirty-six degrees north and ninety-six west.

  “Oh boy,” she said softly as the numbers rattled around in her head. All thoughts of midnight’s speed disappeared. This was serious.

  Thirty-six was a multiple of twelve. Ninety-six was a multiple of twelve. The numerals all added up (three plus six plus nine plus six) to twenty-four, another multiple of twelve.