The Secret Hour

She pulled her bike back to the main street and climbed onto it, shading her eyes with one hand for a moment as she looked back. The face had disappeared, but Jess recognized the thirteen-pointed star on a plaque mounted next to the door. Dess had been right: they were everywhere in Bixby.

An old woman emerged from the house, wearing only a wispy nightgown that clung to her frail frame in the light breeze. She was clutching something to her chest, a long, thin object that glimmered in the sun.

“Get away from my house,” the woman shouted in a voice that was bigger than her tiny body.

“Okay, sorry.” Jess started to pedal away.

“And don’t come back tonight either,” a final shout followed her down the street.

Come back tonight? Jessica wondered as she rode. What had the old woman meant by that?

Jessica shook her head, checking her watch. The marks on the tree proved that the secret hour was real. She had to face the fact that something really had tried to kill her last night. And she had to find out how to protect herself before the blue time came again.

Jessica rode fast toward downtown.

She hated being late.

12

11:51 A.M.

ARROWHEADS

As they drew closer to downtown Bixby, Rex could feel the car slowing. He glanced at Melissa, whose hands gripped the steering wheel.

“It’s okay, Cowgirl,” he murmured. He tried to think calm thoughts, hoping it would help.

It wasn’t a real downtown, like Tulsa or Dallas had, just a handful of five- and six-story buildings that included the town hall, the library, and a couple of office buildings. On a Saturday the workplaces were empty. There would be a few people at the expensive shops on Main and lining up for the first shows at the restored 1950s cinema. That was about it.

But crowded or not, downtown sat right in the center of Bixby, surrounded by rings of housing developments. As they drew closer, the densest part of the city’s population encircled them. It wasn’t nearly as bad as school, but it always took Melissa a minute or so to adjust to the accumulated weight of those minds.

Soon her knuckles relaxed on the wheel.

Rex took a deep breath and leaned back into his seat.

He stared out the window, pulling off his glasses to look for signs.

They were out there. Lots of them.

Usually it was pretty clean this far from the badlands. With his glasses off, the city should have been one big reassuring blur. But Rex could see marks of visitation everywhere—a house that stood out with strange clarity from its neighbors, a street sign that he could easily read with unaided eyes, a slithering path across the road that shimmered with Focus, the sharp edges that revealed the touch of inhuman hands.

Or claws, or wriggling bellies.

The signs of midnight were here, where they shouldn’t be, creeping closer toward the bright lights of downtown. Rex wondered what the darklings and their little friends were up to. Were they testing their limits? Growing in number? Showing a sudden interest in humanity?

Or were they searching for something?

“What do you think she is, Rex?” Dess asked from the backseat.

“Talentwise?” He shrugged. “Could be anything. Could be another polymath.”

“Nah,” Dess said. “I’m in trig with her, remember? She’s hopeless. Sanchez had to explain radian measures to her three times this week.”

Rex wondered what radian measures were. “Trigonometry isn’t really part of the lore, Dess.”

“It will be one day,” Dess said. “Sooner or later arithmetic has to run out of steam. Like obsidian did.”

“That’ll be a long time from now,” Rex answered. He hoped it would, anyway. Trig was beyond him too. “Anyway, Jessica only just got here. She could take a while to find her talent.”

“Come on,” Dess said. “You guys tracked me down when I was eleven, right? By that time my mom and dad were letting me do their taxes for them. Jessica’s fifteen, and she can’t handle high school trig? She’s no polymath.”

“She isn’t a mindcaster either,” Melissa said.

Rex glanced over at his old friend. Unlike the blurry dashboard and passing background, Melissa’s face was in perfect midnighter Focus. Her expression was grim, and her hands gripped the wheel hard again, as if the old Ford were passing a busload of brawling five-year-olds.

“Probably not,” he said mildly.

“Definitely not. I could taste it if she was.”

Rex sighed. “There’s no point arguing about it now. We’ll find out what she is soon enough. She could be a seer for all I know.”

“Hey, Rex, maybe she’s an acrobat,” Dess said.

“Yeah, a replacement,” Melissa joined in.

Rex glared at her, then put his glasses back on. Melissa’s face went a little blurry as the rest of the world sharpened, and he turned away to stare out the car window.

“We don’t need an acrobat.”

“Sure, Rex,” Dess said. “But wouldn’t a full set be better?”

He shrugged, not taking the bait.

“Collect ’em all,” Melissa added.

“Listen,” Rex said sharply, “there’s lots more talents than the four we’ve seen, okay? I’ve read about all kinds of stuff, going back as far as the Split. She could be anything.”

“She could be nothing,” Melissa said.

Rex shrugged again and didn’t say another word until they reached the museum.

The Clovis Period Excavation Museum was a long, low building. Most of the museum was underground, sunk into the cool, dark shelter of the red Oklahoma clay. With its single row of tiny windows it looked to Rex like one of those bunkers that rocket scientists cowered in while they tested some new missile that might explode on the launchpad.

This was the first weekend of the school year, so the parking lot was almost empty. Later in the day there might be a trickle of tourists, and in a month or so the school trips would start. Every student within a hundred miles of Bixby made the visit at least three times during their school career. It had been on a fifth-grade trip that Melissa and Rex had first come here and begun the process of discovering who and what they were.

Anita wasn’t at the ticket and info desk. The woman sitting there was new and looked up suspiciously as the three of them walked through the door.

“Can I help you?”

Rex fumbled in his pocket, hoping he’d remembered to bring his membership card. He found it after a few anxious moments. “Three, please.”

The woman took the crumpled card from him and eyed it closely, one eyebrow raised. There was the usual wait as she looked them over, her eyes tracing his black coat and the girls’ clothes, trying to think of a reason to keep them out.

“Anytime this year,” Dess said.

“Pardon me?”

“She said that the membership should be good throughout this year, ma’am,” Rex offered.

The woman nodded, lips pursed as if all her suspicions had been confirmed, and said, “Well, then, I see.”

She punched a key, and three tickets emerged from a slot in the desk. “But you-all watch yourselves, y’hear?”

Dess snatched the tickets and was about to say something, but an older man in a tweed suit came through the staff door behind the desk, interrupting her just in time.

“Ah, it’s the Arrowheads,” Dr. Anton Sherwood said with a chuckle.

Rex felt the tension leave him. He gri

“Got anything for me today, Rex?”

Rex shook his head, taking a moment to enjoy the confusion on the ticket woman’s face. “Sorry, we’re just here for a quick visit. Anything new to look at?”

“Mmm. We got a new biface point in from Cactus Hill, Virginia. Looks like a good candidate for a Solutrean link. It’s in the pre-Clovis case on this floor. Let me know what you think.”