He was arm’s length from Angie, but the woman stumbled backward, shrinking against the broken car. The cigarette dropped from her fingers.

“Maybe you’re right, Angie,” he said. “Maybe monsters have lived in Bixby for a long, long time. But you should just remember one thing.”

His voice changed then, turning dry and cold, as if something ancient was speaking through him. “Monster or not, I’m what you made me when you left me out in the desert. I’m your nightmare now.”

A hissing sound came from him then, and his neck stretched forward, as if his head were straining to leave his shoulders. His fingers seemed to grow longer and thinner, cutting the air in mesmerizing patterns. The hiss sliced through Jessica’s nervous system like a piece of broken glass traveling down her spine.

Angie’s smug confidence melted, and she slumped down, only her back against the Ford holding her from sinking to the dirt.

The hissing faded until it was lost in the wind, and then Rex’s body seemed to fold into itself again, back to its normal human size and shape. Jessica wasn’t sure if she’d really seen him change so completely or if the whole thing had been a massive psych-out.

He turned away from Angie. “Come on, guys.”

“But she knows more,” Melissa said.

“Not anything important. They told me what I really need to know.”

His voice was normal again, and as Rex strode toward Jonathan’s car, he looked tired, the energy that had coursed through his body during the sudden transformation now gone.

Jessica and Jonathan cast a wary glance at each other, then followed Melissa, who was trailing worriedly after Rex.

“What about her?” Dess called. Jessica paused and glanced over her shoulder; Dess was looking down at Angie as if she were a particularly interesting bug found smashed against the ground.

Rex didn’t turn back, just spoke to the empty desert in front of him.

“She’s walking. She knows the way out of town.”

19

6:23 P.M.

SPAGHETTI SITUATION

“The rule is in force tonight,” Beth announced.

Jessica glanced up from her physics textbook. “Um, Beth? I’d like to point out that I am in my own bedroom, not in the kitchen. Therefore there is no possible way that I can be found in violation of the rule.”

“I’m just warning you,” Beth answered.

“Warning me?” Jessica said with a look of annoyance.

It was Beth Spaghetti Night, which meant that her little sister was cooking dinner. Over the last four years, since Beth had turned nine, the ritual had been held every Wednesday night, interrupted only in the first few tumultuous weeks after the family had arrived in Bixby.

The one rule of Beth Spaghetti Night was simple: Beth cooked, and everyone else had to stay away from the food.

Even now, the scent of reducing onions was already drifting through Jessica’s open door. The familiar smell had been making her happy until this interruption.

“Warning me about what exactly?”

“That I am enforcing the rule in its maximum form tonight,” Beth said.

“What does that mean? That we all have to leave the house while you cook?”

“No, but just…” Beth wrinkled her nose and checked over her shoulder, as if the smell of something burning had reached her. “Just stay in here. Okay, Jess?”

“Why?”

Beth smiled. “It’s a surprise.”

Jessica considered getting Mom to pass judgment on this new and irksome interpretation of the rule, but it probably wasn’t worth the effort. Jessica had been planning on studying until dinner anyway, and maybe the threat of Beth’s irritation would keep her from winding up in front of the TV.

Physics was Jessica’s only test scheduled before Halloween, and it seemed a shame for the world to end on a D+.

“Please?”

“Sure. Whatever,” Jessica said, making sure to roll her eyes.

“Good.You’ll like my little surprise.”

“Okay” Beth’s smug expression didn’t reassure Jessica. “Can’t wait for it.”

“Can I close your door?”

Jessica groaned. “Don’t I smell something burning, Beth?”

Her little sister spun on one heel, an expression of alarm crossing her face. Something really was burning. But she still managed to slam the door closed behind her as she fled.

Jessica listened to her footsteps thundering back toward the kitchen, wondering what this “surprise” was. Beth had been much easier to get along with in the last week, snooping a lot less, talking about her new friends at marching band, and practicing her twirls. Maybe she really did want to surprise them all with something special.

And even if she wanted to make trouble, Beth could hardly have anything up her sleeve that would really make things worse.

There hadn’t been any more eclipses—or timequakes, or whatevers of the prime whatever—since lunchtime a week ago. But as far as Melissa could tell, the darklings were expecting another one soon. After the last eclipse the rip in Jenks had grown to roughly the size of an oval-shaped tennis court. One of them checked it every midnight now, just to make sure that no more normal people had fallen through. Along with the usual blue glow everything inside it was tinged with red and nothing was frozen—autumn leaves fell, earthworms crawled, mosquitoes buzzed and bit. Too weird for words.

According to Dess, every eclipse would make the rip larger, like a tear traveling down a set of old stockings. Finally on Halloween the fabric of the secret hour would fall apart, and everyone for miles in all directions would find themselves engulfed in a world of red-blue.

As Jessica scanned her physics textbook, trying to focus on a chapter called “Waves and You,” images of last Wednesday night kept popping into her mind—the way Rex had looked as he stumbled back across the desert, as pale as a prisoner released after years in a tiny, lightless cell. The way he had transformed into something inhuman in his anger.

Rex said he still couldn’t remember what had happened to him out in the desert, and even Melissa hadn’t gotten far enough down into his mind to dredge up anything. He said he was having weird dreams, though, like ancient darkling memories running through his head in high definition. All from one conversation with the old ones in the desert.

It had been more of a brainwashing session than a conversation, as far as Jessica could tell. Or maybe a whole bodywashing—his freaky transformation seemed to make Angie’s accusations come true, as if Rex really was a monster now.

Jessica shivered at the image and gave up trying to concentrate on toroidal and sinusoidal waves. Instead she closed her eyes and drew in the smell of tomato sauce filtering under her door. If everything was about to change, Jessica wanted to relish these few last slices of normality.

Only two more Wednesdays before Samhain. She might as well enjoy Beth Spaghetti Night while it lasted.

“Dinnertime!” Beth shouted from right outside the door.

Jessica jerked out of her reverie, blinking. “Thanks for scaring me.”

“No problem.” Footsteps scampered down the hall.

Jessica smiled. Spastically enthusiastic Beth she could deal with. Rolling off the bed and to her feet, she paused to stretch away the muscle kinks of too much studying, then opened her door.

The mouthwatering scent of Beth’s tomato sauce rolled toward her from the kitchen, and the house echoed with the sounds of her whole family in animated conversation. Just for tonight, she could pretend that everything was normal here in Bixby.

But as Jessica made her way down the hall, a stranger’s voice spoke up, gentle but certain of itself—and somehow vaguely familiar.

“No way,” she said softly. Beth was talking again now; she must have misheard.