Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (23 page)

“What did you want to talk to me about?” I
asked Heather.

“I know you said not to write this down, but
you’re just going to have to deal. Because I really can’t right
now. So here,” she shoved a small spiral memo pad at me. “It’s a
list of all the Talents I know about. Names and abilities, and I
made notes about who knows I know, who knows each other, stuff like
that. It’s a lot of information—more than I can figure out. But
probably Rob can do something with it. Or get some machine to work
it out.”

“So why are you giving it to me? I thought
you were going to talk to Rob.”

“You are so clueless,” Kat said. “She can’t
just go up and start talking to Rob.”

“I’ll call him up and talk to him. Tell him
what we’re doing, what we need his help with, explain your part in
it—”

“No, don’t do that!”

“What—?”

Kat gave me her hands on hips exasperated
look. “How would you have liked it if we’d called up Dylan, told
him you can bench press a truck with your brain, and made you guys
meet up for some lame-ass project?”

“What does Dylan—? Oh.”
Oh, okay, Heather
likes Rob. Yeah, I totally missed that.

“And imagine what Rob would think if I
happened to show up with all this information I shouldn’t know.
He’d think I could read minds or something. And yeah,
that’s
attractive. At least when Dylan found out what you could do he
thought it was totally hot.”

“He did?”

“Not so shiny now, though, is it? Trouble in
paradise?” Kat asked.

What the hell?
I knew I’d pissed her
off, but damn, did she have to be so
mean
about it? Would I
be that way if I thought someone had insinuated bad things about
Dylan?

Maybe.

“Joss, can you stop thinking about Dylan for
a minute?” Heather wanted to know.

Kat’s phone beeped and she looked at the
incoming text. “That’s Eric. He’s waiting for us where we asked him
to meet us because we couldn’t tell him about your precious secret
hide-out.”

I didn’t say anything. What was I supposed
to say, thank you?

“Let’s go,” Kat said to Heather.

I didn’t make any move to follow them, and
it felt like they let the grate down over the pit with an extra
clang. Kat was right, I’d now managed to alienate all three
non-family members I actually cared about. Plus my actual family.
It felt like I kept screwing up. Had I really left home over these
guys when it was so easy for them to judge me and turn their backs
on me?

But the only one I could really focus on was
Dylan. He was the only one I could think about, the only one I
really needed.

I had to find a way to make things right
again.

* * *

Dylan

“That girl is here.” Mom barely stopped to
say it as she passed my room, and then I heard her door slam.

Gee, I wonder who it could be.

Joss was standing in the doorway, studying
the tops of her boots and acting like she was afraid to come in.
Which made me feel bad. For like half a second, before I remembered
why I was pissed off at her.

Breakable. Fuck that. Maybe I couldn’t throw
furniture around or tear up a kitchen, but I’d saved her ass more
than once, and then she tells me I’m not bad-ass enough to have her
back?

Nice to know how you really feel.

“What are you doing here?”

She flinched, but looked me in the eye. “Are
you busy? Today, I mean.”

“Yeah. Saturday’s the day I rearrange my
sock drawer.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Can you go somewhere?
With me.”

“Where?”

“Can you just give me a few hours of your
day? Please.” It was the same no-nonsense tone she usually used,
the one with the underlying hint of impatience that pushed back at
you. But it softened a little on the please, just a little crack
that told me this was hard for her.

“Fine,” I heard myself saying. Damn. She was
mostly right. Not breakable, but already broken.

Half an hour later we were still driving. I
didn’t know Joss had a license, but she shrugged and said something
about her dad and being prepared for anything. She handled her
parents’ car well enough, more confidently than some kids, on the
twisting road up the mountain.

“Are you looking for a convenient place to
dump my body?” I asked her.

“If I were planning to kill you, I’d have my
disposal site picked out already.”

“Of course you would.”

“We’re almost there.”

She stopped at a little general store place
that mostly sold food and drinks to hikers and campers, parked the
car near the end of the lot, and got out without saying anything to
me. When I joined her, she was pulling a pretty big daypack out of
the trunk. She hesitated, giving me an uncertain glance that I
didn’t react to, before slinging it onto her back and buckling the
straps.

“We have to walk from here.”

“Is there anything for me to carry?”

“No, I got it.”

“Fine.”

Her eyes swept the area, a quick assessment
that must have assured her no one was taking any interest in us.
She turned from me and set off into the woods.

I kept looking, when I could, but didn’t see
any kind of trail markers. There was a trail, a very faint one, but
I wouldn’t have been able to follow it on my own and probably
wouldn’t be able to find my own way back. I was at her mercy now.
But that was nothing new.

I kept up. Barely. Even with the heavy pack,
Joss had no trouble picking her way over the rough ground. She
never looked back to see if I was still with her, a vote of
confidence I appreciated—until I realized she must be able to hear
me crashing along behind her.

Our path zigged and zagged its way up the
mountain, I think as much to ease the rate of the climb as to make
it harder to follow. By the time we emerged in a clearing, the
muscles in my legs were starting to burn, and I was sweaty and
short of breath.

Joss shoved a water bottle at me, and I took
a big drink while I didn’t help her with the pack. It bugged me how
out of breath she was not. She took the bottle and drank after me,
and then wiped the sleeve of her jacket across her mouth like a
guy.

It made me smile.

“What?”

“You’re just…not like other girls.”

Her cheeks got pink, and she bit her lip and
turned away to rummage in the pack. I hadn’t meant it as an insult,
but whatever.

Okay, yeah, so I felt bad for how I was
acting. But I didn’t want to feel bad about it.

Or maybe I just didn’t know what I
wanted.

Next thing I knew, she had grabbed one of my
hands and was shoving it into a boxing glove.

“What the hell are you doing?” She gave me a
d
uh
glance and went back to what she was doing. Since I
didn’t fight her on it, she made quick work of getting me
outfitted. “Why am I wearing boxing gloves?”

She was tightening the straps on hers with
her teeth, so I had to wait for my answer.

“Hit me.”

“What the fuck, Joss, is that why you
brought me all the way out here? I’m not going to hit you. You’re
out of your mind.”

“You want to hurt me, just hit me.”

She said it calmly, didn’t hurl it at me in
anger, didn’t whine, and it hit me right in the gut. It was one
thing for me to know I was being a jerk, it was another for her to
come right out and say it was working.

I swallowed something that felt stuck in my
throat. “I’m not going to hit you,” I told her, raising the glove
to my mouth to loosen the strap.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and there was a snide
tone that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “I meant:
try
to
hit me.” And she socked me in the shoulder.

“Cut it out. This is dumb.”

“Dylan, come on. You know I’m not going to
get hurt, remember?” She held up a hand. “Just hit my glove.”

I rolled my eyes at her, and took a
half-hearted shot at the glove. My hand felt like it was stuck in
Jello for a moment before the feeling went away and my glove
glanced lightly off hers. She was using her Talent to focus the air
into a block like she’d done when we’d fought Marco. I hadn’t been
on this end of it before.

“See? Just spar with me.”

I shook my head, but raised my hands up in
front of my face, mirroring her stance. “That’s great, you’re safe,
but who’s going to protect me from you?”

“Protect yourself,” she told me, taking a
swing that I blocked easily. “Just me, no Talent behind it.”

“This is stupid. I don’t hit girls,
Joss.”

“You’re not hitting me, we’re sparring. And
what are you going to do when Marco recruits a girl scarier than
Angie or Bella? What if there’s a female version of Marco out there
and she decides to pound on you?”

She got under my guard and caught me hard in
the ribs. I grunted and glared at her. “I thought you said just
you, no Talent.”

“That was just me.” She actually grinned.
“Pay attention.”

I swung, but I telegraphed it so she had
plenty of time to block or dodge. Again, my glove had to break
through whatever it was she did with her mind. By the time I felt
it give, she had stepped out of the way, and I overbalanced. She
cuffed me on the back of the head.

“Hey!”

“Now actually try.”

We stalked around each other, and traded a
few, light hits. She was right, I couldn’t actually hurt her. She
was too practiced at this, and I could tell I was only reaching her
at all because she was letting me.

And then she wasn’t letting me anymore. She
was light on her feet, and her jabs were quick and mean, more
powerful than I would have expected, although I shouldn’t have been
surprised. Mostly she was pulling her punches, only hitting me hard
enough to make me know I got hit, while she ducked and wove and
danced out of my reach. She was wearing me down.

I dropped my guard at the wrong moment and
she socked me In the jaw. Hard.

“Keep your hands up and tell me why you’re
letting me hit you.”

“I’m not
letting
you do
anything.”

“I can’t hit what I can’t see.”

“That would be cheating.”

She covered her face with her gloves. “Is
this, like, some kind of a guy code thing?”

“Uh… I don’t know. Yeah?”

“’Cause it wouldn’t be manly to wink out and
be invisible during a fight.”

“Well, no.”

“So, when you and Marco were slugging it out
and he was driving his fists at you with the force of a wrecking
ball, you had to stay visible because it just wouldn’t be manly to
hide in a fight. And that’s why you stayed visible and let Tony
burn you
and
your jacket.”

“Well, if I’d thought I was going to lose
that jacket, I might have considered it.”

She snuck another one past me and boxed my
ear. “Idiot.”

“What’s your point, Joss?”

“Besides that you’re an idiot? That you’re
not looking at this the right way at all. It’s like it’s okay for
other people, like me, for example, to use their Talents
defensively, but not for you. Just because of what your Talent is.
It doesn’t even occur to you to use it, even when you really need
to, because it violates some kind of code in your head. But those
guys don’t deserve your ethics. Fighting isn’t about winning fair
and square. When someone attacks you, it’s about surviving.”

I’m sure there was a moment, while I
realized she was right, where she could have busted my nose. But
she didn’t.

“How fast can you do it? How much
concentration does it take? I mean, can you do it and still pay
attention to other stuff? Does it make you tired? What’s harder,
going in and out, or just staying out? Can you do just part of you,
or does it have to be all of you?”

“Slow down! What’s with all the questions
all of a sudden?”

“I’ve been curious, I just haven’t asked
yet. I mean, I’ve been thinking a lot, about how I look at things.
About how I’ve been taught to look at things and how different it
seems from everyone else. And what are we going to do when NIAC
comes for us and here we are, too well-mannered to fight back?”

“Can we sit down to talk about this?”

She smiled. “Sure.”

We took off the gloves and Joss stuffed them
back in the pack. She pulled out a piece of canvas and tossed me
another bottle of water before spreading it on the ground. I
collapsed on it, and was kind of surprised that she kept her
distance when she joined me.

I’d already forgotten we were in a fight.
Which made it seem even more stupid.

“You think they’re coming for us?”

She shivered a little and took a drink from
her bottle to cover it. “If they had any idea how many of us are
here, yeah. They’re picking us off, one by one, because that’s how
they’re getting the information. But if they knew there were more
of us, they’d just come and round us up because they’ve really got
no reason to fear facing us
en masse
. They’ve got the power
of the federal government behind them, and we’re just a bunch of
small town kids.”

“Who don’t hit girls and always fight
fair.”

“Well…yeah.”

“Don’t you think that, if it was NIAC, if it
was life and death, or at least freedom or imprisonment, don’t you
think that would change things?”

“I don’t know. And I’m not saying this to
rub your nose in it or something, but…when it was Marco, when I
believed it could have been life and death, it still didn’t occur
to you to fight dirty.”

She had me there, and I didn’t have an
answer.

“I know that you never know what you’ll do,
what you
can
do,” she continued, “until it really is life
and death. I know that some people would just panic and run, and
then get caught, and others would step up, stand and fight, with
varying degrees of success.”