Heroes 'Til Curfew

  “I’m enchanted by your face,” he told me in a soft, muffled voice, “and everything else about you.”

  “Enchanted, is it?” I wanted to sound snarky and unaffected, but didn’t pull it off. Everything—his nearness, his lips on my neck, his voice in my ear—was making me feel stupidly happy, like I couldn’t decide if I wanted to sink back into some dream or turn and hurl myself at him. I looked up and concentrated on pulling the grate back into place over our heads. I needed to stop swooning over him before I made a complete ass of myself. “You know, I think that’s what they’re putting under my yearbook picture. ‘Joss Marshall: Enchanting.’”

  He hugged me tighter, chuckling. “Yeah, but that’s only because I paid them to. Trust me, the secret’s not out yet.”

  I struggled to turn in his arms, still on the bottom rung of the ladder and just a little taller. “Jerk.” I punched his shoulder for emphasis.

  “For now,” he whispered, combing his fingers into my hair, “you remain the enigma you’ve always been.”

  My eyelids dropped as he pressed his lips to my temple. You’re killing me, you know that?

  “And I’m the only one who knows,” soft kisses made a tingling path down my cheek, “how amazing you are.”

  But what’s a little death?

  When his lips covered mine, I actually made a noise—some kind of whiny, breathy, girly noise that would have been even more embarrassing except that Dylan seemed to really like it. The teasing vanished in that instant as he kissed me harder, urgently. His arms came around me, pulling me closer, which I needed so much. I needed to be pressed up against him, to feel as much of him as I could. I tried to hold back more of those sounds as I tightened my fingers in his hair and tried to get closer, to kiss him harder.

  His tongue slid into my mouth and I went weak all over, feeling like my body had been drenched in liquid heat. His hands slid up under my shirt, rough palms sliding over my skin, returning strength to my limbs with this wild need for contact, pressure. In my mind I was chanting, Please, please, with no idea what I wanted until his hand moved over my bra and squeezed gently.

  Too gently. He was kissing me and touching me and it felt so good, but still all I wanted—what I needed—was more. And then more.

  Dylan pulled his mouth from mine and yanked his hands away from me, pressing me back against the ladder.

  “I need a time-out,” he said breathlessly, wrapping his hands around the ladder and laying his head against my shoulder with his face turned away from me. We were both breathing hard, and I thought Dylan was shaking a little.

  I didn’t know what to say, or if I should say anything, or if I could even speak. But I wondered what had happened, and why he’d stopped. My Dylan-crush hyper awareness had tuned me in to enough locker room eavesdropping to know that this wasn’t new territory for him. So it must be me, right? Something I’m doing wrong?

  “Unless you’ve got a cold shower down here in your bunker, I’m just going to take a minute, recite some multiplication tables in my head, and try to pull it together before we go too far and wind up really embarrassed when Kat and Heather finally get here.”

  Oh, right. I remember those guys.

  Vaguely.

  “You drive me crazy,” he muttered.

  “Don’t act like it’s a long trip.”

  “Nice. So in an effort to keep me sane, let’s talk about something unpleasant. Like…do we have more patrolling planned for this weekend?”

  “Are you kidding me? After you almost got killed last night?”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “They. Bashed. Your. Skull. In. Uh-uh. Consider yourself retired.”

  I should have paid attention to the way he stiffened, the way he was already pulling away from me. “You mean, ‘consider us retired.’”

  To keep my mind off of the other stuff today, I had been thinking about how the patrol thing hadn’t worked out. Even though I hadn’t come up with much, it had been good distraction and I was glad to let the conversation go that way. “I’m not sure what to do now. I mean, clearly, I need more information, but confronting them last night didn’t get me anywhere. But it’s not like—” I cut myself off when he pushed back from me and settled against the wall across from me with his arms crossed.

  It was suddenly much colder.

  “I’m hearing an awful lot of ‘I’s here. I’m sorry, was I cramping your style? Let’s not forget what I was doing when I got my skull bashed, which was saving your ass.”

  Cramping my style? What the hell? “You know, a ‘Joss! Head’s up!’ would have been a lot safer way to go.”

  “Safer for who? What, did you expect me to just yell out and wait to see if you’d catch it before it landed on you? Jesus Christ, what kind of guy do you think I am?!”

  “Breakable!”

  There was a moment of silence that didn’t sound good, and made it really obvious we’d been yelling at each other. How did that happen? What was I thinking?

  “So. What I think I hear you saying is that I’m too fucking fragile—not to mention not altogether smart and quick-thinking enough—to accompany you anymore when you decide to go out and save the world. Because you’re Joss. Super powerful, Super-Joss, who’s always got it all under control and always knows just what to do.”

  “Dylan—”

  “Oh no, I get it. Totally. You can’t be worried about me and my breakable little self when you’ve got the fate of Fairview—and possibly the world—resting on your shoulders.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Yeah, well, a lot of things aren’t fair. A whole lotta things. You wanna move off that ladder so I can get out of your way?”

  I moved, because he’d told me to, before I realized what was happening and that I should have stayed and blocked his exit.

  “Where are you going?” I asked him as he climbed away from me. When I looked up, I could see Kat and Heather peering down through the grate. As they lifted it aside, I wondered how long they’d been there.

  “Home. Such as it is.”

  I wanted to try to bring him back, figure out what I’d just said and take it back. I couldn’t stand for him to look at me like that, to be mad at me. How had I messed things up so fast?

  But I couldn’t say anything, not with Kat and Heather there. Dylan barely looked at them and no one said anything as he climbed through the opening and stalked off. Heather and Kat came down, and I hoped it was dim enough that they wouldn’t see how watery my eyes were or how red my face was.

  “Well, nice job, Joss,” Kat told me, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Tell me, is there anyone you haven’t pissed off this week?”

  I so did not need her crap right now. “No, I think that pretty much completes the list, so I was thinking about going for round two. Wanna be first?”

  She actually laughed. “Well good. For a minute there I thought you were gonna cry and I’m still mad at you, so that would be awkward for me.”

  “Jesus, Kat, give it a rest,” Heather said, looking uncomfortable.

  “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 loo
k. “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 duh 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.”

  “Th
at 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.”