“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.

No one seemed to be awake; half the houses still hadn’t been moved into. She could see the curtainless windows and feel the empty rooms behind them. Ugly as they were, Melissa dreamed of living in a house like these one day—unstained by years of human habitation, no sleepless worries seeping out of the walls, no residue of ancient petty arguments.

Most of the people who’d already moved into the complex were fast asleep, their dreams as smooth and interchangeable as the manicured front lawns.

Then she felt it again and gripped the wheel hard. Melissa knew it was the one, the same mind that had thought so intensely a week ago, We must have Jessica Day.

“What’re you—?”

“Shush!”

It was already slipping away, moving fast across the empty psychic terrain.

“Crap!” It was in a car. (He was in a car—a male, she could tell suddenly.) The tendrils of his mind trailed away like a condensation cloud behind a jet plane. “I tasted him, Rex. But he’s driving.”

“Which way?”

“I… don’t know.” She shook her head; the last traces were fading. She brought the car to a halt. “He was around here somewhere.”

“Same guy?”

Melissa nodded. “And we’re only about a mile from where I heard him the first time. But we just missed him, running off to something he was late for. Want to look around some more?”

“Sure.” Rex’s glasses were off, and he was staring at the overgrown houses. “There are signs here. Focus.”

She took her foot off the brake, eased back onto the road.

“Really? In this place?” Sure, they were close to the desert, but Melissa couldn’t imagine darklings taking an interest in this development, full of shiny new fixtures and stainless steel sprinkler systems. But the marks that Rex could see lingered longer than darkling mind traces, so there was no point arguing. She drove the car slowly along the meandering streets, keeping her mind watchful for cops or private security guards. Her old Ford stuck out here like a helping of dog turd on angel food cake.

It was good to feel Rex’s mind at work, clear and pure as he looked for signs of Focus. In his excitement he had forgiven her slight against his authority, too intoxicated by his seer’s powers to hold a grudge. In some ways he was still the kid she’d rescued from solitude eight years before, enthralled by the mysteries of midnight, driven by his need to know more. Melissa was sure they would hold hands again soon.

“Stop,” he whispered. Melissa halted the car, feeling the buzz of his excitement.

The house he was staring at looked like all the others, two-storied and big-windowed, an overpowering double garage presented proudly to the world.

“I wish you could see this, Cowgirl. It’s so Focused. They’ve been crawling all over it.”

She let her mind drift in through its big front door. The place had hardly any human taste at all. “No one home. And if anyone lives there, they haven’t for very long.”

“Darkling Manor,” Rex said quietly. “Not a clean brick on the joint.”

She looked at her watch. Twenty to midnight. “Well, shall we take a look before the witching hour?”