Rex nodded. “Maybe they passed down an edited version.”
“What they passed down was unbelievable smugness, Rex. They never questioned what they were doing. I don’t think they could question it.”
“How do you mean?”
She reached for his hand again and showed him an unpleasant memory from only a few weeks before—the moment when she had touched Dess against her will and pried the secret of Madeleine’s existence from her. Melissa forced herself to linger over how Dess’s mind had been locked by the old mindcaster, effortlessly twisted to hide what she knew. And how Melissa had torn it open.
When she felt a chill run through Rex, she released his hand.
“Why did you show me that?” he asked.
“Because you have to remember what we’re capable of,” she said. “Mindcasting doesn’t just affect normal people. It can be used against other midnighters too.”
“I know.” His eyes narrowed. “But what does that have to do with Bixby’s history?”
She looked up at him. “Before us five orphans came along, every midnighter grew up surrounded by mindcasters, all of them sharing thoughts every time they shook hands. But what if it wasn’t just news and memories they were passing on? What if they were passing on beliefs? And what if at some point they all decided to believe that midnighters never did anything bad?”
“Decided to believe?”
Melissa leaned closer, speaking softer now, imagining the old woman upstairs listening from just around the corner. Melissa had chosen Madeleine’s house to have this conversation with Rex for one simple reason: inside its crepuscular contortion, their minds couldn’t be overheard.
“Over the centuries,” she said, “midnighters started to believe whatever they did was okay, just like people who owned slaves used to think they were being ‘good masters’ or whatever. Except unlike slavery, nobody from the outside ever questioned what the midnighters were up to in Bixby. It was all secret, and anytime doubts cropped up, there were mindcasters around to squash them. It was like some clique of cheerleaders going through high school together, all thinking the same way, talking the same way, believing they’re at the center of the universe… but for thousands of years.”
She looked into his eyes, hoping that he would get it.
“Until we came along,” Rex said.
“Exactly. We’re more different from our predecessors than we thought, Rex. Maybe they really did all that evil stuff, but they didn’t know they were being evil. They couldn’t know.”
“You haven’t asked Madeleine about this yet?”
Melissa shook her head. “No way. I haven’t let her touch me since Angie gave her little speech.”
Rex smiled softly. “So you’re an Angie fan now, are you?”
“Not really, but she has the same good point that most scumbags have: she makes me feel a lot better about myself.”
“Because you never kidnapped anyone?”
“Oh, much better than that.” She placed her palms together, hoping that the realization would still make sense once she’d said it aloud. “Madeleine always says I’ll never be a real mindcaster—I started too late. Those memories are just figments to me; to her they’re like real people.” Melissa shook her head. “But what if it’s a good thing that I never got indoctrinated? What if I’m not the first crazy mindcaster in history, Rex? What if I’m the first sane one?”
“Sane…” he said, not quite understanding yet.
Melissa pressed on. “Because no matter how screwed up I happen to be, no matter what I did to your dad, at least I can see that ripping the minds of a whole town for a hundred generations is not cool.”
He took her hand, and all of Melissa’s thoughts, which had tumbled out in clumsy words, seemed to order themselves at his touch. They flowed into him, along with the thing she hadn’t said aloud.
I’m sorry about your father, Rex.
“You saved me from him, the best you knew how,” he answered.
Melissa looked away, her emotions churning. Her shame at her own past, her worries that she’d already lost Rex to the darklings, her fear of what Madeleine might do to his mind—all of it squeezed into a single tear. It traveled down her cheek like a drop of acid.
Rex sat there thinking, then finally said, “I think you’re right. Madeleine’s going to find my new view of history… challenging.”
“Then let me go up there with you, Rex. I don’t care what a badass darkling you are these days. You need my protection.”
He smiled again, and she saw a violet spark in the depths of his eyes. “You have no idea what I am.”
She let out a short, choked laugh. “Whatever, Rex. Even if you are a monster, I don’t want to lose you to her. And don’t think all those creepy old midnighters in her brain won’t give you a run for your money.”
Unexpectedly he leaned forward and kissed her—the first time their lips had met since last Wednesday night. His taste hovered on the edge between bitter and sweet, like chocolate that was almost too dark.
But what scared her most was that she tasted no fear in him at all.
“We’ll see about that,” he said. “Come on, Cowgirl. She’s waiting.”
Madeleine sat in her usual spot in the corner of the attic, tea things arranged around her. “Both of you, is it?”
“Maybe I can help,” Melissa said.
The old mindcaster gave a little snort but didn’t send her away. Like Rex, Madeleine had no fear.
“Well, sit down then, both of you. Tea’s getting cold. In my day, young people didn’t keep their elders waiting.”
The more I hear about your day, Melissa thought, the more I’m glad the Grayfoots came along.
She and Rex sat down in the corner, the three of them forming a triangle around the tea service. Melissa had never done this before—held two midnighters’ hands at once—but she knew from her store of memories that mindcasting circles were an ancient practice.
No wonder they all thought the same way. All those minds tuned together and reinforcing one another’s beliefs—add a few pom-poms and they’d be just like the pep rallies of Bixby High, except without anyone sneaking out the back to smoke.
Melissa took a sip of tea. It had indeed grown cold, bringing out its bitter taste even more than usual.
“What you did last week was very dangerous, Rex,” Madeleine scolded. “I watched from this very spot. No one has ever survived anything like that before.”
“We didn’t have anywhere else to turn,” he said.
“I’ve worked hard the last sixteen years to keep you alive, Rex. You could have thrown away all that effort in a matter of minutes.”
Melissa took a slow breath. In their training sessions Madeleine never tired of reminding her why she and Dess had been made—to help Rex, the only natural midnighter in Bixby’s recent history. The old mindcaster had subtly manipulated hundreds of mothers during their labor, trying to create babies born at the stroke of midnight. And all to make sure Rex had a posse to lead, like a proper seer should.
Melissa understood all too well now what the five of them really were: Madeleine’s attempt to re-create the Bixby she had grown up with, a paradise for midnighters… at the expense of everyone else.
“I’m still alive,” Rex said in a flat voice. The human softness he’d allowed himself to reveal on the stairs had disappeared again.
“They could have eaten you,” Madeleine said.
“The things I was talking to don’t eat meat,” he said. “They eat nightmares.”
She raised an eyebrow.