Watchers

Jonathan was the one that stated the obvious question. They had left the car in the communal street parking, with a well-fed meter sitting beside it. They didn't have as much money as they might've had before, but it was enough to keep the car there until they returned to wait out the last few seconds until the Secret Hour came. Now, he and Melissa were wandering the crowded, loud, streets, he acutely missing his lower gravity and Jess as usual.

After about ten minutes of walking down random streets, he finally opened his mouth and asked.

"How are we gonna find them?"

He wasn't sure if the Mindcaster had heard him at first: she had the usual pained expression she wore when there was a lot of mind noise swamping her head, and the headphones were on, so he couldn't tell if she had heard either the mental or vocal versions of his question.

However, after about a minute after the question had been tossed out in the open, Melissa finally replied. "None of the other places that we were at had many Midnighters, and none of them Seers. We can't find them by sight, so we do the same thing we've been doing everywhere else: feel for their minds at midnight."

"What if there's no one here?" Jonathan asked anxiously as they passed a Mercedes that wouldn't have been out of place in the garage of the Greyfoots.

Truth be told, this had been nagging at him for a long time now. At all the towns and cities they had had few Midnighters, if any – and more often than not, there were none. And as town after town went by, his fear of that happening here increased.

"Dess said that there would be about 100 Midnighters here in the city, Flyboy. She hasn't been wrong before."

XxX

The driver of the Mercedes was bored, to put it mildly. Until the blue time came, there was nothing of real importance to do, and even when that came, there was no Lore, only the "words" of Ari.

Even as he came out of the store that his car was parked in front of, he caught a flash of . . . something . . . and turned his head so he was looking down the street. Two people, marked so heavily with Focus that they stood out amongst the masses of daylighters.

What were they? Had the darklings and slithers marked them and made them so bright? Or were they others like him and the rest?

Frowning behind his sunglasses even as the wind tousled his blonde hair, he diverted his path and followed them, staying close enough that he could see them, but if they looked back he would just look like another pedestrian.

Even as he tailed them, he noted the Focus around them – a boy and a girl, both in their late teens – was strong. If it had been darklings, they must've rubbed all over them. However, the things he was seeing were too strong to be simply darkling. This was natural Focus, coming off of Midnighters.

And the strange thing was this: he had no idea who they were. He had never met them, or known of them being here.

Frowning, he ducked back. Something was up. He had to meet up with some of the others, loathe as he was to admit it. They could think of something to explain them, or figure out if they were the other Midnighters Ari had been telling them about. Turning his feet to match his new direction, he walked back to his car, got it, and took off as fast as the traffic and the speed limit would allow him.

XxX

Sure enough, once he entered the library parking lot, he knew at least two of the others were there – the car enthusiasts that were drooling over the black Ferrari Enzo and the dark blue 911 Porsche Turbo on the far end of the asphalt were enough to convince him. Shaking his head as he pulled in close by – none of the goggling people noticed – he wondered why they went anywhere in those stand-outs, then rejected the thought just as fast as it had appeared. One of them just really liked expensive cars, and one had gotten it for a birthday gift two years prior. In either instance, there was little chance in them getting new ones.

As he walked through the doors of the library, three Focused people came into his eyesight: one sprawled in a leather chair reading, another shelving books, and the third helping out the one doing the shelving. However, the latter seemed to paying equal attention to the shelving girl herself as he was the books, which was causing her to become slightly flustered.

The Seer ignored this, and simply walked straight up to the girl, knowing that she was the one to inform first. The boy – whom he noticed had still neglected to shave, despite the desperate need he was in for that – turned his head sharply towards him when he picked up on his thoughts, eyes surprised. He quickly touched the girl's bare forearm, and she rapidly looked around, and started as she spotted him. And why not? He hardly came in here.

"What is it, Chris?" the girl asked, her voice low, her blue eyes behind her sunglasses glinting seriously.

"I found two more. They aren't from here; I've never seen them."

The girl frowned, somehow still looking as pretty as she always did when she wasn't presented with something she couldn't figure out. She glanced at her companion, all tense feelings gone, and he closed his red-flecked green eyes to concentrate. Out of the corner of his eye, Chris saw Joel leave his chair and walk over, summoned by a mental message from Jake.

"What is it?" Joel asked in a low tone of voice – this was a library after all.

"Two more of us. Chris spotted them; he didn't recognize them," Jake butted in, which resulted in a glare from the Seer.

"What are they?" Joel asked.

"I'm not sure. We can't be sure until we catch up to them during the Secret Hour and we can see them," Lauren replied. A glint appeared in her eyes, the one that Chris hated to see. "We should get the rest of us together and try to figure out the best course of action. Same place, tonight?"

"Sounds good," Jake said enthusiastically, backing her up as usual. Chris gritted his teeth. One thing that he discovered, and already Lauren Swann was turning it into a group affair.

Still, he pushed the feeling down as Lauren continued. "I'll track down Noah and Kang after my shift is up, and I'll get Anthony too. Joel, you should probably find Kit and Mai. Jake should find Stephan, and Chris, can you get Caspian?"

The three other Manhattan Midnighters nodded as Lauren listed off the other members of their group. Since the city was huge, and they didn't want to reveal their presence just yet to these new Midnighters until they were able to decide on how to do so, they had to make sure they were all able to get the message.

"Just what is going on here?"

Slowly, the group of teens turned around to see Lauren's white-haired boss, Ms. Wintrope, glowering down at them from behind her half-moon glasses. She had a bad temper when her younger employees were slacking on the job or talking to friends when they should be working, along with having – as Lauren and Jake had begun to suspect – a cruel sense of humor. Joel had once questioned Chris if she was a Mindcaster like some of the others were after hearing the Mindcaster and the Acrobat complain about some of the instances when they had begun to suspect that, but a quick Focus scan had confirmed that she was simply a daylighter.

"My friends just wanted to remind me of something we're doing after my shift's up," Lauren said quickly, her eyes pulling off her classic "good-girl" appearance. "They were just about to leave, right guys?" she continued even as she cued them to follow her lead with her eyes.

"Yeah, that's right," Jake chimed in, taking his cue from the female Midnighter. Chris realized with some irritation that she had said that to get them moving on finding the others, and thus make the meeting inevitable. I really hate it when she does that.

"Well, be off, then!" the white-haired woman said with an irritated look that harbored no argument. "Lauren, when you're done shelving, I need you up at the desk."

The Acrobat shot an apologetic look over her shoulder as she got back to work and her boss stalked off. "Better scram, before she gets back," she mouthed over at them. Knowing full well what they might be in for if Ms. Winthrope caught them here still distracting her, the three of them took off, looking for the other Midnighters. Only Jake glanced back at her.