“What’s his problem with Bixby, anyway?” Maria asked.

Constanza shrugged. “He never tells anyone what happened. He grew up here, but something weird went down when he was a teenager. I think the Anglos chased the family out of town during the oil boom because we’re Native American and everything. He hasn’t set foot in Bixby in, like, fifty-something years.”

Except for slipping across the edge of the midnight border to leave his little messages, Jessica thought. Then a horrible notion occurred to her.

“He wants you to go live in Broken Arrow?” Jessica asked. She’d always wondered if the old man knew that Constanza and she were friends. Maybe he planned to finally bring his granddaughter into the real family business—working for the darklings.

“Excuse me, Jess? Me, living in puny little Broken Arrow?” Constanza shook her head and snorted. “No way.”

“So where, then?” Liz asked. “Tulsa?”

“No.” Constanza lowered her voice still further, and Jessica saw Ms. Thomas, the librarian, straining to hear. “You know how I’m going to be an actress?”

Everyone nodded, a few of them exchanging glances. You only had to know Constanza for about ten minutes to hear about that aspiration.

“Well, my grandfather said that if I wanted to start right now, I could come stay with him. Because in a couple of weeks he and a whole bunch of my cousins are moving to… now get this… LA!”

“Los Angeles?” Maria cried.

“No, Maria,” Liz said with a sneer. “Lower Argentina. That’s the new LA. Haven’t you heard?” She turned to Constanza. “Los Angeles? I hate you. You are so lucky.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jessica said. Her mouth had gone dry.

“Grandpa’s got it all worked out,” Constanza said. “He’s already found a school for me there, and this movie agent who’s a business friend of his wants to meet me. And he says I can have an awesome allowance to pay for acting lessons and stuff.”

“I can’t believe you!” Liz said. “I’m going to kill you. After I come visit, of course. I can come visit, right?”

“So why exactly is he going to LA?” Jessica asked.

Constanza shrugged. “I don’t know. There must be oil wells there. Right?”

“In Los Angeles?” That didn’t seem likely. Nor did it seem very likely that the old man was concentrating on his oil business anymore. He seemed more focused on getting himself and his family as far away from Bixby as possible.

“Who cares why he’s going there, Jess? As long as the result is”—Constanza pointed both her index fingers toward herself—“movie star!”

“Girls!” Ms. Thomas called from her desk. “Could you please keep it down to a dull roar?”

Jen turned to the librarian. “But Constanza’s going to—”

“Shhh!” Constanza hissed. “Could we please all remember about the top secret thing?” Then she turned and called out in a normal voice, “Sorry, Ms. Thomas. We’ll try to be more quiet.” She glared at Jen. “Especially you.”

“Wait a second,” Jessica said. “Why is this all a big secret?”

“Well, believe it or not,” Constanza said. “I haven’t mentioned the weirdest part of this yet.” She paused, waiting until all eyes were on her again. “It’s like this whole moving-to-LA thing just appeared out of nowhere. Grandpa hasn’t even talked to my parents about it yet. But in the meantime he says that there’s this agent who needs somebody like me right away, for some new TV show or something. So first I’m going to go ‘visit’ Grandpa out there, supposedly just for a week or so. I can audition then, and if I get the part, I’m not coming back!”

Everyone was quiet for a moment as Constanza’s words gradually sank in. Jessica felt her own pulse pounding in her fingertips and saw Dess lower her book slowly so that she could see the other girls. Even Ms. Thomas shot them a glance, intrigued by their sudden silence.

Liz spoke first. “Right away?”

“Like… when?” Maria asked.

Constanza shook her head, her mouth slightly open, as if she still couldn’t believe it herself. “Well, they’re holding auditions in a couple of weeks, right about when Grandpa and my cousins are all moving out there. So he said I have to be there before the end of this month or the whole thing’s off. So in a couple of weeks or so, it’s goodbye, Bixby!”

“You’re kidding!” said Jen.

“You are so psychotically lucky!” said Maria.

“I repeat: I hate you!” said Liz. “And you’ve got to have a going-away party!”

Jessica didn’t say anything. Suddenly the library’s fluorescent lights were buzzing too loud for her to think clearly. The old man and his family moving, this agent for Constanza—all of it was happening way too fast for any innocent explanation to be believed.

Constanza’s last words rang in her ears: Goodbye, Bixby…

Jessica glanced over at Dess and saw the polymath drop her trig book onto her lap and pull out a few pieces of paper. She hunched over them, scribbling furiously, filling page after page with grids drawn in blue ink. One of the pages fell to the floor….

Jessica squinted and saw that it was divided into seven squares across and five down, like a wall calendar. Each of the squares was filled with cryptic formulas in tiny, manic handwriting.

She closed her eyes and did a few simple calculations herself.

It was the eighth of October today and she knew from her father’s annoying little rhyme that October had thirty-one days.

The end of the month was just over three weeks away.

12

12:07 P.M.

LUNCH MEAT

“Okay, guys,” Dess said. “There’s some good news and some bad news.”

The others looked at her tiredly, already shell-shocked from the weirdness of the last fifty-three hours. Dess was glad she’d waited until all five of them were here; no sense explaining this twice.

Dess found it oddly comforting to be sitting here at the old corner table, the one farthest from the windows, where she and Rex and the Vile One had always eaten together, back before Melissa had revealed her totally evil side. The lunchroom rumbled along around them in its familiar state of chaos, daylighters jockeying for prime table space, unaware of the major trouble that was on its way.

Rex, of course, spoke up first. “Okay. What’s the bad news?”

Dess shook her head. “Sorry, Rex. But it’s one of those things where the good news has to come first. Otherwise there’s no punch line.”

“Come on, Dess,” Jessica said. “This is serious. Don’t you think this is serious?”

“Good question.” Dess stared down at her pile of extremely rough calculations. On the one hand, all their information had come from Constanza Grayfoot, which made it inherently suspect. Her instant TV-star status had sounded more like a psycho-cheerleader wet dream than a prophecy of the end times. Dess often wondered how the same family that had managed to undo thousands of years of midnighter rule in Bixby had also produced Constanza.

But as the girl’s revelations in study hall had gotten weirder and weirder, Dess had stopped smirking and done her own calculations. The numbers were grim.

The four of them stared at her expectantly, but she just waited. That was the good thing about being the one who actually did the math. Other people had to play by your rules.

Finally Jessica sighed. “Okay, Dess. What’s the good news?”

Dess allowed herself a victorious smile. “Well, it doesn’t look like the whole world is going to end.”

That got a reaction. Rex raised both eyebrows, and Jonathan managed to stop eating for five whole seconds. Jessica was already freaking out, of course, but her expression angsted up a notch. And Melissa… Well, the bitch goddess looked like she always did at lunch: a bit pained by all the mind chaos of the cafeteria, even though she was supposedly in control these days.