32

10:30 P.M.

EPILOGUE

The car slid to a halt in front of the house across the street, setting the neighborhood dogs barking wildly.

Nice move, Flyboy, Melissa thought. Dess had told him to keep it quiet tonight. Her parents were still in major curfew mode since the Great Bixby Halloween Hysteria.

He waited for a moment, then reached to honk the horn.

"Don't," Melissa said. "She's coming."

He glowered for a moment, his impatience bitter in the air. Of course, there was plenty of time before midnight to get to Jessica's house and still make it out to Jenks. But Jonathan was in a hurry to get tonight over and done with. It was all too emotional, and underneath his tension Melissa sniffed a sliver of fear....

"Don't worry, Jonathan. She won't change her mind about leaving."

He looked at her, bristling, then sighed.

"She better not, anyway," Melissa said. "I don't think I can live with my parents much longer. Not with Rex's new rules on mindcasting." Her parents had never been psychos like Rex's dad, but the subtle web of deceits she had woven around them over the years was beginning to collapse. Melissa had spent the last sixteen years shrinking from their very touch; she doubted she was ready for any heart-to-heart talks about her private life.

In particular, they'd started asking about her missing car. It was definitely time to get out of town.

Dess appeared, slipping from her window and crossing the threadbare lawn at a deliberate pace. Melissa felt her annoyance at Jonathan's noisiness and saw her taking her time.

"Hey, Flyboy." Dess pulled the back door open and slid her backpack across, then jumped in herself. She didn't say hello to Melissa, but there was no real animosity in it, only habit.

Jonathan glanced over his shoulder at the backseat. "You really think we'll need that stuff? I mean, are there even any darklings left?"

Melissa found herself defending Dess. "A few got away. And the really cautious ones never even showed."

"Sure," Flyboy said. "But they're not in Bixby anymore. And the four of us will be there."

Dess shrugged. "When dealing with midnight, better safe than sorry."

Jonathan gave her his new wounded stare. "Guess that makes me sorry."

Melissa scowled as the sour milk taste of guilt rolled out of his mind. Two weeks later and he was still wallowing in the idea that what had happened to Jessica was his fault.

She sighed softly, wondering what it was going to be like to deal with Flyboy all alone for twenty-four hours a day.

Maybe without Rex around to challenge his freedom, he'd chill out....

At the thought of leaving Rex behind, Melissa shivered a little and pulled her mind back to the present. The future could sort itself out now that they actually had one to look forward to.

Jonathan pulled out onto the street, swinging the car into a wide one-eighty that kicked up dust on Dess's dying lawn. Then he shot down the unpaved road, tires spitting gravel and sand. As usual these days, he wasn't in the mood to talk or watch out for cops.

Melissa settled into the front passenger seat, casting her mind across the empty spaces on the edge of town, staying alert. Since the Hysteria, curfew had a whole new meaning here in Bixby.

The official story was, of course, a big joke. A freak collision of air masses over eastern Oklahoma had caused a record number of lightning strikes and brain-rattling waves of thunder. Power had been knocked out across the county, and random electrical fields had disrupted even battery-operated devices and cars. These natural phenomena - along with statistical spikes of heart attacks, fireworks thefts, and costumed Halloween pranks - were the official reasons for the panic.

None of which explained the mutilated body of the camper found in outer Jenks or the seventeen people still missing. But it was a good enough rationalization for anyone who hadn't been awake and inside the rip that night.

Of course, a few conspiracy types had much better theories. Melissa's favorites were an electromagnetic pulse from an experimental plane using the new Bixby runway (which wasn't even built yet) and psychedelic mushrooms growing in the town water supply.

It was all part of a need to understand or, more accurately, to explain away what had happened. Anything not to have to face the truth - that the unknown had come visiting.

One certainty remained, though: Halloween would never be the same in Bixby again.

They reached Jessica's house just before eleven.

All the inside lights were off, both cars sitting in the driveway. There was no For Sale sign on the lawn yet or any other way to distinguish the Day house from the others on the street. But it looked different somehow, even before she cast her mind inside. Sadder.

"Are they really moving?" Dess asked.

"That's just a rumor at school," Flyboy said. He looked to Melissa for confirmation.

She nodded, her mouth filling with the burnt-coffee taste of anguish that still clung to hope. "They don't really know. Still waiting for some kind of hard evidence, I suppose."

"Waiting sucks," Dess said, and Jonathan nodded.

And then they waited.

She made her way out the window about fifteen minutes later, dropping ungracefully into the bushes. Her jacket looked too big on her, and she walked hunched, her hands jammed all the way down into the pockets.

When she was halfway to the street, Jonathan flashed his headlights once. She spun toward the car, and a sudden jolt of fear shot through the air. For a second Melissa thought that she was about to chicken out and crawl right back into her bedroom.

But a moment later she was at the car window. Her anxiety pulsed in Melissa's mind, her suspicion almost hiding the tight ball of grief in her stomach. Suddenly Melissa realized how brave Beth was to have agreed to this at all.

"Hey," Jonathan said.

"That's Dess, isn't it?" the kid said.

Dess nodded. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"You look just like Cassie's picture."

Dess didn't answer, giving off the prickly taste of a lump rising in her throat.

"You cut your hair," Beth said to Melissa.

The mindcaster pushed her fingers through her one-inch buzz, a nervous habit she'd learned from Rex. "It's what I get for playing with fire."

Beth got into the back with Dess, sitting on the backpack with a clink.

"Ouch!"

"Just give it here," Dess said.

"What's in there?"

"Magic stuff."

Jonathan turned to give Dess a death glare, but the kid handed over the backpack with the utmost care.

Rex limped up the stairs of Madeleine's house, trying not to think of what was going on in Jenks. There were bigger issues to consider, lots of questions to be answered before the others left. He clutched his latest letter from Angie and its accompanying sheaf of photocopies - biface spear points from a museum in Cactus Hill, Virginia. She was researching Stone Age culture there, helping Rex search for a link to ancient finds in southern Spain. Rex had serious work to do tonight, more important than watching over ritual farewells.

Besides, Madeleine needed feeding.

In his other hand he carried a thermos of hot chicken soup. Not too hot, of course; she could drink on her own now, but like a baby, she didn't know enough not to burn her lips. Fortunately Rex knew a lot about caring for invalids.

He didn't mind taking care of Madeleine, actually. Here inside the crepuscular contortion that had protected her for fifty years, the human presence of the outside world didn't bother him as much. No cable TV, no cordless phone filling the air with its buzz. The place stank of thirteen-pointed steel, but rust had long ago consumed the alloy's bite. The midnighters who had named those weapons were all dead, except for Madeleine.

Not merely alive: Melissa said that her mind was slowly repairing itself, rebuilding from what his darkling half had done to her, a survivor to the last.

When he opened the door to her room, Rex was surprised to see her sitting up, a gleam of intelligence in her eyes. The smell of weakness and death had lifted a little.

"Madeleine?"

She nodded slowly, as if remembering her name. "What day is it?"

Rex blinked. The dry, rough-edged words were her first in a month. "Samhain has come and gone. The flame-bringer stopped it."

She let out a rattling sigh, a smile fluttering on her lips. "I knew that girl was special. I was right to call her here to Bixby."

Rex couldn't argue with that. Since Samhain he had been forced to admit that Madeleine's manipulations over the years had saved a lot of lives. Her orphaned set of midnighters had done more for Bixby than all the previous generations put together. However broken the two of them were, they could congratulate themselves on that.

He sat down next to her, twisting the top from the thermos.

"Where is Melissa?" she croaked.

"She's leaving." The two simple words sent a spur of pain through him. But of course it was the only way.

"Where?"

He shrugged. "Eat."

She took the thermos in trembling hands, held it to her lips, and drank. Rex watched her wrinkled throat move with each greedy swallow. Apparently rebuilding her damaged mind was hungry work. He looked down at the spear points, reading the lore symbols in Angie's cramped handwriting. It was easier on his brain than modern letters.

Melissa found it maddening how much he enjoyed the letters from his new pen pal.

Finally Madeleine rested the thermos in her lap, catching her breath. "You're a fool to hate me, Rex."

"I don't hate you. I pity you when I bother to think about it."

"I did it all for you, Rex. Don't you see?" Her eyes gleamed, and he could see what remained of her colossal egotism. "I wanted to make Bixby as it was in the old days."

He shook his head. "That Bixby was a nightmare. It's our day now."

She snorted. "What would you know about it? A half-darkling, half-midnighter and so concerned with daylighters. It's perverse."

Rex smiled, glad to hear her diagnosis. She could see that the beast inside him was under control, subservient to his human side. Maybe she wasn't the only one repairing herself.

"Did you say Melissa was leaving?"

He nodded.

"But why? I cowered in this house for fifty years rather than leave the contortion. She'll be blind and deaf out there, without a hint of taste. A daylighter, Rex - a nothing."

"No, she won't be."

He swallowed, fear moving through him again at the thought of her leaving. It wasn't Melissa he was worried about, of course. It was Rex Greene. Would he still be able to hold himself together once his oldest friend was gone? Maybe he should join the others, leaving Dess all alone in Bixby, leaving his father and the old woman to die. They deserved whatever they got, and without Melissa's calmness of mind, without her touch...

Rex shook his head, steeling himself. He took the thermos from Madeleine's hand and wiped stray soup from her chin. Perhaps Melissa was right, and it was tending to his father and an old woman that had kept him sane all along. His cares kept him human.

Madeleine hadn't heard him; she was still mewling. "Why, Rex? Why would she leave? This is Bixby, after all."

He drew himself up and gave her a predatory smile, knowing that the news would silence her.

"Because Bixby isn't special anymore."

They reached Jenks without any trouble, and Jonathan drew to a halt in the same field that Rex had raged across in his mother's pink Cadillac. As the four of them made their silent way toward the rip, he stared down the railroad tracks, which still bore the scars of Halloween - a few cross-ties were blackened from burning oil and rocket exhaust, and the soggy relics of firecracker-red paper clung to bits of gravel everywhere.

But the surrounding grass had recovered from the rip's strange light, Jonathan noticed, a healthy green again. Maybe the dark moon wasn't so tough after all.

There wasn't much left of the rip anymore, just a sliver. A few more nights and it would fade into the lore completely. When they reached it, Dess pulled out Geostationary and began to make a small, precise circle of stones.

Beth stood close to him, watching her. "What's that thing?" she said softly.

"A GPS device," he answered. "It's not magic or anything."

"What's it supposed to do?"

"It's for finding places. You have to be in exactly the right spot for this to work."

Beth looked at him, her stare suddenly fierce. "I've got my mom's cell phone, you know."

He blinked. "That's... good."

"So you guys better not try anything weird."

Jonathan sighed. What they were about to try was, pretty much by definition, weird. "Don't worry, okay? We're all friends here. You said you wanted to do this."

Beth only swallowed and for a moment looked like she was about to cry.

"She wants this too," Jonathan added, wishing he were somewhere else. He'd been the one to break the news to Beth, to argue against her suspicions, her angry disbelief. After the hours spent convincing her to come out here, Jonathan was all out of words. He reached out and put his arm around her, drew her closer.

"Really?" she said, her voice breaking. "And this is for real?"

He smiled. "Well, I ain't dreaming." She felt unbelievably small and fragile, shivering in the cold.

"Come on," Dess said. "Stand right here."

Jonathan guided Beth up onto the tracks and into the circle of stones. The frightened expression on her face made something loosen in his throat, and his voice grew hoarse. "Don't worry. It'll be okay."

He stepped back, waiting, hoping that this would work.

Midnight fell a few moments later, the moan of the cold wind switching off like a light, the blue time sucking the color from their faces. Jonathan felt the awful weight of Flatland lift up from him.

Same old midnight - damaged, unleashed from its proper boundaries, but not destroyed.

For a moment Jonathan wondered if they'd waited too long to try this and the rip had faded out. Beth just stood there in her circle of rocks, as motionless as any stiff.

But then her eyes blinked. "That was weird."

"No kidding," Jessica said from behind her little sister. She'd asked them to face the kid toward Bixby and had wisely chosen not to be standing in Beth's view. She kept her right hand in her jacket pocket as well.

It still freaked Jonathan out how Jessica always folded out of the air as midnight fell. Even darklings and slithers had to escape from the sun, hiding in caves or burying themselves. But the flame-bringer had become something altogether different, a whole new kind of midnight creature.

She wasn't frozen during daylight... she simply wasn't.

Rex called it "temporal dependence." Jonathan didn't know what to call it. During the day it felt like Jessica was gone, like that first night when he thought he'd lost her to the lightning. He'd searched the roof for hours before trudging down the twenty-six flights of stairs to the ground floor, exhausted by Flatland, crushed by grief. It had been a whole terrible day before midnight had fallen again and he'd flown back up to Pegasus, hoping to find some kind of sign.

And she was standing there... still in shock, not realizing a whole day had passed without her. Alive.

But his joy had faded when midnight had ended again and they realized that Jessica was trapped now inside the secret hour.

Jonathan looked at her, feeling that fractured rush of relief again. For the last two years his life had been split in half, between glorious midnight and the crushing gravity of daylight. These days it was even worse: Flatland was much flatter without Jessica and the secret hour suddenly more precious.

Midnight stretched across the whole world now, after all. They could fly anywhere... in their one hour.

Beth turned around slowly, huddling in her jacket as if the air were still cold. She stared at Jessica.

"Come on, Flyboy," Dess said. "Let's give them some privacy."

He caught Jessica's eye, and she nodded.

Walking away felt like a kick in the stomach, giving up these minutes with Jessica. This was what he'd always tried to avoid since the day his mother had departed and not returned: this feeling that if you lost someone, your world could come crashing down. And it had happened again.

But at least Jessica hadn't disappeared completely. She was only gone for twenty-four hours a day. And Jonathan knew he would hold on to that one hour left to them for as long as he could.

"Jess?" Beth said in a small voice.

"Yeah, it's me." Jessica felt tears on her face. She'd known the exact spot her sister would shimmer into view, but it still made her breath catch.

"You're really... here."

Jessica nodded. She wanted to gather her little sister into a hug, but for these first fragile moments she'd decided to keep her right hand in her pocket. "Yeah. I've been here all along."

"Why didn't you come home?"

Jessica bit her lip. "I can't. I'm stuck here."

"What? In Jenks?"

"No, in midnight. I only exist for an hour a day. I'm part of midnight now." Jessica shook her head sadly. Maybe she'd been part of midnight since she'd woken up that first time in the secret hour. It had nibbled away at her life since then, until only this one sliver was left.

She felt a mental nudge from Melissa, standing close by, and stood straighter, swallowing her self-pity. Jessica had made her choice on that building top, after all, knowing that sticking her hand into the bolt of lightning would change everything.

"Why didn't you tell me what was going on?" Beth said. "The whole time, you could have let me know."

Jessica was ready for this. "Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?"

"Tell them...?"

"About this. Are you going to tell them you saw your missing sister appear on some railroad tracks in Jenks?"

Beth thought for a moment, then shook her head. "They'd probably send me to a shrink."

"Exactly." Jessica nodded. "So you have to keep it secret. Like I did. That's just the way it works. But Beth, at least you'll know I'm... somewhere."

"Somewhere isn't good enough, Jess! You're leaving me all alone."

"I'm not. You've still got Mom and Dad."

Beth clenched her teeth. "Mom cries all the time. She thinks it's because she was working so much that you disappeared. And Dad's an even bigger zombie than before."

Jessica closed her eyes, her tears hot on her cheeks in the cool of the blue time. The thought of her parents missing her, not knowing what had happened, was too much to bear. "They need you, Beth."

"They need you. Maybe they could come here and stand here like I did. I'll think of some way to get them out to Jenks. I'll make them come...."

"No." Jessica took a step forward, put her left arm around Beth. "The rip is fading. And besides, I won't be here anymore. Jonathan and Melissa and I are leaving Bixby."

Beth kicked at the gravel, tears appearing in her eyes. "You are leaving me."

"Midnight's spreading, Beth. There are going to be more people like me, waking up and finding themselves in the blue time."

"And lying to their little sisters?"

"Probably, at first." Jessica nodded. "Right now they need our help."

"I need you too, Jessica." Beth was sobbing now.

"I know." She drew her little sister into a left-handed hug and sighed. "I'm so sorry, Beth. Maybe it wasn't fair, bringing you out here."

Beth shook her head.

"But you'll have to keep everyone in the dark, just like I did," Jessica said. "You'll have to lie about it."

Beth raised her head. "Not to everyone. There's Cassie."

Jessica nodded slowly. "That's right. She saw the rip, anyway. I guess you could tell her about me too."

Beth sniffed once. "Already did."

"What?"

"When Jonathan was trying to convince me to come out here. I had her spend the night, and she hid in my closet. And listened."

A momentary wave of annoyance, all too familiar, went through Jessica. But then it turned into a feeling of relief and she let out a chuckle. "You little sneak."

"There have to be more people in Bixby who know about all this, who've figured out how it works." Beth pulled away a bit, staring fiercely into her sister's eyes. "And believe me, Cassie and I are going to find them. Don't think you've gotten away from us yet."

Jessica looked down at her little sister, a smile spreading across her face, suddenly certain that Beth was going to be okay, with or without her big sister around.

Dess let herself wander along the tracks, looking into the trees, searching for any sign of life. It was almost too quiet these days; she wouldn't mind the sight of a slither among the leaves. Certainly she was safe enough, between Counterfeiter in her pocket and the flame-bringer a few hundred feet away. Jessica hadn't tried out her new, softly sparkling right hand on any darklings yet, but Dess was pretty sure she didn't need a flashlight anymore.

Dess hadn't slain anything herself in ages now. Why had they all run away? Darklings were like tigers, she figured. You didn't want them eating you, but you didn't want them going extinct. The world was less interesting without them.

Of course, after a few thousand years in one crappy town, Halloween had probably looked like Christmas to the darklings who'd survived.

When Jessica had sealed the rip, the energies built up along Bixby's fault line hadn't disappeared - they'd spread across the globe.

Dess shook her head. After all her work on the geography of the secret hour, it seemed a shame to throw out all those maps. Still, she couldn't wait for Jonathan and Jess to start exploring the 36th parallel, finding out how far midnight stretched in the aftermath of Samhain.

Did it extend along the whole 36th parallel? And the 12th, 24th, and 48th as well? Was it wrapped around the entire globe, or did it only pop up at the intersections of multiples of twelve?

Or was midnight simply everywhere now? Were lucky midnighters waking up in every city and town, amazed at the blue and frozen world?

Dess heard the crunch of gravel and turned. Flyboy was bouncing along behind her, looking unhappy, like he needed someone to talk to.

She sighed. "So when do you three leave?"

"Probably soon." He pointed his chin back toward the girls. "Now that this is over and done with."

"It's going to be lonely, only seeing Jess an hour a day."

"It's already lonely."

Dess shook her head, wondering if he'd bothered to do the math on that little conundrum. Jess lived only one hour to his twenty-five, which meant she'd be hitting her nineteenth birthday just about the same time Jonathan was dying of old age. And sometime way before that, things were going to get... icky.

"Oh, well." Dess smiled wryly. "You've always got Melissa to talk to."

He looked up from the tracks. "Why do you still hate her? She saved Jessica that night, you know. And Beth. Maybe everyone in the world."

"I don't hate her." As the words left her mouth, Dess realized it was really true - her hatred of the mindcaster had quietly expired. "Still, she's not exactly road trip material."

"Maybe not." He smiled. "But without her, we'll never find all of them."

"All of them? Flyboy, there's lots more than you think."

Jonathan looked at her, then shook his head. "Any idea how all this happened? I mean why it happened?"

Dess just snorted at that one. Let Rex bury himself in the lore, still trying to figure that stuff out, how the time-quake and the lightning had chosen the same moment to strike. But Dess knew that was nuts. Not that she was against doing the math - explaining why and how things happened was the credo of the Discovery Channel, after all. But sometimes the numbers would never add up, no matter how hard you calculated.

After all, the chances of a bolt of lightning hitting the center of Bixby on the exact stroke of midnight on Halloween were... rather low. And if you thought for too long about why it had happened in exactly that way, you weren't doing your brain any favors. In which case it was better to leave the math the hell alone.

She looked into the sky and saw that the dark moon reached its apex. "Come on, Flyboy. Time for your party trick."

"Okay." He swallowed. "You really think this will help?"

"Of course it will." Dess led Jonathan back toward where the other three stood. She knew the two sisters had more stuff to work out, but sometimes apology math was funny: no number was ever high enough, and you just had to get over it.

They were holding each other, as if already out of words. Melissa stood off to one side, eyes closed. Prompting? Controlling? Or just eavesdropping? Dess wondered if this new non-evil style of mindcasting really helped or was just another crock.

Dess waited until she caught Jessica's eye, then pointed at Jonathan.

Give the poor kid this much at least.

Jessica nodded back and pulled away. "Come on. I want to show you something about midnight. Something not horrible. It's a little weird but... trust me?"

Beth made a choked little sound, wiping at her face, then said softly, "I trust you."

Jonathan stepped forward, holding out both his hands. "You saw us do this, right? On Halloween?"

Beth nodded, taking his hand carefully. As her smaller fingers closed around his, a look of surprise crossed her face.

"It's... dizzy."

"It's a lot better than dizzy," Jessica said, smiling. She pulled her right hand from her pocket; white sparks fluttered upward from it. The bracelet she wore glowed, its tiny charms aglitter. Dess squinted at the light.

Beth stared at it openmouthed. "What is that?"

"Don't you remember? It's a present from Jonathan... plus some lightning." Jessica took Flyboy's hand.

At first they took a weenie, ten-foot hop. Then a longer one took them to the middle of the field. Finally they opened up big time, heading for the motionless Arkansas River. Jessica's right hand sparkled in the distance, its trail of white light coruscating across the blue horizon.

Dess felt a smile spread across her face, and she was suddenly much less depressed. Beth had seen the blue time again; she'd gotten to fly.

"Yeah, I know," Melissa said.

Dess let out a sigh. Alone with the bitch goddess one more time.

"I'm still sorry, you know. For what I did to you."

Typical mindcaster trick, catching her off guard and getting all sentimental. Dess heard herself saying, "Whatever. It's probably not your fault, the way you are."

"We saved Rex that night."

Not so sorry after all? Dess thought. But she couldn't argue with Melissa's logic. "You'll miss him, won't you?"

Melissa nodded. "I already do."

Dess sighed again. Maybe there was one darkling left in Bixby.

They stood there in silence for a while, waiting for the others to come back.

"So how many more of us are out there?" the mindcaster finally asked.

Dess took a breath, glad to be talking about math instead of all this emotional crap. "Well, let's say you have to be born within a half second of midnight, right? That would be one out of every eighty-six thousand four hundred people."

"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.