Blue Noon m-3

by Scott Westerfeld

  Was she making all this up? Could there really be a secret history behind the secret history?

  He took a deep breath, checking his watch. The only way to find out was to stick to the plan; Melissa could get to the bottom of this.

  “In any case,” Angie said. “I didn’t come here to debate midnighter ethics. Just don’t sit there pretending like I’m some kind of demon, all right?”

  “Fine.” Rex forced himself to calm down. This was nuts, sitting here questioning what was what. It was probably the new predator part of his mind, willing to believe anything said against the humans who had dared to challenge the darkling kind.

  He just had to let the plan unfold. Keep stalling and make sure that Angie stayed nervous.

  “Just one quick question,” he said. “Your employers? The nice people who ‘freed’ Bixby. What would they do if they knew you were here talking to me?”

  She let out a short, dry laugh. “Probably cut me into small pieces. Maybe you too.”

  Rex allowed a grim smile to show on his face. He’d been hoping she would say something like that. “Talk about monsters.”

  “I never said they were perfect. Far from it.” She crossed her arms. “All right, since it’s a school night and everything, shall we move on from the mutual recriminations? I told you some of what I know in my note. Maybe I’ll have more to tell you later. But you go first.”

  “Okay.” Rex glanced at his watch. He still had fifteen minutes to kill. “There have been signs of change in the blue time.”

  “Blue time?”

  “You know, the secret hour.” Rex blinked. He’d forgotten that “blue time” had originally been Dess’s term—not part of the lore. “Everything turns kind of blue when time freezes.”

  Angie just looked at him.

  “What?” he said. “You didn’t know that?”

  “Yeah, I’ve read the accounts. But I never got used to the idea of you midnighters,” she said. “It’s one thing that spooks live in the secret hour, but human beings walking around while the rest of us are frozen?” She shivered. “It’s so creepy.”

  He snorted a laugh. “Trust me. They’re the creepy ones, not us. Whatever you’ve read about the darklings, I’ve seen them.”

  “But you haven’t read their words,” she said. “And I have.”

  Rex was silent for a moment. It was true—Grandpa Grayfoot had managed to do something that no seer had ever done before. He’d communicated with the enemy.

  But now Rex had gone one better—he’d actually communicated with a darkling face-to-face. He thought again about heading out to the desert, meeting with the old minds there, hearing what their perspective was about all this history.

  Now, that would be a brain bender… if they didn’t kill him first.

  As Rex stared out the window, he saw a car flash past at the end of the alley. He swallowed, glancing at his watch again. They were early.

  Angie hadn’t seen it, though.

  “Well, whatever,” he said. “When time freezes, it’s blue. But this last week something really strange happened. Something that’s not in any lore I’ve ever read.”

  “A timequake.”

  He looked at her. “A what?”

  “A spontaneous fluctuation of the prime contortion. Releasing the energies built up over the centuries.”

  “Um, yeah.” He drummed his fingers on the seat. Prime contortion? Maybe Angie really had read a few things that Rex hadn’t. “We’ve been calling it an eclipse. But it might be more like a tremor, a warning of bigger things to come.”

  “And that’s why the Grayfoots’ houses all sprouted For Sale signs last week?”

  He nodded. “We think that the blue time is going to expand, suddenly and without much warning, getting big enough to swallow Broken Arrow.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Jesus. No wonder they’re running. When?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I think I’ll save that piece of information until you tell me more. Such as, when are the Grayfoots leaving Broken Arrow?”

  “Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure,” she said. “But there is something they’ve all been talking about for a while.”

  “What is it?”

  Suddenly lights swept through the interior of the car.

  “What the…?” Angie said, turning to look back.

  Rex winced as he glanced in the mirror. A pair of headlights loomed at the other end of the alley. Jonathan and Dess, you morons, he thought. Can’t you read a clock?

  They’d come way too soon.

  But there was only one thing to do: stick with the plan. He started the engine.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Angie shouted.

  “They’re coming for us,” he said. The headlights were closing fast. “They must have followed you!” He put the car in gear and rolled down the alley.

  “Oh, Christ! Let me out!” She started to open her door.

  Rex accelerated, and the door crushed a trash can with a sickening sound, swinging closed with a thunk. Sorry, Melissa, he thought.

  “You’ll never make it to your car!” he shouted. “Just hang on. I’ll get us out of here.”

  He accelerated down the alley and out onto the first street on Dess’s route map. As he turned right, the Ford’s freshly filled tires screeched across the asphalt.

  The headlights swept out of the alley behind them, clinging to his tail.

  Very convincing, Flyboy.

  “I don’t know if I can outrun them,” he said. “This car’s pretty old.”

  “Oh, great! You know, my car goes plenty fast!”

  “I didn’t know you were going to bring company!” he shouted. “I’ll head for the highway.”

  He hit Highway 75 and turned west, bringing the Ford up to eighty miles per hour. This was the diciest part of the plan. Going over the speed limit was bad enough, given that it was curfew time back in Bixby, but if another eclipse—or timequake, or fluctuation of the prime contortion—suddenly struck, Rex would plow through the windshield like a bullet.

  “Hey! You’re headed to Bixby!” The knife flashed in the corner of Rex’s eye—he smelled steel inches from his face.

  “Oh, crap.” He swallowed, finding it easy to sound scared. “Just headed home by reflex. Sorry.”

  He heard a growl rise in her throat, but no burning blade of steel pierced his ribs just yet.

  “Listen,” he said. “There aren’t any exits before Bixby except the access road. We can follow it through Saddleback.”

  “Don’t try to mess with me, Rex. That’s inside the contortion!”

  “Yeah, but we can go straight through to the other side of the county. You’ll be in and out of the blue time inside ten minutes.”

  “Dammit, Rex…” She looked at her watch.

  “Maybe the Grayfoots will be afraid to follow us in!”

  Angie’s voice suddenly grew very calm. “Okay, keep driving. It’s before eleven-thirty, so you can get me out by midnight. But if you stop anywhere in this county, Rex, I swear I’ll kill you.”

  “Hey, don’t threaten the driver. I won’t stop, okay?”

  Unless of course, I happen to run out of gas.

  There was movement in his peripheral vision, and the glimmer of the knife disappeared. “All right, then,” she said.

  Rex breathed a sigh of relief. Things were going more or less according to plan. Jonathan and Dess might have shown up a bit too early, but at least Angie hadn’t stabbed him yet.

  “They’re catching up,” she announced.

  He looked in the rearview. Idiots. They weren’t supposed to overtake them or force Rex to drive over seventy-five, which would draw cops like flies.

  Couldn’t Jonathan and Dess do anything right?

  “Like I said, the Grayfoots probably won’t follow us into Bixby. Right?”

  “If they know I’m meeting with one of you midnighters, they might make an exception.”

  “But maybe not.” R
ex pushed the accelerator a bit farther down, trying to make it look convincing. The old Ford’s engine began to make a grinding sound, and Rex hoped he wasn’t screwing up Dess’s calculations too much.

  Of course, the most worrying question was whether Angie would go crazy when his car ran out of gas right smack in the center of the emptiest, least traveled part of the county.

  Rex swore under his breath. It would have been better if Dess and Jonathan had shown up ten minutes later. As it was, Angie would have too much time before midnight to wonder if this had all been arranged. Or she might get lucky and have a passing car pick her up.

  Still looking backward, she swore. “There’s two of them now.”

  “Huh? Two of what?”

  “Two cars following us, you pinhead.”

  “How could there…? Oh, crap!” he shouted. It had to be the police. “Does one of them have a flashing light on top?”

  “No, they’re both black Mercedes. Standard Grayfoot issue.”

  “Mercedes…?”

  A few seconds later Rex let out a strangled little laugh of pure amazement. On the other side of the highway, headed into Broken Arrow right on schedule, was Jonathan’s father’s car, complete with him and Dess in the front seat, their expressions of surprise briefly visible as they flashed by.

  “Oops,” Rex said softly.

  “What?”

  “You actually let the Grayfoots follow you!”

  “I thought we already covered that,” Angie said. “They’re closing in! Doesn’t this thing go any faster?”

  “I guess it does,” said Rex, and pushed the pedal to the floor.

  He looked down at the gas gauge, which hovered just above E.

  But not for much longer.

  14

  11:27 P.M.

  CHANGE OF PLAN

  “So, Flyboy—clue me in here. Was that Rex we just saw speeding down the other lane?”

  Jonathan’s eyes swept the highway frantically. Now that the shock was wearing off, he’d realized they needed to turn around. Fast. “Yep.”

  “And that was Angie sitting next to him?”

  “I don’t think it was his mom.”

  “And—now this was the confusing part—there was this big black car chasing them, right? Like we were supposed to be doing? I mean, this isn’t one of those time travel things where we just saw ourselves in the future, is it?”

  “Not unless ten minutes in the future we’ve got a pair of Mercedes between us.”

  “There were two of them?”

  “That’s what I saw.” Although at this point Jonathan wasn’t completely sure what he’d seen.

  Then he spotted a familiar exit, a mile up. He could pull off here and head back west without getting completely tangled in downtown Broken Arrow’s web of warehouses and alleys.

  Dess tapped her fingers on her window for a few seconds. “So that means Rex’s plan isn’t going very well, is it?”

  “Nope. Hold on.” Without slowing at all, Jonathan brought the car off the highway. Dess crushed against his shoulder as she leaned into the turn.

  “Seat belt?” he suggested. He heard the slithering sound of vinyl as Dess scrambled to secure herself, then the click of a metal clasp.

  He found himself glad that Melissa and Jess were still back in Bixby. Rex hadn’t wanted them all inside Broken Arrow together in case this whole thing was some kind of Grayfoot trap.

  Frankly, Jonathan had never thought much of the plan. It was pretty complicated, which always meant there were lots of things that could go wrong. Being involved in Rex’s schemes had taught Jonathan that someone was always late (usually Jessica) or didn’t pass along the message (usually Beth) or simply didn’t do what they were supposed to do because they didn’t feel like it (typically Melissa). And even if all the midnighters decided to play their parts, there were always cops, or parents, or teachers to screw things up.

  Of course, even with all his doubts, Jonathan hadn’t actually thought of this particular possibility.

  “So wait,” Dess said as they zoomed through the dark underbelly of a cluster of overpasses, huge concrete columns flashing past on either side. “The Grayfoots really did know that Angie was meeting with Rex?”

  “Yeah. They must have been following her or something.”

  “Stupid cow.”

  “That’s usually the problem with brilliant plans: not-so-brilliant people.”

  Dess shook her head as they climbed onto an entrance ramp and shot back up onto Highway 75. “Wow. So this afternoon, when Rex made us siphon most of the gas out of Melissa’s tank? That was kind of a waste of two hours.”

  “My guess is that Rex feels the same way,” Jonathan said. “When’s he supposed to run out?”

  “At exactly eleven forty-seven and… oh, wait. We’re ahead of schedule here, aren’t we?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  She looked at Geostationary. “Well, they were supposed to come to a stop right when they got to the middle of Saddleback. Of course, Rex looked like he was driving a little faster than we figured, which is less fuel efficient, especially in an old beater like Melissa’s car. So…”

  “Pretty soon, right?”

  “Yeah. About eleven-forty. Unless those guys in the Mercs have guns and shoot out their tires or something.”

  “Oh, right. Good point.” Jonathan realized that he had been going a bit slower than maximum, not wanting to send Dess through the windshield if an eclipse sneaked up on them. But the more he thought about it, the worse trouble he figured Rex was in. He pressed the accelerator down harder.

  “So, Dess, if you see any blue sweeping across the sky, you know what to do, right?”

  “Grab your hand. No problem.”

  Jonathan nodded. If he was sharing his midnight gravity with someone, they probably wouldn’t carry their momentum into the blue time. Two weeks before in the desert, Jessica and Dess had been whacked against their seat belts when his car had frozen and Melissa almost killed when she’d been, but nothing had happened to Jonathan.

  Of course, no one had been crazy enough to test this hand-holding theory yet.

  This zooming along at seventy-five miles an hour was another reason he was glad Melissa and Jess weren’t here. He only had two hands.

  They shot along the highway, the lights of central Bixby glowing before them, a great mass of darkness all around.

  “Can you see anything?”

  She leaned forward, squinting through the windshield at the dark road ahead. “Barely. I think that little cluster of taillights is them.”

  “So what are we supposed to do now?” Jonathan said. “Try to catch up and help Rex? Or stick to the plan when we hit the county line and head out to pick up Melissa and Jess?”

  “Crap, I don’t know. I hate all this plan stuff.”

  “Me too,” Jonathan said.

  “Maybe we should keep following Rex. We can swoop in and pick him up after he runs out of gas.”

  Jonathan swallowed. “You do realize that’ll be trickier than it sounds, right, Dess? Remember what you said about them maybe having guns?”

  “Absolutely. But we can’t just leave him out here with real Grayfoots chasing him. Who knows what they’ll do to him?”

  Jonathan couldn’t argue with that. Melissa’s car couldn’t outrun those two Mercedes even if it wasn’t about to conk out. “I guess I could fly over and get Jessica after midnight falls.”

  “What about Melissa?” Dess said. “We’ll need her if we’re going to get into Angie’s mind. You actually going to hold her hand?”

  Cold fingers stroked Jonathan’s spine at the thought. He’d touched Melissa exactly once before, for an emergency jump across a hundred yards of angry tarantulas. In those few seconds her tortured mind had flooded into him like a wave of nausea; it was something he never wanted to repeat.

  He sighed. “I guess I’ll have to. But what about you and Rex being alone in Saddleback? It’ll take me ten minutes to get Jessica t
here, and that’s the deep desert—darkling country.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” Dess kicked the duffel bag on the floor in front of her, which let out a clank. “I think our big problem right now is Rex staying alive until midnight.”

  “Yeah, you got that right. Those guys in the Mercs looked pretty pissed.” Jonathan took a deep breath. “Okay, we go after Rex and save his sorry ass from the Grayfoots.”

  He accelerated still more, squeezing every drop of speed out of his father’s car.

  Dess scrunched down into her seat. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  15

  11:34 P.M.

  OUT OF GAS

  As they crossed the county line, Rex kept his eyes locked on the road ahead. “Are they giving up?”

  Angie turned to stare through the back window, then let out a string of curses. “No, still with us. And if they’re risking Bixby at this hour to catch us, that means they’re in a really bad mood.”

  Rex gripped the steering wheel, trying not to scream with frustration. In all his detailed planning, it had never once occurred to him that the real Grayfoots would show up. “How did they know we were meeting?”

  “No one followed me, Rex, I’m positive.”

  “What about your phone?”

  “They couldn’t have tapped it. That number I gave you was a disposable cell phone I bought last week at the Tulsa Mall. Never used it before you called, so they couldn’t have…” Her voice turned cold. “You didn’t call me from your house, did you?”

  Rex didn’t answer for a few critical seconds, and by the time he found the right words, it was too late to lie.

  “Was I not supposed to?” he finally managed.

  She let out a groan.

  “You mean, my phone is tapped?” he cried.

  “Only for the last two years. Pinhead.”

  Rex drove on, waiting for the burning sensation of a knife slipping between his ribs, but all he heard was Angie muttering beneath her breath. “Jesus. Maybe you really are just a bunch of kids.”

  The pursuers drew closer, filling the old Ford with their headlights. They were easing up on either side now, like wolves shepherding wounded prey away from the herd, out to a nice, private killing ground. This abandoned stretch of the access road was probably just the sort of place they’d been waiting for. Rex’s plan had brought them to a perfect spot.