Scott Westerfeld - Blue Noon

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.