Blue Noon

13

11:07 P.M.

BRILLIANT PLAN

Broken Arrow hadn't changed much, as far as Rex could see.

The town was still Bixby's little sister, with no buildings over a few stories marking its skyline. Clanking oil derricks and mesquite trees went right up to the city's edge, and instead of green lawns most people had dirt front yards. The native desert scrub they planted to keep the soil from eroding needed a lot less water than grass - and looked better, Rex thought - but in Bixby not having a real lawn meant that you were poor or lazy, which most people figured was pretty much the same thing.

He drove carefully, checking the street signs, following the exact route that Dess had used for her calculations. She'd complained about that part of the plan because too many things could mess with the math - how fast Rex drove, the air pressure in the tires, even the temperature outside. She spent a lot of time complaining about something called "fumes."

Rex couldn't think about all that. It was all he could do to drive this rumbling, smelly, human machine. His reflexes were much faster now, but the plastics and metal in the car put him on edge.

Besides, there were lots of ways this plan could go wrong. The precisely measured gas in the Ford's tank was only one.

It was strange being in Melissa's car without her along, but Angie had demanded three things: that they meet no later than 11:00 P.M.., that they didn't go anywhere near Bixby, and that Rex come alone.

He remembered how nervous Angie's voice had sounded on the phone. But Rex didn't want her too anxious. He wouldn't get any information from the woman if things got violent.

He found the corner Angie had named, two narrow back alleys that intersected among dark and looming warehouses, the prey marks of humans scant - the perfect place for Rex to disappear, if that's what Angie had in mind. Of course, if Rex were still relevant to the family's plans, they probably wouldn't have gone to this much trouble.

Still, he was glad it was just him here in the car and not all five of them. The Grayfoots were old hands at making people vanish.

Angie was already there, smoking a cigarette and wearing a leather coat that reached her knees. She gave him an angry glare, checked her watch, then cast a wary glance around. As she walked toward the Ford, Rex realized that he'd never seen her in normal time before. In motion and without the waxy pallor of the secret hour laid across her skin, she didn't look that much older than a college student.

He remembered to turn off the Ford's engine; Dess's calculations didn't include any idling time.

"You're late," she said.

"Sorry. My mom came over. Had to sneak out - school night."

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, but then she let out a smoke-tinged sigh. Nothing like being reminded that the latest person you'd kidnapped was still in high school. Rex hoped that seeing Anathea dead out in the desert had made Angie think twice about her employers. Hopefully she was fed up with the kid-snatching business.

"Fine, let's talk," she said. "But in exactly twenty minutes I'm out of here. You're not going to pull any of that spook crap on me."

Rex laughed. "What sort of 'spook crap' are you expecting? We're miles from Bixby."

"Yeah, I know where the edges are," she said. "But before the Grayfoots stopped talking to me, Ernesto said that things were changing."

Rex nodded. Ernesto was Constanza's cousin - the family definitely knew something.

"They are," he said. "Get in and I'll tell you what we know."

"What? Get in that car with you?"

He gave her a bored look. "Don't be so paranoid, Angie. Midnight still comes at midnight, not..." He checked his watch, as if he hadn't planned this all out to the minute. "Eleven-fifteen. And I'm not standing around in the cold." He tugged on the front of his T-shirt; not wearing a jacket had been Jessica's idea. "So get in."

Her nervous eyes scanned the buildings around them again. "Okay, but my car."

"Forget that," he said. "My wheels or no deal."

Rex held her suspicious gaze, wondering if that last line had been too much. He'd rehearsed it on the way over here, trying out various inflections, settling on a dramatic pause between "no" and "deal." But maybe he'd blown it. The rest of the plan wouldn't work unless Angie got into Melissa's car.

But as he watched her think about it, Rex felt something else replace his jitters - the same calm he'd experienced just before he'd turned Timmy Hudson into jelly. He could smell Angie's fear now, could see it in the play of lines on her face, and he realized that she'd been telling the truth about the Grayfoots cutting her off. She carried the anxious scent of a human rejected by its tribe, left to its own devices on the harsh desert.

A trickle of anticipation went through Rex, the same excitement he'd felt tracking Cassie Flinders across the blue time. He was the hunter here, not this human.

"Take it or leave it, Angie. But don't make me sit here." He drew his lips back from his teeth. "Like I said: it's a school night."

A long moment later she said, "Okay. But if you start that engine, I'm sticking this between your ribs." Steel flashed in the darkness.

At the sight of the knife Rex felt some of his predatory confidence slip away. He could smell that the blade was tungsten stainless; its very touch would burn him. Rex couldn't imagine what the weapon would feel like thrust into his side.

Angie walked the long way around the car, checking the backseat for any surprises. Finally she opened the passenger door and slipped inside, bringing in the scents of anxiety and cigarette smoke.

"You know," he said. "Seeing as how you kidnapped me, you've got a lot of nerve acting like I'm the bad guy."

She snorted, running nervous fingers through her blond hair. "Spare me. I know what you midnighters are."

"What? High school students?"

She turned away to stare through the front windshield, watching the empty alley. "It doesn't matter how old you are. A monster is still a monster."

"Me? A monster?" For a second the word made him shudder. Did she know about the way he was changing?

Angie turned to him, her words spilling out with furious speed. "Listen, Rex, the family may have shut me out after what happened two weeks ago, but I know a lot about the history of Bixby. Probably more than you do."

Rex's jaw dropped open. "I doubt that."

"Right, I'm sure you think you know everything." She smiled. "You may know a few tricks, like how to read fifty-year-old propaganda, but you don't know what things were really like in Bixby back then. You weren't there. The old guy I work for was."

"What? He's a..." Rex started, but he was too indignant to finish. This traitor to humanity, this Grayfoot lackey, this daylighter was lecturing him about the lore? Rex's amazement sputtered out of him like an old car engine giving up the ghost.

He'd made Melissa swear to take it easy on Angie's brain, but Rex doubted it would be tough to make her break that promise.

"After they freed Bixby," Angie continued, "the Grayfoots discovered a lot of what you midnighters call 'the lore.' That's how I learned to read the symbols, practicing on all that old rubbish about how the great midnighters kept everyone happy and safe."

"The Grayfoots freed Bixby?" was all Rex could manage. "From what?"

"Come on, Rex. What do you think it was really like back then? A small, unelected group of people running a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. People who could play God with time, who could ruin the brain of anyone who disagreed with them. Doesn't that sound great, Rex, growing up in a place like that?" She paused, giving him a disgusted look. "Of course, you would have been one of the people in charge."

"But midnighters aren't about controlling people's minds."

"Are you kidding?"

"Well, they only did it to keep the secret hour hidden, to keep the town safe."

Angie barked out a single-syllable laugh. "Sometime, Rex, you should read some real history. Everyone who abuses power says exactly the same thing: 'We only do nasty, secret things to keep everyone safe. Without us in charge, you're all doomed.' "

"What are...?" He growled, unable to organize his thoughts. "You kidnapped me!"

She looked away, letting out a slow breath, and Rex thought for a moment that he had finally quieted her madness. But after a moment she turned back and said, "It was the only way to stay in contact with the darklings. Without them we couldn't keep you from re-creating the old Bixby." She shrugged, the thick leather coat creaking. "Besides, do you know how many hundreds of children the old midnighters kidnapped over the years?"

"What?" Rex cried. But then he remembered the ancient tales: when mindcasters detected newly born midnighters nearby, war parties had been dispatched to steal them. More recently, offers of jobs and money had been sent to their parents. Rex found himself wondering, though - if those inducements hadn't worked, had the old midnighters resorted to stronger tactics? There wasn't anything like that in the lore, but what if they had just pretended it hadn't happened?

"Well," he said, "maybe a long time ago they did some things that seem weird now, sort of like... George Washington having slaves or whatever." Rex shook his head firmly. "But we're not like that!"

"I've seen your father, Rex," she said calmly. "Did a stroke leave him that way?"

"That was..." His voice broke. "We were just kids."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Born monsters, like I said."

They were silent for a moment, Rex's head spinning from everything Angie had said. When he'd seen her name in lore symbols at the bottom of the note, there had been a moment of curiosity; even if she wasn't a seer, here was someone else who could read the lore, who knew the signs of midnight. But after just a few minutes of talking to her, he felt his oldest sureties in danger of crumbling.

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." Rex 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.