“In a big city that’s a lot, isn’t it?”

“In New York about a hundred. In the world…a hundred thousand.”

“Crap,” Melissa said softly, like she hadn’t thought through the scale of their little road trip yet.

Amazement radiated from the mindcaster, a tingle that shot down Dess’s arms into her fingers, bringing back her smile. Even being stuck here in Bixby with crazy Rex and crazier Maddy, even with no darklings left to slay, even living in a major curfew zone for the next two and a half years, Dess couldn’t complain about the cards she’d drawn.

Once the midnighters had gone their separate ways, Dess would no longer be stuck between the two couples, hemmed in by the constant clash of egos. And eventually she would be free of Bixby itself. No longer a fifth wheel.

After high school, Dess knew, she could get a job anywhere. Computers, spacecraft, all kinds of cool stuff that hadn’t even been invented yet—all of it needed math. And with midnight spreading across the globe, thousands of polymaths would be waking up. Finally she’d have people to talk to with minds like hers, math geniuses in a frozen time where math kicked ass. Together they could map the expanded secret hour, have whole conversations in tridecalogisms, try to figure out how time itself worked. Change the world, maybe.

Screw the lore, with all its propaganda and lies and bitter history. Dess was going to be the one to write the axioms of midnight, the first principles of Dessometrics.

Inexhaustible. Unsmotherable. Extraordinary. That was her.

It was way cool, being the one who did the math.

Acknowledgments

Like all books everywhere, this series has been shaped and supported by a host of readers, editors, and friends. Most especially: Liesa Abrams, Holly Black, Gwenda Bond, Eloise Flood, Claudia Gabel, Justine Larbalestier, Ursula K. Le Guin, Garth Nix, Christopher Rowe, John Scalzi, Jonathan Strahan, Tui Sutherland, Kathleen Thomas, and Sean Williams, among others.

About the Author

SCOTT WESTERFELD has written many acclaimed novels, including the bestselling Uglies books and the Midnighters series, SO YESTERDAY, and PEEPS. His books have been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and have won the Aurealis Award, the Victorian Premier Award, and the Philip K. Dick Special Citation. Scott lives in New York City and Australia. You can visit him online at www.scottwesterfeld.com.

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Credits

Cover photograph © 2008 by Veer / PhotoAlto

Cover design by Joel Tippie

Midnighters symbols by Scott David Westerfeld

Copyright

MIDNIGHTERS #3: BLUE NOON. Copyright © 2005 by Alloy Entertainment and Scott David Westerfeld. Midnighters symbols by Scott David Westerfeld. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.