Blue Noon

“Hey, Flyboy.” Dess pulled the back door open and slid her backpack across, then jumped in herself. She didn’t say hello to Melissa, but there was no real animosity in it, only habit.

Jonathan glanced over his shoulder at the backseat. “You really think we’ll need that stuff? I mean, are there even any darklings left?”

Melissa found herself defending Dess. “A few got away. And the really cautious ones never even showed.”

“Sure,” Flyboy said. “But they’re not in Bixby anymore. And the four of us will be there.”

Dess shrugged. “When dealing with midnight, better safe than sorry.”

Jonathan gave her his new wounded stare. “Guess that makes me sorry.”

Melissa scowled as the sour milk taste of guilt rolled out of his mind. Two weeks later and he was still wallowing in the idea that what had happened to Jessica was his fault.

She sighed softly, wondering what it was going to be like to deal with Flyboy all alone for twenty-four hours a day.

Maybe without Rex around to challenge his freedom, he’d chill out….

At the thought of leaving Rex behind, Melissa shivered a little and pulled her mind back to the present. The future could sort itself out now that they actually had one to look forward to.

Jonathan pulled out onto the street, swinging the car into a wide one-eighty that kicked up dust on Dess’s dying lawn. Then he shot down the unpaved road, tires spitting gravel and sand. As usual these days, he wasn’t in the mood to talk or watch out for cops.

Melissa settled into the front passenger seat, casting her mind across the empty spaces on the edge of town, staying alert. Since the Hysteria, curfew had a whole new meaning here in Bixby.

The official story was, of course, a big joke. A freak collision of air masses over eastern Oklahoma had caused a record number of lightning strikes and brain-rattling waves of thunder. Power had been knocked out across the county, and random electrical fields had disrupted even battery-operated devices and cars. These natural phenomena—along with statistical spikes of heart attacks, fireworks thefts, and costumed Halloween pranks—were the official reasons for the panic.

None of which explained the mutilated body of the camper found in outer Jenks or the seventeen people still missing. But it was a good enough rationalization for anyone who hadn’t been awake and inside the rip that night.

Of course, a few conspiracy types had much better theories. Melissa’s favorites were an electromagnetic pulse from an experimental plane using the new Bixby runway (which wasn’t even built yet) and psychedelic mushrooms growing in the town water supply.

It was all part of a need to understand or, more accurately, to explain away what had happened. Anything not to have to face the truth—that the unknown had come visiting.

One certainty remained, though: Halloween would never be the same in Bixby again.

They reached Jessica’s house just before eleven.

All the inside lights were off, both cars sitting in the driveway. There was no For Sale sign on the lawn yet or any other way to distinguish the Day house from the others on the street. But it looked different somehow, even before she cast her mind inside. Sadder.

“Are they really moving?” Dess asked.

“That’s just a rumor at school,” Flyboy said. He looked to Melissa for confirmation.

She nodded, her mouth filling with the burnt-coffee taste of anguish that still clung to hope. “They don’t really know. Still waiting for some kind of hard evidence, I suppose.”

“Waiting sucks,” Dess said, and Jonathan nodded.

And then they waited.

She made her way out the window about fifteen minutes later, dropping ungracefully into the bushes. Her jacket looked too big on her, and she walked hunched, her hands jammed all the way down into the pockets.

When she was halfway to the street, Jonathan flashed his headlights once. She spun toward the car, and a sudden jolt of fear shot through the air. For a second Melissa thought that she was about to chicken out and crawl right back into her bedroom.

But a moment later she was at the car window. Her anxiety pulsed in Melissa’s mind, her suspicion almost hiding the tight ball of grief in her stomach. Suddenly Melissa realized how brave Beth was to have agreed to this at all.

“Hey,” Jonathan said.

“That’s Dess, isn’t it?” the kid said.

Dess nodded. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“You look just like Cassie’s picture.”

Dess didn’t answer, giving off the prickly taste of a lump rising in her throat.

“You cut your hair,” Beth said to Melissa.

The mindcaster pushed her fingers through her one-inch buzz, a nervous habit she’d learned from Rex. “It’s what I get for playing with fire.”

Beth got into the back with Dess, sitting on the backpack with a clink.

“Ouch!”

“Just give it here,” Dess said.

“What’s in there?”

“Magic stuff.”

Jonathan turned to give Dess a death glare, but the kid handed over the backpack with the utmost care.

* * * * *

Rex limped up the stairs of Madeleine’s house, trying not to think of what was going on in Jenks. There were bigger issues to consider, lots of questions to be answered before the others left. He clutched his latest letter from Angie and its accompanying sheaf of photocopies—biface spear points from a museum in Cactus Hill, Virginia. She was researching Stone Age culture there, helping Rex search for a link to ancient finds in southern Spain. Rex had serious work to do tonight, more important than watching over ritual farewells.

Besides, Madeleine needed feeding.

In his other hand he carried a thermos of hot chicken soup. Not too hot, of course; she could drink on her own now, but like a baby, she didn’t know enough not to burn her lips. Fortunately Rex knew a lot about caring for invalids.

He didn’t mind taking care of Madeleine, actually. Here inside the crepuscular contortion that had protected her for fifty years, the human presence of the outside world didn’t bother him as much. No cable TV, no cordless phone filling the air with its buzz. The place stank of thirteen-pointed steel, but rust had long ago consumed the alloy’s bite. The midnighters who had named those weapons were all dead, except for Madeleine.

Not merely alive: Melissa said that her mind was slowly repairing itself, rebuilding from what his darkling half had done to her, a survivor to the last.

When he opened the door to her room, Rex was surprised to see her sitting up, a gleam of intelligence in her eyes. The smell of weakness and death had lifted a little.

“Madeleine?”

She nodded slowly, as if remembering her name. “What day is it?”

Rex blinked. The dry, rough-edged words were her first in a month. “Samhain has come and gone. The flame-bringer stopped it.”

She let out a rattling sigh, a smile fluttering on her lips. “I knew that girl was special. I was right to call her here to Bixby.”

Rex couldn’t argue with that. Since Samhain he had been forced to admit that Madeleine’s manipulations over the years had saved a lot of lives. Her orphaned set of midnighters had done more for Bixby than all the previous generations put together. However broken the two of them were, they could congratulate themselves on that.

He sat down next to her, twisting the top from the thermos.

“Where is Melissa?” she croaked.

“She’s leaving.” The two simple words sent a spur of pain through him. But of course it was the only way.

“Where?”

He shrugged. “Eat.”

She took the thermos in trembling hands, held it to her lips, and drank. Rex watched her wrinkled throat move with each greedy swallow. Apparently rebuilding her damaged mind was hungry work. He looked down at the spear points, reading the lore symbols in Angie’s cramped handwriting. It was easier on his brain than modern letters.