“Could someone use them to communicate with the darklings?” she asked.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Darklings hate symbols and signs, any written language. That’s one of the new ideas that scared them off ten thousand years ago, along with math and fire and metal.”
“But Rex, you’ve got your glasses off.”
“I what?” He put one hand to his face. Melissa realized that Rex had momentarily forgotten he wasn’t wearing the thick lenses. The house was so marked with Focus that he could see everything clearly anyway.
“So darklings have touched these,” he murmured, a few of the dominoes slipping through his fingers. “But how?”
“Rex…” A familiar taste was penetrating the overwhelming clamor of Rex’s excitement. “What time is it?”
He checked his watch. “You’re right. We should go soon. Just let me grab a few of these—”
“Rex!” It wasn’t impending midnight that had her worried; it was something she’d felt before, and it was rushing back toward them. The voice seemed to suddenly crack through the psychic silence of the house.
We’re just going to make it, no thanks to you, Angie.
Her head spun, trying to sort Rex’s mental turmoil from the approaching thoughts. They came through grim and determined, angry at some inconvenience, and, most of all, anxious.
“It’s him…” she whispered.
“Who?”
Keep it on the road, idiot. We’re almost there.
She recognized the exact kind of fear now; it was of a type familiar from a thousand school mornings. There was always at least one mind trailing in after everyone else had settled into their desks, rushing along panicked at the thought of punishment. That was what she tasted: fear of being late.
“He was in a hurry when he left,” she muttered, “but he was in a hurry to get back by midnight?
“The guy you heard?”
“Yes! We have to get out of here now.” She stood, still dizzy. For some reason, mindcasting in this house was like walking through syrup.
Rex was scraping at the tiles, trying to return them all to the box.
“There isn’t time!” She tasted the man’s bitter curses as he twisted at the steering wheel, felt his body sway on the quick turns, heard the skidding of tires…
Rex looked up. He’d heard the tires too.
Headlights crawled across the ceiling, and a screech came from the driveway.
“He’s here,” she said, too late.
“Don’t worry about him,” Rex said, taking her gloved hand softly as he checked his watch. “We only have to stay hidden for four minutes. It’s what’s coming after midnight that worries me.”
They shoved the darkling dominoes back into the closet and crept to one of the smaller bedrooms. Hopefully the man wouldn’t poke around the empty house with so little time remaining before midnight. Rex pointed to a wide, shallow wardrobe with sliding doors.
The sound of the front door opening carried up the stairs just as they made it into the darkness of the wardrobe. Melissa felt Rex breathing hard next to her, off balance as he tried to avoid touching her accidentally. She slipped her other glove back on and steadied him with that hand, whispering, “Relax. Let me concentrate.”
Rex’s mind calmed, and she could feel now that there were two of them downstairs, the man and… Angie. The woman radiated only calm; no wonder she’d been invisible to Melissa before now.
“You’re lucky we made it,” came the man’s muffled voice, his footsteps audible on the stairs.
Melissa controlled her breathing. The way sound echoed through the empty house, one bump against the wardrobe door and they’d be discovered.
“I didn’t ask to break down. Next time I won’t bother to call you.” Her voice was low and controlled, not out of breath like his. Her mind held none of his fear of being late. Melissa felt the woman check her watch—a burst of satisfaction as she confirmed that everything was on schedule. Now that they were inside the house, Melissa could taste them clearly.
“Promises, promises,” the guy shouted from the master bathroom. A rush of release filled his brain just as the trickling sound of piss reached Melissa’s ears. She shuddered at the intimacy.
“Like you could handle this on your own,” the woman said in a voice so soft that it mostly reached Melissa as thought. She had a lock on Angie’s mind now: it was saturated with a sickly sweet contempt for the man. Angie didn’t need him here in the first place—he could barely interpret lore symbols, couldn’t see the big picture, was always lugging around his stupid camera, which of course never captured the spooks anyway. If he wasn’t related to the patriarch…
The woman’s mind grew closer, her slow footsteps carrying her through the upstairs hall. She came to a halt just outside the room they’d hidden in.
“Did we really need this big a house?”
Rex’s shoulder muscles tightened under Melissa’s grip, his mind clouding hers with a wave of fear. Relax, she willed him.
“Location, location, location,” the man said. “That’s all the spooks care about. Anyway, if this field is as big as they say, we should make about a hundred times what this cracker box cost.”
The woman took one more step into the room and flicked on a light. A blinding wedge of illumination forced its way through the crack between the wardrobe’s double doors. Melissa squinted, feeling as if the light was slicing her in half from top to bottom. Rex had stopped breathing.
Melissa closed her eyes, trying to tease from the woman’s mind what she was thinking, why she was staring at the closet door. But Rex’s terror drowned out those smooth, collected thoughts.
“Come on, Angie! Thirty seconds.”
The woman didn’t move. Melissa made a fist with her free hand. One solid punch to the gut would put anyone down for half a minute. Long enough.
“Angie!”
Finally the footsteps retreated, quick and determined now. Melissa heard the clatter of dominoes being spilled in the other room, felt anticipation growing in the two intruders as relief flooded through Rex.
And then, seconds later, always glorious…
Silence.
8
12:00 a.m.
HALFLING
“Come on! We’ve got to run!”
Melissa shook her head and tore away from him. Her eyes shone with the terrible clarity they always had in the blue time; freed from the tumultuous mind noise of humanity, she could be fearless, imperiously bold.
Rex sighed. She could also be a pain in the ass.
“I am so going to rip this woman,” she said, pushing past him and into the master bedroom.
He followed, coming to a halt at the door. The two normals were frozen on either side of the clutter of tiles, the man kneeling, the woman standing. The man’s face was obscured by a camera pointed at the floor. Rex noticed that his watch was set exactly to Bixby midnight and that its face was marked with the tiny glittering eyes of jewels.
“Well, what do you know?” Rex said. “He stalks darklings as well as Jessica.”
“She’s the one that matters,” Melissa said.
The motionless woman was tall and fair, dressed in business clothes. Midnight had caught her expression: awe and fear mixed with expectation. All the tiles were facedown on the floor, ready to be turned over and arranged into messages.
Rex shook his head, still unable to wrap his mind around it. How could a darkling communicate using hated midnighter symbols? And where had these people hidden themselves for fifty years?
Melissa stood before the woman, reaching out her hands.
“There’s no time!” Rex shouted. “The desert’s only half a mile away. Whatever’s coming will be here soon!”