Scott Westerfeld - Touching Darkness

Despite how automobile ads tried to make it look, Jonathan had learned this year that driving was not like flying. In fact, driving pretty much sucked compared to flying. Flatland at sixty miles an hour was still Flatland.

And his sore throat from the other night hadn’t gone away entirely. He swallowed gingerly before he spoke. “Actually, those two pretty much set off my smarmy meter twenty-four, seven. I tend not to notice the minor fluctuations.”

Dess chuckled beside him, the low rumble of it bringing a smile to his face. Jonathan hadn’t hung out much with Dess lately, he realized. At least not since Jessica had arrived in town.

“Weren’t they kind of… chummy?” she continued. And chipper.”

He glanced at Dess. Her expectant expression annoyed him. Who was supposed to be the mind reader here? He shrugged. “I think they were just freaked out by what they saw last night. Hell, I’d be.”

The thought that he was driving straight back to where it had all happened wasn’t thrilling Jonathan either. He wondered why he was here instead of getting back to school to tell Jessica what had happened and make sure she was okay.

Maybe because of all of them, he most trusted Dess to help Jessica when she really needed it. Ten days ago he’d seen who had led the other two across darkling-infested desert when he and Jessica had been trapped in the snake pit.

“Sure. The trauma thing was part of it.” Dess was nodding to herself. “But there was more.”

“Like what? What more could there be?”

“So you know what I mean.”

A trucker blasted his horn just behind them, looking to keep up the speed his rig had gathered down the slope of an overpass. Jonathan wrenched the car out of his way, earning a respectful middle finger as the truck roared by. This conversation had become dangerously distracting.

“You’re nuts,” Jonathan said. “No way.”

“True. No possible way. It’s more complicated than that.”

He snorted. “I can’t imagine anything more complicated than that.”

She snickered, then said, “You know they did… once.”

Jonathan looked at her with alarm. “Did what?”

“Not that.” She laughed. “But back when they were kids, Rex touched Melissa by accident.”

“Oh.” Jonathan’s left hand trembled for a moment, a sense memory moving through his body in a wave of dizziness. He gripped the wheel hard, concentrating on the dotted white lines pulsing in front of the car, and managed to keep the vehicle in a straight line until the spell passed.

“Rex told me all about it,” Dess was saying. “Said it was a total head bang, like she was crowding into his mind and he was getting into hers.”

Jonathan nodded. “Yeah. That’s what it’s like.”

“What? How would you know?”

He paused. He wondered why he’d never told anyone about this, not even Jessica. (Especially not Jessica, come to think of it.) Rex must have realized what was going on as it happened, but neither he nor Jonathan had ever brought it up. And of course, Melissa hadn’t said a thing after that one thank-you in the desert.

“Well, it was the weekend before last, when we found out Jessica was the flame-bringer. When you guys were trying to get to the snake pit and you did your amazon thing.”

“That was so cool. Resplendently Scintillating Illustrations kicked that darkling’s ass.”

“Yeah, well. But you may recall that you left Rex and Melissa surrounded by a zillion spiders. And I had to fly back out and save them.”

Dess was silent for a moment, then she let out a long breath. “That’s right! You flew Melissa back to the snake pit. So you must have…”

“Touched her.” Jonathan felt a faint shadow of the dizziness come over him again—the nauseating rush of thoughts and emotions, the despair that permeated Melissa, her revulsion at those few seconds of human contact. Since that night he hadn’t seen her the same way. He could detect something behind her scowl other than her hatred for humanity—something fragile.

Jonathan shuddered. Silent treatment or not, he somehow felt closer to her now. It had been much easier when she’d just been a royal bitch.

“Damn,” Dess said softly. “Rex must hate you for that.”

“What? For saving both their lives?” He shook his head, suddenly hoping Dess wouldn’t answer. He wished this whole conversation hadn’t started. Fortunately the turnoff was just ahead. “Forget I mentioned it.”

But Dess didn’t shut up. “Rex says in the old days, mindcasters could control their ability. They could tolerate crowds, even transmit information through a handshake. They were the ones who passed on the news, who bound everyone together.”

“Really?” Jonathan knew there’d been mindcasters back in Bixby’s history, but he’d never imagined sane ones. “So why’s Melissa such a basket case?”

“Rex doesn’t know. Maybe she’s just a freak. But he’s always wanted to find out if she can learn to tolerate it. Maybe last night was some kind of bonding experience or something. And now they’re trying to hook up.”

Jonathan looked at his left hand; it had always seemed as if Melissa’s searing touch should have left a mark. But his palm bore nothing but a thin layer of sweat.

He swallowed again, his throat still sore.

They exited the main highway, heading toward Las Colonias. Melissa’s directions had turned out to make sense after all. The badlands were ahead of them now, a single tear of sun-leeched white across the horizon.

Jonathan remembered the two of them on the porch, Rex all smiley, Melissa as relaxed as he’d ever seen her in normal time. But then he felt another touching-Melissa flashback trembling at the edge of his mind and shook his head.

“I just hope they know what they’re doing.”

Dess laughed. “Haven’t you figured it out, Flyboy? None of us knows what we’re doing.”

The arched entrance to Las Colonias was guarded by a private security car. Two rent-a-cops slouched against its hood, drinking coffee and turning redder in the sun. One held up his hand, his eyes sweeping across the old car with obvious contempt. Jonathan rolled down his window, the presence of an authority figure bleeding into his stomach like a drink of acid.

“What’s your business here?”

“Just taking a drive, Officer.” Rent-a-cops loved it when you called them Officer.

“Here to see the demon house, huh? Well, I’m afraid it’s residents only today. So why don’t you just turn your vehicle around and head back where you come from.”

Jonathan thought of a few things to say but realized that if he mouthed off, one of the two might figure out it was a school day. So he tipped an imaginary cowboy hat and started to turn the car around.

“Smooth, Jonathan,” Dess started in. “ ‘Just taking a drive, Officer.’ ”

“What would you have said? ‘Just here to investigate the paranormal’?”

Dess snickered and put on her good-old-boy drawl. “How about, ‘Just taking my new girlfriend to meet my daddy? We’re fixin’ to get us married.’ ”

He laughed. “Next time you do the talking.”

“So now what?”

“Now we look for the back door.” Jonathan turned down the dusty service road that skirted the community, his eyes following the ten-foot-high metal fence surrounding it. Even in normal time his acrobat’s brain still worked. He could see the angles—where a foot would go to get a boost up, then a handhold, another within reach of that one…

Finally he spotted a place. A termite mound rose up close to the fence, cutting a couple of feet from its height. Jonathan slowed the car.

“We can’t climb that,” Dess said.

“I can. Just show me how that thing works.”