8

12:00 A.M.

NIGHTMARE INTERRUPTED

"There they go," Jessica said.

A cloud of slithers was swirling up from the dense trees in the distance, like a flock of birds sent into flight by a gunshot. She and Jonathan were at the top of their arc, the straight line of the railroad track below them leading off toward the deep desert.

"Never seen that many before," Jonathan said. "Not since..." His voice trailed off.

Jessica saw that the swarm had split, half of them wheeling around, heading toward her and Jonathan.

"What are they up to?" she said. The darklings had mostly steered clear of Jessica since she'd discovered her talent. But this flock of slithers almost looked intent on attacking. The creatures were spreading out, flying low, rushing toward them like oil spreading across the treetops.

"Not sure." Jonathan squeezed her hand. "And I think we're lost. Hold up a second."

They were descending into a small clearing near the railroad tracks. She bent her knees on landing, the soft grass absorbing their momentum.

"Which way?" she asked. From the ground the trees looked the same in every direction.

Jonathan shook his head. "Don't know. And we're taking way too long."

The trip from the car had eaten up precious minutes, but at least they'd been moving fast, bounding straight down a dirt road, then through a neighborhood of shabby houses set on large, junk-strewn lots. At the rendezvous point Melissa had pointed in the direction Rex had wandered off, saying he was only half a mile away. But the dense brush had forced them to take small jumps from clearing to clearing, weaving their way toward him. This was the worst kind of terrain to fly across; mesquite trees were dangerous, with their razor-sharp thorns.

After all this aimless bouncing around, Jessica figured that the other two were probably there already, charging straight through the trees under Melissa's guidance. She just hoped they had enough Dess-made weapons to protect Rex and the lost girl - and themselves - until she and Jonathan finally managed to discover a flight path.

"I think it's that way," Jonathan said. "But what were those - ?"

Suddenly a wave of silent shapes surged through the trees. The slithers' wings were furled into their snakelike bodies, like black arrows launched by invisible archers. Jessica's arms shot up just in time to ward off one flying toward her face. Acariciandote exploded with blue sparks, its charms glowing white-hot, but the icy needles of a slither bite shot all the way up into her shoulder.

"Jess!" Jonathan pulled her to himself, shielding her with his body. She heard the thunk of a slither plowing into his back, and he let out a grunt of pain.

With her good hand Jessica pulled Disintegrator from her pocket and turned it on, the beam of white light cutting through the blue time, turning a few of the darting shapes into flaming streaks of red fire.

She played her flashlight through the trees in all directions, the familiar glow of power moving through her. But the beam connected with nothing. The swarm had passed through the clearing in seconds flat.

Jonathan pulled away, groaning and stretching to reach the middle of his back. "Ow! Right on my spine! Little creeps."

"What was that all about?" Jessica cried, flicking off the flashlight.

Jonathan opened his eyes, blinking away the white light. "Who knows? Maybe they didn't realize it was you.... Down!" He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to the ground.

Jessica heard the whistle of more slithers passing just overhead; they'd shot from the trees again, coming from a new direction, fearless of her flame-bringer's power. She turned Disintegrator on and waved it randomly, missing completely as the last slithers disappeared into the trees.

"We need to jump!" Jonathan cried, his eyes shut tight against the white light. "They're using the trees for cover!"

He pulled her up from the ground by her numbed hand, jumping straight up into the sky. They spun slowly around each other, their flight unbalanced from the uncoordinated jump.

Nothing was in the air with them, but Jessica saw another flight of slithers slicing from the trees and through the spot where they had stood a moment before. She angled Disintegrator's beam downward, and soon the clearing floor was dotted with screaming, burning bodies.

"What are they doing? Don't they know I'll just kill them?"

"I think they're trying to delay us."

As they reached the peak of the jump, Jessica whipped the flashlight around, but nothing flew nearby. In the distance, though, the rest of the slither cloud had gathered itself around a rising black nucleus, a single darkling on the wing.

"That's not good," she said. The rescue plan had assumed it would take a while for anything big to reach Jenks from the deep desert. But apparently a darkling had come early, while she, the flame-bringer, had been late.

"Can I open my eyes?" Jonathan said as they began to descend.

She swept the flashlight across the trees below them one more time, but nothing sparked to life, and she flicked it off. "Sure."

As they began to descend, Jonathan swept his gaze across the horizon swiftly, then pointed with his free hand. "That's it over there."

Among the low, gnarly mesquite trees a spike of rock thrust into the air like a rude finger. It was in the general direction Melissa had indicated, and she'd said that Rex had found the lost girl in some sort of cave.

"Come on. Let's try to make it in one jump," Jonathan said. "If they're risking white light to slow us down, we should probably get there fast."

Instinct took over as they dropped, Jessica twisting in midair to reorient herself for a last jump toward the stone spire. They landed in the high grass and rebounded without any pause.

They rose above the trees again, and Jessica spotted two tiny figures standing close together by a fissure in the stone. "That's them!"

"They look like they're in one piece," Jonathan said softly. "Any slithers down there?"

"Close your eyes."

She switched the flashlight on again, playing it across the small clearing, the rocks, and the treetops. Nothing burst into flame; no slithers hurtled screaming from the undergrowth. Jessica did catch, however, the dark purple flash of Rex's eyes as he glanced up, then turned away, his expression of pain visible even from the air.

"Oops." Jessica turned the flashlight off. "Okay. You can look now, Jonathan. Landing in five, four..."

They came down softly in the thick grass, about ten feet from Rex and the small, thin girl who stood next to him, clinging to his arm. She was about Beth's age, wearing a ragged sweatshirt and pajama bottoms. Her eyes bulged as she stared at Jonathan and Jessica. She'd probably seen some pretty astonishing stuff tonight, but two people flying hand in hand was still pretty jaw-dropping.

"Are you okay?" Jonathan asked.

"Sorry about blinding you. Rex," Jessica said.

His eyes still covered, his hands shaking, Rex answered, "No, that's fine. It cleared my head. You got here just in time."

Jessica raised an eyebrow, wondering what that meant. There weren't any slithers here. Why had they been frying themselves just to delay her another minute?

Jonathan dropped Jessica's hand and crossed to the girl. "Cassie, right?"

She nodded dumbly.

"I'm Jonathan. Hey, your elbow looks ouchy."

Cassie looked at the red mark, then pointed into the cave. "Banged it in there. But you should see my ankle." She pulled up one pant leg, revealing the dark bruise of a slither bite. Jessica winced, shaking out her own hand, which was still tingling with icy needles.

"Ow!" Jonathan said. "I hate snakes."

"No. It was this stupid cat."

Jonathan glanced back at Jessica.

She remembered that night, only her second time in the secret hour, when the black slither-cat had transformed horribly into a snake before her eyes. Then another dozen slithers had shown up, along with a darkling in the shape of a giant panther. And then the biggest surprise of all: finding out that the whole thing hadn't been a dream, but an entire new reality opening up.

Jessica frowned. On the phone this afternoon no one had mentioned what was supposed to happen after they rescued Cassie from the blue time. How would they keep her from spilling the beans to everyone in town?

Of course, maybe the answer was obvious. Melissa would reach into the young girl's mind and erase what had happened here. She had done it more than once before - to Jessica's own parents, probably. And back when her talent was young and unformed, Melissa had forced herself into Rex's father's mind, leaving the old guy half crazy. The thought of his milky, empty eyes made Jessica shiver again.

But maybe it didn't have to be that way.

"This is a pretty crappy dream, huh?" she said to the girl, rubbing her slither-bitten hand.

Jonathan raised an eyebrow, and even Rex, who still looked pretty shaky, snorted out a short laugh.

"What?" Jessica shrugged. "I'm just saying, as nightmares go, this one's on the weird side. Right, Cassie?"

The look of dazed confusion gradually faded from the girl's face, her expression turning more thoughtful. "Well, I was kind of wondering: what's going on here?" She looked up at the dark moon. "What happened to everything? And who are you guys?"

"You've got a fever, right?" Jessica asked.

"Not a fever. My grandma said it's just a cold."

"Oh. Right. Okay," Jessica said slowly and deliberately. "But sometimes when we're sick, we have funny dreams."

Cassie crossed her arms. "Yeah, maybe. But people in those funny dreams don't usually bring it up that I'm dreaming."

Jonathan laughed. "Nice try, Jess."

"Yeah, this kid's smarter than that," Rex said. "And tougher than she looks too."

"Smarter?" Jessica cried. "What's that supposed to mean? I thought the blue time was all a dream, remember?"

"Oh, yeah." Rex chuckled. "Well, feel free to tell her whatever you want until Melissa gets here."

Jessica frowned and glanced at Jonathan, who shrugged, a helpless look on his face. He didn't much like the idea either, but he clearly couldn't see any other way of keeping the secret hour secret.

A crashing sound reached them through the trees.

"Speaking of which," Rex said.

Dess emerged first, a long metal pipe balanced over one shoulder, like a spear ready to be thrown. She stumbled into the clearing and came to a halt, looking at them one by one. Then she lowered the spear with a disgusted noise. "No monsters left, are there?"

"All under control," Rex said.

"Rats," Dess said. "Jessica, I haven't slain jack squat since you became the flame-bringer."

Jessica sighed. "Yeah. My bad."

Melissa came into view, yanking on her long black dress, the hem of which was tangled with twigs and trailing branches.

"Jeez, Rex. That was freaky," she announced.

"You tasted it?" he asked quietly.

"It was pretty hard to miss," Melissa said, running a finger along one of her scars. "I mean, I already knew you were having an identity crisis. But I didn't think a darkling would agree with you!"

Jessica glanced from one of them to the other. Rex had a funny look on his face, and she noticed that his hands were still shaking, his fingers bent stiffly into claws. Melissa was staring at him like he'd grown antlers.

"Are we missing something here?" Dess asked aloud.

"Yeah, what happened?" Jessica said. "I saw a darkling running away."

Melissa took a step closer to Rex and the girl. "The darkling was here, but it seemed to think Rex was a - "

"Don't!" Rex interrupted.

There was a long silence, the two of them staring at each other.

"Not now," he hissed.

"Wow," Cassie Flinders said. "Maybe I am dreaming because you guys are really weird."

Everyone looked at the girl. She stood there, staring defiantly back at them. Jessica decided that she had a point.

"Okay, kiddo," Melissa said after another awkward moment of silence. "I think it's past your bedtime."

"But it's morning," Cassie answered, then looked up at the sky and frowned. "Or it was..."

"Either way, I can't believe your grandma let you out of bed," Rex said. "You being sick and all."

"She always lets me play in the backyard," Cassie said huffily. "Says it's good for a cold to get out in the cold."

"Well, I'm putting you back under the covers," Melissa said, reaching out a hand. "Come with me."

"Said the spider to the fly," Dess muttered.

Jessica looked across the clearing at Jonathan. There had to be some other way to keep the secret than messing with people's brains. She was just a kid, after all. Who would believe her?

As Melissa's hand closed around Cassie's, the girl seemed to relax. Then she yawned, her eyes growing sleepy.

Melissa turned to the others. "Chill, guys. I'm a lot better at this than I used to be." She shrugged. "Besides, I'm only going to calm her down and put her to sleep and maybe suggest that this all was a nightmare. When it comes to radical memory overhaul, I only work on stiffs. Which, you may have noticed, Cassie isn't. Anything else will have to wait."

"What are you guys talking about?" Cassie asked sleepily.

Melissa smiled, leading Cassie back toward the railroad tracks. "We're discussing how you're going to remember this crazy dream tomorrow." She winked at Rex. "But probably not the next day."

"So she'll tell people about it?" Jonathan asked. "And then just forget the next day? Won't that seem funny to everyone else? I mean, she'll probably be on the news tomorrow."

Rex shrugged. "She's a kid, she's sick, she wandered off. So what if she talks crazy for a day? And after we pay her a visit tomorrow at midnight - " He raised his fingers and snapped.

The sound sent a shiver through Jessica. Maybe they were right, and mindcasting was the only way to keep the secret. In the old days, when Bixby had practically been ruled by midnighters, they'd probably done it all the time. But still, the idea didn't make her very happy.

"So, Rex, should I leave her out in the sun?" Melissa asked from the edge of the clearing.

"No reason to," he said. "Jessica already gave us both a blinding dose of white light. It worked for me when I was half-darkling; it should work for her. Meet you at the car?"

"Sure thing, Spider-Man," Melissa called, waving goodbye.

Jessica watched the two of them disappear into the trees, wondering at how pliant and sleepy Cassie had become after Melissa had taken her hand. Maybe it was only shock, the poor girl overwhelmed after everything that happened. But Madeleine had suppressed Dess's memories with only a touch too.

Melissa was growing in power every day. Jessica wondered what she could do if she got really pissed off at someone.

"So, Jessica, you ready to fly home?" Jonathan asked.

She looked at Rex. He still seemed shaky, as if it had been a close thing tonight.

"Will you guys be safe, Rex?"

He nodded. "Sure. I'll stick around and see if there's any lore sites around here. Or any other clues about this place. I think you ruined the darklings' party, for the rest of the hour at least. And Dess here has..."

"Magisterially Supernumerary Mathematician," she said, hefting the spear proudly.

"But what about your car, Jonathan?" Jessica said.

He shrugged. "I'll get it tomorrow."

"I can drive it into town!" Dess offered.

"I don't think so," Jonathan said.

Dess snorted and prodded his ribs with the point of Supernumerary.

Jessica stood there, rubbing her wounded hand and thinking glum thoughts. They had saved a young girl tonight, but in payment for the rescue the memory of the most amazing experience in Cassie's life would be erased forever. And Cassie Flinders was only the beginning. If the blue time was tearing, more unlucky people were likely to step into the secret hour, where hungry monsters waited for them. And possibly normal time itself was coming to an end.

Worst of all, Beth was probably waiting in Jessica's room right now, ready to unleash holy fury when she got home.

"You know what?" Jessica said. "You can drive me back after the secret hour's over."

Jonathan frowned at her, rubbing at the middle of his back. "What about curfew?"

"I'll risk it. You guys do all the time."

"What about Beth? I told her eighteen minutes."

"I'll risk her too."

"But what - ?"

"Jonathan, you don't have to take me home yet, okay?" She took his hands, felt weightlessness flow into her. "This whole night has sucked so far. Maybe we could just do some flying? Real flying, out in the open. We can take our time getting me home."

His frown faded, and a smile spread slowly across his face.

"Take our time getting home?" Dess said with a smirk. "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

Rex chuckled softly.

Jessica ignored them. The heart-pounding panic of the slither attack had erased the mutual irritation between them on the subject of little sisters. And although what he'd said about liking Beth had been maddening at the time, right now it seemed kind of sweet.

"Come on. Let's fly somewhere together," she said. She massaged her shoulder. "Now that we're not getting pelted with slithers."

"Well," he said after a moment's thought, "have you ever seen the river?"

"The Arkansas?" Jessica shrugged. "Just from the bridge on the way over here."

"You haven't seen the Arkansas River till you've seen it in the secret hour," Jonathan said. "Motionless water, excellent for skipping rocks."

"Oh, cool." For a moment she tried to figure out how the laws of motion would apply, but her new physics lobe quickly gave up. "So how does that work?"

Jonathan smiled again, his brown eyes flashing in the light of the dark moon. "It's kind of tricky to explain. But you get a lot more skips than on regular water. Swimming's fun too."

"Okay," Jessica said. "I could use some fun."

"Come on, then. I'll show you."

Jonathan offered her his hand, and she took it.

"You kids have fun now," Dess called.

"Okay," Jessica said. "See you, Rex."

The seer only nodded, his hands still shaking. Even in the blue light she could tell his face was ashen. What had happened to him before they'd arrived? And why had the darkling run away while she was still finding her way here, if its minions were sacrificing themselves to hold her up?

She shook her head. Evidently Rex and Melissa were still keeping secrets from the rest of them.

They leapt up and over the trees, finding their way back to the railroad bed and then across Jenks, until Jessica could see the glimmer of the river in the distance. From the air it looked like a giant slither winding its way down from the black hills, glowing with the cold light of the dark moon.

"You know," Jonathan said as they flew. "Maybe it's better for Cassie. Forgetting about all this."

"Maybe. Doesn't seem fair, though."

"Sure, but think about how much it would scare a kid like that. Knowing about all these weird creatures crawling across her while she's frozen for an hour every night?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Jessica said. "I mean, it scares me, and I'm the all-powerful flashlight-bringer."

"And on top of the fear factor, everyone would think she was totally crazy. Eventually, since she'll never see the blue time again after all, she'd probably decide they were right."

They landed on a stretch of not-quite beach, a narrow strip of dry earth dotted with patches of scrubby grass. The river stretched out before them, motionless wavelets glittering like scales made of diamond, reflecting a shattered image of the dark moon.

It was beautiful, but Jessica shivered.

"Not cold, are you?"

"No. It's always warm here." She shook her head. "I was just wondering if Cassie might see the blue time again. I mean, what if Dess is right? What if the secret hour swallows all of Bixby - or even the whole world - forever? And everyone gets sucked through, like Cassie was? Suddenly cars and electricity don't work, and people can't even make fires anymore. Only five of us on the whole planet know anything about using thirteen-letter words and stainless steel to protect ourselves. What happens then?"

He squeezed her hand. "Then I'll come get you, wherever you are when it happens. We'll be okay."

"But what about everybody else?"

He stared out across the river, nodding slowly. "My guess is, everybody else is in big trouble."