Blue Noon

“Oh, poor Angie,” Melissa hissed, her fingernails cutting into her palms. “This is such crap. They just want to kidnap you again!”

He shook his head. “Why? The darklings can’t turn me into anything. Jessica burned away their special halfling-making spot.”

“So they just want to kill you, then. Spiteful little creeps. Finish what they started fifty years ago.”

“Melissa,” he said with maddening calm. “They left it on my kitchen table, while I was sleeping. If they wanted to kill me, I’d be dead, right? What she wants is to exchange information. Like I said, she’s scared.”

Melissa got herself under control, concentrating on her heartbeat until it slowed. “Okay, then, Rex, an exchange of information sounds like fun. Why don’t you offer to meet her at your house, say, around eleven fifty-five at night?” She felt her lips curl back from her teeth. “I’ll show her what scared really means.”

“I thought you were all featherlight these days.”

She snorted. “Come on, Rex. It’s a win-win situation. We’ll know everything about the Grayfoots that she does, and she’ll be left a drooling vegetable.”

He just stared at her, the old guilt of what they’d done to his father spreading through the car like a gas leak.

Melissa held his gaze for a moment but then let out a sigh. “Sorry.” She turned away. “Why did you keep this a secret from me, anyway?”

“Because it gave me an idea. Something you won’t like.”

“You are not going to meet with her, Rex,” she hissed. “Not unless it’s in the middle of Bixby right before midnight and I’m there to rip that bitch’s mind inside out. I don’t care if the darklings can’t make you a halfling anymore—Angie’s a psycho. What’s to stop her from trussing you up and giving you to the Grayfoots just to get back on their good side!”

“Don’t worry. Meeting with her wasn’t the idea I’m talking about.” He scratched his chin. “I’m not even tempted to call. But something big is happening. And the information we need isn’t in the lore. I may have to go directly to the source.”

“You’re going to talk to Grandpa Grayfoot himself? He’s an even bigger psycho than Angie. This is a guy who had a hundred people killed in one night!”

“Not him. When Anathea died, he was cut off from the darklings. He’s probably panicking too.”

“So who else is left, Rex?”

He reached out and let his fingers stray across her lips again. She felt them glide across the sticky trickle of blood, tugging at the wounded skin beneath. Then an appalling thought drifted into her mind from his. She saw the desert, the light cool and flat and blue….

“No,” she said.

“They know what’s going on. You said so yourself.”

“They’ll eat you, Rex.”

He shook his head slowly. “Wolves don’t eat other wolves.”

“Um, Rex?” She cleared her throat. “Maybe you’re right. But I’m pretty sure that wolves do kill other wolves.”

“Hmm, good point.” He took a breath. “But you felt what happened last night. It talked to me.”

She shuddered, recalling the images that had come from Rex’s mind during their kiss—that huge spider practically doing the two-step with him, like they were old friends. The taste of its forelegs in their sinuous salute was still in her mouth. “That was one darkling, Rex. You’re talking about the deep desert. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. We don’t even know how many.”

“I haven’t decided yet, okay?”

She looked out at the sliver of dark moon on the horizon, checking for winged shapes against it. When Rex had first suggested coming out here tonight without Jessica, she’d wondered if it was a good idea. They’d faced darklings on their own together, but this place had drawn huge clouds of slithers, and the taste of old minds lingered here.

But during their kiss Melissa had realized that she was safe here with Rex. Safe from darklings, anyway. He had become as much one of them as he was human.

Suddenly something odd caught her eye—a few leaves were falling near the tracks, giving off a soft red glow that looked completely strange here in the blue time. It was the rip, the sliver of unfrozen time. It must have been there that Cassie Flinders had been standing the morning before.

Melissa sighed. They had to deal with that girl tonight, not sit around talking. “Okay, Rex, maybe you really can talk to darklings. But tell me before you do anything.”

He laughed. “Think you can change my mind?”

“I’d never do that to you, Rex.”

“Do you swear, Cowgirl? No more of that, on me or anyone else, unless I’m there.”

“Absolutely.”

He took her hand, and Melissa let the surety of her promise flow into him. Whatever Rex was turning into, whatever crazy risks he decided to take, she would never twist or change a single thought in his brain…

Not even to save your life.

They crossed the tracks, pausing to look at the rip in the blue time. A red glimmer ran along its boundaries. It was about the size of an eighteen-wheeler now, much bigger than when Cassie had stepped through while her grandmother, only a few yards away, had remained frozen. The leaves from two trees caught within it were drifting down.

Rex stepped into the rip and caught a leaf. He dropped it, and it fell again.

“Feels different in here somehow.” “Is it spreading all the time? Like, right now?” He shook his head. “Only during the eclipse, Dess says. It’s like a fault line shifting during an earthquake.”

She pulled him away. This whole rip business gave her the creeps. The last thing Melissa needed was a bunch of a

Cassie Flinders’s house was an old double-wide trailer, its concrete teeth sunk deep into the hard soil, gripping tenaciously against the Oklahoma wind. Halloween decorations were already up on the door—a gri

Rex stared at the skeleton for a moment.

“Friend of yours?” Melissa asked.

“Don’t think so.” He pushed open the screen door, and its rusty hinges rang out in the blue time. The wooden door inside was unlocked. Rex smiled. “Good country folk.”

They pushed into the blue-lit home, the floorboards creaking as they walked. Melissa wondered if the old wood stayed pressed down until the end of the secret hour, then popped up with a final complaint—letting out a sudden chorus of creaking just after the stroke of midnight. Flyboy was always wondering about stuff like that. If she was ever on normal speaking terms with the rest of them again, she’d have to ask him.

An old woman sat at a kitchen table, a bowl of something glowing an unappetizing blue in front of her. Her eyes were locked on a blank-screened TV. Melissa avoided her and the motionless cloud of smoke that rose from the cigarette clutched in her fingers.

Cassie’s room was in one corner, the door plastered with drawings and more Halloween decorations. Rex pointed at the black cat. “Fu

“Cats.” Melissa snorted. “Smug, self-centered little beasts.” Then she remembered to add, “Except yours, of course.”

“Daguerreotype’s smugness is part of his charm.” He pushed the door open.

The room didn’t reek of thirteen-year-old. No boy band posters, no dolls. The walls were covered with more drawings, crayon landscapes of Jenks, the Bixby skyline, and oil derricks, all drained of their color.

“Not bad,” Rex said. He pointed to a music stand, a clarinet leaning against it. “Creative kid.”

“Good. Nobody believes the artistic ones.”

Cassie was lying on her bed, eyes closed and sheets tangled around her—a bad night of sleep in the making. Melissa wondered if being frozen for fifteen hours had given the girl some sort of jet lag and cracked her knuckles. She could fix that.