Scott Westerfeld - Blue Noon

“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.