Rex paced the room. “The lore says that darklings can taste it when new midnighters arrive in their territory, like Melissa can. They can feel our talents, and they know when someone new is a danger to them.”
“Me, a danger to them?” Jessica laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. So far, my major talent seems to be disaster magnet. A walking bad-luck charm.”
“That’s because they’re scared,” Dess said. “They’re still animals, in a way—wild cats.”
“And you’re stirring up their nest.”
Dess rolled her eyes. “Cats don’t have nests, Rex.”
“Well, you’re stirring up their… cathouse. But whatever your talent turns out to be, Jessica, it must be important. For us.”
She looked up at him. “Are you sure?”
“If they want you, we need you,” Dess said.
“But they want me dead.”
“That’s why we have to find out exactly what you are,” Rex said. “Will you help us do that?”
Jessica looked at them both, then stared glumly out the window at the blue time. Dess saw the careful rows of thumbtacks lining each window and wondered what it would be like to be trapped in your room for the secret hour, with the whole world waiting empty for you outside.
Jessica’s room had a crazed neatness to it, as if she’d been cleaning all day. As Dess had figured, her parents weren’t poor. Jessica had a real stereo and a ton of CDs. But the room hardly looked lived in at all. It felt like a lonely room.
Jessica sighed before she answered. “Sure. What do I have to do?”
Rex smiled. “We have to take you to a certain lore site during the secret hour. There are ways of reading your talent there, testing you to find out what you are.”
“Okay, except what happens when the darklings butt in?”
“They’ll try,” Dess said. “But I can set up defenses in advance, get everything ready in daylight. It’ll be totally safe by the time midnight rolls around. Safer than this room, at least.”
Jessica looked around, clearly unhappy with the idea that her room wasn’t totally secure. “So the only problem is getting there,” she said.
“We’ve got that covered too,” Rex said. “You can tell your parents that you’re spending the night with Dess. She lives out closer to the badlands. You can slip out and get there before—”
“Forget it.”
“Why?” Rex asked.
“I can’t spend the night with anyone, not for the next month, anyway. I’m grounded. Very.”
“Oh.” Rex looked as if he hadn’t expected anything so mundane to mess up his plans. “Well, if you slip out on your own, Melissa can pick you up and drive—”
“No.” Jessica said the word without hesitation. “I’ve lied to my parents enough. I’ve snuck around enough. Forget it.”
Rex opened his mouth, then closed it.
Dess was dying to talk to Jessica away from Rex. What had happened last night? She wondered if Jess’s grounding had anything to do with Jonathan.
“I mean,” Jessica continued, “I don’t mind going out in the secret hour, but I’m not leaving this house during regular time. If my parents found out, they’d be really upset. I don’t want to do that to them again.”
“Do you want to wait a whole month?” Rex argued. “If they’re as scared as they seem, the darklings might try something really serious soon.”
“How far away is this place?” Jessica asked.
“Pretty far out,” Rex said. “Even from Dess’s, you can barely make it there and back in an hour on a bike.”
“What about flying?”
Rex’s jaw dropped, and then his eyes turned coldly toward Dess. She sighed and spread her hands with a little shrug. There was no hope of avoiding blame. Rex knew that Melissa would never have told Jonathan where Jess lived. For that matter, if Dess hadn’t blabbed, Jonathan might not even have guessed that there was a new midnighter in town. She tried to look sheepish.
But inwardly Dess smiled. Occasionally Rex needed to be reminded that nobody had elected him seer.
He gathered himself and turned back toward Jessica.
“It’s too dangerous. You two alone, out in the badlands—you’d be flying right into a death trap.”
“Yeah,” Jessica admitted, “it was pretty bad last night. And we barely went past the edge of town.”
“You went past—?” Rex bristled again but kept himself in check. “We’ll think of something else,” he said. “Some way to get you there before midnight.”
“Exactly where is this lore site, anyway?” Jessica asked.
Dess watched Rex carefully and thought she saw a moment of pleasure as he answered, now that he had another reason for Jessica Day to be scared of midnight.
“It’s called the snake pit.”
18
11:06 A.M.
NOTORIOUS
On Monday morning it didn’t take long to find out where Jonathan had spent the rest of the weekend. Jessica didn’t believe it at first—it sounded too much like a rumor to be the truth—but his empty desk and the stares in second-period physics said it all.
It was true. He was in jail, and it was all her fault.
There were a lot of versions circulating, but everyone seemed to know that Jonathan had been busted in the company of Jessica Day. She had gone from new girl to bad girl in record time. Most people seemed surprised to see Jessica here in school, as if they expected her to be rotting away in her own jail cell. She caused a stir everywhere she went, with everyone (except those few clueless teachers who were eternally immune to gossip) wanting to know what had happened.
Thankfully, Constanza came to her rescue, shepherding Jessica between her morning classes and filling her in.
“It’s like this: Someone’s aunt, or mother, works as a dispatcher, or deputy, in the sheriff’s department and was there on Saturday night when Jonathan was brought in. News travels fast in Bixby. What were you guys doing, anyway?”
“Just walking.”
Constanza nodded. “Breaking curfew. That’s what I figured. But some people are saying that you got busted for breaking into a car, or a drugstore, or both.”
“None of the above. But why did they take me home and him to jail?”
“Well, everyone knows—at least as of this morning—that Jonathan has been in trouble with the police before. Like a million times. His father has too. In fact, I heard that Jonathan, or his father, maybe, was wanted for armed robbery back in Philadelphia, or maybe manslaughter, which is why the two of them had to move here in the first place.”
“Are you absolutely sure about all this?”
“Absolutely not. But you have to know what people are saying, Jessica.”
“Yeah, of course. Sorry.”
A few freshman girls were standing near Jessica’s locker, and Constanza shooed them away while Jess got her books for study hall. Jessica picked through her locker, feeling the stares of people passing by, trying to decide if she was more behind in trig or physics.
She could still see Jonathan’s empty desk, the final confirmation that he hadn’t made it home that night. Jessica couldn’t believe how things kept getting worse. Everything that could have gone wrong, with the possible exception of being eaten, had.
Jessica Day: darkling magnet, police magnet, shady character.
She grabbed her trig book and slammed the locker closed.
“I heard you two were kissing when the cops showed up,” Constanza said.
“No, we weren’t.”
“What, you were out there just to hold hands?”
“No.” Jessica paused. “Well, actually, we were kind of holding hands.” She rubbed her wrist, which was still sore. Hanging on for dear life required muscles that normally didn’t get much exercise.
“So you and Jonathan are an item?”
Jessica felt her face heat up. “No. I don’t know. Maybe…” She barely knew Jonathan, but she’d never felt a connection with any guy the way she had with him Saturday night. Of course, after the way the night had ended… “Probably not, after what happened,” she finished.