Burning Midnight (18 page)

Sully held the spoonful of Campbell's chicken noodle soup to Hunter's lips. “Hunter, you have to help me. If you don't eat, we'll have to take you to a hospital. We won't have a choice.”

Her eyes a thousand miles away, Hunter opened her mouth ever so slightly. Relieved, Sully slipped the spoon into her mouth, which closed around it. “There you go. Good girl.”

Sully couldn't take his eyes off Hunter's skin. It shone, reflecting the kitchen's overhead light. She was terrifying and breathtaking.
El Ángel
come to life.

Her arm seemed better. Either she'd only bruised it or the Golds had healed it.

“I think I want to die,” Hunter whispered. “If I decide for sure, will you help me?”

Sully slipped another spoonful of soup into her mouth, fighting against the despair threatening to swallow him.

“We'll get through this,” he said. “I love you, you know?” His own words startled him. He'd never said that to anyone besides his mom.

Hunter's eyes focused on him. “You do?” She nodded. “That's nice. No one's loved me in a long time.” She sounded like a little girl, the way she said it.

Sully kissed the side of her head. “Whatever this is, fight it, okay? Don't let it beat you. You're a ninja.”

“Yeah,” Hunter whispered, as if that was the best idea she'd ever heard. “I am a ninja.”

She was the only one who'd had the courage to burn the Golds. Maybe living on a razor's edge her whole life, she was the only one desperate enough for the sort of salvation you could only find in spheres. Sully suspected it had never been about money for her. It had always been about the spheres themselves.

When Hunter let out a tight shriek, Sully realized he'd dozed off on the couch. He checked the clock: 3:22 a.m. Hunter was sitting on the floor, rocking, one hand over her eyes.

“I don't want to see any more colors. Anything else. Show me anything else.”

Looking bleary-eyed, Mom came out of her room in a bathrobe. “Why don't you sleep for a couple of hours?”

Sully desperately wanted to take his mom up on the offer, but she'd been up with Hunter most of the night before.

They could really use some help, but that would mean Dom or Mandy, and it was possible Dom's dad would never let him leave the house again, except to go to school. Sully had missed the entire week; he refused to leave Hunter for a minute, and Mom hadn't once suggested he should.

Mandy's parents had no idea about any of what had happened. They still thought she'd spent those three days at Virginia Tech. Now she was back at school.

Hunter inhaled sharply. She stood, looked around for a moment, then disappeared into Sully's room. Sully and Mom watched the doorway until she reappeared, carrying two Army Green spheres, a couple of commons that were just about the end of Sully's stock. She returned to her spot on the couch, drew up her bare legs, and rested the spheres on her knees.

“How are you doing, sweetie?” Mom asked.

Hunter stared at the spheres.

“She doesn't need a doctor,” Mom said. “She needs a psychologist. She reminds me of a soldier coming home from combat.”

“They're like sperm and egg,” Hunter said.

“What?” Sully asked.

Hunter gestured at the spheres. “They come together inside you.”

Just the thought gave Sully a crawling feeling. “You're saying they give birth to something inside the person who burns them? I've never heard that idea before.”

Hunter turned her luminous gaze on Sully. “It just popped into my head.” She looked at the ceiling. “You know what?”

“What?” Sully asked.

Still staring at the ceiling, Hunter stood. Sully and Mom followed as she dragged a chair from the kitchen and set it in the little hall that connected Sully's room and the bathroom. She climbed onto the chair and pushed away the panel that covered the crawl space in the ceiling. Hoisting herself up, she disappeared.

There was nothing up there. Sully had checked it out once, but the space was just a latticework of two-by-fours over dusty insulation.

“Hunter,” he called, “what are you doing?”

She didn't answer.

“If we took her to a psychologist, do you think we could get him or her to promise to keep quiet?” Sully asked.

Hunter reappeared before Mom could answer. She dropped onto the chair and hopped down, holding a Ruby Red. White, even teeth. Rarity level two.

“Where did you get that?” Sully asked.

Hunter pointed up. “Under the insulation. In the corner.”

Sully peered into the dark. “How did you know it was there?”

Hunter followed his gaze. “I don't know.”

Sully's heart began to beat slow and hard. She'd found the sphere as if she knew right where it was, like she had built-in sphere-detecting radar.

“Oh, my God,” Mom whispered.

“Do you think you could find another like that?” Sully asked.

Hunter frowned in concentration. “There's a Lemon Yellow not far away.” She pointed. “That way.”

“Oh, my God,” Mom repeated, pressing a palm to her forehead.

Sully fetched Hunter's coat, pulled the hood up to hide her face. “Let's see if we can find it.”

He had no doubt they would. The mystery was solved. Gold: the ability to locate other spheres. In a million years he wouldn't have guessed.

Hunter gasped.

“What is it?” Mom asked.

“I know where there's another. No—two more.”

Sully grabbed his coat.

They should have brought a bag. Sully's arms were so full of spheres he couldn't open the building door. Giggling, he set them on the stoop as gently as he could. A Lavender rolled into the bushes. He would get it later.

Inside, they piled the spheres on the couch. Mom was shaking. “My God, this is better than if you'd sold the Golds. Except for what it's done to Hunter.”

Hunter looked like she was about to throw up.

Sully touched her back. “How are you feeling?”

“I'm here and I'm not,” she said. She pulled off her parka, swept her brilliant hair away from her face. “I don't know how to describe it. I get these flashes. Shafts of color that make the strangest sounds. Then I'm moving very fast, going on and on. Sometimes I think something and it makes no sense. It's not even words.”

Mom was listening intently.

“You seem to be a little better, though,” Sully said.

Hunter shook her head. “I don't think I'm getting better. I'm getting used to it.” She pressed a palm to her chest, tilted her head, as if straining to hear something. “I can feel it inside me. I can hear it.”

“What?” Sully asked.

“
It.
The Gold. It's inside me, and it's never coming out, because it can't.” She pressed both hands to her face. “It can't live on its own. That's why they always give us something: they're paying rent.”

Mom sat next to Hunter. She'd gone very pale.

“You're saying
everyone
who's burned spheres has something living inside them?” Mom asked.

“It's beautiful, in a way. If you think about it just right, at just the right angle, it's beautiful.”

Sully wasn't sure he could find that angle. He wasn't even sure he believed Hunter. Then again, there was no denying the dazzling hue of her skin. It was as if she'd become half Hunter, half sphere. Or half alien.

The idea made his skin prickle.

Hunter drew her legs up and hugged them. “It wants me to see this as a beautiful thing, but I'm not sure I can.”

Sully looked at his mom, trying to sense what she was making of this. Was Hunter delusional? Or was she communicating with whatever had been born inside her when she burned the Golds?

“Is that how you know where spheres are hiding?” Mom asked. “Because it's telling you?”

Hunter considered. “More like it's
showing
me.” She picked up one of the spheres they'd found—an Auburn. “Can we get Dom and Mandy over here? I want them to see I didn't cheat them.”

Sully parked Mom's station wagon in the Yonkers High parking lot and ducked down so no one passing by would see he wasn't getting out of the car. He watched for Dom's Camry.

This would be his fifth consecutive day of missing school. He wasn't exactly a stellar student; it was going to be hard to catch up when he went back on Monday.
If
he went back on Monday.

Drop out.
Holliday's words echoed in his head.
Those who can't do, learn.
Maybe it wasn't the worst advice in the world, given the situation. He and Hunter could spend all day harvesting spheres.

It was still hard to grasp that there was no need to hunt, that they could just drive around and pluck the spheres from their hiding places.

Mom would not be happy if he dropped out, though. Maybe if he had Dom's parents it would be easier to ignore what they wanted, but Sully had a wonderful mom, and he hated to repay her by dropping out when trying hard in school was one of the few things she asked of him.

Dom's Camry pulled into the lot, a plume of black smoke in its wake. It was amazing the thing had taken them to Mexico and back.

Watching in his side mirror, Sully waited for Dom to draw close, then rolled down the window.
“Dom.”

Dom looked his way. Sully motioned at the passenger door. “Get in.”

As Dom slid in, he gave Sully a dark look. “We've been friends our whole lives. You meet a girl, and suddenly you're on her side.” He squeezed his eyes closed, lifted his hand and made a fist. “Millions of dollars, Sully. Millions. And it's all gone. I can't just forget that and move on like it never happened.”

Sully pulled out and headed toward Rockland Avenue. “I didn't take her side because I like her. I took it because she was
right.
Holliday and his goon were coming through the door. Holliday would have taken them, and we would have had nothing. I wasn't going to let that happen again.”

Dom sprang forward in his seat. “
We ended up with nothing anyway.
Unless you count Hunter having gold skin and going crazy as something. Besides, you took her side
before
they broke down the door.”

“No I didn't. I said we needed to keep our options open. You were the one who was saying Hunter's idea was off the table.”

“That's because it was a bad idea.”

Sully pulled up to a stop sign. He looked at Dom and smiled.

“What?” Dom said. “You think there's something funny about this?”

“Yes. But I know something you don't.”

Dom studied his face. “What's that?”

Sully drove on. “You'll see. I promised not to tell. Call Mandy. See if she can sneak out of school.”

Sully turned the knob, motioned for Dom to go first, then pushed the door open.

There were spheres all over. Almost a hundred of them. Mom hoisted a milk crate of Lemon Yellows and Lavenders. She was sorting them by color.

“Holy—” Dom said, taking it in. “Where did you get these?”

Hunter appeared from the kitchen carrying a glass of Coke. “I told you I'd make it up to you.”

“I don't understand. Where did they come from?”

“Hunter knows exactly where spheres are hidden. That's the power the Golds gave her,” Sully said.

Dom clutched his heart. “You're serious? Oh, my God.” He ran to Hunter and hugged her, then ran to Sully and hugged him.

“Where's mine?” Mom asked, opening her arms. Dom ran over and hugged her as well.

“Except that's not exactly the power they gave me,” Hunter said. “At least, that's not what it's meant to be. It's a side effect.”

“A side effect?” Dom looked around and spotted their best finds lined up on the couch: Sky Blue (sense of humor, rarity four); Indigo (enhanced eyesight, rarity five); Periwinkle (good with numbers, rarity six); and good old Plum (erase memories, rarity six). “That's some side effect. What's the main effect?”

“Mine is talking to me,” Hunter said.

“Your
what
is talking to you?”

Hunter shrugged. “Whatever they are. My alien, I guess.”

Dom looked skeptical. “What's it saying?”

She took a sip of Coke. Her hands were shaking. “I'm still trying to figure that out, but I'm pretty sure it's telling me I need to find the other Midnight Blue.”

“There are only two?” Sully asked.

Hunter nodded. “Two Midnight Blues. Two Golds.”

That's what Sully had figured. Now he knew for sure.

“You know where it is?” Mom asked.

Hunter nodded. “It wants me to burn the Midnight Blues. I don't know how I can do that, since Holliday has the other one. And anyway, I don't think I want to.” She closed her eyes, swallowed. “But it says if I do, something wonderful will happen. And not just for us.”

It felt like something was crawling down Sully's back. He was beginning to think they were in way over their heads.

“Hunter, I'm scared,” Mom said, echoing his unease. “I think it's time we tell the authorities what happened.”

“That would be a mistake,” Hunter said.

“Why? Why would it be a mistake?” Mom asked.

Hunter shrugged. “I'm just telling you what it said.”

Mom froze. “It can hear me?”

“I guess so. Or maybe it's hearing me think about what you said.”

There was a knock on the door, which Sully had left open. Mandy was standing in the doorway, her hand still raised, gaping at the spheres all over the living room.

Sully motioned her in, turned back to Hunter. “Do you know what the wonderful thing is? Is it a third wave?”

She looked toward the ceiling, her lips moving silently. “Yes. But these will be bigger.”

Mandy was looking from Hunter to Sully. “What's going on?”

“Well, let's see,” Dom said, finger to his lips. “How do I summarize this? Hunter says she's talking to the alien inside her. It told her where the other Midnight Blue is, and says if she burns the Midnight Blues something wonderful will happen.”

Mandy absorbed this. “The
alien
inside her?”

“That's what she said.”

“Do you believe her?”

Dom looked slightly stunned. “Do I believe something is talking to her?” He shrugged. “She turned gold. She can find marbles. I figure that earns her the benefit of the doubt.”

“No, I mean, after what happened to her when she burned the Golds, do you believe something wonderful will happen if she burns the Midnight Blues?”

“It doesn't matter,” Sully said. “Holliday would never give us the Midnight Blue, so we'll never know unless we find the other and sell it to him so he can burn them.”

“Holliday can't burn them,” Hunter said. “I'm the only one who can burn them.”

Mom headed toward the kitchen. “That's it. I'm calling the authorities.”

“Whoa, hang on, Mrs. Sullivan,” Dom said.

Sully beat her to her phone, which was sitting on the counter.

Mom looked like she was going to cry. She held out her hand for the phone. “It's too big, Sully. It's too serious.”

“We're not getting both Midnight Blues, so nothing is going to happen,” Sully said. “Except we're going to find a buttload of spheres, and we're all going to be rich. Think about it: if they take Hunter away, no more spheres.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Hunter padded into the kitchen in her socks.

“Of course.” Sully slid an arm around her waist.

Hunter fixed Sully's mom with her luminous gaze. “Please don't call anyone. We're the ones who found the Golds, so we're the ones who get to use them. Not Holliday. Not the government. That's how it's supposed to be. That's the rule.”

“It sounds to me like the rules are changing.” Mandy was still in the living room, hands on her hips. “Since when can only one person burn a pair of spheres? I don't like this.”

Looking pained, Mom turned to Hunter. “Just don't do anything without asking me first, okay?”

“Sure,” Hunter said. “You got it.”

Dom held up a canvas shopping bag he'd found in the living room. “Come on, I'm dying here. Let's go find more marbles.”