Scott Westerfeld - Blue Noon

“Okay: history lesson.” She leaned forward, addressing Rex directly. “Grandpa Grayfoot kicked Constanza’s parents out of the clan when they moved to Bixby, right?”

“Because he knew about mindcasters,” Melissa said. “He didn’t want anyone in the family business here, where we could rip their memories.”

A shudder went through Dess. “Lovely choice of words, Melissa. But basically, yeah. So maybe he doesn’t care what happens to her parents because they disobeyed the no-Bixby rule.”

“But Constanza’s still his favorite granddaughter,” Jessica said.

“Mystifyingly,” Dess muttered.

“She’s really nice,” Jessica said defensively. “And it’s true, he really likes her. He buys her tons of clothes.”

Melissa nodded. “We’ve seen the closets.”

“Lucky you,” Dess said. “But closets full of tacky clothes are nothing compared to what the old guy’s bribing her with now. He’s invited her to come live in Los Angeles and promised that she’s going to be a TV star. But there are two catches. One: she can’t tell her parents about it.”

A guilty look crossed Jessica’s face. “Actually, she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone at all.”

“Yeah.” Dess chuckled. “Good move, telling Constanza to keep a secret. It would’ve been smarter to just come by in a van and grab her. Worked on Rex, after all.”

“Like I said, he thinks the darklings are coming after his family,” Rex said. “But that doesn’t prove the world’s ending.”

Dess shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. Which brings us to catch number two: Constanza has to get her butt out to Hollywood by the end of the month or, and I quote, ‘the whole thing’s off.’ And Grandpa’s moving the rest of his clan out there in two weeks—from Broken Arrow, Rex, where the darklings can’t reach. Not yet anyway.”

She let that sink in for a moment. The noise of the lunchroom seemed to grow around them, like the rumble of a coming storm.

“But how would he know the blue time’s expanding?” Rex said. “There’s no halfling to tell him.”

“Maybe he already knew,” Melissa said suddenly. She squinted, chewing her lip. “The oldest darklings did.”

Rex shook his head, still unconvinced. Dess realized what the problem was: he refused to believe that the Grayfoots knew something he didn’t.

Jessica spoke up. “It’s so sad. Constanza thinks that she’s going to an audition and that she’ll get an agent and acting lessons and stuff. But she’s leaving her parents behind forever.”

“She’s one of the lucky ones,” Dess said. “At least she’ll be out of town before October 31.”

“Hey,” Flyboy said. “That’s Halloween!”

“Um, yeah.” Dess raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t thought of that. It’s kind of… interesting, but it’s not numbers.” She frowned at Rex. “Anything about Halloween in the lore?”

“Of course not.” He shrugged. “There was no Halloween in Oklahoma until about a hundred years ago.”

Dess nodded. “Fine, enough with history. Here’s the math: when you boil it into numbers, October 31 seems like no big deal at first. I mean, the sum is forty-one, and you get three hundred-ten when you multiply. No relevant numbers there. But in the old days October wasn’t the tenth month, it was the eighth. You know, October, like an octagon, with eight sides?” They all looked at her blank-faced, and Dess suppressed a groan. Next time she was definitely bringing visual aids. “Come on, guys. Eighth month? Thirty-first day? And eight plus thirty-one is…?”

“Thirty-nine?” Jessica said.

“Give the girl a prize.”

“Wait a second, Dess,” Flyboy said. “I thought thirty-nine was a major anti darkling number. Like all those thirty-nine-letter names.”

“Magisterially Supernumerary Mathematician,” Dess supplied. “An instant classic. And yes, the number thirty-nine is totally antidarkling. The real problem is the next day.”

“Isn’t that All Saints’ Day or something?” Jonathan said.

Dess let out an exasperated breath. This wasn’t about spooks or ghosts or saints; it was about numbers. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

Melissa brought her fingers up to her temples. “Hang on, guys.”

Dess ignored her. “But November 1, here in the modern era, is the first day of—”

“Guys!” Melissa cried out.

They were all silent for a moment, and Dess thought she heard the hubbub of the cafeteria fade for a few seconds, as if a chill had spread through the room. Her fingertips were tingling, and a trickle of nerves filtered their way down to the pit of her stomach.

“Something’s coming ,” Melissa whispered.

As the words passed the mindcaster’s lips, a tremor rolled across the room, the shudder of the spinning earth halting in its tracks. The roar of the cafeteria was sucked away all at once, leaving the five of them surrounded by almost two hundred stiffs, faces blue and cold and waxen, caught throwing food and picking their noses and chewing with their mouths open.

“What time is it, Rex?” Dess’s own voice sounded small in the awesome, sudden silence.

Rex looked at his watch. “Twelve twenty-one and fifteen seconds.”

Dess wrote the number down and stared at it, wondering how long this one was going to last.

Jonathan bobbed weightlessly up from his chair. “Cool, this again.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Jessica said softly.

“We just sit here,” Rex said. “We wait it out. And get down, Jonathan!”

“Why?” Jonathan said. “I can fall from here, no problem.”

“There are people all around, Jonathan. If you fly off someplace and the blue time ends, they’ll see you disappear.”

“Come on, Jonathan.” Jessica reached up and took his hand. “Plenty of time to fly when the world ends.”

“All right, whatever.” Jonathan sighed, settling back onto his chair like a deflating balloon.

No one said anything for a moment. Dess’s eyes were drawn to the tray in front of Rex, whose cafeteria lunch had already been left to congeal during the discussion. Its waxy layer of interrupted time made it look even more unappetizing, his Jell-O glowing blue, its wobble arrested.

Melissa held her head tipped back, tasting the air to her heart’s content, and for once Dess was glad that the mindcaster was around. At least they’d know if an army of darklings was on its way.

Of course, this wasn’t the end of the world, not yet. You could tell just by looking. If the secret hour had snapped completely, all the stiffs around them would still be moving, having been sucked into the blue time along with everything else within a few hundred miles.

Dess didn’t have to do any math to know what the result of that would be. All those predators suddenly escaping from their midnight prison, unleashed on their prey—maybe millions of people, if the blue time really expanded across the whole state. No phones, no cars, not even fire, and only the five midnighters knew how to defend themselves.

Dess fixed her gaze on a constellation of french fries hovering over a motionless food fight across the lunchroom. She wondered if what she’d told Jessica yesterday after school was really true. Could you make it to the border of the blue time, freezing yourself at the edge until the long midnight ended?

Not too many people would be lucky enough to make it that far. Not with all those hungry darklings pouring in from the desert. And what if the blue time never ended? What if everyone on the outside was permanently frozen and everyone in the inside was lunch meat—most of humanity gone with a whimper, the rest with a bang?

“So, Dess?” Jessica said, finally breaking the silence.