Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (9 page)

I snorted at that as I made my way around to
the back of the building and the faculty parking lot.
You could
try, asshole.

The thing that surprised me was that he’d
meant
it. Fucking ungrateful piece of shit. We’d been like
brothers and he’d turned his back on me over a girl. I kept
thinking he’d get some of that, get over it, and come crawling
back. And I would have let him, too. After some heavy-duty
groveling and a few favors, I even would have put the fight and the
cracked rib behind us. Because we had history. But I was just done
with him now. When he got bored with that bitch—or she climbed back
up on her high horse and started ignoring everybody again—he could
just find someone else to watch his back for him because I was
done.

A hand clamped down on my shoulder and I was
almost jerked off my feet before Poe steadied me again. He was
always showing off like that.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“What do
you
want?”

“I gotta talk to your boss.”

“Oh yeah? Then ask nice.”

“I don’t need your permission, jerk-off. She
asked me to meet her.” I should have known she’d have at least one
of her goons with her. It seemed like she never made a move without
at least one of them. Poe, the fat slob, was a strength Talent like
me. I wanted to go hand to hand with him, take him down a peg, but
lucky for him I had way too many important things to do. Since I
always had to do everything. The other one, Richie, was a tall,
skinny guy whose curly hair made him look like some kind of
overgrown Muppet. I had no idea what his Talent was, but I was
pretty sure he had one. Vivian wouldn’t waste time on him
otherwise.

We rounded the corner into the faculty lot
in time to see the naughty nurse coming out the door. She pulled
the pins from her cap and pulled it off, yanking out the elastic
from her hair with the other hand. She shook her head, tossing wavy
red hair all over the place like she was walking through a
goddamned shampoo commercial. She flicked open a few buttons on the
dress, flashing some cleavage before she belted her little black
trench coat over it.

Poe and I met her at the car where Richie
was already waiting. “Get in,” was all she said before Richie
opened her door and she sank into the front seat. Poe gave me a
shove toward the car, just ’cause he thought he could, but of
course it didn’t affect me at all. I got in behind the driver’s
seat.

“What the hell happened last night?”

“That girl I told you about. Joss. She gave
the guys some trouble when you called Tony and me away.”

“You trying to blame this on me, Finelli?”
she snapped as Richie pulled out of the lot.

Only ’cause it’s your goddamned
fault.
“No, I’m just tellin’ you what happened.”

“How’d the cops get involved?”

“I dunno.”

“My guys at the precinct tell me it started
when one of them was chasing a speeder. Guy was driving like a
maniac. More cars got involved but they couldn’t manage to box him
in.”

“Sounds like Eric.”

“He was on your crew, right? One of the ones
who left you.”

“Yeah. He went with Dylan.”

She nodded in that way she had of not
saying
anything while trying to make me feel like a bug. I
was really starting to hate the bitch. She went on asking
questions, going over what had happened, which was a total waste of
time. Thanks to her Syndicate connections inside the police
department, she was just asking me to repeat stuff she already
knew. So did she want to find out if I was going to lie about it?
Like I’m that kind of an idiot. Or maybe she just wanted to make me
say it all because she knew I’d be pissed off about losing the
lair.

She was a hottie, but a real bitch on
wheels.

“So what are you boys going to do now?”

I hated the way Vivian called us “boys.” It
wasn’t like she was that much older than us. She just did it to put
us in our place, to remind us that she was hooked up with the
Syndicate and we were still knocking on the door, trying to come up
with a pay-off big enough to get in. I needed to get in with them.
I needed to get the hell out of this hick town and run with some
people who really knew about power and what to do with it.

Tony and I had been trying to find an angle
for months, just doing little shit. Our family had connections, my
mom, his dad, but both of them had moved to Fairview to try get
away from the life. And once you’re out, it’s hard to get back in.
We’d tried, and they’d told us we had to prove ourselves. Tony and
I had been in a competition to see who could do that first.

And I was doing really well. I was gonna
show them that I had leadership quality. I had a crew. We were
tight, organized, and they did what I told them to. Little shit
yeah, but I had a plan. I was building to something. The bank job
was going to be a big payday for me, and that was going to get me
noticed.

Until Dylan turned on me and fucked it all
up. Tore up my crew and made the bank job impossible. And all
because of that little bitch girlfriend of his.

“Marco, you fuck, are you even listening to
me?” I really wanted to punch Vivian in that pretty face of hers
but I stopped myself. The Syndicate had noticed what we were doing,
and now I had to work with her, impress her, if I was ever going to
get in with the big guys in Banner.

“I’ll find another place. Something better.”
I shrugged like it didn’t matter. “It was time to move on from
there anyway.”

“Whatever. Look, you need to get it together
and stop fucking up. So far I am not impressed.”

“Last night wasn’t part of the plan. We just
happened to run into Joss and we wanted to mess with her. Then when
Tony and I weren’t there, things got out of hand. It won’t happen
again.”

“Yeah, well, see that it doesn’t.” She
signaled to her goons with a jerk of her head. We were well away
from the school now, on a side street without any traffic. Richie
swung to the curb suddenly. Poe reached across me, popped the door
handle, and shoved me out of the car.

I stood there in the middle of the street as
it sped away, clenching and unclenching my fists. I wasn’t the one
fucking up. It wasn’t my fault Vivian had dragged Tony and me out
of there—for no good reason but just to see us run when she called.
I’d left those guys with one girl, tied up and blindfolded, and
they still couldn’t manage her. It was Joss screwing with my shit
all over again. Joss
and
Dylan. And I wasn’t about to let
them get away with it.

* * *

Joss

After school I looked for Dylan. At his
locker, as I moved through the halls, and I looked around when I
got outside. I was half afraid that I would find him.

“
Nope. Never.”

Well what did that mean? That was a joke,
right? Right?

I was trying to be understanding about the
whole avoidance thing, because, as much as I wanted to see him
right now, I was kind of feeling it too. But…
grrr.

“There you are!” Kat bumped into me, and she
and Heather caught me in a flanking maneuver.

“Wasn’t hiding,” I muttered.

“Imagine that.”

“Wish I’d thought of it.”

“Someone’s in a mood today,” Heather
said.

“You know exactly what kind of mood I’m in,
and I’ll thank you to keep it to yourself.” Heather always kept
stuff to herself, so that was unnecessary. It wasn’t her fault she
could hear all my thoughts, and she had really strict rules about
how she used her Talent. But I knew
she
knew that I’d been
replaying Dylan’s kiss in my head all afternoon, which made me
blush, which made me peevish. Which she also knew, so she could
just deal with my mood.

“Dealing!” she said, throwing up her hands
in mock surrender.

“Am I missing something?” Kat asked.

“Is that actually possible?” I replied.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t know
what took you so long. Come on. We’re going to the Pit. The guys
went on ahead of us, but Matt’s waiting to drive us over.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want pizza. Actually,
if we could go someplace else, I’d really like to talk to you
guys.”

“She wants to talk? She wants to talk! I am
totally missing something. And
you
know what it is.” Kat
reached around behind me to cuff Heather on the back of her
head.

“Joss’s mind is a complicated place. I’m not
really sure what she wants.”

Oh, nice, Heather. That’s so helpful.

“No problem.”

“Well, as much as I would like to engage in
the historic event of you talking
voluntarily
, we’re going
to have to do it at the Pit. My man is waiting for me, and he does
not like to be kept waiting.”

I muttered something rude that doesn’t need
to be repeated.

“Kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?”

I made a big-eyed
shut the hell up
face at Heather, but Kat didn’t even seem to notice. She was
heading for the twins’ SUV. Well, it would belong to both of them
if Maddy could ever pass her road test.

The last thing I wanted to do was hang out
at the Pizza Pit with a whole crowd of people. More specifically, I
didn’t want to go hang out with Dylan in front of a bunch of
people, trying to act like nothing was going on, since I still
didn’t know if there was anything going on.

I mean, obviously there was
something
going on.

“It’ll be fine,” Heather said, as we climbed
down from the truck.

“Care to expound?” I asked.

“Can’t.”

“Of course not.”

“What are you guys
talking
about?”
Kat growled. “It drives me nuts when you do that.”

She flounced off into the Pit, which was
getting crowded, and plopped herself down in Eric’s lap for a
sloppy kiss before sliding off onto the chair he was saving beside
him. Dylan was lounging in his long-legged sprawl pose next to
Eric, Maddy had the seat next to him. She looked at me when we came
in, pointed to her chair and raised her eyebrows like,
Want this
seat?
I shook my head slightly.

I didn’t make eye contact with Dylan. I
wasn’t there yet. Heather sat next to Kat, and I took the last
chair between her and Elizabeth. And then realized that this put me
directly across from Dylan. Damn.

A can of diet slid across the table and
bumped my hands. I picked it up and finally looked at him. He was
looking at me kind of weird. Part his concerned look, part his
don’t be mad
look…it was some kind of question, but I didn’t
know what it was. And Heather could tell me, because she was
sitting right next to me, but she wouldn’t.

“Thanks.” I popped the top and took a swig,
because my mouth was really dry, plus it gave me something to
do.

“Okay,” Kat announced as she rose, in a very
let’s get started
voice that immediately made me edgy. That
was all it took for me to know that this was not about pizza.
“Let’s get started.”

“On what?” I asked.

“The first meeting of the Fairview Talent
Society.”

“Will you shut the hell up and sit down?!” I
hissed.

“What’s your problem?”

“Kat,” Dylan said, “you might want to
re-think that name.”

“Did you
know
about this?”

He looked across the table at me, guilty.
“Sort of.”

“Okay, forget the name,” Kat said. She had
retaken her seat and was now leaning on the table. “We can vote on
a name later. The important thing is that we start to organize
ourselves. We Talents—”

“If you use that word in this place one more
time, I swear I’m going fix it so you can’t talk again for
weeks.”

“Joss!” Maddy sat up to start in on me.

“Don’t even. I cannot believe you guys.
What, you don’t like Fairview High? Think it’s gonna be
better…there?” My voice was pitched low, as private as I could be
in a place like the Pit, but unmistakably full of wrath. “Keep it
up, and you’ll find out.”

“But Joss,” Elizabeth said, quietly, “that’s
the whole point. We need to stick together if we’re going to
protect ourselves. And each other. Like at Kat’s party.”

Oh, Jesus. Like at Kat’s party, when NIAC
agents stormed in with Tasers and you animated a small army of
porcelain dolls to throw plates at them? Yes, let’s get together
and do that again soon. And now that Kat’s kitchen repairs are
finally finished, maybe I can rip out all the cabinets to barricade
the doors again. Ugh!

I pressed my hands against my head, not
wanting any more replay of that disaster. Yeah, we’d saved Phil
“Laser-Vision” Meeks from State School, but— “Maybe you guys
haven’t noticed, but what happened at that party brought us enough
attention to last a while. Disappearances are up—”

“That’s the point!” Eric cut me off.
“Disappearances are way up. Ever since that party, kids are being
plucked out of Fairview left and right.”

“And you want to give them a bigger target?
Make it easier for them to catch all of us at once. Hey, maybe they
could get a deal on a bus charter.”

“Joss,” Heather said soothingly, reaching
out to touch my hand which I yanked away from her. “I know you have
a personal style, a way of dealing that you’re used to. You have a
comfort zone. But the fact is that you’re the one who’s most
qualified—”

“Yeah,” Matt cut in with way too much
enthusiasm, “you’re the most kick-ass Talent we’ve got!”

“Hey! Pipe down, Matt,” Dylan growled.

“What are
you
even doing here?” Matt
was asking him.

But I was already way more than done. I
leaned into the table and kept my voice steady. “I suggest that you
all shut up and go home. Don’t sit here anymore, in a big group
where everyone can see you and knows who you are. Don’t continue to
talk about your private business where you don’t know who’s
listening. Don’t talk about it outside on the street, on the way to
your vehicles. Just stop talking and go think about why this was a
bad idea. I’m going to work. Don’t follow me. Don’t come by the
store later. Don’t try to call me.”