6

11:36 p.m

SPEED BUMP

Jonathan sat in his father's car, drumming on the steering wheel. Jessica was late. Halfway down the block, he could see her window still glowing. She hadn't even turned her lights off yet.

What was she waiting for? Tonight every second counted.

On the phone with Jessica this afternoon, the five of them had planned everything to the minute: Jonathan had driven here instead of flying during the secret hour. Jessica was supposed to sneak out at eleven-thirty, leaving time to get within a mile of the spot where Cassie Flinders had disappeared. Then when midnight fell, they'd be at most a few jumps away.

Dess, Rex, and Melissa were already there, which made it doubly important to stay on schedule. Jenks wasn't exactly the badlands, and the three were well armed with clean steel, but the spot was too far from the city's center for them to survive forever without the flame-bringer's protection.

He looked at his watch - 11:38. "Where are you, Jessica?"

The words echoed in his mind, and Jonathan remembered what they'd kept saying on the evening news: Where is Cassie Flinders?

If Dess was right, the lost girl had slipped into the blue time.

Jonathan let out a breath through his teeth - a day-lighter walking around in their private world. Just when he thought he understood the secret hour, it threw another curveball.

Of course, it was nothing like the curveball that reality had thrown Cassie Flinders.

Rex and Madeleine kept talking like she might be okay. Cassie could have wandered off during the eclipse and wound up somewhere out of the sun's reach, frozen in darkness, like the darklings were during daylight hours. And once midnight fell, she would awake again, and Melissa would find her, no problem. All they had to do was protect her until the secret hour ended, when a blast from Jessica's flashlight or - if that didn't work - the eventual arrival of sunrise would push her back into regular time.

Of course, there was also the possibility that Cassie hadn't wandered off - that she'd been taken. If the darklings had actually known in advance where the blue time was going to wrinkle, they could have flown straight to the spot and taken her away, deep into the desert where no one would ever find her again.

There was a third possibility as well: they could have simply eaten her on the spot, right in front of her grandmother's frozen, unseeing eyes.

"Come on, Jessica..." He tapped one fist against the hard, cold metal of the dashboard.

An endless, whispered count of sixty later, Jonathan swore, checked the rearview mirror for any sign of curfew-sniffing cop cars, and stepped out into the cold autumn air.

New flower beds edged Jessica's house, her father's latest project. He was getting into gardening in a big way, she'd said, trying to grow all the vegetables the family ate. Apparently he hadn't noticed that the season was changing into fall, the ground turning cold and hard at night.

Jonathan tried to step lightly on the overturned earth, wondering if Don Day's gardening efforts weren't just an excuse to look for footprints under Jessica's window. Jonathan cursed his Flatland heaviness; in the blue time he could have just floated over to the sill.

Voices. He ducked down.

He could hear Jessica speak, then someone answering. Muffled through the window, the voice's high-pitched insistence reminded Jonathan of a mosquito trapped under a glass.

His heartbeat settled a little. Probably only Beth. He eased his head up to peer inside.

They both sat on the bed, no parents in sight. Jessica was dressed, her little sister huddled in pajamas. Beth was still talking, waving her hands around frantically, as if warding off an attack of houseflies. Jonathan saw Jessica glance over at her bedside clock, where the approach of midnight was clearly displayed.

Why didn't Jessica just get rid of her? On a school night it had to be past Beth's bedtime by now.

Jonathan raised a fist to the glass, steeling himself to knock. Jessica wouldn't appreciate him announcing his presence in front of the little sister, especially on the very last night of her grounding. But Beth wouldn't tell her parents - Jessica's sister wasn't that uncool.

Besides, there were more important things at stake here.

According to the news, Cassie Flinders was thirteen, about the same age that Anathea had been when the darklings had taken her. Jonathan remembered how small she had been, almost disappearing into the darkling body they had grafted to her.

Of course, Cassie was no seer. She couldn't read the lore; the darklings wouldn't bother to make a halfling out of her. She wouldn't last very long in the blue time, except maybe for the fillings in her teeth.

He knocked.

Both sisters jumped at the noise, the sound of Beth's voice choking off mid-sentence. She stared at Jonathan's face in the window for a moment, then focused a cold gaze on Jessica.

As Jonathan pushed the sash up, he heard her whisper, "I knew it!"

Jessica just stared at him.

"Hey, guys," he said.

"Well, hey there, Jonathan," Beth said sweetly. "Just dropping by?"

"Jonathan!" Jessica groaned. "Couldn't you have..." Her voice trailed off.

He climbed in and looked from one sister to the other. Beth's eyes were narrowed, and Jess was staring at the floor and shaking her head. He sighed. "Look, I'm really sorry to interrupt, Beth. But something's come up. Something important," He looked at Jessica to emphasize that last word.

"You're sneaking out tonight?" Beth said, her whispering only making the words harsher. "You've only got one more day, Jess. Do you want to get grounded again?"

"Believe me," Jessica said. "I really don't."

"Listen, Beth, I only need to borrow your sister for..." Jonathan glanced at the clock. "Eighteen minutes. I promise she'll be back by then."

Jessica closed her eyes as Beth's stare swung across to the clock.

"Eighteen minutes?" Beth said.

Jonathan swallowed. Jessica's little sister didn't know anything about the blue time, of course, but she had an uncanny way of making you think she did. "Yeah. More or less."

Jessica stood, pulling her jacket from the bed. "Come on. Let's just go."

"Jessica," Beth whined.

"Look," Jessica said tiredly. "If you're going to tell Mom and Dad, go ahead. I don't have time for this."

"Jess, I don't want you to be in trouble," Beth whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. "I just want to know what's going on with you."

"I'm sorry, okay?" Jessica paused, as if struggling for words. "But I need to get out of here right now, and I can't explain why."

"And you're going to sneak out right in front of me?" Beth crossed her arms. "So I'll be in trouble too when you get caught?"

"That's your fault, Beth. I told you to leave half an hour ago."

"Can you at least explain when you come back... in eighteen minutes?"

Jessica sighed. "Sorry, Beth, I'd love to. I just can't."

"Got your flashlight?" Jonathan said, one foot already out the window.

She thumped a bulge in her jacket. "Yeah, right here."

They slipped out, dropping to the soft earth of the garden. Jonathan heard one last complaint cut off by Jessica's sliding the window closed and thought again how he couldn't wait for midnight gravity to arrive. Finally he would be unstuck from Flatland, able to fly again, and all little sisters would be mutely frozen.

And the darklings will come to life, he realized, checking his watch as they jogged toward the car.

Midnight was coming, all right. Way too soon.

"Why did you have to say that?"

"Say what?"

"That thing about eighteen minutes exactly," Jessica said. "It was kind of obvious, don't you think?"

Jonathan shrugged. The clock had said 11:42, and he could fly Jess back here by the end of the secret hour, midnight on the dot. He did see her point, though. Maybe he had been a little too precise about exactly when Jessica would return.

He sighed, watching a flattened armadillo flash past on the road. Listening to Dess talk math all afternoon had crowded his brain with numbers. "What's the difference, anyway?"

"Beth's starting to figure out that midnight's important." Jessica was staring out the passenger window. "She's noticed that I'm always getting ready to leave around twelve, and she's started showing up just before the secret hour starts. If I kick her out, she'll probably just go get Mom and Dad. It's like she knows. Ever since that night I shoved her in the closet - right at the stroke of midnight."

Jonathan chuckled. "Well, maybe you shouldn't shove her in closets."

"You're lucky - nobody but your father, and no hassle from him."

He winced a little at that and took one hand off the wheel, reaching out to her. She was nervously playing with Acariciandote, the bracelet he'd given her, and he stilled her hand. "That was my mom's, remember?"

"Oh. Sorry, Jonathan."

"It's okay. She ran off all the time, so it wasn't a huge surprise when she didn't come back. But you're lucky to have family."

She was quiet for a moment. "Yeah."

Jonathan wished he hadn't brought it up. Talking about this kind of stuff never helped. "Anyway, Beth probably isn't going to guess that time freezes at the stroke of twelve and a secret blue world full of monsters appears." Jonathan laughed. "She might be smart, but she's not that smart."

Jessica turned toward him. "You don't really mind her that much, do you? You like her."

"Sure. Don't you?"

"Yeah. But she's my sister. I sort of have to."

Jonathan chuckled again. "Listen. You guys used to get along before you moved here, right? You will again, once Beth gets used to the weird ways of Bixby. And yeah, I do like her. Since you introduced us, I feel like less of a stalker when I'm sneaking around."

Jessica drew closer, leaning her weight against him. "Yeah, it's been better since she got to know you. I think she trusts you. At least, she doesn't think you're a serial killer anymore."

Jonathan smiled, but the expression faded as he glanced at his watch: only ten more minutes before the blue time fell, and they were about that many miles from Jenks. He stepped on the gas, the old car shuddering as it accelerated. They had more important things to worry about tonight than little sisters.

They zoomed passed an old Chevy that was lumbering down Creek Turnpike. This far out of town the roads were almost empty, which meant that his father's car would be easy for his old friends in the sheriff's department to spot. He was sure that by now, they'd recognize it from halfway across the county.

Jonathan didn't know what he'd do then. Get stopped for breaking curfew, maybe go to jail again, and risk Cassie Flinders disappearing forever? Or do a grand theft auto, get the cops into hot pursuit mode, and get Jessica and himself into more trouble than Beth could ever have imagined?

Not a great choice.

Jessica cleared her throat. "Um, I hope you're not planning on going this fast when time freezes. Don't want to fly through the windshield, personally."

"Midnight's not for ten more minutes. Unless there's another eclipse."

She pulled away, sitting straighter in her seat and checking her seat belt. "Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me. Midnight can come at any time now."

"Yeah. Cool, huh?"

"Uh, no, Jonathan. Not cool. What if it keeps happening?"

He shrugged. "Then we get to fly around more."

She sighed. "You'd love that, wouldn't you?"

"What? More midnight? The whole world belonging to just us five? Less time in Flatland? Sure, I would."

"But we don't understand what's happening, Jonathan. On the phone Dess said something about the blue time changing completely. And today we didn't know if the eclipse was ever going to stop. It felt like the world had ended."

"Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen." He snorted. "And anyhow, look at it this way: if the world ends, you won't have to worry about Beth anymore."

Jessica just turned away, staring out the passenger window and not saying another word.

Jonathan frowned, wondering what he'd said wrong now.