Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (2 page)

At the end of the row of bookshelves, I
peeked around the corner. They were still playing their stupid
game.

The first two would count it down, “Three,
two, one, GO!” and toss the books.

Then the other two would say, “Ashes to
ashes!” and “Dust to dust!” at practically the same time they
destroyed the targets.

Losers. I was debating what to say when a
girl rushed out of the center aisle into the middle of them to bang
on the door to the back room.
Yeah, hon, just step right in the
middle of a contest between the guy with the flame and the guy with
the—disintegration ray power.
Whatever. It’s not always easy to
come up with names for some of these Talents.

The door was yanked open and Marco stepped
out. My stomach did something unpleasant. Okay, I’ll admit I was
kind of scared of my nemesis. Call it post-traumatic stress. Mr.
I-Can-Bench-Press-A-Steel-Girder did almost kill me not too long
ago. When I looked at him, I imagined the feel of his hands around
my throat, right before Dylan tackled him and saved my life. I
so
did not want to take Marco on again.

“You’re screwing up Angie’s concentration,
Bella. What do you want?”

“Corey was feeling me up again when I was
out of my body.”

“What?” came a voice from the stacks. “She
wasn’t using it.”

“Cor, this isn’t a date-rape opportunity,
it’s a job. If you get your rocks off fondling unconscious chicks,
get some GHB and do it on your time. Or take Sleepy, here, for a
night on the town.”

“My name is
Curtis
,” the freshman
whined, indignant.

“Like anyone cares,” Jeff said.

“Hey, you guys need to get back to business.
Now. Angie’s still working on the safe. Bella, get your virtual ass
back up to the roof and do your job.”

“Okay, but I thought you’d want to know that
some girl went down the alley and was looking in the windows.”

“What?” Marco asked, in a dangerous tone
that made the boys sit up, but didn’t seem to affect Bella very
much.

“Yeah, dark-haired girl in an army jacket?
Looked kind of like Joss Marshall.”

Oh shit.
I pulled back behind the
stacks and started to move toward the window.

He came through the bookcase. I mean
through
the bookcase. One minute there was no one between me
and the window, and the next there was a shimmer to the air in the
form of a body coming out of the books. It grabbed me hard while it
was still fading back into Corey Danvers. He smiled at me as he
jerked me into the back aisle where everyone could see me.

“And look what I found.”

* * *

Dylan

“What time is it?”

“Time for you to get a watch,” Eric told
me.

“About a minute since the last time you
asked,” Kat added. “Damn, Dylan. You know, at first it was cute,
but it’s getting sad.”

“Seriously, man. You’re all anxious to get
over there before she gets out of work, and are you even going to
talk
to her this time?”

“We talk,” I muttered defensively.

“I never knew you to be this chicken-shit
around a girl before.” Eric reached across the checkout counter and
punched me in the shoulder, like the guy-punch was supposed to take
the sting out of it.

“He’s not chicken-shit, baby—”

Why did it feel like a new low that I needed
Joss’s crazy friend Kat to defend me?

“—he’s just embracing the stalker
lifestyle.”

“I’m not a stalker! I’m just waiting for my
moment.”

“Oh, honey, no. A guy doesn’t kiss a girl
and then wait around a month for his ‘moment,’ okay?” Kat was
giving me air-quotes. Awesome. “You see Eric waiting around for
some moment?”

They then engaged in a PDA that might have
gotten me fired from the mini-mart if Casey had come out of the
back room and caught them. I had to clear my throat twice to break
it up.

“Lookit,” Kat said, digging her phone out of
her bag, “I looked up stalker in the dictionary the other day. I’ll
show you.” She pressed a few buttons and then held it up.
“See?”

Naturally, the display showed a picture of
me.
Nice friends. It’s enough to make a guy long for days of
being best buds with Marco and being pressured into a life of
crime.

“If you want to walk Joss home,” Eric
advised, “just go over there and say, ‘Hey, Joss, mind if I walk
you home?’”

“Oh yeah, ’cause that’s brilliant. Kat saw
her lift a steel girder, like, three stories in to the air…
with
her brain
. The girl tosses sofas like it’s nothing—”

“Don’t forget how she ripped out all my
kitchen cabinets!”

“And there’s that,” I said to Kat. “So I’m
supposed to go over there and offer to walk her home at night? Like
she needs someone like me to look out for her. How stupid does that
make me look?”

“And yet you keep leaving here and racing
over there to
follow
her home instead. If you’re so sure she
doesn’t need you looking out for her, what are you doing?”

“Maybe I just like the view.”

While Eric had a laugh over that, I had to
admit to myself that he had a point. It was stupid of me to keep
following her home at night, thinking I could do anything to help
her if trouble came looking for her. But then, I was all kinds of
stupid over Joss lately.

When I thought about it, and I thought about
it way too much, it didn’t make sense for me to be protective of
Joss. She didn’t need someone like me. But I couldn’t stop myself
from feeling it, from needing to look out for her, and knowing I’d
do whatever I could to help her—even if whatever I could do was
pretty useless.

It was like when I thought she was in over
her head with Marco, and I found them with his hands around her
neck. I didn’t think about the fact that he had super strength and
was probably going to kill me. It was like that part of reality
didn’t matter, didn’t even apply to me right then. Lucky for me,
Joss was able to use her Talent to help me fight him back.

Because that’s how lame I am, that I needed
my girlfriend’s psychic ability to do my fighting for me.

Except she’s not my girlfriend. Because
that’s how lame I am.

“Are these paying customers, Maxwell?” my
boss asked me.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Casey,” Kat said with too
much enthusiasm. “I just
love
to shop here!” She made a show
of browsing the gum selection in front of the register.

“My friends just dropped in to give me a
ride when Manny gets here.” Eric, for all his ribbing, was always
happy to drive like a madman to get me from Casey’s Go-Mart over to
Gene’s Army/Navy Store in time for Joss to get off work. Mostly
because Eric was always happy to be speeding.

“Ortega’s not coming. Something with his
wife, water breaking, blah blah blah. Porter’s filling in.”

“Porter?” Manny was always early. Partly
because he was that kind of guy, and partly because I had told him
I liked to leave ten minutes early and he didn’t mind getting paid
for my 10 minutes. Carl Porter, on the other hand…

“Mr. Casey, I really need to leave on time
tonight.”

“Well, I guess you’d better pray for a
miracle.”

“But—”

“But nothin’, Maxwell. You know I’ve got a
mean wife at home that’s scarier than any crisis you got. I get in
the door five minutes late and she starts searching my truck for
panties.”

“Damn,” Eric muttered.

“Never marry an insecure woman, boys, that’s
my free advice of the evening. You’re here until Porter gets here,
and that’s it. If he’s not here by ten, you can try calling
Winters. “

“Yes, sir.” I tried not to be too whiny
about it, but in my head I was thinking how much freer my schedule
was when I was living the life of a petty thief. I had lifted a
fair amount of beer, snacks, cigarettes, and other merchandise from
Casey over the years. Working for him, and keeping an eye on his
stuff, was part of my new leaf-turning penance thing. But it was
sucking right now.

Kat’s phone rang as Casey walked out the
door.

“I’m at Casey’s, waiting for Dylan, who’s
been waiting for his ‘moment’ by the way,” and she actually held
the phone with her shoulder so she could do the air quotes
for
the phone caller
—did I mention crazy? “to get off work.” A
pause, then, “Dylan, why haven’t you been answering your
phone?”

“Casey said my leather jacket made me look
like a punk and was keeping old ladies from buying lottery tickets.
And he needs one of them to hit it big so he can get his share
because his wife’s demanding to go to Bermuda or some shit. I guess
I left my phone in the pocket. It’s in the back.”

“Jesus,” Kat said into the phone, “slow
down. I can’t listen to both of you at once. He says because it’s
in the pocket of his jacket which is in the back because—Well,
damn, girl, take my head off. Fine. Here he is.” Kat passed the
phone over the counter. “It’s Heather. You might want to hold it
away from your ear. She’s a little wound up.”

“You okay, Heather?”

“It’s not me, it’s Joss.”

I backed up into the stool we kept behind
the counter and sat down.

“I’m not sure what I heard—not heard,
but…you know—“

“Yeah, I get it.” Heather tended to hear
stray thoughts in people’s heads. “Go on.”

“They were just going by my house, on foot.
I kinda got a glimpse of them out the window.”

“Who?”

“I’m not sure. Definitely Marco, though, and
Jeff, some ‘voices’ I couldn’t quite place, maybe five or six, and
Joss.”

“What’s she doing with those guys?”

“She’s thinking a lot. Trying to take in
details and come up with some kind of a plan to get away. She’s
wishing she could see, so I think she’s blindfolded.”

“Fuck.” Besides the fact that Joss with
Marco scared the crap out of me, and Joss being taken away
blindfolded scared the crap out of me, the part of my brain that
was actually thinking knew that her ability worked about a million
times better if she could see what she wanted to move. I knew that
she could use visualization to some extent, but her Talent was
really weak that way and didn’t always work. If she couldn’t see,
she was almost helpless.

“She’s scared, Dylan.”

Join the fucking club.

“Do you know where they’re headed? What
Marco’s planning?”

“I…it was really a mess of thoughts, all of
them at once, and once I heard Joss, I really just concentrated on
her.”

“Any little thing, Heather,” I said quietly,
trying to sound calming.

“Okay, um…Marco thought about his…lair? Does
he have a lair?”

A string of expletives went through my head,
but I was also kind of relieved. At least I knew where they were
headed. “He does, the freak. Anything else?”

“Marco’s got a lot of hate. It was kind of
inarticulate, but I think ‘payback’ was clear. And Jeff wants…
Dylan, if you know where they’re going, you need to just get
there.”

I clicked off the phone without saying
goodbye. “We gotta go. Now.”

“What about the store? Is it Joss? Did
something happen?” Kat asked.

“Yes, it’s Joss, and fuck the store. You run
it,” I said, heading for the door.

“Go through the storeroom,” Eric told me,
“I’m parked around back. We’ll go kick some ass and then I’ll swing
by to pick you up later, ’kay, baby?”

“Call me!” I heard Kat yell. I was swiping
my jacket off the hook as we ran through the back room. How much
time had we already lost because I didn’t think to keep my phone on
me? Had Joss tried to call me?

I looked. No messages. Of course not.

Eric slammed his hand down on the hood as he
moved around the front of the car and his Talent brought the engine
roaring to life. We threw ourselves down into the Camaro, slammed
the doors, and he peeled out of the parking lot.

I thought about calling Heather back, asking
her if she could tell if any of the others had Talents and what
they were. But would knowing that really help? What was I going to
do when I got there?

Something. I was just going to do
something.

Chapter 2

Joss

The sweat-jacket tied around my head stank
like cigarettes and pits. The way it was wound up, part of the
zipper had gotten caught up with the sleeve and was digging into
the side of my head. It had reached that point where it itched more
than anything else. But nothing I could do about it with my hands
bound behind my back with electrical tape. Except be grateful
they’d found the tape
after
the jacket thing. I was going to
get to keep my eyebrows. Bonus.

If I could keep the rest of me intact that
would just be aces.

I shook off the distraction of
nausea-inducing bad thoughts and refocused. It was a long walk,
maybe close to half an hour, so probably a bit more than a mile
from the mall. Marco never once let up on his grip on my arm. I was
guessing we were cutting through some yards and parking lots by the
change in the terrain under my boots, the fact that I was hearing
things like loud televisions and phones ringing more than I was
hearing cars going by, and that, hey, a group of kids
force-marching a blind-folded girl down the sidewalk was bound to
attract
some
kind of attention. One would hope. Judging by
where we had started, how much downhill there was, and how the wind
had picked up and really cut in where I couldn’t pull my unzipped
coat closed, I figured we were going down to the river.

Which I had to admit was a scary
proposition. How long could I tread water without the use of my
arms? How cold was that water? What was the current like? How hard
would it be to breathe when this jacket took on water and was stuck
to my face? And that’s all assuming I was conscious when I went
in.