Crowds of students spilled out of the high school, all of them taking one last look. Jessica was thrilled that everyone was getting another chance to gawk at the new bad girl in town. It might be a while before they could stare at her again. Like tomorrow morning.
She glared back at a couple of freshman boys, and they flinched and ran to their waiting bus. One day into her grounding and public humiliation, Jessica Day had had enough.
She hadn’t asked to be a midnighter, hadn’t tried to get into trouble. As far as she could tell, her big mistake had been not stopping to explain to the darklings that Bixby had a curfew.
For the thousandth time that day she replayed in her mind the fantasy where the darklings had caught her and her shredded body was presented to her parents with a final note:
Mom and Dad,
Couldn’t run for life because of curfew.
Dead but ungrounded.
— Jess
She was composing an alternate, much more ironic note when a voice came from behind her.
“Jess?”
She turned around. It was Jonathan.
“You’re… out?” She felt a huge grin growing on her face.
He laughed. “Yeah. Good behavior.”
“I’m sorry. I mean, it’s good to see you.” She took a step forward.
“You too.”
The school sounds around them seemed to vanish for a moment, as if the blue time had somehow arrived in the middle of the day. For once Jessica knew she wasn’t dreaming.
She looked at Jonathan, trying to gauge what he was thinking. He seemed tired but relaxed, relieved to see her. His hair was a little damp, as if he’d just taken a shower. Jessica realized that he must have come out to school just to see her, and her smile broadened.
“What happened?”
“St. Claire, the sheriff here in Bixby, just wanted to make a point,” Jonathan said. “It’s no big deal. He talked my dad into this thing where they could lock me up all weekend until Dad picked me up this morning. But it was all a joke. I wasn’t even arrested, not for real. Just detained in custody.”
Jessica shivered. She had imagined him being “detained” all day. None of the images in her mind had been comforting.
“How was it?”
Jonathan shivered. “Completely skyless. And not enough to eat. Spent the secret hour bouncing off the ceiling. But the rest of the time it was mostly… smelly. I’ve been taking showers all day and listening to my dad apologize.”
“But you’re okay?”
“Sure. How are you?”
Jessica opened her mouth, wanting to tell Jonathan about Rex’s plan, to ask him more about jail, about midnight gravity, about how they’d escaped the darklings. Then she saw her dad’s car crawling through the buses and shouting kids and decided to summarize.
“Well, I’m wanting to go flying again.” She grinned hopefully. He smiled back.
“Great. How’s tonight?”
19
11:49 P.M.
MINDCASTER
“Whizzway’stown?”
Melissa took one hand off the wheel and pointed to her right, toward the great mass of sleeping humanity. The center of town tasted bloated and sweet, pulsing with slow and vapid dream rhythms, laced with a few sharp nightmares like undissolved chunks of salt. One good thing about Bixby was that people went to bed early. On a Wednesday night the mind noise started to fade about ten, and by eleven-thirty the few waking thoughts were merely annoying, like mosquitoes at the edge of hearing.
Rex grunted, spreading out the map with both hands and clenching a small flashlight between his teeth. It had been his idea to take the car tonight.
“I know how to get there,” Melissa complained. “Let’s just get onto Division. We’ve only got ten minutes.”
“Donwannagesstopped,” he mumbled around the flashlight.
Melissa sighed.
At sixteen in Oklahoma, she was stuck with a hardship license valid only for going to and from school. (And work, in the unlikely event that she ever found a job that wouldn’t drive her insane.) It was also after eleven o’clock, so Rex was being ultracautious and guiding her through the back roads. He didn’t want to meet any police, in case Sheriff St. Claire had decided to launch some sort of curfew crackdown.
Jonathan’s trip to jail had spooked Rex. In a way, Clancy St. Claire scared him more than anything in the midnight hour. When it came to fat, nasty sheriffs, there was no lore to turn to.
Jonathan’s weekend disappearance had been alarming for Melissa too, but for different reasons. All Sunday’s secret hour she’d been casting on her roof, mostly watching the growing darkling activity but partly wondering why Jonathan had never appeared. Normally she could taste him shooting across the landscape. He was easy to spot, faster than anything else in the midnight psychic terrain, even a flying darkling.
His absence had worried her more than she would have thought. When she found out on Monday morning that he’d only been in jail, surrounded by opaque steel, it had been a relief. Rex might have sheriff-phobia, but there were worse things than getting busted.
She smirked. A night on the ground might even have done Jonathan some good. He’d tasted a little more humble this week.
“Tahnright.”
Melissa turned right.
She was starting to recognize the neighborhood. “Okay, we’re not far. I’ll park somewhere.”
Rex looked up at her, nodding agreement.
“Ow! Blind me, why don’t you?”
Rex pulled the flashlight from his mouth. “Sorry.” He began to fold the map.
Now that they were almost there, Melissa was glad they’d driven. Riding their bikes in the blue time wouldn’t have taken that long, but they would be exposed to whatever the darklings threw at them. Without a stack of Dess-quality weapons it wouldn’t have been safe, and this was one trip she and Rex wanted to keep secret.
They had never told Dess all of the lore about mind casting. It would be hard for anyone else to understand the mistakes they’d made when they were young. Dess always walked around thinking she’d been left out, never appreciating how much easier she’d had it. Back when it had been just Rex and Melissa, they’d had to learn the rules of midnight the hard way. Those years hadn’t been all fun and games.
Melissa shivered and brought her mind back to the present.
She brought her old Ford to a stop a block or so away and pulled up her right sleeve to check her watch. Three minutes to spare.
Rex noticed her black-gloved hands. “You’re looking very commando.”
She smirked. “So what’s this girl’s name again?”
“Constanza Grayfoot. You haven’t heard of her?”
Melissa sighed, shaking her head. Even Rex didn’t completely understand how unbearable school was for her. Melissa didn’t know the names of half her teachers, much less every social big wheel.
“Anyway, her name doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just as long as you get the general idea across. Clear the way, and it’ll happen by itself.”
“No problem.”
Melissa looked at her watch again, calmed herself, and closed her eyes. The buzzing of a waking mind was close by, some brainless wonder soaking in late night TV. But sweet relief was coming in sixty seconds.
“Make sure to get both of them in sync. We don’t want to miss Friday while they’re doing parental negotiations.”
“Rex, it’s going to be easy. Just show me the stiffs.” She felt a twinge from him. Rex hated when she used that word. “Sorry,” she said sarcastically. “Just show me the midnight-impaired persons, and I’ll get it done.”