Burning Midnight Read online

  “That’s correct.” The girl didn’t hesitate. A few people in the audience gasped at her audacity. Sully couldn’t believe how calm she was.

  There was whispering and mutters as Holliday cleared his throat, folded his hands in front of him, and spoke softly, forcing everyone to be absolutely silent to hear him. “I am truly sorry your aunt lost her store, but I hope you can understand if I take umbrage at your accusing me of a felony in front of two thousand people. Holliday’s is not the only corporate player in the sphere industry, and it has a reputation for being the most principled. My weapon is my business model, not gasoline and a match. My integrity is worth more to me than a hundred stores.”

  “Bullshit!” Dom shouted. “Bull. Shit.”

  Stunned, his heart suddenly hammering, Sully watched Holliday’s face go stony as his gaze lifted toward them. A thousand people turned to look in Dom’s direction.

  Dom put a hand on each of Sully’s shoulders. “You recognize this guy?”

  Holliday shook his head briskly. “I’m sorry? You have a little too much Red Bull tonight, my friend?”

  Dom shouted over the laughter, “This is David Sullivan! Does that name ring a bell, Mr. I-have-so-much-integrity-it’s-squirting-out-my-butt?”

  People booed.

  Sully raised both hands. “Can I say something?” No one heard him.

  “You owe this man two point five million dollars!” Dom shouted, stabbing a finger at Holliday.

  Holliday was staring right at Sully. Sully stared right back, gave Holliday a little mock salute for good measure. Holliday shook his head, looked away.

  A rough hand landed on Sully’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Two big, solid guys in black suits had pushed their way to Sully’s and Dom’s seats. One was bald with a goatee, the other—the one who’d grabbed Sully—sported a bleached-blond crew cut. Two more just like them waited in the aisle. Holliday’s bodyguards.

  “Who are you?” Dom asked, knocking the bald guy’s hand off his shoulder.

  “Event security.” The bald guy curled a finger at them. “Let’s go. Outside.”

  “What the hell is event security?” Dom said, nice and loud. He looked the guy up and down. “You’re not police. You’re just guys in suits.”

  The bald guy grabbed Dom by the front of his sweatshirt with both hands and yanked.

  Dom threw a punch and nailed the bodyguard in the face, sending him stumbling into the seats.

  The blond bodyguard grabbed Sully’s arm. Without thinking, Sully reached with his free hand and pulled the guy’s pinkie back, hard. The bodyguard shouted in pain, let go of Sully. As soon as Sully eased up, the guy spun around, lightning fast, and grabbed Sully from behind, putting him in a headlock.

  “Hey, let him go.” Rob grabbed the arm around Sully’s neck, tried to pry it off. The bodyguard shoved Rob, sending him tumbling over the seats.

  Black spots peppered Sully’s vision as he was shoved toward the fire exit.

  “So much for your goddamned integrity.” The voice sounded like the Asian girl’s. She shouted over the rumbling crowd and Dom’s cursing, “That’s David Sullivan? The kid you cheated? Perfect. Tell us more about your pristine ethics while your goons beat on a welfare kid.” Out of the corner of his eye, Sully glimpsed another bodyguard racing up the aisle toward the girl. “Somebody call the police. Don’t touch me.”

  The blond guy pushed the fire exit door open with his hip. Sully reached back and grabbed for his face, but only brushed his nose before the guy shoved his head through the half-open door. Sully landed on one knee on the concrete alley.

  Behind him, Dom was dragged out, shouting and swinging, by two bodyguards. A third pushed the Asian girl through. As soon as the door clicked closed, the two bodyguards went to work on Dom, punching him from both sides.

  Sully lunged, shouting, but the blond bodyguard shoved him back. “Stay out of it.”

  The guy was way bigger than Sully, and built like a steer. Sully got low and kicked him in the knee. It felt like he was kicking a fire hydrant. The guy let out a grunt and grabbed his knee as Sully ducked around him.

  Before he could get clear the guy tackled him, driving him to the ground. Sully’s nose hit the pavement and erupted in searing pain. A second later a knee was in his back. His kidney exploded in agony as the guy landed a punch. Two more quick blows followed.

  “Now stay down!” the bodyguard screamed into his ear.

  The knee in his back lifted. Sully grunted, trying to take a breath. For a moment he couldn’t, then his chest expanded in a spasm and a tight squeal escaped him.

  He heard Dom grunting with effort, or in pain, the girl cursing, shouting, the smack of fists landing.

  Applause rose inside the auditorium. Evidently the great Alex Holliday had concluded his Q-and-A session.

  “Crap. We gotta get back,” one of the bodyguards said. He turned to Sully, pointed. “Lesson over. Don’t screw with Alex Holliday.” They headed off at a jog toward the front of the building.

  “Should I call nine-one-one?” It was the Asian girl, her face close to Sully’s.

  Sully struggled to his hands and knees, touched his nose. It was bleeding, but from the feel of it, it was just a bad scrape. “I’m okay.” He looked at Dom, who was sitting on a concrete step, head down, one hand over an eye. He pursed his lips, spit blood on the ground, pressed on one of his front teeth.

  “You all right?” Sully asked.

  Dom looked at him. “Just peachy. Marvelous.” He let out a guffaw. “Jerks.”

  The girl went to Dom. “Let me see your eye.”

  Dom took his hand away, tilted his head up.

  “I think you need stitches.” She turned to Sully. “Let’s get him to the emergency room.”

  When they tried to help him up, Dom brushed them off. “I can walk.”

  Sully limped along between Dom and the girl.

  “I’m David Sullivan, by the way. Sully.”

  “Mandy Toko.”

  “Dom.” Sully wasn’t surprised Dom didn’t give his last name. He rarely had since sixth grade, when his uncle made the name Cucuzza infamous. Dom’s upper lip was swelling; blood from the cut over his eye dribbled down his temple. Dom stopped short. “Crap.”

  “What?” Sully asked.

  Dom raised his eyebrows. “You feeling a little chilly?”

  “Our coats,” Sully said.

  “I’ll get them,” Mandy said. She was wearing hers, which was long and black. “I’ll catch up.” She turned and jogged away. They watched her for a minute, her long strides eating up ground. She looked like an athlete.

  They turned and walked.

  “Basketball team?” Sully asked.

  “Maybe. Did you see her go after the douche who was whaling on me?”

  “No. She punched him?”

  “She punched him in the throat.”

  “I missed that,” Sully said.

  “She’s kind of cute.”

  “Sure.” One downside to having Dom as a friend was that he was immediately interested in—and quickly established dibs on—every girl they met.

  Dom pulled out his phone. “We forgot about Rob. He has no idea where we are.” Dom filled Rob in about their injuries and said he’d call him later.

  When they reached Thirty-Fourth Street, they paused. Sully had no idea where the nearest hospital was. He asked a guy wearing a fedora and a pin-striped suit, who pointed them toward a walk-in clinic.

  Dom touched the cut above his eye, looked at his fingers. “I’m gonna hurt like hell in a couple of minutes. Right now my face just feels kind of warm.”

  Sully’s nose didn’t feel warm. It hurt. He was fairly sure it wasn’t broken, though; he’d heard you knew immediately when your nose was broken.

  Behind them, a voice shouted, “Hey!”

  They waited for Mandy to catch up. She held out their coats. Sully thanked her as he pulled his on.

  “So where do you go to school?” Dom ask
ed, falling back on the tried-and-true conversation starter.

  “St. John’s.”

  “A prepper,” Dom said. He looked her up and down. “You’re one of those smart people, aren’t you?”

  Mandy shrugged. “I guess.” She looked at Sully. “I didn’t realize the David Sullivan lived around here.”

  Sully rolled his eyes. “Yeah. There was supposed to be a press release. I don’t know what happened.”

  A couple of years earlier, Sully had stumbled onto an article on Slate while Googling himself. It was about weird fame—people who were known for things that had nothing to do with talent or ability. The article mentioned Steve Bartman, who was famous for leaning out of the stands and deflecting a foul ball that cost the Cubs a chance to play in the World Series, and Monica Lewinsky, who had an affair with Bill Clinton that almost got him impeached. And Sully, who, instead of sticking his hand in front of a foul ball, had stuck it inside a storm drain under an overpass and pulled out the rarest sphere in the world.

  —

  Warm air hit Sully as he stepped into the hallway of his apartment building. His nose was throbbing, and he was totally whipped. Starving as he was, he didn’t know if he could stay awake long enough to eat dinner.

  “Sul-ly.”

  Sully raised his head, found Mike Lea and Laurie Heath sitting crossways on the stairs to his apartment.

  Mike stood, his phone in hand. He was a year older than Sully, pitched on the school’s baseball team. Sometimes Sully and Mike were friends, and sometimes Mike acted like he didn’t know who Sully was. “Sully, man. You’re going viral on YouTube.” He turned his phone so Sully could see himself, caught in a headlock, struggling to break free.

  Evidently word spread fast. He’d turned his phone off on the way into the auditorium and forgot to turn it back on. He pulled it out and turned it on now. He had about a hundred texts.

  Mike stepped closer. “Man, your nose. Those goons did that?”

  Sully touched his nose. “The sidewalk did it, but the goons helped.”

  Laurie stepped closer as well, inhaling in sympathy. “You should clean that up right away.”

  Sully nodded. “I’m guessing my mom is going to run for the Bactine as soon as she sees me.”

  Laurie nodded. It had been two years since Laurie broke Sully’s heart, but there was still a slight whiff of awkwardness when they talked.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened; Sully’s mom burst out. “Sully?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  As his mom came barreling down the stairs, Sully thought she was going to hug him, but she stopped short and held up her palm for a high five.

  Confused, he slapped her hand.

  “Good for you. I wish you could have gotten on the stage to bend that little bastard Holliday’s finger back, but good for you.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Grinning, Mike patted Sully’s shoulder. “I’m gonna get going.” He made a fist. “Way to go, Sully.”

  Laurie gave Sully a wave and followed Mike out.

  “You’ve got seven thousand and some hits already,” Mom said as the front door clicked closed. She studied Sully’s face. “Come on, let’s get your nose cleaned up. No broken bones?”

  “Dom took most of the punches.”

  “Bull. Shit,” Mom said, mimicking Dom’s Italian American Yonkers delivery. “That was priceless.” She looked back at Sully as they climbed the stairs. “He’s okay, though?”

  “He’s fine. Just some stitches.”

  Once Sully’s nose was bandaged, they ate dinner on tray tables at the couch, watching a rerun of CSI: NY like they always did. Pretty much all they watched were CSI reruns, plus Marble Hunters and a few of the copycat sphere-hunting shows.

  Dinner was spaghetti, which was definitely not like always. For as long as Sully could remember, Friday had been take-out pizza night. Sully didn’t say anything; his mom was hurting enough.

  Sully only half watched the show. Seeing Laurie had stirred up some of the memories from that time when he’d been borderline obsessed with her. It had been the first time Sully truly understood how painful love could be. He’d been shocked by how much it hurt. Until Laurie, having a girlfriend had just been something you did, like an extension of being friends.

  His first girlfriend, if you could call her that, had been Kaitlin Bie. They’d both been nine when Kaitlin’s older brother dared them to kiss on the swing set in their backyard. Kaitlin’s dad had seen them from the living room window, though, and their relationship ended right then and there.

  Then there’d been Jen Posner, when he was thirteen. After walking around with a crush on Jen for a couple of months, Sully had mustered the nerve to send her a candy-gram—one of those Valentine’s Day fund-raisers where you pay a dollar to send a flower or candy to someone during class. She’d sent one back the very next period. Unless Sully counted the peck he’d given Kaitlin on the swings, Jen was the first girl he’d ever kissed. He’d been so blown away by the sheer act of kissing a cute girl with big brown eyes and exactly the right amount of freckles that it had taken him about two months to realize he was bored out of his mind whenever she was around and they weren’t kissing.

  Breaking up with her, seeing the disappointment on her face, had been awful. It was nothing compared with the day Laurie broke up with him, though. Laurie had seemed like his entire world back then. Every love song he heard had been about Laurie. Her face had floated like an overlay on Sully’s vision all day long. Since Laurie, he’d hung out with a couple of girls as more than friends, but it had never gotten close to serious with any of them.

  After dinner Sully went to his room and read through his messages, shooting texts back to friends, answering the same question over and over, about where he learned the pinkie move. He had no idea where he’d learned it; in the heat of the moment he’d seen that finger on his shoulder and wanted to snap it off the guy’s hand.

  It should have felt good, reading message after message about what a badass he was, but it didn’t. When you cut right through it, Holliday had kicked them to the curb. His bodyguards had taken out the trash while the audience cheered.

  Sully sat up on his bed, then went over to his little desk, where the used Cherry Red sat on a shot glass that served as its pedestal. He picked it up, turned it in his hand.

  It was hard to believe this marble and its only match had reseeded the entire planet with new spheres. The first wave of spheres had just about dried up when Holliday burned the Cherry Reds.

  Sully remembered the start of the second wave like it was yesterday. At first he didn’t realize he’d been cheated by Holliday, and he went out hunting along with everyone else. You could probably find a couple of spheres in your own house that first day, and by the time it was dark and Sully came home, exhausted and dehydrated from a frantic day of hunting, he was carrying six spheres in a pillowcase, including a rarity three (Mint, more outgoing).

  Now the second wave was getting thin. Sully was beginning to wonder if there would be a third.

  Once a month Sully had a dream about finding the Cherry Red. There were all sorts of variations: who was with him and where he found it, but the dream ended the same every time: he’d suddenly realize he was dreaming and cling to that Cherry Red as hard as he could, willing himself not to wake up. He always woke up, though.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sully eyed the empty space in his display case where the Forest Green had been resting front and center until a few minutes ago, feeling a buzz of satisfaction. He’d made a hundred ninety dollars on one transaction. You couldn’t beat that. The woman who bought it, as a Christmas present for her daughter, had pulled out six hundred-dollar bills like it was nothing. His customers seemed to fall into two categories: collectors/investors who stopped by regularly to see if Sully had anything new (and to talk sphere collecting), and well-off impulse buyers, who were usually just browsing, just passing an afternoon.

  A kid with bright red hair an
d freckles, six or seven years old, picked out a bagged pair of toy Seafoam Greens and handed Sully a ten as his parents looked on.

  Grinning, Sully gave the kid his change. “Speed, eh? Be careful with those; there’s a thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit in here.”

  Sully watched as the kid rejoined his parents. He tore open the bag, pressed the plastic spheres to his temples as if burning them, then raised a fist in the air, made a sound like a rocket lifting off, and ran full tilt down the aisle.

  “Look at that handsome face over there,” Samantha called. She was unpacking a box of scented candles. “I need to introduce you to my niece, Paulina. Let me show you.” She rummaged in her wallet, finally pulled a picture from a plastic sleeve. She crossed over and held it in front of Sully’s face.

  It was a studio shot of a girl in a white lace dress, wearing a lot of makeup. She was pretty, with dark, smoky eyes and silky brown hair. She looked about fourteen.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  “She’s gorgeous,” Sully said. “How old is she?”

  “Thirteen.”

  Sully smiled.

  “She’ll be fourteen in March.”

  “Yeah, that’s a little young for me.”

  “Three years is nothing,” Samantha said, pushing the photo closer to his nose. “Neal is nine years older than me.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t meet when he was seventeen and you were eight.”

  “Oh, come on, give the girl a chance,” a girl’s voice called.

  Sully turned. A flutter went through him when he saw Hunter standing at his table, hand on her hip.

  “Where did you come from?” Sully asked. “I didn’t even see you coming.” He was pleased, and surprised, to see her back so soon. They’d completed the Forest Green transaction just last week.

  “I’m like a ninja.” Hunter slid her pack off her shoulder, squatted to pull something out.

  “How old are you?” Samantha asked.

  Hunter looked up. “Me? Seventeen. How old are you?”

  Samantha laughed. “Twenty-nine. I’ve lived a hard life.”

  Hunter stood. “Me too.”

  “There you go, Sully,” Samantha said, gesturing toward Hunter. “Someone your age.”