The Secret Hour (15 page)

Jessica was scared. Jonathan could feel it.

They had made it up to Pegasus in record time, shooting down Division like a stone skipping on water, then gaining altitude from rooftop to rooftop, making a giant obstacle course out of the Bixby skyline. The Mobil Building was the tallest in town, and now they were high atop the winged horse with the darkened city spread out below them.

But Jess had seemed anxious the whole way. She kept looking over her shoulder, not trusting in their speed to keep them safe. Even up here, her green eyes still scanned the horizon. The muscles in her hand were tight, and the connection that Jonathan usually felt when they flew together was missing.

“Are you okay?”

“What?”

“You seem nervous.”

She shrugged.

He smiled. “Like maybe you’re worried about being seen with me.”

Jess laughed, looking out over the dark, empty city. “Yeah, if any slithers tell my mom about us, I’m dead.” She paused, then blurted, “Anyway,
you’re
the one who’s all antitouching during daylight.”

Jonathan blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Jessica looked away. “I mean, it’s no big deal, but it’s not like you ever put your arm around me or grab my hand.”

“We hold hands all the time!”

“At
midnight
we do. In school you get all anxious about it.”

He frowned, annoyed and wondering if it was true. “Well, we’ve got to rest sometime. Or we’ll wind up with Nintendo wrist.”

Jess pulled away her flying hand and flexed it. “I guess so.”

Jonathan gently took it back and started to massage the tendons. He felt her muscles begin to relax. “So what are you really nervous about?”

Her gaze swept the skyline. “How safe do you think we are up here?”

“We’re in the middle of town, sitting on ten tons of clean steel.
Mobil Building
has thirteen letters in it.
And
we can fly if we need to. Pretty safe, I’d say.”

Jess ran a finger along the rusty strut they were perched on. “How do you know this steel’s clean? It’s been here a long time, looks like.”

“I asked Dess if Rex could take a look with his glasses off. When Pegasus is lit, you can see it from all over Bixby, you know. He said the horse doesn’t show a bit of Focus. It’s clean.”

She smiled at him. “Thanks for doing that.”

He shrugged. “Rex can be a pain, but the guy’s good for some things.” He concentrated on rubbing her hand.

Jonathan hadn’t told Jess, but over the last week he had spotted a few slithers at the edges of downtown, daring to come closer to the tall steel buildings than he’d ever seen before. They were tentative, slithering across the low warehouses on the fringes, blurring them into the midnight world, laying claim to them. Since Jess had come to town, the midnight creatures were pushing their way in, a little closer every night. It might take months, but Jonathan had grown certain that eventually there wouldn’t be any clean places left in Bixby. The slithers and their darkling masters would be able to claim even Pegasus.

Where would he and Jess go then?

“But we can’t sit on top of this sign forever, Jonathan.”

He looked up at her, wondering how she knew what he was thinking. He dreaded that Jess’s mysterious talent might have something to do with mind casting. He hoped not. Jonathan had no idea how Rex could stand to hang out with Melissa. He shivered. No privacy, not even in your brain.

“We’re safe for now, Jess. And maybe once you get ungrounded—”

“I got ungrounded today,” she said.

“That’s great! Why didn’t you tell me?” he said. Then he saw her expression. “Jess, why isn’t that great?”

“Well, because now I’m allowed to go to that party tomorrow night, out at Rustle’s Bottom.”

“Oh, the snake pit.” Jess had told him about Rex’s master plan a few days ago. The idea had sounded dangerous enough when it was way off in the future. Now that it was twenty-four hours away…

“You know that’s out in the badlands.”

“They kind of mentioned that. But Rex says it’s the only way to find out what I am,” Jessica said. “Dess can make it safe out there, and Rex says my talent could be important or maybe something I can protect myself with. In the museum he told me there’s lots of kick-ass talents.”

“If Rex told you to jump off a cliff—,” he started.

“Jonathan,” she said, laughing, “that would be
you
telling me to jump off a cliff.”

Jonathan smiled. “Probably. But I’d jump with you.”

She pulled him closer. “I’ve got to do
something,
Jonathan. I can’t spend the rest of my life sitting up here.”

“I know.” He sighed. “So you’ve got to do what Rex says. He’s the only one of us who’s got the manual for midnight, after all.”

Jess looked into his eyes. “That’s why you don’t like him, isn’t it? Because he can read the lore and you can’t.”

Jonathan frowned at her. “It’s more complicated than that.” He swallowed, wondering how much he should say. “You don’t know Rex and Melissa as well as I do. Let’s just say I don’t trust Rex. I don’t think he tells everything he knows, even to Melissa.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To keep control of the whole thing. If everyone else knows what he knows, being a seer doesn’t give him any power.”

“Rex withhold information? Come on, Jonathan. Last weekend at the museum he told me stuff about the blue time for, like, six hours. I had to tell him to stop or my head was going to explode.”

“Six hours, and he didn’t tell you about me.”

Jessica blinked. “Oh, right. He did kind of forget to mention you.”

Jonathan smiled sourly. “He wanted you to be one of
his
midnighters.”

She sighed and looked out again. He followed her gaze past the city to the horizon. From up here they could see all the way to the edge of Bixby, where dark clusters of houses faded away into the badlands. The low flat plains shone with dark moonlight, and the mountains beyond were black silhouettes against the stars.

“So what do I do?” she said softly.

“I guess you don’t have a choice. You’ve got to do what Rex says.” Jonathan sighed. “Sometimes I think the whole midnighter thing is rigged.”

“Rigged?”

“Yeah. It’s a setup. We’ve all got our own talents. Rex reads lore, I fly, Melissa casts, Dess does the math. You must do
something.
So we wind up all dependent on each other, like we’re supposed to fit together into a team.”

Jess squeezed his hand. “Jonathan, what’s so bad about that?”

He scowled. “I didn’t ask to be on a team. I don’t even know who put the team together.”

“Maybe fate put us together.”

“I didn’t ask to be on fate’s team either.” He pulled his hand away. “It all seems totally rigged, like we’re stuck with each other.”

Jess shook her head. “Jonathan, that’s not rigged. That’s just life.”

“What’s life? Having Rex tell you what to do?”

“No, needing help. Getting stuck with other people.”

“Like being stuck up here with me?”

“Yeah, exactly. Like you being stuck protecting me.” Jessica stood up on the narrow strut. She took a few steps away, glaring out over the dark city.

“I didn’t mean—,” he started, standing himself.

The two were silent. Jonathan took a deep breath, trying to figure out when this conversation had turned into a fight. He did feel trapped now. Not by Jess, or even the darklings who were after her, but by the words they’d said—by not knowing what to say to make it better.

It was strange not touching Jessica, not sharing his gravity with her. The midnight air seemed cold, as if the space between them had filled with ice. When they flew, everything was so easy. Over the last four nights they’d stopped saying out loud where their next jump would take them. They communicated through their hands much better than with words.

And now they were stuck up here—not flying, not talking, not touching. It felt to Jonathan as if daylight gravity had come already and was crushing him.

He looked down through the rusty framework that held up the Pegasus sign to the rooftop of the Mobil Building forty feet below.

“Jess?”

She didn’t reply.

He reached out. “You should hold my hand. It’s dangerous up here.”

“It’s dangerous everywhere. For me.”

The fear in her voice chilled him. Midnight should have been so beautiful for her, an infinite playground, but it seemed as if something—Rex and his lore, the curfew, the darklings—was always screwing it up.

“Jess,” he said. “Just hold my…” He trailed off as something hit him—maybe the reason she was upset with him, the reason he’d been missing. “I’ll be out there tomorrow night. At the snake pit. You know that, right?”

She turned to look at him, her green eyes softening. “You will?”

“Yeah, of course. I mean, I’m not going to let you guys have all the fun.”

Her face broke into a smile.

“I’ll even let Rex give the orders,” he said. “This might be one of those things where you’d actually want to read the manual.”

“Thanks, Jonathan.” She finally took his hands again, and he could feel midnight gravity reconnect them.

Jonathan grinned back. “Jess, I wouldn’t let you…”

But before he could finish the sentence, she leaned her head toward his and kissed him.

Jonathan blinked with surprise, then let his eyes close. Jessica was warm against him, even in the summer-night air of the secret hour. He put his arms around her, feeling her feet come lightly up off the ground in his embrace.

When they parted, he grinned. “Wow. I think we found your talent.”

She laughed. “It’s about time, Jonathan.”

“That we kissed? Yeah, I was going—”

“No. That you said you were coming out to the snake pit.”

“Jess, of course I’m coming. I’m not going to let Rex get you killed.”

“You should have told me right away,” she said.

“You should have asked me.”

She groaned, pulling him against her again in a too tight hug. “You shouldn’t be such an idiot,” she whispered.

Jonathan frowned, afraid to say anything. Staying close to her, he reached up and undid the clasp of his necklace.

“Here, take this for tomorrow night.”

“Your necklace?”

“It’s called Obstructively: thirty-nine links. It’ll take me about ten minutes to fly out to the Bottom from my house. You might need it before I get there.”

Her fingers closed around the metal links. “But then you won’t have anything to protect yourself.”

“Maybe Dess will give me something. She’s been making toys all week. I want you to have this, though.”

“Thank you, Jonathan.” Jess’s face was lit up by her smile. “Tell me, have you ever kissed anyone be—”

“
Duh
.” He saw her frown and swallowed. “I mean, yeah.”

“As I was saying,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “have you ever kissed anyone before
in the secret hour?
”

He blushed, then shook his head. “Not until now.”

Jess’s smile brightened. “Then you haven’t done
this
.” She grabbed him around the waist and bent her legs. He barely had time to prepare before she jumped, carrying them both straight up into the sky.

“Oh,” he said.

And then they were kissing again.

“Well, what do you think, Jess? Are we ready to go?”

Jessica stared at herself in the mirror. She recognized the red hair and green eyes, but that was about it.

Constanza had spent the evening doing a makeover on them both. She’d taken one look at Jessica’s party outfit and decided to lend her a jacket. Then some makeup. Then a dress.

Spending a few hours trying on Constanza’s clothes had turned out to be a lot of fun. There were two closets full of them, and a whole wall of her bedroom was covered with mirrors. Most of her things seemed to fit Jessica, and everything was beautiful or at least expensive looking. Constanza absolutely
loved
every outfit Jessica had put together. It was like being a regular teenager again, getting ready to go to a normal party instead of a snake pit full of evil creatures. Constanza played CDs and Jessica played dress-up, and it had been the first night all week that she’d been able to forget what time it was and what would happen when the clock reached twelve.

Now, looking at the whole ensemble, Jessica was surprised how little she looked like herself. In Constanza’s thigh-length leather jacket, with just an inch of red dress visible below the hem, and the matching dark red lipstick, she looked more like Jess Shady than Jessica Day.

“Are you sure I don’t look… too dressy?”

“Too
dressy?” Constanza said. “As in too beautiful or too gorgeous?”

“As in too silly.”

“Jessica, you don’t look silly at all. You’ll knock them dead.”

“Who’s them again?”

“The guys at the party. And these are Broken Arrow guys.”

Broken Arrow was the next county over, where the boys were cuter, the grass greener, and curfew nonexistent, at least according to Constanza. And everyone was a senior, apparently.

Jessica felt weird dressing up like this. She never particularly thought about what she wore to school or even to go flying with Jonathan. She knew she didn’t have to worry about that with him.

“So, do these guys have names?” Jessica asked. She was still a bit nervous about the regular-time dangers of a late night party full of strangers.

“I guess so.”

“I mean, how well do you know them?” Jessica pushed.

“Rick, who invited me, is a friend of Liz, who’ll be there.”

Jessica sighed, reminding herself that the main point was getting out to Rustle’s Bottom. Surviving the snake pit and finding out why the darklings were after her was the only thing that counted.

“Okay, I guess I’m ready. You look great too, by the way.”

Constanza was wearing a houndstooth jacket and skirt with high-heeled boots. She clearly wasn’t planning to run away from any darklings tonight.

“Yeah, not bad, if I do say so myself.” Constanza swept her car keys from off the makeup table and headed out, calling good-bye to her mother.

Jessica dug into the pockets of the jacket she’d brought with her, fishing out a small flashlight, a compass, and a carefully folded piece of paper. Dess had given her the compass and drawn her a map of the Bottom to help her find the snake pit. After a second warning about stepping on snakes in the dark, the flashlight had been Jessica’s idea. Around her neck she was wearing Obstructively, Jonathan’s thirty-nine-link chain.

“Come on, Jess!”

She took a deep breath. Jessica hadn’t mentioned the party to her parents and wasn’t sure what would happen if Mom called after she and Constanza had left. Well, the worst they could do was reground her. Forever.

She looked at herself one last time in the mirror and practiced her tridecalogism of the night.

“Serendipitous.”

On the way out to Rustle’s Bottom, Jessica looked out of the car window to see a roll of razor wire passing by. She realized that they were driving along the fence around Aerospace Oklahoma.

“Hey, my mom works here,” she said.

“You said she designs planes, right?”

“Just wings.”

“That’s so funny that your mom works and your dad doesn’t.”

Jessica shrugged. “Dad gave up his job in Chicago to come down here. He’s always switching jobs anyway.”

“That was pretty cool of him, though.”

“Yeah, I guess. I think he’s wishing he hadn’t.”

Jess sat up straight. A tall structure was looming ahead of them, alight and unfinished. It was the new building where she and Jonathan had taken refuge from the darklings. The construction was going late tonight, it seemed. The grid of steel was brightly lit, big lamps hanging from every girder, swinging in the autumn wind. It looked almost like it had in the secret hour, when the moon was setting and the whole building had suddenly ignited with white light, driving the slithers and darklings away.

“Hey, any new buildings at work?” she murmured softly.

“What?” Constanza asked.

“Nothing. Just something I forgot to ask my mom about.”

Jonathan and Jessica had talked a couple of times about what had happened that night and about what might have saved them from their pursuers. Jonathan figured the building must be built of some new kind of metal. Jessica had told Rex and Dess the whole story, but they were busy planning the snake pit expedition and hadn’t come up with any answers. Apparently Rex didn’t know everything about the rules of midnight.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to Mom about her new job,” Jessica continued. “But she’s so busy there, I haven’t been able to.”

“Yeah, my dad’s the same way,” Constanza said. “Not that I’d want to talk to him about his job. Oil futures or whatever.” She pointed ahead, her smile brightening. “Congratulations, Jessica, you are now leaving Bixby.”

The town limit flashed by, and Jessica’s stomach tingled. They weren’t just leaving Bixby—they were headed out to the badlands.

“Next stop, the snake pit,” she said to herself.

She checked her watch. Fifty-seven minutes to midnight.