The Secret Hour

28

12:00 A.M.

CEREMONY

Jessica followed Rex down into the center of the snake pit.

The ground was damp down here. This morning in the library Dess had explained to her how sinkholes formed. Somewhere below them was an underground pocket of water trapped between layers of stone, which had collected back when the Bottom had been a lake. The crust of sand beneath her feet was thinner here than across the rest of the Bottom and had partly collapsed into the pocket of water a few decades ago.

Jessica walked carefully, wondering if the snake pit was planning on collapsing the rest of the way anytime soon. With her luck, it would probably pick tonight.

At the center, the lowest and dampest part of the pit, a shaft of stone thrust up from the ground. Dess had said it had been buried for a long time, maybe thousands of years, before the formation of the sinkhole had exposed it to the sun again. The stone had been important to the people who'd fought the darklings in the old days, before the creatures had retreated to the secret hour.

It was about as tall as Rex, with a flat shelf jutting out from it about halfway up. A little pile of rocks sat on the shelf. Rex swept them away.

"Kids," he said.

"Lucky there's no stiffs tonight," Melissa said. She turned to Jessica. "Some nights you have to crawl over them to get anything done."

"Yeah, I heard about people coming here at midnight."

"They do," Melissa said. "We like to give them a scare, just to keep them out of the way next time, you know?"

"I'm sure you do."

Melissa smiled. "It's for their own good."

Rex was tracing his fingers across the stone, staring intently at it.

"This is one of the places where the lore changes," he said to Jessica. "I try to come here pretty often."

"Changes? You mean, the lore's different on different nights?"

Jessica took a step closer, trying to see the signs that Rex was reading. All she saw was rock, divided into separate layers of different hues. In the blue light they were all shades of gray.

He nodded. "Yeah. Every time I read the signs here, there are new stories." He thumped the rock with one knuckle. "There are a lot of tales stored in here, and only so many show up at once."

"So it's like the screen of a computer," she said.

Melissa snorted, but Rex nodded again. "Sure. Except you can't make it tell you what you need to know. It tells you what it wants."

"Unless you ask it really nicely," Melissa said.

She pulled a black velvet bag from her jacket and drew a knife from it.

Jessica swallowed. "How does this work, anyway?"

"The rock just needs a little taste of you," Melissa said.

"A taste," Jessica asked. "As in it's going to lick my hand?"

Melissa smiled again. "More of a bite than a lick."

Rex turned to Melissa and took the knife from her hand. "Stop it, Melissa. It's not that big a deal."

He turned toward Jessica.

"A few drops of blood will do."

She drew a step away. "Nobody said anything about blood!"

"Just from your fingertip. It won't hurt that much."

Jessica clenched her fist.

"Come on, Jess," Melissa said. "Haven't you ever become a blood sister with someone? Or made a blood oath?"

"Uh, not really. More of a cross-my-heart kind of girl."

Rex nodded. "Actually, the crossing of the heart was originally a blood oath. They used a knife in the old days."

"The hope-to-die part was a lot more literal back then," Melissa said.

"These are not the old days," Jessica said. "And I don't particularly hope to die."

"What, are you too wimpy to cut your finger?" Melissa asked.

Jessica scowled. After everything she'd been through that night, no one was calling her a wimp. Certainly not Melissa, anyway.

"Okay. Give me the knife," she said with a sigh.

"Let the blood collect right here," Rex said. He pointed at a small depression in the shelf of rock, no bigger than a quarter.

Jessica inspected the knife. "Is this thing clean?"

"Absolutely. Nothing inhuman has ever - "

"Not that kind of clean," Jessica interrupted, trying not to roll her eyes. "Disinfected clean."

Rex smiled. "Smell it."

Jessica sniffed the knife and caught a whiff of rubbing alcohol.

"Just go easy, okay?" Rex said. "We only need a few drops."

"No problem." She looked at her hand and curled it into a fist except for the ring finger. The knife glistened in the dark moonlight, and she could read the tiny words stainless steel on its shaft.

"Okay," she said, preparing herself.

"Do you want me to do it for - "

"No!" Jessica interrupted him.

She swallowed, gritted her teeth, and pulled the edge across her fingertip. Pain shot up her arm.

As she watched, blood welled up along the cut. Even in the blue light of midnight it was a fresh, bright red.

"Don't waste it," Melissa said.

"Plenty to go around," Jessica muttered. She held her hand over the shelf of rock and watched as a drop gradually formed on the fingertip, wobbled tenuously for a moment, then fell into the little bowl of stone.

A hissing sound came from deep inside the rock. Jessica jerked her hand away.

"More," Rex said.

She reached out carefully, letting another drop fall into the bowl. The hissing grew louder as the blood ran. She felt a tremor build under her feet.

"Okay," Rex said. "Maybe that's enough."

The shaft of stone in front of Jessica was trembling. Sand was slipping down into the center of the pit from all sides, and she had to pull one foot free, then the other.

"Is this what's supposed to happen?"

"Um, I don't know," Rex said.

"We never actually did this before," Melissa admitted.

"Great."

"I mean, it's usually pretty obvious who has what talent," Rex said, backing away from the stone. It was shaking harder now. Dust rose up from the ground around them, and Jessica heard a huge gulping sound from beneath her feet.

She imagined the water below, cold and dark and waiting for centuries.

"So when should we start running?" she called over the rumble.

With a sharp boom the shaft of stone cracked before them, a fissure splitting it from top to bottom.

"I guess about right now!" Rex yelled.

Jessica turned, scrambling upward. The sand slid under her, carrying her back down the slope.

Suddenly the rumbling stopped.

The three of them came to a halt, looked at each other, then turned toward the stone.

"Nice going," Melissa said. "You broke it, Jessica."

The stone had actually cracked in two, a thin fracture running its entire length, but the trembling had stopped completely. Dust swirled around them, and lightning still flashed from the perimeter of the pit, but it seemed almost silent after the earthquake.

Jonathan landed softly next to Jessica, and she heard Dess running down the slope behind her.

"What happened?" he asked.

Jessica held up her finger. "I cut myself. Then things got earthquakey."

Rex ran back down to the stone. He peered closely at the shelf.

"It worked," he said softly.

Jessica came up beside him, staring into the little bowl. Her blood had twisted into long threads, turning dark and staining the rock. The threads of blood formed a symbol, what looked to Jessica like a crescent-shaped claw holding up a spark.

"What does it mean, Rex?"

He paused, blinking.

"Two words, linked together... flame-bringer."

Jessica shrugged. "Which is what?"

He took a step back from the stone, shaking his head. Jessica turned around, looking at the other midnighters. They all looked as puzzled as she was.

"I don't know," Rex said. "Flame-bringer? There's no such talent."

"There is now," Jonathan said.

"Well, it better be something good," Dess announced. "Because in about five minutes we've got company."