The Secret Hour

21 12:00 A.M. PEGASUS

Jessica was scared. Jonathan could feel it.

They had made it up to Pegasus in record time, shooting down Division like a stone skipping on water, then gaining altitude from rooftop to rooftop, making a giant obstacle course out of the Bixby skyline. The Mobil Building was the tallest in town, and now they were high atop the winged horse with the darkened city spread out below them.

But Jess had seemed anxious the whole way. She kept looking over her shoulder, not trusting in their speed to keep them safe. Even up here, her green eyes still scanned the horizon. The muscles in her hand were tight, and the connection that Jonathan usually felt when they flew together was missing.

“Are you okay?”

“What?”

“You seem nervous.”

She shrugged.

He smiled. “Like maybe you’re worried about being seen with me.”

Jess laughed, looking out over the dark, empty city. “Yeah, if any slithers tell my mom about us, I’m dead.” She paused, then blurted, “Anyway, you’re the one who’s all antitouching during daylight.”

Jonathan blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Jessica looked away. “I mean, it’s no big deal, but it’s not like you ever put your arm around me or grab my hand.”

“We hold hands all the time!”

“At midnight we do. In school you get all anxious about it.”

He frowned, annoyed and wondering if it was true. “Well, we’ve got to rest sometime. Or we’ll wind up with Nintendo wrist.”

Jess pulled away her flying hand and flexed it. “I guess so.”

Jonathan gently took it back and started to massage the tendons. He felt her muscles begin to relax. “So what are you really nervous about?”

Her gaze swept the skyline. “How safe do you think we are up here?”

“We’re in the middle of town, sitting on ten tons of clean steel. Mobil Building has thirteen letters in it. And we can fly if we need to. Pretty safe, I’d say.”

Jess ran a finger along the rusty strut they were perched on. “How do you know this steel’s clean? It’s been here a long time, looks like.”

“I asked Dess if Rex could take a look with his glasses off. When Pegasus is lit, you can see it from all over Bixby, you know. He said the horse doesn’t show a bit of Focus. It’s clean.”

She smiled at him. “Thanks for doing that.”

He shrugged. “Rex can be a pain, but the guy’s good for some things.” He concentrated on rubbing her hand.

Jonathan hadn’t told Jess, but over the last week he had spotted a few slithers at the edges of downtown, daring to come closer to the tall steel buildings than he’d ever seen before. They were tentative, slithering across the low warehouses on the fringes, blurring them into the midnight world, laying claim to them. Since Jess had come to town, the midnight creatures were pushing their way in, a little closer every night. It might take months, but Jonathan had grown certain that eventually there wouldn’t be any clean places left in Bixby. The slithers and their darkling masters would be able to claim even Pegasus.

Where would he and Jess go then?

“But we can’t sit on top of this sign forever, Jonathan.”

He looked up at her, wondering how she knew what he was thinking. He dreaded that Jess’s mysterious talent might have something to do with mind casting. He hoped not. Jonathan had no idea how Rex could stand to hang out with Melissa. He shivered. No privacy, not even in your brain.

“We’re safe for now, Jess. And maybe once you get ungrounded—”

“I got ungrounded today,” she said.

“That’s great! Why didn’t you tell me?” he said. Then he saw her expression. “Jess, why isn’t that great?”

“Well, because now I’m allowed to go to that party tomorrow night, out at Rustle’s Bottom.”

“Oh, the snake pit.” Jess had told him about Rex’s master plan a few days ago. The idea had sounded dangerous enough when it was way off in the future. Now that it was twenty-four hours away…

“You know that’s out in the badlands.”

“They kind of mentioned that. But Rex says it’s the only way to find out what I am,” Jessica said. “Dess can make it safe out there, and Rex says my talent could be important or maybe something I can protect myself with. In the museum he told me there’s lots of kick-ass talents.”

“If Rex told you to jump off a cliff—,” he started.

“Jonathan,” she said, laughing, “that would be you telling me to jump off a cliff.”

Jonathan smiled. “Probably. But I’d jump with you.”

She pulled him closer. “I’ve got to do something, Jonathan. I can’t spend the rest of my life sitting up here.”

“I know.” He sighed. “So you’ve got to do what Rex says. He’s the only one of us who’s got the manual for midnight, after all.”

Jess looked into his eyes. “That’s why you don’t like him, isn’t it? Because he can read the lore and you can’t.”

Jonathan frowned at her. “It’s more complicated than that.” He swallowed, wondering how much he should say. “You don’t know Rex and Melissa as well as I do. Let’s just say I don’t trust Rex. I don’t think he tells everything he knows, even to Melissa.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To keep control of the whole thing. If everyone else knows what he knows, being a seer doesn’t give him any power.”

“Rex withhold information? Come on, Jonathan. Last weekend at the museum he told me stuff about the blue time for, like, six hours. I had to tell him to stop or my head was going to explode.”

“Six hours, and he didn’t tell you about me.”

Jessica blinked. “Oh, right. He did kind of forget to mention you.”

Jonathan smiled sourly. “He wanted you to be one of his midnighters.”

She sighed and looked out again. He followed her gaze past the city to the horizon. From up here they could see all the way to the edge of Bixby, where dark clusters of houses faded away into the badlands. The low flat plains shone with dark moonlight, and the mountains beyond were black silhouettes against the stars.

“So what do I do?” she said softly.

“I guess you don’t have a choice. You’ve got to do what Rex says.” Jonathan sighed. “Sometimes I think the whole midnighter thing is rigged.”

“Rigged?”

“Yeah. It’s a setup. We’ve all got our own talents. Rex reads lore, I fly, Melissa casts, Dess does the math. You must do something. So we wind up all dependent on each other, like we’re supposed to fit together into a team.”

Jess squeezed his hand. “Jonathan, what’s so bad about that?”

He scowled. “I didn’t ask to be on a team. I don’t even know who put the team together.”

“Maybe fate put us together.”

“I didn’t ask to be on fate’s team either.” He pulled his hand away. “It all seems totally rigged, like we’re stuck with each other.”

Jess shook her head. “Jonathan, that’s not rigged. That’s just life.”

“What’s life? Having Rex tell you what to do?”

“No, needing help. Getting stuck with other people.”

“Like being stuck up here with me?”

“Yeah, exactly. Like you being stuck protecting me.” Jessica stood up on the narrow strut. She took a few steps away, glaring out over the dark city.

“I didn’t mean—,” he started, standing himself.

The two were silent. Jonathan took a deep breath, trying to figure out when this conversation had turned into a fight. He did feel trapped now. Not by Jess, or even the darklings who were after her, but by the words they’d said—by not knowing what to say to make it better.

It was strange not touching Jessica, not sharing his gravity with her. The midnight air seemed cold, as if the space between them had filled with ice. When they flew, everything was so easy. Over the last four nights they’d stopped saying out loud where their next jump would take them. They communicated through their hands much better than with words.

And now they were stuck up here—not flying, not talking, not touching. It felt to Jonathan as if daylight gravity had come already and was crushing him.

He looked down through the rusty framework that held up the Pegasus sign to the rooftop of the Mobil Building forty feet below.

“Jess?”

She didn’t reply.

He reached out. “You should hold my hand. It’s dangerous up here.”

“It’s dangerous everywhere. For me.”

The fear in her voice chilled him. Midnight should have been so beautiful for her, an infinite playground, but it seemed as if something—Rex and his lore, the curfew, the darklings—was always screwing it up.

“Jess,” he said. “Just hold my…” He trailed off as something hit him—maybe the reason she was upset with him, the reason he’d been missing. “I’ll be out there tomorrow night. At the snake pit. You know that, right?”

She turned to look at him, her green eyes softening. “You will?”

“Yeah, of course. I mean, I’m not going to let you guys have all the fun.”

Her face broke into a smile.

“I’ll even let Rex give the orders,” he said. “This might be one of those things where you’d actually want to read the manual.”

“Thanks, Jonathan.” She finally took his hands again, and he could feel midnight gravity reconnect them.

Jonathan grinned back. “Jess, I wouldn’t let you…”

But before he could finish the sentence, she leaned her head toward his and kissed him.

Jonathan blinked with surprise, then let his eyes close. Jessica was warm against him, even in the summer-night air of the secret hour. He put his arms around her, feeling her feet come lightly up off the ground in his embrace.

When they parted, he grinned. “Wow. I think we found your talent.”

She laughed. “It’s about time, Jonathan.”

“That we kissed? Yeah, I was going—”

“No. That you said you were coming out to the snake pit.”

“Jess, of course I’m coming. I’m not going to let Rex get you killed.”

“You should have told me right away,” she said.

“You should have asked me.”

She groaned, pulling him against her again in a too tight hug. “You shouldn’t be such an idiot,” she whispered.

Jonathan frowned, afraid to say anything. Staying close to her, he reached up and undid the clasp of his necklace.

“Here, take this for tomorrow night.”

“Your necklace?”

“It’s called Obstructively: thirty-nine links. It’ll take me about ten minutes to fly out to the Bottom from my house. You might need it before I get there.”

Her fingers closed around the metal links. “But then you won’t have anything to protect yourself.”

“Maybe Dess will give me something. She’s been making toys all week. I want you to have this, though.”

“Thank you, Jonathan.” Jess’s face was lit up by her smile. “Tell me, have you ever kissed anyone be—”

“Duh.” He saw her frown and swallowed. “I mean, yeah.”

“As I was saying,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “have you ever kissed anyone before in the secret hour?”

He blushed, then shook his head. “Not until now.”

Jess’s smile brightened. “Then you haven’t done this.” She grabbed him around the waist and bent her legs. He barely had time to prepare before she jumped, carrying them both straight up into the sky.

“Oh,” he said.

And then they were kissing again.