30

12:00 A.M.

TALENT

The white light swept across the crater floor, reducing the spiders to ash in its wake. Shrill, horrible cries rose up from the swarming army, like a thousand whistles blowing at once. The tide of hairy bodies turned away swiftly, pouring back up the snake pit's sloped walls. Jessica pointed the flashlight into the air, and the slithers that crossed its path burst into flame, suddenly red against the dark sky. She shone the light straight up to search for the darkling over their heads, but the creature had disappeared into the distance, howling.

A last few spiders crawled witlessly around the smoking bodies of their fellows, and she burned them one by one with the flashlight.

The white light seemed unreal and uncanny in the blue time, revealing everything in its true colors. The beam drove the blue from the landscape, returned the reds and browns of the desert, and turned the charred bodies of slithers and spiders a dull gray.

Even the moon above them seemed gray now, pale and unthreatening, washed out and emptied of its menace.

As the attackers retreated from the snake pit, the night grew silent. The clicking calls of slithers and the shrieks of the spider army faded, until only the howls of a few darklings could be heard, screams of pain and defeat in the distance.

"Turn that thing off!" Dess complained.

Jessica started when she saw her friends' eyes flashing angry purple in the light. Dess cowered behind her hands. Jonathan, Melissa, and Rex had all covered their eyes, their faces twisted in pain.

Only Jessica could stand the light.

She pointed the flashlight to the ground, then switched it off.

"Sorry."

One by one, blinking painfully, they dropped their hands.

"That's okay," said Rex.

"Yeah. Don't worry about it," Jonathan said.

"Call it even." Dess laughed, rubbing her eyes. "Not being spider food kind of makes up for the temporary blinding."

"Speak for yourself," Melissa said, rubbing her temples. "I had to taste your stupid pain along with mine."

"You really can do it," Rex said softly. "You brought technology into the secret hour."

Jessica's head spun. Her vision still danced with the colors revealed in the white light, the afterimages of burning spiders and slithers. The flashlight seemed to be tingling in her hand.

"Fire on tap," Dess said. "You're a darkling's worst nightmare!"

Melissa nodded slowly, looking into the sky. "That's true. They are not happy about this. Not happy at all."

Jessica looked at her, then down at the flashlight in her hand. "Yeah, but what are they going to do about it?"

Dess laughed. "You said it."

Jonathan put his hand on her shoulder. "It's true. You're the flame-bringer. This means you're safe now, Jessica."

She nodded. The flashlight in her hand seemed ordinary now, but when it had shone, something had surged through her, larger and more powerful than anything she had experienced before. She had felt like the conduit of something huge, as if the daylight world were flowing through her into midnight, changing everything.

"Safe," she murmured. Not just safe, though. What she had become felt bigger than that, and scarier, too.

"You know, Jessica, it's probably not just flashlights," Dess said. "I wonder what your limits are. I mean, maybe you can use a camera in the blue time."

Jessica shrugged, looking at Rex.

"There's no way of knowing," he said, "except to try. I mean, film is a chemical process, kind of like fire, I guess."

"Hey, just a flash attachment would kick butt."

"Or walkie-talkies!"

"What about a car engine?"

"No way."

The group fell into silence. Rex shook his head, dazed and happy, then looked up at the setting moon.

"It's late," he said. "We can figure this out tomorrow night."

Jonathan nodded. "I better get going. St. Claire's boys are on the lookout for me these days. Do you want me to take you home?"

Jessica sighed. She wanted to fly, to leave the horrible things she'd seen tonight behind on the ground. But she shook her head.

"I have to get back to the party. Constanza will flip if I just disappear into thin air."

"Okay. See you tomorrow?"

"Definitely."

Jonathan bent forward to kiss her, and gravity left her body at the touch of his lips. As he pulled away, her feet settled back onto the ground, but her stomach still danced inside her.

"Tomorrow," she said as Jonathan turned and jumped, soaring out of the snake pit. Another bound took him high into the air, then he disappeared into distance and darkness.

"We'd better get moving too," Rex said.

"Sure," Jessica answered. "I'll be okay."

"You look better than okay." Dess laughed. "Wipe that smile off your face, Jessica Day."

Jessica felt herself blushing and pulled her jacket tighter.

"Do you know the way back to the party?" Melissa asked quietly.

"Yeah." She pointed. "Moon sets in the west, so back that way."

"Not bad, Jessica," Dess said. "You're starting to get the hang of midnight."

"Thanks."

"Let's clean up some of this stuff, guys," Rex said. "We left a bigger mess than usual." Dess and Melissa grudgingly agreed.

"I should get back to the party," Jessica said. She hefted the flashlight in her hand. "I guess I'll be safe."

Rex nodded. "Thanks for coming here, Jessica. For trusting us."

"Thanks for telling me what I am," she answered, then frowned. "Whatever it turns out to mean in the long run, at least I'm not a totally useless midnighter, you know?"

"I never thought you were."

It wasn't long before she reached the bonfire. Walking directly took only five minutes, just like Dess had promised.

Jessica had never seen a frozen fire before. It didn't look like much. The bluish flames cast no light, were barely visible except as a warping of the air, like ripples of heat in the desert.

She didn't want to look at the frozen people, especially their faces, which seemed ugly and dead, like a bad photograph. So she peered closely at the fire, reaching out a tentative finger to touch one of the flames.

The heat was still there, but muted and soft, like a sound from the next room. Her touch left a glowing mark suspended in the air, as if the red flame were trying to poke its way through into the blue time. She pulled her finger back. Where she had touched it, the frozen flame was red now. That one spark of light stood out against the blue veil that lay across the desert night.

As the moon set, Jessica slipped back into the shadows.

Midnight ended.

The cold wrapped around her suddenly, and she shivered in the light jacket.

The fire pit jumped into motion - conversation, laughter, and music blurting to life as if Jess had opened a door onto a party. She felt smaller; the world had suddenly grown crowded, pushing her back into the shadows.

"Jessica?"

Constanza was peering out at her from the fireside.

"Hey."

"I thought you were 'taking a walk' with Steve," Constanza said, smiling. "Didn't think I'd see you for a while."

"Yeah, well, he turned out to be kind of a creep, actually."

Constanza took a few steps nearer, hands disappearing into pockets as she left the fire behind her.

"He what?" Constanza looked closer, her eyes widening as she saw Jessica's electrified hair, her bloody knuckles, the dirt on the jacket and dress. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"Oh, I'm sorry about your clothes. I didn't - "

"That creep!" Constanza cried. "I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

"Well, it wasn't exactly his - "

"Come on, Jess, I'm taking you home."

Jessica paused, then sighed with relief. The last thing she wanted was any more partying tonight. "Yeah, sure. I'd really appreciate that."

Constanza thrust her arm through Jessica's and walked her toward the cars.

"These Broken Arrow boys are really too much sometimes." Constanza sighed. "I don't know what anyone sees in them. They think they're so cool, but they're so out of control."

"Nice fire, though."

"You like bonfires?"

"Yeah."

"Well, good. Maybe sometime we'll - "

A voice came from the darkness in front of them. "Hey, there you are."

Jessica's feet froze in midstride. It was Steve, making his way back from the cars where he'd led Jessica. She felt Constanza's hand tighten on her arm.

"You totally disappeared there, Jess. Kind of freaked me out." He took a few steps closer. "Hey, what happened to your - "

He never saw it coming; Jessica hardly saw it herself. In one fluid motion Constanza released her, took a step forward, and punched Steve in the face.

He stumbled backward, tripped on his own feet, and landed on his butt on the hard ground.

"Hey!" Constanza took Jessica's arm and resumed their march toward the cars, continuing where she had left off.

"We'll get together with some decent Bixby boys and have a party out on the salt flats."

Jessica blinked and felt a laugh gurgling up inside her. "Uh, yeah, that'd be fun."

Steve's protests faded behind them.

"Nothing like a desert bonfire to keep warm," Constanza proclaimed.

Jessica smiled and pulled her friend a bit closer for warmth.

"Great idea," she said. "I'll bring the matches."