If this was all true, then how much had Madeleine known about everything that had gone on back in her day? She’d only been seventeen when the Grayfoots had swept the midnighters from power, but she carried the memories of generations of mindcasters. Wouldn’t she know about it if midnighters had been doing creepy things for thousands of years?
And would any of them have the guts to ask her what she thought about all this? Of course, Melissa wouldn’t have much choice in the matter the next time the two of them touched. Jessica was just glad it would be Melissa, and not her, doing the asking.
By the time Angie drew her lecture to a close, she didn’t seem scared of them anymore. She was smoking now, looking at them like they were just kids.
“So now that I’ve explained reality to you,” Angie finished, “what are you going to tell me in return?”
Jessica narrowed her eyes at the woman. She was glad Melissa hadn’t turned her into a drooling idiot, but that didn’t mean she liked Angie. Not at all.
“Here’s the main thing you need to know,” Rex said.
“As far as we can tell, all hell’s going to break loose on November first.”
“The midnight before, actually,” Dess added. “When October 31 rolls over into November.”
Angie smirked. “Midnight on Halloween, huh?”
“It may sound cheesy,” Dess said coolly. “But numbers don’t lie.”
“I don’t know if I believe all that numerology stuff.”
“Numerology?” Dess’s jaw dropped open. “This is math, you dimwit.”
The woman stared at Dess skeptically for a long moment, but then a troubled look crossed her face. “You know, before they cut me off, Ernesto Grayfoot kept saying that something was arriving soon. And after the darklings stopped answering, everyone started getting anxious about it. He said it had to do with the flame-bringer.” She looked at Jessica. “That’s you, right?”
Jessica nodded.
“But the Grayfoots never got all their instructions before the halfling died.”
“What exactly did Ernesto say?” Rex asked.
“All he told me was a name—the old man was nervous because ‘Samhain’ was coming.” She shrugged. “He never told me who that was.”
Melissa shook her head. “Not ‘who,’ dimwit, when. Samhain is the ancient name for Halloween.”
“Spot the goth,” Dess muttered.
“Like you should talk,” Melissa answered.
“Halloween again.” Rex sighed tiredly. “Can’t seem to get away from it.”
“Come on, you guys. Don’t be stupid,” Angie said. “Halloween’s just pop culture nonsense. It didn’t exist here in Oklahoma until a hundred years ago, and as I’ve explained to you, the monsters got here a lot earlier than that.” Her gaze drifted across the five of them. “They’re still here.”
“Monsters?” Rex said. He took a step toward Angie, then another, and Jessica felt a nervous tingling in the bottom of her stomach. Something was changing in Rex, exhaustion leaving his frame. He seemed suddenly taller, his expression harder, a threat implicit in every line of his face. Then the most astonishing thing—Jessica saw his eyes flash violet, though the dark moon had long set.
He was arm’s length from Angie, but the woman stumbled backward, shrinking against the broken car. The cigarette dropped from her fingers.
“Maybe you’re right, Angie,” he said. “Maybe monsters have lived in Bixby for a long, long time. But you should just remember one thing.”
His voice changed then, turning dry and cold, as if something ancient was speaking through him. “Monster or not, I’m what you made me when you left me out in the desert. I’m your nightmare now.”
A hissing sound came from him then, and his neck stretched forward, as if his head were straining to leave his shoulders. His fingers seemed to grow longer and thinner, cutting the air in mesmerizing patterns. The hiss sliced through Jessica’s nervous system like a piece of broken glass traveling down her spine.
Angie’s smug confidence melted, and she slumped down, only her back against the Ford holding her from sinking to the dirt.
The hissing faded until it was lost in the wind, and then Rex’s body seemed to fold into itself again, back to its normal human size and shape. Jessica wasn’t sure if she’d really seen him change so completely or if the whole thing had been a massive psych-out.
He turned away from Angie. “Come on, guys.”
“But she knows more,” Melissa said.
“Not anything important. They told me what I really need to know.”
His voice was normal again, and as Rex strode toward Jonathan’s car, he looked tired, the energy that had coursed through his body during the sudden transformation now gone.
Jessica and Jonathan cast a wary glance at each other, then followed Melissa, who was trailing worriedly after Rex.
“What about her?” Dess called. Jessica paused and glanced over her shoulder; Dess was looking down at Angie as if she were a particularly interesting bug found smashed against the ground.
Rex didn’t turn back, just spoke to the empty desert in front of him.
“She’s walking. She knows the way out of town.”
19
6:23 P.M.
SPAGHETTI SITUATION
“The rule is in force tonight,” Beth announced.
Jessica glanced up from her physics textbook. “Um, Beth? I’d like to point out that I am in my own bedroom, not in the kitchen. Therefore there is no possible way that I can be found in violation of the rule.”
“I’m just warning you,” Beth answered.
“Warning me?” Jessica said with a look of annoyance.
It was Beth Spaghetti Night, which meant that her little sister was cooking dinner. Over the last four years, since Beth had turned nine, the ritual had been held every Wednesday night, interrupted only in the first few tumultuous weeks after the family had arrived in Bixby.
The one rule of Beth Spaghetti Night was simple: Beth cooked, and everyone else had to stay away from the food.
Even now, the scent of reducing onions was already drifting through Jessica’s open door. The familiar smell had been making her happy until this interruption.
“Warning me about what exactly?”
“That I am enforcing the rule in its maximum form tonight,” Beth said.
“What does that mean? That we all have to leave the house while you cook?”
“No, but just…” Beth wrinkled her nose and checked over her shoulder, as if the smell of something burning had reached her. “Just stay in here. Okay, Jess?”
“Why?”
Beth smiled. “It’s a surprise.”
Jessica considered getting Mom to pass judgment on this new and irksome interpretation of the rule, but it probably wasn’t worth the effort. Jessica had been planning on studying until dinner anyway, and maybe the threat of Beth’s irritation would keep her from winding up in front of the TV.
Physics was Jessica’s only test scheduled before Halloween, and it seemed a shame for the world to end on a D+.
“Please?”
“Sure. Whatever,” Jessica said, making sure to roll her eyes.
“Good.You’ll like my little surprise.”
“Okay” Beth’s smug expression didn’t reassure Jessica. “Can’t wait for it.”
“Can I close your door?”
Jessica groaned. “Don’t I smell something burning, Beth?”
Her little sister spun on one heel, an expression of alarm crossing her face. Something really was burning. But she still managed to slam the door closed behind her as she fled.
Jessica listened to her footsteps thundering back toward the kitchen, wondering what this “surprise” was. Beth had been much easier to get along with in the last week, snooping a lot less, talking about her new friends at marching band, and practicing her twirls. Maybe she really did want to surprise them all with something special.