Goddess of the Night Read Free Page A

laughs and squeals, but only
the thunder of motorcycles taking off outside was loud enough to
drown the loud sing-songy music from the fifties and sixties.
    "I swear I
didn't go into your room last night." Catty's brown hair fell in
perfect spirals around her face. When she tilted her head, the curls
caught the sunlight pouring through the window.
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    "Someone
turned my clock around," Vanessa said.
    "Why would
I turn your clock around?"
    "Just to
show me you had been there." Vanessa looked at her. "It
wouldn't be the first time you had done something like that."
    "But I was
at Planet Bang with you." Catty had a slight smile that curled
on her lips even when she frowned.
    "I thought
maybe you had tweaked time." She had hoped it had been Catty.
"Who was in my room if it wasn't you?"
    "Maybe no
one," Catty pointed out. "Maybe you're creeping yourself
out. You could have been nervous while getting ready. So you knocked
over your clock and set it up facing the wall without noticing."
    "Maybe,"
Vanessa agreed, but the nagging feeling that someone had been in her
room wouldn't leave her.
    "I can't
believe you were so scared that you almost told your mother the truth
about . . . you know." Catty flipped through the song titles in
the Seeburg Wall-O-Matic. She picked up the
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    nickels the
waiter had left for the vintage machine, dropped two in the coin
slot, and punched in a set of numbers. "Would you have told her
about me, too?"
    "No,"
Vanessa said. "Just me."
    Charlie Brown
boomed from the speakers, competing with the sizzle of hamburgers
frying on the grill. A crowd of bikers walked in and straddled red
seats at the counter.
    "What
would she have done?" Catty asked. "It's not something a
mother expects to hear. 'Hey, Mom, did you know I can be as
see-through as a ghost? Wanna see? I mean, not see.'" Catty
laughed so hard the bikers turned and smiled at her.
    Vanessa wiped
the drop of chocolate running over the Johnny Rockets red emblem on
the glass. "I'm not kidding, Catty, it wasn't just the dark of
the moon. Someone was following me."
    "I know
one way we can check it out." Catty dug her spoon into the
whipped cream on top of the shake.
    "No,"
Vanessa said firmly. "I told you. Never
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    again. Not
after last time." The truth was, Vanessa found Catty's power
frightening.
    "You
always say that, and then you end up changing your mind."
    "I guess.
Want my tomatoes?"
    "Last
night made you all messed up." Catty took the tomatoes and
tucked them into her burger.
    Vanessa didn't
want to talk about last night anymore. It was better forgotten, like
a nightmare. "I looked for you at school today."
    "I was
hopping time," Catty said. She picked up a French fry covered
with chili and cheese and pushed it into her mouth.
    "You got
to stop doing that! You're missing too many tests."
    "My mother
doesn't care."
    "But you
should." Sometimes Vanessa felt jealous of Catty's relationship
with her mother. Catty's mother didn't care if she missed school,
because she knew Catty was different. She also wasn't Catty's
biological mother. She had found Catty walking along the side of the
road in the desert between Gila Bend and Yuma when Catty was six
years old. She'd planned to turn her over
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    to the
authorities in Yuma, but when she saw Catty make time change, she
decided Catty was an extraterrestrial, separated from her parents,
like E.T., and that it was her duty to protect her from government
officials who would probably dissect her. She brought Catty to Los
Angeles, knowing that in a city where anything goes, a child from
another planet could fit in.
    Catty had only
two memories of the time before she was six. One of a crash, the
other of a fire. Both were only flashes of memory and didn't reveal
much about her past. When her power was strong enough, Catty planned
to go back to the time before she was six.
    Vanessa rolled
down the paper wrapper that swaddled the hamburger. She opened her
mouth wide and bit down. Mayonnaise, pickle juice, and