Free The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld Page B

glinted in the dark moonlight. Jessica knew that she was dead meat.
    Then something happened.
    A tiny flying saucer came screaming past Jessica, headed toward the panther. The object left a wake of blue sparks and electrified air. Jessica felt her hair stand on end, as if lightning had struck close by. The panther’s eyes flashed, wide and panicked, reflecting gold instead of indigo.
    The projectile burst into a blue flame that wrapped itself around the giant cat. The creature spun around and leapt away, the fire clinging to its fur. It bounded farther down the street, howling a menagerie of pain—lions’ roars and stricken birds, cats being tortured. The beast passed from sight around a corner, its cries finally fading into a hideous, tormented laugh like that of a wounded hyena.
    “Wow,” came a familiar voice, “Hypochondriac killed the cat.” The nonsense words were followed by a giggle.
    Jessica turned to face the voice, blinking away tears and disbelief. A few yards away, somehow invading her dream, was Dess.
    “Hey, Jess,” she called. “How’s it going?”
    Jessica opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
    Dess was astride a rickety old bike, one foot resting on the pavement, the other on a pedal. She wore a leather jacket over her usual black dress and was flipping what looked like a coin in the air.
    Jessica heard a hissing noise from below. A few dark squiggles were wriggling their way toward Dess.
    “Snakes,” she managed to croak.
    “Slithers, actually,” Dess said, and flipped the coin into the dark shapes.
    It pinged against the ground among them, raising a single bright blue spark, and, with a chorus of thin screeching noises, the snakes scuttled back under the car.
    Two more bikes rolled into view.
    They were ridden by Dess’s friends from the cafeteria. The boy with the thick glasses pulled up first, only he wasn’t wearing glasses now. His long coat billowed around him as he halted, and he was breathing hard. Then the other girl who’d been at Dess’s table, whom Jessica had never met, pulled up.
    Jessica looked at the three of them blankly. This dream was getting weirder and weirder.
    “You’re
welcome,
” said Dess.
    “Be quiet,” the boy said breathlessly. “Are you okay?”
    It took a moment for Jessica to realize that the question was directed at her. She blinked again and nodded dumbly. Her feet hurt and she was out of breath, but she was okay. Physically, anyway.
    “Sure, I’m fine. I guess.”
    “Don’t worry about psychokitty; it’s gone for the night,” Dess said, looking after the departed panther. She turned to the boy. “What was it, Rex?”
    “Some kind of darkling,” he said.
    “Well, duh,” Dess said.
    Both of them looked at the other girl. She shook her head, rubbing her eyes with one hand. “It tasted very old, maybe even from before the Split.”
    Rex whistled. “That’s old, all right. It must be insane by now.”
    The girl nodded. “A few fries short of a Happy Meal. But still crafty.”
    Dess dropped her bike to the ground and walked over to where the cat had stood. “Whatever it was, it turned out to be no match for the mighty power of Hypochondriac.”
    She knelt and plucked a dark disk of metal from the ground.
    “Ouch!” Dess passed it from hand to hand, grinning. “Still sparky.”
    It looked like an old hubcap, blackened by fire. Was that the dazzling flying saucer of a minute ago?
    Jessica shook her head, dazed but slowly calming down. She was breathing evenly now. Everything was moving into more familiar dream territory: total craziness.
    Rex rested his bike on the street and walked to the side of the car. Jessica shrank from him a little, and he put up both palms.
    “It’s okay,” he said softly, “but you should probably get off the car. It looks like it’s going pretty fast.”
    “Come on,” Dess said, looking up at the sky. “It’s like a quarter till.”
    “It’s still not a good habit, Dess,” he said. “Especially