“On it.”

While I waited for Nixie, I watched the seconds change. Nikos’s sable eyes followed my gaze. He frowned.

“Twyla. Will everyone be riveted on the Ball? Or is there a countdown?”

“Damn, you’re right. There’s a billboard too, with numbers flashing, and-” I swung around, seeing again the glaring color and light that was Times Square at night. “Everything’s lit up for miles around. It’s not just the Ball. It’s the whole damn canyon.”

Except Jones couldn’t have screwed with every building in Times Square. He’d only had access to the Ball, and maybe some connected mechanisms. Still, I waited impatiently for Nixie to get back on the line. My internal clock clicked off each second like a notch on my gut. Sixty seconds passed, and then another.

We’d never fix it in time. Another thirty seconds carved into me as I gazed at the crowds below, seeing a Google-Earth-sized Where’s Waldo. Only in this case the vampires would be only too easy to find.

“Twyla. Power-tie colors. Red and yellow.”

I blinked. Focused on the clock, which read eleven fifty-five. Five minutes left. “Red and yellow?” I pictured the old Windows color scheme called Hot Dog. Thought of Monty Python and the Holy Grail-the introductory credits with the llamas. Winced. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”

“Huh, Julian? Twyla, there’s a problem. Julian says the Ball isn’t set up to do all red and yellow.”

“What? You know that how?”

“He’s on the line with a computer guru in Iowa. Mr. Goo Roo hacked into the Ball through some sort of SyFy interwebz.”

“You mean the Ball is doing a normal show?”

There was a long pause. “Goo says it’s not normal either. But it ain’t pus and blood. He’s not sure what it is. Huh, Julian? Oh yeah. One more prob. Even if the Ball were screaming chartreuse, it’s not big enough to send v-guys into spasming conniptions.”

“Chartreuse is green.”

“Yeah, okay. Thing is, the Ball is too small and too far away to do more than make a vamp a little sickly carmine.”

“Carmine is red.”

“Fine. Puke-y green. Up-gechucken green. Vomity-”

“I get it.” The clock flashed across from me, eleven fifty-six a full story high. “What about the countdown clock? It’s on a screen, and flashes with the Ball. Maybe they’re coordinated.”

“Hey Julian. Ask Mr. Goo if the Ball of Damocles is tied to the ticking crock.”

Sometimes Nixie’s cultural polyglot is confusing, but this time I got it. I laughed. “Ticking Crock. Like the crocodile that swallowed the clock in Peter Pan.”

“What? No, that’s Team America.”

“Huh?”

“For shit’s sake, Twyla, what eon were you born in? What, Julian? Oh. Yeah, the Ball and clock board are tied. But that still won’t be enough firepower to fry a vamp’s circuits. And it’s still the wrong colors.”

I pushed knuckles into my skull. “I should know this. I’m the light and color expert.” Nixie’s handle on chartreuse and carmine hammered that home.

Nikos, maybe feeling my frustration, started pacing. His eyes were red and his fingers were awfully long and pointy.

Something niggled at me but it wouldn’t quite settle. Kind of like my big Spartan lover. “I should know this,” I repeated.

I panned through years of art school memories, but there was so much. Photographic theory. Mixing oils, different than mixing watercolors. Arc welding. Even some CAD. Centuries of knowledge, condensed into an impossible four years. Now I tried to pack that into four minutes.

No, three. The clock turned eleven fifty-seven while I was thinking.

Nikos stopped pacing abruptly. “I’m going down.”

“Into the streets? You hate crowds.”

“It’ll be a bloodbath. Somebody has to help. They’re mostly fledglings down there, and I’m old. I can take them out.”

“And what happens if you’re as overcome by Jones’s light show as the rest? How much more damage could a millennia-old vampire do?”

Without a word, he kicked into pacing again, although his pacing screamed curses.

Eleven fifty-seven and twenty seconds. “Nixie. Is there a way to see what your computer guru is seeing?”

“Hey. He’s not a guru for nothing. Julian?” She spoke with her hubby for a moment, then came back on the line. “Okay, take a look at your display.”

I pulled the phone from my ear. Nikos came to watch over my shoulder.

Sure enough, the normal display had been replaced by a picture of the Ball, all flashing colors, descending on its pole. Colors played, indigo to orange to white. Red and yellow weren’t even predominant. I cudgeled my brain, trying to figure out what that meant. Or even trying to guess a way to structure my thoughts to figure out what it meant. I clapped the phone to my ear again. “Can I see that with the countdown added in? Cut it down to the last fifteen seconds.”

“You can see the whole damned building, and hear it, too. Julian!”

Moments later we saw the same play of lights, view expanded now. Whatever Jones and Steale Programové had done, it coordinated the entire building. Color swirled, intensifying with the percussion that hit the final ten seconds.

“What’s wrong?” Nikos’s breath was warm on my ear.

“The colors intensify on the beat. But they don’t change. Don’t flash. On television the Ball flashes the last seconds of the countdown in bright, white light. But this one swirls a cacophony of colors.”

“Isn’t it just artistic design? Maybe there is no purpose.”

“All art has purpose. Sometimes only to shock or please the viewer, but the artist made it for a reason. And in this case, we even know the purpose-stimulate vampire vision. But how, without the red or yellow? Damn it, Nikos, I’m missing something.” I gasped. “It’s missing-”

The music stopped. Loudspeakers blared. “Two minutes.” A roar erupted from the city’s miles-long carpet of people.

“Damn it, I had it! Before that stupid announcer broke my concentration-”

“Calm down, Twyla.” Nikos stroked my hair. “You had it, you’ll get it again. Something missing.”

“Missing, yes. Missing.” I snapped my fingers. “Color. The way it combines. Red and blue, red and green-no wonder I didn’t see it before.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What if the Ball isn’t the focus? What if Jones programmed the colors, not to trigger the vampires, but to trigger the other buildings?”

“What? Why would he do that?”

“Colors combine. Imagine the Ball-and the whole damned glowstick of the One Times Square building-throwing its light on these skyscraper-sized neon billboards around us. Beaming colors in just the right order so that everything that’s not red or yellow is changed to red or yellow. Now the whole ocean that’s Times Square is pulsing pus and blood. Combined with the noise, the blood scent of the crowd, the excitement-”

Nikos nodded impatiently. “Vampires would go wild, especially the youngsters. But how? Yellow and blue combine to make green. Yellow and red make orange. Nothing combines to make red or yellow. They are primary colors.”

I sometimes forget that not everyone went beyond kindergarten art. “In paints, yes. Paints are subtractive. But light mixes differently. Light is additive. RGB.”

“Twyla, make sense.”

“Red Green Blue. Red is a primary, but it’s a color we want. Blue can be flashed with red light to make magenta, a violently bright pink.”

“And green? Green plus blue is aqua, and green plus red is just ugly brown.”

“Not in light. Green plus red equals yellow.”

His breath sucked in. “What? That’s impossible.”

“No, it’s physics. Every single light in the Square can be morphed into a variation of red or yellow.”

Nikos blinked once as his brain processed what I was telling him. “The whole Square is a vampire time bomb. And we’re standing on the detonator?”