Blue Noon m-3

by Scott Westerfeld

  Like the old minds across the desert, the things down there didn’t have words, just images she could barely grasp—lore signs, a pile of bones, the smell of burning… the glorious rush of taking prey.

  There was a moment of sharp pain, and then he pulled away, his body shuddering.

  Melissa sat for a moment, watching his eyes flash violet in the moonlight, the echoes of what she’d felt in him subsiding slowly. She tasted salt and wondered for a moment what sort of mind noise it was, then realized that the taste was real—blood in her mouth.

  “Crap,” she said, putting a hand to her lips. “I bit my lip. How lame is that?”

  “It wasn’t you.” He turned away. “Sorry… if that was weird.”

  “It’s okay, Rex.” Melissa touched her wounded lip tenderly. “I had some spooky stuff in me too the first few times we touched. Remember?”

  He turned back to her and pulled off one glove. He reached out, his fingertips lightly touching her mouth.

  A shudder traveled through the car at that moment, all the random mind noise around them extinguished at once. Blue light swept across the world, and against the suddenly quiet mental landscape, the visions she’d taken from Rex’s mind grew clearer.

  She saw a piece of paper covered with the spindly symbols of the lore and knew that those unreadable signs were what had made him so edgy tonight.

  Melissa squinted in the dark moon’s light. “What the hell?”

  “I found it this morning.” Rex’s voice was rough.

  He reached into his jacket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. He opened it, revealing the same scrawled symbols she’d seen in his mind.

  “So this is what’s got you spooked?” She settled back onto the driver’s side, sighing. “Ancient seer wisdom about the end of the world?”

  He shook his head. “Not exactly ancient. Look.”

  She peered closer. The symbols were written on lined paper, three-hole punched, with a confettied edge from being torn out of a spiral notebook.

  “I don’t understand. These are your notes?”

  “I didn’t write that. I found it on my kitchen table this morning.”

  “Wait a second.” Melissa’s mind spun. “But it’s written in lore signs, Rex.”

  He nodded. “That’s right, Cowgirl. A slightly odd dialect, but readable.”

  “And it just showed up on your kitchen table? But no one knows how to write the lore besides you. And… oh, crap.” Melissa placed the nail of her ring finger between her front teeth and bit down on it furiously. Her teeth slipped from the fingernail with a jarring snap. “Those dominoes that the Grayfoots used to communicate with the darklings—they had lore symbols on them.”

  “That’s right. With the same slight differences as this one. It’s even signed.” He pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of the page, where a cell phone number was written next to three spindly symbols grouped by a circle. “Ah-nu-gee.”

  “What the hell is ah-nu-gee?”

  “Each lore sign usually stands for a word, but when you put a circle around them, they turn into sounds, like using the alphabet. It’s a way to spell out names and write about objects that didn’t exist a few thousand years ago.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “And people back then didn’t have ah-nu-gee? I repeat: what the hell?”

  He laughed softly. “What they didn’t have back then were certain sounds. It was a Stone Age language, after all. ‘Ah-nu-gee’ is as close as they could get to ‘Angie.’ ”

  “Angie.” Melissa’s blood ran cold at the name. Angie, last name unknown, was one of the Grayfoots’ agents. She’d translated the darklings’ messages, had been in the desert that night Anathea had died, and it was her—Melissa was certain—leading the party that had kidnapped Rex. “She wrote to you?”

  He nodded. “She wants to meet me.”

  “Meet you? What the—?” Melissa pressed herself back against the car seat and growled, fists tightly clenched. “Is she crazy?”

  Rex gave that question a shrug. “More scared than crazy, sounds like. The Grayfoots are up to something, and she doesn’t know what. She says that after Anathea died, they cut her out of the loop because she’s not family.”

  “Oh, poor Angie,” Melissa hissed, her fingernails cutting into her palms. “This is such crap. They just want to kidnap you again!”

  He shook his head. “Why? The darklings can’t turn me into anything. Jessica burned away their special halfling-making spot.”

  “So they just want to kill you, then. Spiteful little creeps. Finish what they started fifty years ago.”

  “Melissa,” he said with maddening calm. “They left it on my kitchen table, while I was sleeping. If they wanted to kill me, I’d be dead, right? What she wants is to exchange information. Like I said, she’s scared.”

  Melissa got herself under control, concentrating on her heartbeat until it slowed. “Okay, then, Rex, an exchange of information sounds like fun. Why don’t you offer to meet her at your house, say, around eleven fifty-five at night?” She felt her lips curl back from her teeth. “I’ll show her what scared really means.”

  “I thought you were all featherlight these days.”

  She snorted. “Come on, Rex. It’s a win-win situation. We’ll know everything about the Grayfoots that she does, and she’ll be left a drooling vegetable.”

  He just stared at her, the old guilt of what they’d done to his father spreading through the car like a gas leak.

  Melissa held his gaze for a moment but then let out a sigh. “Sorry.” She turned away. “Why did you keep this a secret from me, anyway?”

  “Because it gave me an idea. Something you won’t like.”

  “You are not going to meet with her, Rex,” she hissed. “Not unless it’s in the middle of Bixby right before midnight and I’m there to rip that bitch’s mind inside out. I don’t care if the darklings can’t make you a halfling anymore—Angie’s a psycho. What’s to stop her from trussing you up and giving you to the Grayfoots just to get back on their good side!”

  “Don’t worry. Meeting with her wasn’t the idea I’m talking about.” He scratched his chin. “I’m not even tempted to call. But something big is happening. And the information we need isn’t in the lore. I may have to go directly to the source.”

  “You’re going to talk to Grandpa Grayfoot himself? He’s an even bigger psycho than Angie. This is a guy who had a hundred people killed in one night!”

  “Not him. When Anathea died, he was cut off from the darklings. He’s probably panicking too.”

  “So who else is left, Rex?”

  He reached out and let his fingers stray across her lips again. She felt them glide across the sticky trickle of blood, tugging at the wounded skin beneath. Then an appalling thought drifted into her mind from his. She saw the desert, the light cool and flat and blue….

  “No,” she said.

  “They know what’s going on. You said so yourself.”

  “They’ll eat you, Rex.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Wolves don’t eat other wolves.”

  “Um, Rex?” She cleared her throat. “Maybe you’re right. But I’m pretty sure that wolves do kill other wolves.”

  “Hmm, good point.” He took a breath. “But you felt what happened last night. It talked to me.”

  She shuddered, recalling the images that had come from Rex’s mind during their kiss—that huge spider practically doing the two-step with him, like they were old friends. The taste of its forelegs in their sinuous salute was still in her mouth. “That was one darkling, Rex. You’re talking about the deep desert. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. We don’t even know how many.”

  “I haven’t decided yet, okay?”

  She looked out at the sliver of dark moon on the horizon, checking for winged shapes against it. When Rex had first suggested coming out here tonight without Jessica, she’d wondered if it was a good idea. They’d faced darklings on their own together, but this place had drawn huge
clouds of slithers, and the taste of old minds lingered here.

  But during their kiss Melissa had realized that she was safe here with Rex. Safe from darklings, anyway. He had become as much one of them as he was human.

  Suddenly something odd caught her eye—a few leaves were falling near the tracks, giving off a soft red glow that looked completely strange here in the blue time. It was the rip, the sliver of unfrozen time. It must have been there that Cassie Flinders had been standing the morning before.

  Melissa sighed. They had to deal with that girl tonight, not sit around talking. “Okay, Rex, maybe you really can talk to darklings. But tell me before you do anything.”

  He laughed. “Think you can change my mind?”

  “I’d never do that to you, Rex.”

  “Do you swear, Cowgirl? No more of that, on me or anyone else, unless I’m there.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He took her hand, and Melissa let the surety of her promise flow into him. Whatever Rex was turning into, whatever crazy risks he decided to take, she would never twist or change a single thought in his brain…

  Not even to save your life.

  They crossed the tracks, pausing to look at the rip in the blue time. A red glimmer ran along its boundaries. It was about the size of an eighteen-wheeler now, much bigger than when Cassie had stepped through while her grandmother, only a few yards away, had remained frozen. The leaves from two trees caught within it were drifting down.

  Rex stepped into the rip and caught a leaf. He dropped it, and it fell again.

  “Feels different in here somehow.” “Is it spreading all the time? Like, right now?” He shook his head. “Only during the eclipse, Dess says. It’s like a fault line shifting during an earthquake.”

  She pulled him away. This whole rip business gave her the creeps. The last thing Melissa needed was a bunch of annoying human minds invading midnight. “Come on.”

  Cassie Flinders’s house was an old double-wide trailer, its concrete teeth sunk deep into the hard soil, gripping tenaciously against the Oklahoma wind. Halloween decorations were already up on the door—a grinning paper skeleton with swinging joints, orange and black bunting that glowed blue.

  Rex stared at the skeleton for a moment.

  “Friend of yours?” Melissa asked.

  “Don’t think so.” He pushed open the screen door, and its rusty hinges rang out in the blue time. The wooden door inside was unlocked. Rex smiled. “Good country folk.”

  They pushed into the blue-lit home, the floorboards creaking as they walked. Melissa wondered if the old wood stayed pressed down until the end of the secret hour, then popped up with a final complaint—letting out a sudden chorus of creaking just after the stroke of midnight. Flyboy was always wondering about stuff like that. If she was ever on normal speaking terms with the rest of them again, she’d have to ask him.

  An old woman sat at a kitchen table, a bowl of something glowing an unappetizing blue in front of her. Her eyes were locked on a blank-screened TV. Melissa avoided her and the motionless cloud of smoke that rose from the cigarette clutched in her fingers.

  Cassie’s room was in one corner, the door plastered with drawings and more Halloween decorations. Rex pointed at the black cat. “Funny, even after last night she didn’t take that down.”

  “Cats.” Melissa snorted. “Smug, self-centered little beasts.” Then she remembered to add, “Except yours, of course.”

  “Daguerreotype’s smugness is part of his charm.” He pushed the door open.

  The room didn’t reek of thirteen-year-old. No boy band posters, no dolls. The walls were covered with more drawings, crayon landscapes of Jenks, the Bixby skyline, and oil derricks, all drained of their color.

  “Not bad,” Rex said. He pointed to a music stand, a clarinet leaning against it. “Creative kid.”

  “Good. Nobody believes the artistic ones.”

  Cassie was lying on her bed, eyes closed and sheets tangled around her—a bad night of sleep in the making. Melissa wondered if being frozen for fifteen hours had given the girl some sort of jet lag and cracked her knuckles. She could fix that.

  Even Rex’s crazy plan to visit the darklings hadn’t taken the edge off her excitement. This was her first serious mindcasting since Madeleine had started tutoring her.

  “Featherlight,” she murmured softly.

  She rested her fingers lightly on Cassie’s waxy skin, her hands like a pair of pale blue spiders splayed across the girl’s face. Melissa closed her eyes, entering the cool domain of a mind frozen in time.

  Low-level nerves were scattered throughout Cassie, lingering shock from her trip into the secret hour. The taste of dread stung Melissa’s lips, anxiety that the black cat would return, terror that the spider thing was still out there in the woods.

  The girl had an artist’s eye, Melissa had to admit. The slithers, the old darkling, the midnighters’ faces were all in there, as crisp as if she’d snapped photographs. As she soothed the fears away, Melissa blurred the memories into shadowy figments.

  This was so easy now, she thought. Not like the clumsy attempts she’d once called mindcasting. Thoughts and memories stood before her like chess pieces awaiting her command.

  She remolded the images trapped in Cassie’s mind, erasing the words they’d said in front of her, turning everything into the sort of nonsense mush remembered from a dream. Melissa softened the sense of danger, made it all vague and formless, divorced it from the reality outside the double-wide’s doors.

  But she left intact one perfectly shaped bit of terror, a phobia a few yards across and a thousand miles deep…

  Stay away from the railroad tracks at midnight. Something nasty lives under them.

  “Done.” Melissa smiled as she withdrew her hands from Cassie’s face. “Now, that was some awesome, featherlight mindcasting.”

  “That’s it?” Rex asked. “You were so fast. Like thirty seconds.”

  Melissa smiled. It had seemed like long minutes. “Bada-bing, bada-boom.”

  “Has she talked to anyone? Told anyone what she saw?”

  Melissa took a breath, stretching her muscles. “She’s been right here since I put her down, sleeping it off and doodling. Grandma didn’t even let her talk on the phone. Her whole day was bedsores and boredom.”

  “But what if she told—”

  “Relax, Rex. Even if Cassie made a full report to the National Guard, when she wakes up tomorrow morning, she won’t remember what she was babbling about. This is a done deal.”

  “Maybe you should check her grandmother.”

  “Rex, it’s not a problem. Trust me. We’ve been doing this for thousands of years.”

  His breath caught, and Melissa felt a twinge of jealousy from him; she had reminded him of all the knowledge she’d received from Madeleine. He’d finally gotten over that time when she’d touched Jonathan, and he understood about Dess, but when Melissa and the older mindcaster went up to the attic, he lost all rationality.

  Funny, he was the one who knew the history. How mindcasters used to pass on information with a handshake, silently spreading midnighter news and gossip throughout Bixby. Compared to those days, Melissa was hardly some sort of mind slut.

  She took a step closer to him. “Come on. Let’s go back to the car. I’ll show you everything.”

  “She saw what I almost became last night. Are you sure she—”

  “Everything.” She drew him closer, silencing his lips with hers.

  11

  11:13 A.M.

  GOODBYE, BIXBY

  “So the weirdest thing happened yesterday.”

  Jessica nodded. She’d been expecting Constanza Grayfoot to tell her all about it. “Yeah, I heard.”

  Constanza came to a sudden halt in the hall, letting lesser mortals flow around them. “You did? From who?”

  Jessica shrugged. For once she’d known what everyone would be talking about way ahead of time. “I don’t remember who told me. Wasn’t it on TV last nig
ht or something? How that lost kid just turned up in her bed yesterday morning, totally okay?”

  “Oh, that. Ancient news, Jess. Pay attention here, please. I’m talking about something much weirder and much more likely to affect our lives. Especially my life.”

  Jessica blinked. “Okay. What are you talking about?”

  “My grandfather called me last night.”

  Cold, dry fingers walked down Jessica’s spine. “He did what?”

  “Called me, with the most incredible news. Come on, let’s get to study hall. And I hope you don’t have any stupid trig homework today because I’m going to need everyone’s full attention.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  As they made their way up to the library, Jessica’s heart pounded. Any mention of Constanza’s grandfather definitely got her attention.

  Grandpa Grayfoot was like anyone else not born at midnight—frozen during the secret hour. But as a kid he’d been a sort of super-evil version of Beth, spying on everyone and uncovering Bixby’s secrets. He’d figured that the darklings were ghosts, or ancient spirits, or something equally creepy and had tried to communicate with them in secret midnight rituals. Eventually the darklings had answered, exchanging messages with him through a half-human, half-darkling creature—a translator between the two worlds.

  Years of doing the darklings’ bidding made his family rich and powerful, but the things that the midnight creatures asked him to do got more and more hideous. Fifty years ago the Grayfoots and their allies had been ordered to wipe out an entire generation of midnighters. They had all but succeeded; only Madeleine remained.

  Just two weeks ago the translator who had made the whole thing possible had been close to death. The Grayfoots had tried to kidnap Rex so the darklings could turn him into a replacement, another halfling.

  But the other midnighters had rescued Rex, and Anathea—the halfling—had died, destroying the old man’s link to his masters. If he and his pals were still trying to contact the darklings, they were leaving messages that would never be returned.