He stepped back, waiting, hoping that this would work.
Midnight fell a few moments later, the moan of the cold wind switching off like a light, the blue time sucking the color from their faces. Jonathan felt the awful weight of Flatland lift up from him.
Same old midnight—damaged, unleashed from its proper boundaries, but not destroyed.
For a moment Jonathan wondered if they’d waited too long to try this and the rip had faded out. Beth just stood there in her circle of rocks, as motionless as any stiff.
But then her eyes blinked. “That was weird.”
“No kidding,” Jessica said from behind her little sister. She’d asked them to face the kid toward Bixby and had wisely chosen not to be standing in Beth’s view. She kept her right hand in her jacket pocket as well.
It still freaked Jonathan out how Jessica always folded out of the air as midnight fell. Even darklings and slithers had to escape from the sun, hiding in caves or burying themselves. But the flame-bringer had become something altogether different, a whole new kind of midnight creature.
She wasn’t frozen during daylight… she simply wasn’t.
Rex called it “temporal dependence.” Jonathan didn’t know what to call it. During the day it felt like Jessica was gone, like that first night when he thought he’d lost her to the lightning. He’d searched the roof for hours before trudging down the twenty-six flights of stairs to the ground floor, exhausted by Flatland, crushed by grief. It had been a whole terrible day before midnight had fallen again and he’d flown back up to Pegasus, hoping to find some kind of sign.
And she was standing there… still in shock, not realizing a whole day had passed without her. Alive.
But his joy had faded when midnight had ended again and they realized that Jessica was trapped now inside the secret hour.
Jonathan looked at her, feeling that fractured rush of relief again. For the last two years his life had been split in half, between glorious midnight and the crushing gravity of daylight. These days it was even worse: Flatland was much flatter without Jessica and the secret hour suddenly more precious.
Midnight stretched across the whole world now, after all. They could fly anywhere… in their one hour.
Beth turned around slowly, huddling in her jacket as if the air were still cold. She stared at Jessica.
“Come on, Flyboy,” Dess said. “Let’s give them some privacy.”
He caught Jessica’s eye, and she nodded.
Walking away felt like a kick in the stomach, giving up these minutes with Jessica. This was what he’d always tried to avoid since the day his mother had departed and not returned: this feeling that if you lost someone, your world could come crashing down. And it had happened again.
But at least Jessica hadn’t disappeared completely. She was only gone for twenty-four hours a day. And Jonathan knew he would hold on to that one hour left to them for as long as he could.
“Jess?” Beth said in a small voice.
“Yeah, it’s me.” Jessica felt tears on her face. She’d known the exact spot her sister would shimmer into view, but it still made her breath catch.
“You’re really… here.”
Jessica nodded. She wanted to gather her little sister into a hug, but for these first fragile moments she’d decided to keep her right hand in her pocket. “Yeah. I’ve been here all along.”
“Why didn’t you come home?”
Jessica bit her lip. “I can’t. I’m stuck here.”
“What? In Jenks?”
“No, in midnight. I only exist for an hour a day. I’m part of midnight now.” Jessica shook her head sadly. Maybe she’d been part of midnight since she’d woken up that first time in the secret hour. It had nibbled away at her life since then, until only this one sliver was left.
She felt a mental nudge from Melissa, standing close by, and stood straighter, swallowing her self-pity. Jessica had made her choice on that building top, after all, knowing that sticking her hand into the bolt of lightning would change everything.
“Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?” Beth said. “The whole time, you could have let me know.”
Jessica was ready for this. “Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”
“Tell them…?”
“About this. Are you going to tell them you saw your missing sister appear on some railroad tracks in Jenks?”
Beth thought for a moment, then shook her head. “They’d probably send me to a shrink.”
“Exactly.” Jessica nodded. “So you have to keep it secret. Like I did. That’s just the way it works. But Beth, at least you’ll know I’m… somewhere.”
“Somewhere isn’t good enough, Jess! You’re leaving me all alone.”
“I’m not. You’ve still got Mom and Dad.”
Beth clenched her teeth. “Mom cries all the time. She thinks it’s because she was working so much that you disappeared. And Dad’s an even bigger zombie than before.”
Jessica closed her eyes, her tears hot on her cheeks in the cool of the blue time. The thought of her parents missing her, not knowing what had happened, was too much to bear. “They need you, Beth.”
“They need you. Maybe they could come here and stand here like I did. I’ll think of some way to get them out to Jenks. I’ll make them come….”
“No.” Jessica took a step forward, put her left arm around Beth. “The rip is fading. And besides, I won’t be here anymore. Jonathan and Melissa and I are leaving Bixby.”
Beth kicked at the gravel, tears appearing in her eyes. “You are leaving me.”
“Midnight’s spreading, Beth. There are going to be more people like me, waking up and finding themselves in the blue time.”
“And lying to their little sisters?”
“Probably, at first.” Jessica nodded. “Right now they need our help.”
“I need you too, Jessica.” Beth was sobbing now.
“I know.” She drew her little sister into a left-handed hug and sighed. “I’m so sorry, Beth. Maybe it wasn’t fair, bringing you out here.”
Beth shook her head.
“But you’ll have to keep everyone in the dark, just like I did,” Jessica said. “You’ll have to lie about it.”
Beth raised her head. “Not to everyone. There’s Cassie.”
Jessica nodded slowly. “That’s right. She saw the rip, anyway. I guess you could tell her about me too.”
Beth sniffed once. “Already did.”
“What?”
“When Jonathan was trying to convince me to come out here. I had her spend the night, and she hid in my closet. And listened.”
A momentary wave of annoyance, all too familiar, went through Jessica. But then it turned into a feeling of relief and she let out a chuckle. “You little sneak.”
“There have to be more people in Bixby who know about all this, who’ve figured out how it works.” Beth pulled away a bit, staring fiercely into her sister’s eyes. “And believe me, Cassie and I are going to find them. Don’t think you’ve gotten away from us yet.”
Jessica looked down at her little sister, a smile spreading across her face, suddenly certain that Beth was going to be okay, with or without her big sister around.
* * * * *
Dess let herself wander along the tracks, looking into the trees, searching for any sign of life. It was almost too quiet these days; she wouldn’t mind the sight of a slither among the leaves. Certainly she was safe enough, between Counterfeiter in her pocket and the flame-bringer a few hundred feet away. Jessica hadn’t tried out her new, softly sparkling right hand on any darklings yet, but Dess was pretty sure she didn’t need a flashlight anymore.
Dess hadn’t slain anything herself in ages now. Why had they all run away? Darklings were like tigers, she figured. You didn’t want them eating you, but you didn’t want them going extinct. The world was less interesting without them.