Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2)

Heroes ’Til Curfew

Smashwords Edition

© 2011 Susan Bischoff

All rights reserved, including the right to
reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

http://susan-bischoff.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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of this author.

Cover Art by Robin Ludwig Design Inc.

Authors note:
This book is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, or persons living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.

Contents

Titles in the
Series

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Come Find me

Impulse
Control
(excerpt)

Red
(excerpt)

Glimpse
(excerpt)

The Talent Chronicles

Hush
Money

Heroes ’Til Curfew

Heroes Under Siege
(forthcoming)

Also

Impulse Control
(short story)

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following
talented people:

Kait Nolan, gifted author and dear friend,
who continues to be THE person who makes me finish what I
start.

Andrew Mocete and Claire Legrand for careful
reading, enthusiastic feedback, and unconditional support.

Stacey Wallace Benefiel who, as it turns
out, is as awesome at beta reading as she is at crafting
stories.

Lauralynn Elliott, author and friend, who
came in with an amazing, last-minute proofreading effort.

Robin Ludwig, Robin Ludwig Design Inc., for
a cover so exciting it made me want to write a book that was
worthy.

My husband, Les, who continues to put up
with a lot.

And my daughter, Briar Rose, whose boundless
creativity is inspiring.

Chapter 1

Joss

Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean
no one’s out to get you.

The thought went through my head in my dad’s
voice—I was that well programmed. That’s why I’d varied my
schedule, to throw off my stalker.

As I walked down the brick-paved road that
ran through the middle of the downtown pedestrian mall, my own
boots were the only ones I could hear beating the pavement. The
feelings I had weren’t the sensations of being followed and watched
that I had become familiar with over the last month or so. Tonight
was different.

It’s not like I’m that kind of psychic. I
don’t have any kind of extra-sensory perception or anything. It’s
just that, since I was a little kid, my dad trained me to pay
attention to my surroundings. At some point that kind of training
turns to instinct—an instinct that warned me something was up.

The economy of our town was not great, and
downtown was especially bad. Yeah, here and everywhere else in the
country, right? That left a lot of empty storefronts on the mall, a
lot of darkened glass windows that showed my reflection as I walked
by, a lone, dark-haired girl in a vintage army jacket and combat
boots, faking confidence in her stride.

Our store was at the far end of the mall and
I had to walk the whole length of it to get home. I was happy when
my dad started letting me walk home by myself, because I loved
walking it, the feeling of freedom in the night air, the quiet, the
glow of the converted gas lights. But making enemies, getting my
ass handed to me, getting to walk around with a bruised face for
weeks and all the attention that got me…that kind of thing changes
a girl, I guess.

I glanced over at the image of the confident
girl who moved from glass to glass beside me, at the dark alleyways
that opened up every few buildings, the looming, brick store
facades, and the shadows under awnings where the attractive but
weak lamplight didn’t reach. I listened hard to the sound of
nothing—too much nothing, it seemed to me—and tried not to think
about the cell phone in my pocket and of calling Dylan. Not because
I was some useless girl, afraid of the dark and in need of
rescuing, but just to hear his voice.

As if I would have the guts to just call up
Dylan.

I passed by the fountain that they didn’t
bother to put water in anymore, even in summer. More than one
person had used it for a giant trash can during the day.
Is that
really any better than throwing your trash right on the ground?
What’s wrong with people?

I don’t know what it was that made me take a
closer look as I walked by Dog-Eared. Mr. McGuffey closed the shop
at five o’clock. He always said that after dinner his customers
were all home reading, and he would be too. The lights were on low
in the front of the store, like usual. Over the piles of used books
stacked against the front windows, the tall bookcases created a
maze through the shop and stacks on the floor encroached on the
narrow aisles. But I guess that squeezing your way around Dog-Eared
is part of its charm.

There was a flare of light. Just a quick
something that was gone almost as I noticed it. Definitely not
right. Moving closer to the shop, I thought I saw a shadow of
movement, so I decided to duck down the alley and see if I could
see anything through the windows over there.

Now I’ll admit it: it’s not a great idea for
a girl, alone at night in a deserted downtown shopping area, to go
creeping down dark alleys to peep in store windows where suspicious
activity may or may not be taking place. But in my defense, I’m not
exactly an ordinary girl, and I was just going to have a look
anyway.

Through a window I could see the wide aisle
that ran across the back of the shop, in front of the door to the
back rooms. In that aisle were four boys doing bad things.

I recognized Jeff right off, even though his
back was to me. Maybe it was the Neanderthal posture. Standing next
to him was a smaller guy who looked vaguely familiar. Probably a
freshman. Across from Jeff was a tall guy I didn’t know, who looked
older than we were. Next to that guy was a sophomore, Nathan, who
was in my gym class last year.

Jeff and the freshman each had a pile of
books in front of them, and when I say pile, I mean it looked like
they’d just gathered up an armload and dumped them on the floor.
Nice. They were tossing these books, in sync with each other, into
the air in front of the other two. Who would then
d-i-s-i-n-t-e-g-r-a-t-e them. No, really, I kid you not. I don’t
know what Nathan was doing, but his book just turned to dust which
floated down to the carpet. The older guy’s book burst with a brief
flash of flame and then exploded into embers that glowed for a
second before they joined the mess of dust and ash on the
floor.

I shuddered.
Damn I hate fire
.

And fire in a bookshop? Genius. What a bunch
of idiots. Did they want to burn the place down? Start a fire that
would rip through all those stacks of books, choking the place with
thick, black smoke, trapping them all in that maze of bookshelves
as they crawled frantically along the floor, searching for the
exit, while the temperature—

I sat down hard in the alley and put my head
on my crossed legs, taking deep breaths of dirty, old cement and
the smell of my leather boots. It’s worth mentioning again: I hate
fire.

But what was I going to do, let them burn
down the store with their stupidity? Besides the fact that not even
stupid people deserved
that
experience, more importantly,
there was Mr. McGuffey. He used to bring me some tattered picture
book that was beyond selling every week when I was a little kid in
the store with my dad. I totally owe my love of reading to my
complete lack of a social life and the owner of Dog-Eared. So there
was no way I was going to just walk away.

And I couldn’t call the police either. Or…I
guess it was more like I wouldn’t. These guys were Talents. No
matter how much I didn’t like them, I still had enough
us
against them
mentality that I wasn’t about to bring in the
cops. We Talents needed to police our own.

The cops would just report the whole thing
to the
National Institutes for Ability Control
. If NIAC came
to investigate Talents in Fairview again, it wasn’t going to be
good for anyone. We’d already had more kids taken away to the State
School in the last month than in the last few years put together,
and I did
not
want to draw any more attention to our town
than we already had.

I just wished these idiots felt the same
way.

I pushed myself back up and moved to the
next window, the one that didn’t have a view of much of the shop
because it was located behind a bookcase and piled with paperbacks.
I could see the latch in the middle, so it wasn’t a problem to
reach out to it with my mind and get it to turn. The fact that it
had been painted over at least once required a little mental elbow
grease, but I got it. I floated the piles of paperbacks down to the
floor before opening the window, so they wouldn’t fall and make
noise, and then I hoisted myself up and climbed in.