“But midnighters aren’t about controlling people’s minds.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Well, they only did it to keep the secret hour hidden, to keep the town safe.”

Angie barked out a single-syllable laugh. “Sometime, Rex, you should read some real history. Everyone who abuses power says exactly the same thing: ‘We only do nasty, secret things to keep everyone safe. Without us in charge, you’re all doomed.’ ”

“What are…?” He growled, unable to organize his thoughts. “You kidnapped me!”

She looked away, letting out a slow breath, and Rex thought for a moment that he had finally quieted her madness. But after a moment she turned back and said, “It was the only way to stay in contact with the darklings. Without them we couldn’t keep you from re-creating the old Bixby.” She shrugged, the thick leather coat creaking. “Besides, do you know how many hundreds of children the old midnighters kidnapped over the years?”

“What?” Rex cried. But then he remembered the ancient tales: when mindcasters detected newly born midnighters nearby, war parties had been dispatched to steal them. More recently, offers of jobs and money had been sent to their parents. Rex found himself wondering, though—if those inducements hadn’t worked, had the old midnighters resorted to stronger tactics? There wasn’t anything like that in the lore, but what if they had just pretended it hadn’t happened?

“Well,” he said, “maybe a long time ago they did some things that seem weird now, sort of like… George Washington having slaves or whatever.” Rex shook his head firmly. “But we’re not like that!”

“I’ve seen your father, Rex,” she said calmly. “Did a stroke leave him that way?”

“That was…” His voice broke. “We were just kids.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Born monsters, like I said.”

They were silent for a moment, Rex’s head spinning from everything Angie had said. When he’d seen her name in lore symbols at the bottom of the note, there had been a moment of curiosity; even if she wasn’t a seer, here was someone else who could read the lore, who knew the signs of midnight. But after just a few minutes of talking to her, he felt his oldest sureties in danger of crumbling.

Was she making all this up? Could there really be a secret history behind the secret history?

He took a deep breath, checking his watch. The only way to find out was to stick to the plan; Melissa could get to the bottom of this.

“In any case,” Angie said. “I didn’t come here to debate midnighter ethics. Just don’t sit there pretending like I’m some kind of demon, all right?”

“Fine.” Rex forced himself to calm down. This was nuts, sitting here questioning what was what. It was probably the new predator part of his mind, willing to believe anything said against the humans who had dared to challenge the darkling kind.

He just had to let the plan unfold. Keep stalling and make sure that Angie stayed nervous.

“Just one quick question,” he said. “Your employers? The nice people who ‘freed’ Bixby. What would they do if they knew you were here talking to me?”

She let out a short, dry laugh. “Probably cut me into small pieces. Maybe you too.”

Rex allowed a grim smile to show on his face. He’d been hoping she would say something like that. “Talk about monsters.”

“I never said they were perfect. Far from it.” She crossed her arms. “All right, since it’s a school night and everything, shall we move on from the mutual recriminations? I told you some of what I know in my note. Maybe I’ll have more to tell you later. But you go first.”

“Okay.” Rex glanced at his watch. He still had fifteen minutes to kill. “There have been signs of change in the blue time.”

“Blue time?”

“You know, the secret hour.” Rex blinked. He’d forgotten that “blue time” had originally been Dess’s term—not part of the lore. “Everything turns kind of blue when time freezes.”

Angie just looked at him.

“What?” he said. “You didn’t know that?”

“Yeah, I’ve read the accounts. But I never got used to the idea of you midnighters,” she said. “It’s one thing that spooks live in the secret hour, but human beings walking around while the rest of us are frozen?” She shivered. “It’s so creepy.”

He snorted a laugh. “Trust me. They’re the creepy ones, not us. Whatever you’ve read about the darklings, I’ve seen them.”

“But you haven’t read their words,” she said. “And I have.”

Rex was silent for a moment. It was true—Grandpa Grayfoot had managed to do something that no seer had ever done before. He’d communicated with the enemy.

But now Rex had gone one better—he’d actually communicated with a darkling face-to-face. He thought again about heading out to the desert, meeting with the old minds there, hearing what their perspective was about all this history.

Now, that would be a brain bender… if they didn’t kill him first.

As Rex stared out the window, he saw a car flash past at the end of the alley. He swallowed, glancing at his watch again. They were early.

Angie hadn’t seen it, though.

“Well, whatever,” he said. “When time freezes, it’s blue. But this last week something really strange happened. Something that’s not in any lore I’ve ever read.”

“A timequake.”

He looked at her. “A what?”

“A spontaneous fluctuation of the prime contortion. Releasing the energies built up over the centuries.”

“Um, yeah.” He drummed his fingers on the seat. Prime contortion? Maybe Angie really had read a few things that Rex hadn’t. “We’ve been calling it an eclipse. But it might be more like a tremor, a warning of bigger things to come.”

“And that’s why the Grayfoots’ houses all sprouted For Sale signs last week?”

He nodded. “We think that the blue time is going to expand, suddenly and without much warning, getting big enough to swallow Broken Arrow.”

She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Jesus. No wonder they’re running. When?”

He shook his head and smiled. “I think I’ll save that piece of information until you tell me more. Such as, when are the Grayfoots leaving Broken Arrow?”

“Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure,” she said. “But there is something they’ve all been talking about for a while.”

“What is it?”

Suddenly lights swept through the interior of the car.

“What the…?” Angie said, turning to look back.

Rex winced as he glanced in the mirror. A pair of headlights loomed at the other end of the alley. Jonathan and Dess, you morons, he thought. Can’t you read a clock?

They’d come way too soon.

But there was only one thing to do: stick with the plan. He started the engine.

“What the hell are you doing?” Angie shouted.

“They’re coming for us,” he said. The headlights were closing fast. “They must have followed you!” He put the car in gear and rolled down the alley.

“Oh, Christ! Let me out!” She started to open her door.

Rex accelerated, and the door crushed a trash can with a sickening sound, swinging closed with a thunk. Sorry, Melissa, he thought.

“You’ll never make it to your car!” he shouted. “Just hang on. I’ll get us out of here.”

He accelerated down the alley and out onto the first street on Dess’s route map. As he turned right, the Ford’s freshly filled tires screeched across the asphalt.

The headlights swept out of the alley behind them, clinging to his tail.

Very convincing, Flyboy.

“I don’t know if I can outrun them,” he said. “This car’s pretty old.”

“Oh, great! You know, my car goes plenty fast!”

“I didn’t know you were going to bring company!” he shouted. “I’ll head for the highway.”

He hit Highway 75 and turned west, bringing the Ford up to eighty miles per hour. This was the diciest part of the plan. Going over the speed limit was bad enough, given that it was curfew time back in Bixby, but if another eclipse—or timequake, or fluctuation of the prime contortion—suddenly struck, Rex would plow through the windshield like a bullet.