The Secret Hour

“Overzealously,” she whispered to it.

Words tumbled through her head, some of which she didn’t even know the meanings of, scraps of language that had stuck in her mind because of the number or arrangement of their letters. Words weren’t really her thing, except when they collided with numbers and patterns, like stretching across a Scrabble board to grab a triple-word score.

What she wanted tonight was pretty straightforward: thirteen-letter words to boost the power of these pieces of steel.

“Fossilization,” she named a long, thin screw, the thread of which wound exactly thirty-nine times around its shaft.

The crunch of Rex’s boots came from right behind her. She hadn’t heard him approach, lost as she was in the pleasures of steel.

“If you were a slither, you’d’ve bit me,” she murmured. The foul little things didn’t exactly bite, of course, but close enough.

“Melissa’s found her,” Rex said.

Dess lifted an old hubcap up to the light. Trapped blue fire coursed around its rim.

“About time.”

“But she says we have to hurry. There’s trouble. Something big out there, or just nasty. Whatever it is, it’s giving Melissa a serious headache.”

Dess brought the hubcap close to her lips.

“Hypochondriac,” she whispered to it.

“You ready?” Rex asked.

“Yeah. This stuff’s all weaponized.”

“Let’s go, then.”

She stood up, clutching the hubcap in one hand and dropping the smaller bits of metal into her pockets. Rex turned and jogged to the edge of the junkyard where their bikes were stashed. He jumped on his and rode after Melissa, who was already headed down the road toward downtown. Of course, Dess thought. Jessica Day was a city girl. Her parents could afford to live close in, away from the badlands and the smells of oil rigs and roadkill.

Dess walked over calmly and pulled up her bike, mounted it, and began to pedal after the two. She didn’t rush. Melissa could only move so fast without losing her way as she cautiously felt for the trembling threads in the tenuous psychic spiderweb of midnight. And even with her crappy one-speed, Dess could beat either of them in a race. It would be no problem to catch up before the fireworks started.

She just hoped this wasn’t a wild-goose chase, a symptom of Rex’s begi

Rex had sounded pretty scared on the phone, though. So Dess had worn her sensible shoes. Ru

The hubcap rattled happily in the basket on Dess’s bike. She smiled. Whatever was out there, she wouldn’t have to run right away. The comforting weight of metal clinked heavily in her pockets, and Dess knew without counting how many weapons she had made tonight.

“Lucky thirteen,” she said.

They drew closer to the city, the wide, blank spaces of vacant lots and new developments giving way to strip malls and gas stations and, of course, her favorite store: 7-Eleven, a fraction also known as point-six-three-six-three-repeat-to-infinity.

Up ahead Melissa was going faster now, no longer feeling her way, apparently certain of the direction. Something was really giving off bad vibes tonight. Dess pedaled a little harder, swerving her bike around the occasional motionless cars that hogged the road.

Rex was right behind Melissa, making sure she didn’t crash into a car while she had her nose in the air. Melissa was a lot more functional here in the blue time, but Rex still hovered. Eight years of baby-sitting was a hard habit to break.

Dess saw a shape in the sky. Silent and gliding—a winged slither. Against the almost fully risen moon she could see the fingers in the wing. Like a bat’s, the slither’s wing was really a hand: four long, jointed finger bones spread out like kite struts, with paper-thin skin webbed between them.

The slither made a chirping call, a strangled little noise that sounded like the last cry of a stomped-on rat.

Answers sounded. There were more of them up there, a full flock of twelve. They were headed in the same direction as Dess and her friends.

Dess swallowed. It was probably a coincidence. Or maybe the little guys were just coming along for the ride. There were always some around, curious about the little tribe of humans who visited the blue time. They didn’t usually make trouble.

She looked up. Another flock had swept in to join the first group. She counted the dark, translucent shapes at a glance: twenty-four of them now.

Dess started counting aloud to calm her nerves. “Uno, dos, tres…” She knew how to count in twenty-six languages and was working on a few more. The rhythmic sounds of number-words soothed her, and she always found the different ways of dealing with the tricky teens amusing.

She switched nervously to Old English. “Ane, twa, thri, feower, fif…”

September the fifth. Nothing big was happening tonight, she was positive. Nine plus five was fourteen. And it was the 248th day of the year, and two plus four plus eight also made fourteen. Not as good as thirteen, but no bad karma there.

There were still more shapes in the sky. Their calls came mockingly from every direction.

“Un, deux, trois, quatre.” She switched to French, counting louder to drown out the slithers. Dess decided to go all the way to eighty, which was “four twenties” in French. “Cinq, six, sept…”

“Sept!” she said aloud, skidding her bike to a halt.

Sept meant seven in French and in a bunch of other languages too. (A septagon has seven sides, her brain uselessly informed her.) Sept as in September. She remembered now—way back in the old days, a thousand years ago, September had been the seventh month, not the ninth.

September fifth had once been the fifth day of the seventh month.

And seven plus five was twelve.

“Oh, crap,” Dess said.

She lifted from her bicycle seat, thrusting her right foot down hard against its pedal as she pulled up on the handles, straining to get the bike moving again. Melissa and Rex had gotten way too far ahead. On a night this serious, she and her weapons should be leading the pack.

A long, piercing cry sounded above her, and another thirteen-letter word came unbidden into Dess’s head.

“Bloodcurdling,” she whispered, and kept on pedaling.

9

12:00 A.M.

RUMBLE

The black panther roared again.

The sound felt loud enough to knock Jessica backward, but her feet were frozen in place. She wanted to turn away, to run, but some ancient terror had taken hold of her muscles, leaving them paralyzed. It was fear of the huge cat’s fangs, of its hungry roar, of the thin, cruel line of pink tongue that flickered out from its maw.

“Dreaming or not,” Jessica said softly, “getting eaten would suck.”

The beast’s eyes flashed bright purple in the moonlight. Its mouth began to twist and change shape, the two longest fangs stretching out until they were as long as knives. It crouched, gathering itself into a bundle of muscle, head lowered and tail raised high like a sprinter setting up to start a race. Its muscles quivered, the huge paws kneading the ground. The grating sound of claws scraping asphalt reached Jessica’s ears, sending shivers up her spine. When the cat sprang toward her, it became suddenly as long and swift as an arrow.

The moment it moved, Jessica was released from its spell. She turned and ran back toward the snakes.

Her bare feet slapped painfully against the asphalt, and the arc of snakes was arrayed across the street directly in front of her, so she veered off to one side, onto the softer strip of lawn. The snakes moved to cut her off, slithering into the high, uncut grass in front of a ramshackle old house. Jessica gritted her teeth as she ran, imagining sharp fangs piercing the soles of her feet with every step. When she reached the spot where she guessed the snakes were, Jessica launched herself into a long jump. The air rushed around her, and the leap seemed to carry her incredibly far. She leapt twice more, taking bounding steps until she reached the edge of the next driveway.