Read Online Blue Noon by Scott Westerfeld - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Scott Westerfeld
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chaos of scribbled numbers and mindcaster swirls. “So what happened to that girl?”
“Midnight happened to her, Jonathan. It opened up and swallowed her.”
“So she’s where now?”
“Well, she should have come out of it when time started again, when the sun hit her. Unless she was taken somewhere.”
“Melissa said the darklings were headed that way.”
Dess blinked. “They only had twenty-one minutes and thirty-six seconds.”
“So she might still be okay?”
“Yeah, probably. Unless…”
Part of Dess’s brain wanted to explain the whole thing to Jonathan: about snow on TV screens, the big bang, and the shapes of galaxies and tea leaves. About how you could know how something was going to happen in the future by looking into the dregs of the past, so maybe the darklings had predicted exactly where it would happen, exactly where their young prey would fall between the cracks of time. They could have lured her away to someplace dark and underground….
She didn’t have a chance to say a word before another set of images rushed into her mindalso straight from the Discovery Channeland Dess found herself silent and shivering in her chair.
She wasn’t thinking about the big bang anymore.
She was thinking about the food chain.
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 watch11:38. “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 teetha 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 orif that didn’t workthe eventual arrival of sunrise would push her back into regular time.
Of course, there was also the possibility that Cassie hadn’t wandered offthat she’d been taken. If the dark-lings 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
“Midnight happened to her, Jonathan. It opened up and swallowed her.”
“So she’s where now?”
“Well, she should have come out of it when time started again, when the sun hit her. Unless she was taken somewhere.”
“Melissa said the darklings were headed that way.”
Dess blinked. “They only had twenty-one minutes and thirty-six seconds.”
“So she might still be okay?”
“Yeah, probably. Unless…”
Part of Dess’s brain wanted to explain the whole thing to Jonathan: about snow on TV screens, the big bang, and the shapes of galaxies and tea leaves. About how you could know how something was going to happen in the future by looking into the dregs of the past, so maybe the darklings had predicted exactly where it would happen, exactly where their young prey would fall between the cracks of time. They could have lured her away to someplace dark and underground….
She didn’t have a chance to say a word before another set of images rushed into her mindalso straight from the Discovery Channeland Dess found herself silent and shivering in her chair.
She wasn’t thinking about the big bang anymore.
She was thinking about the food chain.
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 watch11:38. “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 teetha 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 orif that didn’t workthe eventual arrival of sunrise would push her back into regular time.
Of course, there was also the possibility that Cassie hadn’t wandered offthat she’d been taken. If the dark-lings 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
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