There was nothing he could say that she didn’t already know.
He watched the signs of midnight pass. It was better than thinking about what had happened between him and his oldest friend.
The midnight invasion had stopped, that much was for sure. When Jessica Day had first appeared in town, the marks had been everywhere, swaths of sharp Focus across the blur of Rex’s vision, revealing where darklings and their foot soldiers had disturbed the daylight world. They had pushed farther into town every night, despite the clean metal and thirteen-pointed stars that protected Bixby, emboldened by their hatred of Jessica.
But now the marks were fading. Since she had discovered her talent, the darklings were powerless to attack Jessica directly. The town was softening again, losing the Focus. The darklings were in retreat.
Melissa made a turn. Rex frowned, unsure of where they were headed but unwilling to disturb the silence that had fallen between them since they’d touched. The plan had been to drive around Jessica’s neighborhood and try to catch the thoughts of her human stalker. But they weren’t headed into town. The desert was still in view, a black horizon stretching away toward Rustle’s Bottom and the snake pit.
“Didn’t you get my message?” Melissa said.
“What message?”
“About where we’re going.”
Rex chewed his lip. For a moment he wondered why he should bother to speak since she could evidently read every thought in his mind now. “Message? You know my father—”
“Not a telephone call. From my mind, moron.” She turned to glare at him. “All you got was crap?”
“I wouldn’t call it crap.” The majesty of midnight’s tastes, her profound loneliness, her long-tended hatred of humanity—none of it was crap. All of it was…
“Don’t get all depressing on me, Rex. I tried to send you a message, that’s all. I thought that was the way you wanted it to work. So quit feeling sorry for me and think for a second.”
Rex took a deep breath, turned to stare out the window, and began to examine the mental fragments she had left inside him. He had to ignore what he’d learned, the awesome sadness of it. He had to forget for a moment that he had never managed to understand what his best friend….
“Rex…” she growled.
“Oops, sorry. Thinking about the message now.”
And suddenly there it was against the bleak backdrop. A kind of undigested thought in his head, like a dream not quite remembered in the morning. He closed his eyes, but strangely that made the thought disappear, so he opened them again and stared out at the passing oil fields. Gradually his attention was caught by the rhythm of derricks rising and falling under the bright orange suns of mercury lamps. And then it became clear, like looking just to one side of a faint star and discovering that the periphery of vision is stronger than the center.
“We must have Jessica Day,” he murmured.
“Bingo,” Melissa said.
“You heard that…? In normal time?”
“Give the man a cigar.”
Rex blinked, hearing the voice, distant but clear, exactly as Melissa had when they’d driven back from Rustle’s Bottom that night. “It was a human. You’ve known for a whole week that something human wanted Jessica.”
“The Eagle has landed. Houston, we have a winner.”
He stared dumbly out the window, unable to believe what he had heard in his mind or to comprehend the hysteria in her voice. Why would she hide this from him?
Then suddenly he blinked. Melissa’s old Ford was passing a house he recognized, the two-story colonial fitting neatly over a vision she had left inside him. They were at the exact point on Kerr Street where she’d heard the voice.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rex asked in amazement.
“Because…” Melissa’s voice choked off, and she breathed deeply, getting herself under control. Finally she sighed. “Well, Loverboy, why don’t you figure that one out on your own?”
7
11:24 p.m.
DARKLING MANOR
Rex was pissed. You didn’t have to be a mindcaster to know that.
He stared glumly out the window, watching the houses flash by, his mind tasting of stomach acid and day-old Mountain Dew, the flavor of betrayal with a topping of wounded authority.
As for Melissa, she didn’t much care that Rex was angry. It was far better than having to feel his pity.
She still felt the tingle in her right hand, as if the flaking plastic of the Ford’s steering wheel were buzzing under it. The touch hadn’t been so bad, really. A little mindless maelstrom never hurt anybody, and just before the end she’d felt some kind of release, something shared between them that wasn’t just night terrors and cosmic angst. Something she wanted to try for again.
But then Loverboy had to freak out. Like there was any reason to get all upset about the psychodrama that was her existence. Melissa figured that was just the way things were. And she had managed to give him the memory, one little token of communication amidst the crap-storm. That was something, at least.
“I still don’t get it,” he said.
She sighed. He never would.
Why hadn’t she told him? The reasons all seemed to splinter as she thought of them, dividing into more and more… because she hadn’t been really sure she’d heard it. Because you couldn’t get upset about every stray thought. Because Jessica Day wasn’t her problem anyway.
Nevertheless, he knew now. And she’d given the knowledge to him in a way that was more… interesting than just telling him. Funny—she hated seeing other people hold hands in school, their thoughts all syrupy and self-involved. But with Rex it hadn’t seemed so bad.
Maybe next time he wouldn’t freak out.
Melissa’s mind wandered again, opening itself wide to catch the dreams and nightmares of sleeping Bixby. Hardly anyone awake, even before midnight. (What a loser-magnet this town was.) Most of the conscious minds were locked into TV shows. Hundreds of psyches spread across town were all laughing at the same jokes at the same time like goose-stepping circus clowns. Sometimes on Thursday nights Melissa had to suffer through all of Bixby yucking in tandem to the latest hit sitcom or mindlessly sweating out the million-dollar finale of some so-called reality show. She shuddered. Only four months until the dreaded Super Bowl.
Didn’t any of these brainless wonders ever notice that TV shows were called programs? The same word that meant a bunch of numbers stuck into a computer to make it dance for its masters?
Melissa snorted, realizing she’d borrowed that last image from Dess’s brain. The girl was working on some secret project, her little hamster wheels spinning so fast that Melissa could smell the smoke at midnight. Soon she and Rex were going to have to sit Miss Polymath down and ask her exactly what she was up to.
She glanced at Rex. Because keeping secrets was wrong, wasn’t it?
A fragment of a thought struck her, and Melissa slowed the car.
Nothing in the content, but something about the flavor made her replay the words in her head…
We can’t be late.
Probably just someone racing to get home, trying to catch some movie on cable for the dozenth time. But there was something about the mind, as familiar as the smell of last year’s homeroom.
“Catch something?” Rex asked.
“Maybe.”
She took the next left, through a stone gate and into a plantation of McMansions, giant new cookie-cutter houses stamped onto tiny lots just out of the reach of Tulsa property taxes. The thought had come from in here, she was positive.