“Something’s coming,” Melissa whispered.
As the words passed the mindcaster’s lips, a tremor rolled across the room, the shudder of the spinning earth halting in its tracks. The roar of the cafeteria was sucked away all at once, leaving the five of them surrounded by almost two hundred stiffs, faces blue and cold and waxen, caught throwing food and picking their noses and chewing with their mouths open.
“What time is it, Rex?” Dess’s own voice sounded small in the awesome, sudden silence.
Rex looked at his watch. “Twelve twenty-one and fifteen seconds.”
Dess wrote the number down and stared at it, wondering how long this one was going to last.
Jonathan bobbed weightlessly up from his chair. “Cool, this again.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Jessica said softly.
“We just sit here,” Rex said. “We wait it out. And get down, Jonathan!”
“Why?” Jonathan said. “I can fall from here, no problem.”
“There are people all around, Jonathan. If you fly off someplace and the blue time ends, they’ll see you disappear.”
“Come on, Jonathan.” Jessica reached up and took his hand. “Plenty of time to fly when the world ends.”
“All right, whatever.” Jonathan sighed, settling back onto his chair like a deflating balloon.
No one said anything for a moment. Dess’s eyes were drawn to the tray in front of Rex, whose cafeteria lunch had already been left to congeal during the discussion. Its waxy layer of interrupted time made it look even more unappetizing, his Jell-O glowing blue, its wobble arrested.
Melissa held her head tipped back, tasting the air to her heart’s content, and for once Dess was glad that the mindcaster was around. At least they’d know if an army of darklings was on its way.
Of course, this wasn’t the end of the world, not yet. You could tell just by looking. If the secret hour had snapped completely, all the stiffs around them would still be moving, having been sucked into the blue time along with everything else within a few hundred miles.
Dess didn’t have to do any math to know what the result of that would be. All those predators suddenly escaping from their midnight prison, unleashed on their prey—maybe millions of people, if the blue time really expanded across the whole state. No phones, no cars, not even fire, and only the five midnighters knew how to defend themselves.
Dess fixed her gaze on a constellation of french fries hovering over a motionless food fight across the lunchroom. She wondered if what she’d told Jessica yesterday after school was really true. Could you make it to the border of the blue time, freezing yourself at the edge until the long midnight ended?
Not too many people would be lucky enough to make it that far. Not with all those hungry darklings pouring in from the desert. And what if the blue time never ended? What if everyone on the outside was permanently frozen and everyone in the inside was lunch meat—most of humanity gone with a whimper, the rest with a bang?
“So, Dess?” Jessica said, finally breaking the silence.
She pulled her gaze from the hovering french fries. “Yeah?”
“In study hall, what were you scribbling on those papers? You said Halloween was safe. What’s wrong with the next day?”
“Oh, yeah.” Dess looked down at the papers before her, tinged blue by the eclipse. “Well, the weird thing is what happens at midnight, Halloween, if you switch from the old system to the new. October 31 was an antidarkling fiesta back when October was the eighth month. But now November’s the eleventh month. Right?” Dess spread her hands. “Man, you guys are hopeless. So it’s November 1. And eleven plus one is twelve, as in midnight. As in darklings.”
They were all silent for a moment.
Finally Jonathan asked, “How long is that from now?”
“Twenty-three days, eleven hours, and thirty-nine minutes,” Dess said. “Minus fifteen seconds.”
“Three weeks.” Jessica looked at Rex. “So what should we do?”
Dess was glad to see him scratch his brow, at least pretending like he was coming up with a plan. However messed up Rex’s head was, the coming end of the world might screw it on a little bit tighter.
“I’m not convinced yet, Dess,” he said after a minute. “But I guess we have to find out more about what the Grayfoots are up to.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” Jonathan said. “Just drive over to Broken Arrow and ask them?”
He smiled. “Maybe it’s better if we get them over to Bixby.”
Everyone stared at him, but Rex didn’t blink.
Dess leaned back into her chair, wondering what Rex was smoking. When the last bunch of midnighters had gotten in Grandpa Grayfoot’s way, he’d made a hundred prominent citizens disappear overnight. Less than two weeks ago the Grayfoots had kidnapped Rex right out of his own house, then left him in the desert to have his humanity stripped away.
But for some reason he wasn’t scared of them. Dess might not be a mindcaster, but she could see that. What the hell was happening to him?
It was funny, but ever since the bitch goddess had gotten under control, Rex had gone six kinds of crazy. It was like the five of them only had so much sanity to go around.
“Rex, be serious,” Jessica said softly.
“I am serious.” He reached into his jacket and threw a piece of paper on the table. It was covered with scrawled lore signs. “This is a message from Angie.”
“That psycho who kidnapped you?” Jonathan asked.
“That’s the one.”
“Um, Rex.” Dess shook her head. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
“Sorry. It only showed up yesterday morning, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it—until now.”
“Burn it, maybe?” suggested Dess.
Rex ignored her. “From what Angie says, the family is closing ranks, leaving outsiders like her in the dark. She’s just as freaked out as we are.” His fingers drummed the table. “Which means that Dess might be right.”
“About burning it?” Dess said.
“No, about what’s going to happen in three weeks and that the Grayfoots know more about it than we do. So I guess I should meet with her.”
Jonathan stared at the piece of paper with a horrified expression, like a live rattlesnake had flopped onto the table. “What the hell, Rex? You’re actually going to trust her?”
“I don’t trust her at all. But I’ve been wondering about this message and figuring out a way to get Angie over to Bixby, whether she wants to come or not. We’ll all have to work together, though.” He looked around at them, a seer-knows-best expression on his face.
Dess sighed, wondering if anyone else had noticed how every time all five of them did anything together, things went totally haywire.
“Hang on, guys!” Melissa said suddenly. “It’s ending.”
Rex snatched the scrawled paper from the table. “Get ready.”
Jonathan pulled himself firmly down onto his seat. Melissa put her fingers back on her temples, the way she’d been when the eclipse had hit. Dess tried to remember what she’d been doing—probably looking at Melissa and wondering what the hell she was yelling about.
She turned toward the mindcaster and gave her a suitable look of contempt.
A few seconds later the world shuddered again. The cold blue light was swept from the cafeteria, which exploded around them into a mass of motion and sound and sunlight. The seventeen french fries sailed on their various trajectories, two hundred mouths resumed their chewing, and Rex’s Jell-O began to wobble once more.
Dess pulled at Rex’s arm and looked at his watch, comparing it with the time on her GPS device. This eclipse had been shorter than the first one, lasting only seven minutes and twelve seconds. But it had followed a similar pattern: three times 144 seconds.
Now that it was over, Dess allowed herself a long sigh. However certain she’d been that the big event was three weeks away, it was a relief to know the end hadn’t come.
13
11:07 P.M.
BRILLIANT PLAN
Broken Arrow hadn’t changed much, as far as Rex could see.
The town was still Bixby’s little sister, with no buildings over a few stories marking its skyline. Clanking oil derricks and mesquite trees went right up to the city’s edge, and instead of green lawns most people had dirt front yards. The native desert scrub they planted to keep the soil from eroding needed a lot less water than grass—and looked better, Rex thought—but in Bixby not having a real lawn meant that you were poor or lazy, which most people figured was pretty much the same thing.
He drove carefully, checking the street signs, following the exact route that Dess had used for her calculations. She’d complained about that part of the plan because too many things could mess with the math—how fast Rex drove, the air pressure in the tires, even the temperature outside. She spent a lot of time complaining about something called “fumes.”
Rex couldn’t think about all that. It was all he could do to drive this rumbling, smelly, human machine. His reflexes were much faster now, but the plastics and metal in the car put him on edge.
Besides, there were lots of ways this plan could go wrong. The precisely measured gas in the Ford’s tank was only one.
It was strange being in Melissa’s car without her along, but Angie had demanded three things: that they meet no later than 11:00 P.M.., that they didn’t go anywhere near Bixby, and that Rex come alone.
He remembered how nervous Angie’s voice had sounded on the phone. But Rex didn’t want her too anxious. He wouldn’t get any information from the woman if things got violent.
He found the corner Angie had named, two narrow back alleys that intersected among dark and looming warehouses, the prey marks of humans scant—the perfect place for Rex to disappear, if that’s what Angie had in mind. Of course, if Rex were still relevant to the family’s plans, they probably wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble.
Still, he was glad it was just him here in the car and not all five of them. The Grayfoots were old hands at making people vanish.
Angie was already there, smoking a cigarette and wearing a leather coat that reached her knees. She gave him an angry glare, checked her watch, then cast a wary glance around. As she walked toward the Ford, Rex realized that he’d never seen her in normal time before. In motion and without the waxy pallor of the secret hour laid across her skin, she didn’t look that much older than a college student.
He remembered to turn off the Ford’s engine; Dess’s calculations didn’t include any idling time.
“You’re late,” she said.
“Sorry. My mom came over. Had to sneak out—school night.”
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, but then she let out a smoke-tinged sigh. Nothing like being reminded that the latest person you’d kidnapped was still in high school. Rex hoped that seeing Anathea dead out in the desert had made Angie think twice about her employers. Hopefully she was fed up with the kid-snatching business.
“Fine, let’s talk,” she said. “But in exactly twenty minutes I’m out of here. You’re not going to pull any of that spook crap on me.”
Rex laughed. “What sort of ‘spook crap’ are you expecting? We’re miles from Bixby.”
“Yeah, I know where the edges are,” she said. “But before the Grayfoots stopped talking to me, Ernesto said that things were changing.”
Rex nodded. Ernesto was Constanza’s cousin—the family definitely knew something.
“They are,” he said. “Get in and I’ll tell you what we know.”
“What? Get in that car with you?”
He gave her a bored look. “Don’t be so paranoid, Angie. Midnight still comes at midnight, not…” He checked his watch, as if he hadn’t planned this all out to the minute. “Eleven-fifteen. And I’m not standing around in the cold.” He tugged on the front of his T-shirt; not wearing a jacket had been Jessica’s idea. “So get in.”
Her nervous eyes scanned the buildings around them again. “Okay, but my car.”
“Forget that,” he said. “My wheels or no deal.”
Rex held her suspicious gaze, wondering if that last line had been too much. He’d rehearsed it on the way over here, trying out various inflections, settling on a dramatic pause between “no” and “deal.” But maybe he’d blown it. The rest of the plan wouldn’t work unless Angie got into Melissa’s car.
But as he watched her think about it, Rex felt something else replace his jitters—the same calm he’d experienced just before he’d turned Timmy Hudson into jelly. He could smell Angie’s fear now, could see it in the play of lines on her face, and he realized that she’d been telling the truth about the Grayfoots cutting her off. She carried the anxious scent of a human rejected by its tribe, left to its own devices on the harsh desert.
A trickle of anticipation went through Rex, the same excitement he’d felt tracking Cassie Flinders across the blue time. He was the hunter here, not this human.
“Take it or leave it, Angie. But don’t make me sit here.” He drew his lips back from his teeth. “Like I said: it’s a school night.”
A long moment later she said, “Okay. But if you start that engine, I’m sticking this between your ribs.” Steel flashed in the darkness.
At the sight of the knife Rex felt some of his predatory confidence slip away. He could smell that the blade was tungsten stainless; its very touch would burn him. Rex couldn’t imagine what the weapon would feel like thrust into his side.
Angie walked the long way around the car, checking the backseat for any surprises. Finally she opened the passenger door and slipped inside, bringing in the scents of anxiety and cigarette smoke.
“You know,” he said. “Seeing as how you kidnapped me, you’ve got a lot of nerve acting like I’m the bad guy.”
She snorted, running nervous fingers through her blond hair. “Spare me. I know what you midnighters are.”
“What? High school students?”
She turned away to stare through the front windshield, watching the empty alley. “It doesn’t matter how old you are. A monster is still a monster.”
“Me? A monster?” For a second the word made him shudder. Did she know about the way he was changing?
Angie turned to him, her words spilling out with furious speed. “Listen, Rex, the family may have shut me out after what happened two weeks ago, but I know a lot about the history of Bixby. Probably more than you do.”
Rex’s jaw dropped open. “I doubt that.”
“Right, I’m sure you think you know everything.” She smiled. “You may know a few tricks, like how to read fifty-year-old propaganda, but you don’t know what things were really like in Bixby back then. You weren’t there. The old guy I work for was.”
“What? He’s a…” Rex started, but he was too indignant to finish. This traitor to humanity, this Grayfoot lackey, this daylighter was lecturing him about the lore? Rex’s amazement sputtered out of him like an old car engine giving up the ghost.
He’d made Melissa swear to take it easy on Angie’s brain, but Rex doubted it would be tough to make her break that promise.
“After they freed Bixby,” Angie continued, “the Grayfoots discovered a lot of what you midnighters call ‘the lore.’ That’s how I learned to read the symbols, practicing on all that old rubbish about how the great midnighters kept everyone happy and safe.”
“The Grayfoots freed Bixby?” was all Rex could manage. “From what?”
“Come on, Rex. What do you think it was really like back then? A small, unelected group of people running a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. People who could play God with time, who could ruin the brain of anyone who disagreed with them. Doesn’t that sound great, Rex, growing up in a place like that?” She paused, giving him a disgusted look. “Of course, you would have been one of the people in charge.”
“But midnighters aren’t about controlling people’s minds.”
&nb
sp; “Are you kidding?”
“Well, they only did it to keep the secret hour hidden, to keep the town safe.”
Angie barked out a single-syllable laugh. “Sometime, Rex, you should read some real history. Everyone who abuses power says exactly the same thing: ‘We only do nasty, secret things to keep everyone safe. Without us in charge, you’re all doomed.’ ”
“What are…?” He growled, unable to organize his thoughts. “You kidnapped me!”
She looked away, letting out a slow breath, and Rex thought for a moment that he had finally quieted her madness. But after a moment she turned back and said, “It was the only way to stay in contact with the darklings. Without them we couldn’t keep you from re-creating the old Bixby.” She shrugged, the thick leather coat creaking. “Besides, do you know how many hundreds of children the old midnighters kidnapped over the years?”
“What?” Rex cried. But then he remembered the ancient tales: when mindcasters detected newly born midnighters nearby, war parties had been dispatched to steal them. More recently, offers of jobs and money had been sent to their parents. Rex found himself wondering, though—if those inducements hadn’t worked, had the old midnighters resorted to stronger tactics? There wasn’t anything like that in the lore, but what if they had just pretended it hadn’t happened?
“Well,” he said, “maybe a long time ago they did some things that seem weird now, sort of like… George Washington having slaves or whatever.” Rex shook his head firmly. “But we’re not like that!”
“I’ve seen your father, Rex,” she said calmly. “Did a stroke leave him that way?”
“That was…” His voice broke. “We were just kids.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Born monsters, like I said.”
They were silent for a moment, Rex’s head spinning from everything Angie had said. When he’d seen her name in lore symbols at the bottom of the note, there had been a moment of curiosity; even if she wasn’t a seer, here was someone else who could read the lore, who knew the signs of midnight. But after just a few minutes of talking to her, he felt his oldest sureties in danger of crumbling.
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