22

10:31 P.M.

DRESSED TO KILL

"Well, what do you think, Jess? Are we ready to go?"

Jessica stared at herself in the mirror. She recognized the red hair and green eyes, but that was about it.

Constanza had spent the evening doing a makeover on them both. She'd taken one look at Jessica's party outfit and decided to lend her a jacket. Then some makeup. Then a dress.

Spending a few hours trying on Constanza's clothes had turned out to be a lot of fun. There were two closets full of them, and a whole wall of her bedroom was covered with mirrors. Most of her things seemed to fit Jessica, and everything was beautiful or at least expensive looking. Constanza absolutely loved every outfit Jessica had put together. It was like being a regular teenager again, getting ready to go to a normal party instead of a snake pit full of evil creatures. Constanza played CDs and Jessica played dress-up, and it had been the first night all week that she'd been able to forget what time it was and what would happen when the clock reached twelve.

Now, looking at the whole ensemble, Jessica was surprised how little she looked like herself. In Constanza's thigh-length leather jacket, with just an inch of red dress visible below the hem, and the matching dark red lipstick, she looked more like Jess Shady than Jessica Day.

"Are you sure I don't look... too dressy?"

"Too dressy?" Constanza said. "As in too beautiful or too gorgeous?"

"As in too silly."

"Jessica, you don't look silly at all. You'll knock them dead."

"Who's them again?"

"The guys at the party. And these are Broken Arrow guys."

Broken Arrow was the next county over, where the boys were cuter, the grass greener, and curfew nonexistent, at least according to Constanza. And everyone was a senior, apparently.

Jessica felt weird dressing up like this. She never particularly thought about what she wore to school or even to go flying with Jonathan. She knew she didn't have to worry about that with him.

"So, do these guys have names?" Jessica asked. She was still a bit nervous about the regular-time dangers of a late night party full of strangers.

"I guess so."

"I mean, how well do you know them?" Jessica pushed.

"Rick, who invited me, is a friend of Liz, who'll be there."

Jessica sighed, reminding herself that the main point was getting out to Rustle's Bottom. Surviving the snake pit and finding out why the darklings were after her was the only thing that counted.

"Okay, I guess I'm ready. You look great too, by the way."

Constanza was wearing a houndstooth jacket and skirt with high-heeled boots. She clearly wasn't planning to run away from any darklings tonight.

"Yeah, not bad, if I do say so myself." Constanza swept her car keys from off the makeup table and headed out, calling good-bye to her mother.

Jessica dug into the pockets of the jacket she'd brought with her, fishing out a small flashlight, a compass, and a carefully folded piece of paper. Dess had given her the compass and drawn her a map of the Bottom to help her find the snake pit. After a second warning about stepping on snakes in the dark, the flashlight had been Jessica's idea. Around her neck she was wearing Obstructively, Jonathan's thirty-nine-link chain.

"Come on, Jess!"

She took a deep breath. Jessica hadn't mentioned the party to her parents and wasn't sure what would happen if Mom called after she and Constanza had left. Well, the worst they could do was reground her. Forever.

She looked at herself one last time in the mirror and practiced her tridecalogism of the night.

"Serendipitous."

On the way out to Rustle's Bottom, Jessica looked out of the car window to see a roll of razor wire passing by. She realized that they were driving along the fence around Aerospace Oklahoma.

"Hey, my mom works here," she said.

"You said she designs planes, right?"

"Just wings."

"That's so funny that your mom works and your dad doesn't."

Jessica shrugged. "Dad gave up his job in Chicago to come down here. He's always switching jobs anyway."

"That was pretty cool of him, though."

"Yeah, I guess. I think he's wishing he hadn't."

Jess sat up straight. A tall structure was looming ahead of them, alight and unfinished. It was the new building where she and Jonathan had taken refuge from the darklings. The construction was going late tonight, it seemed. The grid of steel was brightly lit, big lamps hanging from every girder, swinging in the autumn wind. It looked almost like it had in the secret hour, when the moon was setting and the whole building had suddenly ignited with white light, driving the slithers and darklings away.

"Hey, any new buildings at work?" she murmured softly.

"What?" Constanza asked.

"Nothing. Just something I forgot to ask my mom about."

Jonathan and Jessica had talked a couple of times about what had happened that night and about what might have saved them from their pursuers. Jonathan figured the building must be built of some new kind of metal. Jessica had told Rex and Dess the whole story, but they were busy planning the snake pit expedition and hadn't come up with any answers. Apparently Rex didn't know everything about the rules of midnight.

"I've been meaning to talk to Mom about her new job," Jessica continued. "But she's so busy there, I haven't been able to."

"Yeah, my dad's the same way," Constanza said. "Not that I'd want to talk to him about his job. Oil futures or whatever." She pointed ahead, her smile brightening. "Congratulations, Jessica, you are now leaving Bixby."

The town limit flashed by, and Jessica's stomach tingled. They weren't just leaving Bixby - they were headed out to the badlands.

"Next stop, the snake pit," she said to herself.

She checked her watch. Fifty-seven minutes to midnight.