“Sane…” he said, not quite understanding yet.

Melissa pressed on. “Because no matter how screwed up I happen to be, no matter what I did to your dad, at least I can see that ripping the minds of a whole town for a hundred generations is not cool.”

He took her hand, and all of Melissa’s thoughts, which had tumbled out in clumsy words, seemed to order themselves at his touch. They flowed into him, along with the thing she hadn’t said aloud.

I’m sorry about your father, Rex.

“You saved me from him, the best you knew how,” he answered.

Melissa looked away, her emotions churning. Her shame at her own past, her worries that she’d already lost Rex to the darklings, her fear of what Madeleine might do to his mind—all of it squeezed into a single tear. It traveled down her cheek like a drop of acid.

Rex sat there thinking, then finally said, “I think you’re right. Madeleine’s going to find my new view of history… challenging.”

“Then let me go up there with you, Rex. I don’t care what a badass darkling you are these days. You need my protection.”

He smiled again, and she saw a violet spark in the depths of his eyes. “You have no idea what I am.”

She let out a short, choked laugh. “Whatever, Rex. Even if you are a monster, I don’t want to lose you to her. And don’t think all those creepy old midnighters in her brain won’t give you a run for your money.”

Unexpectedly he leaned forward and kissed her—the first time their lips had met since last Wednesday night. His taste hovered on the edge between bitter and sweet, like chocolate that was almost too dark.

But what scared her most was that she tasted no fear in him at all.

“We’ll see about that,” he said. “Come on, Cowgirl. She’s waiting.”

Madeleine sat in her usual spot in the corner of the attic, tea things arranged around her. “Both of you, is it?”

“Maybe I can help,” Melissa said.

The old mindcaster gave a little snort but didn’t send her away. Like Rex, Madeleine had no fear.

“Well, sit down then, both of you. Tea’s getting cold. In my day, young people didn’t keep their elders waiting.”

The more I hear about your day, Melissa thought, the more I’m glad the Grayfoots came along.

She and Rex sat down in the corner, the three of them forming a triangle around the tea service. Melissa had never done this before—held two midnighters’ hands at once—but she knew from her store of memories that mindcasting circles were an ancient practice.

No wonder they all thought the same way. All those minds tuned together and reinforcing one another’s beliefs—add a few pom-poms and they’d be just like the pep rallies of Bixby High, except without anyone sneaking out the back to smoke.

Melissa took a sip of tea. It had indeed grown cold, bringing out its bitter taste even more than usual.

“What you did last week was very dangerous, Rex,” Madeleine scolded. “I watched from this very spot. No one has ever survived anything like that before.”

“We didn’t have anywhere else to turn,” he said.

“I’ve worked hard the last sixteen years to keep you alive, Rex. You could have thrown away all that effort in a matter of minutes.”

Melissa took a slow breath. In their training sessions Madeleine never tired of reminding her why she and Dess had been made—to help Rex, the only natural midnighter in Bixby’s recent history. The old mindcaster had subtly manipulated hundreds of mothers during their labor, trying to create babies born at the stroke of midnight. And all to make sure Rex had a posse to lead, like a proper seer should.

Melissa understood all too well now what the five of them really were: Madeleine’s attempt to re-create the Bixby she had grown up with, a paradise for midnighters… at the expense of everyone else.

“I’m still alive,” Rex said in a flat voice. The human softness he’d allowed himself to reveal on the stairs had disappeared again.

“They could have eaten you,” Madeleine said.

“The things I was talking to don’t eat meat,” he said. “They eat nightmares.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“But they wouldn’t have eaten me anyway. I carry their smell.” Rex gave the old mindcaster a cruel smile. He must know how much it offended her, Melissa thought, to have her little seer infected with the darkness.

Madeleine’s face twitched. “You taste more like them every day. But do you really think they would tell you something useful? Why should they?”

“The darklings didn’t tell me anything,” he said. “They share their thoughts naturally, like animals crying out when they’ve spotted a kill. You know that, Madeleine. You hear them thinking all the time.”

“If you can call it thinking.” She made a face, as if fifty years of her own bitter tea was finally hitting her taste buds. “Well, let’s see if your little experiment accomplished anything other than almost giving me a heart attack.”

She held out both her hands, palms up.

Melissa caught Rex’s eye, and they joined hands first with each other, waiting for a moment until their connection was complete. Her heart was pounding, and even though she was certain that the memory was all part of a big lie—propaganda, like Angie had said—Melissa recalled that long-ago mindcaster gathering, letting her wonder at those ancient images shared around the fire calm her.

As her mind stilled, she felt herself drawing strength from Rex’s dark confidence. Whatever the horde of old mindcasters inside Madeleine had in store for the two of them, at least they were facing it together.

“Come now. Don’t lollygag,” Madeleine snapped.

As one, they raised their other hands and let her grasp them, completing the circle.

As Madeleine stilled herself, she changed, becoming a congress of minds.

Melissa was always awestruck at the vastness of it: memories stretching back to shadowy recollections of the ice age, when glaciers could be reached in a month’s walk to the north. Ten thousand years of history, hundreds of generations, thousands of mindcasters.

She squeezed Rex’s hand. Facing that accumulated mass of minds, she was glad for his dark presence beside her.

“What have they done to you?” Madeleine murmured. She was probing the black sphere of Rex’s darkling half, searching its smooth surface for purchase. As the fingers of her mind settled in and began to pry, Rex’s hand flinched in Melissa’s.

“It’s for your own good,” the old woman muttered. Her concentration deepened, her raspy breathing slowing in Melissa’s ears.

After a long moment the darkness inside Rex began to swell, like something viscous and heavy coming slowly to a boil. The muscles in his fingers twitched again in her hand, a dry taste stirring among the patterns of his mind.

Eyes closed, Melissa watched the changes shifting through him and wondered if Madeleine really knew what she was doing. Melissa could taste arrogance in the mass of memories, their certainty that they could control anything and anyone. But they’d never faced something like Rex.

Then bitter metal filled her mouth, like old pennies on her tongue.

A seam had begun to open in Rex’s mind, his darkling inner core shivering, its surface cracking. Melissa tasted Madeleine’s satisfaction.

Rex made a pained sound.

Melissa sent calming thoughts toward him, but Madeleine pushed her back. You don’t know what you’re doing, girl. Stay clear.

The old mindcaster turned her attention back to Rex, pressing harder, and the darkness inside him began to split—a black and radiant shaft spilled across the mental landscape, bleeding color from it like the dark moon’s light. Images of an ancient Samhain flowed from his mind: masked humans piling up the bones of cattle and setting them alight, fires dotting the landscape for miles, raising up a slaughterhouse smell. Melissa felt a twitch of hunger at the scent and realized that the reaction was a darkling’s. Soon she was ravenous, feeling the call to hunt, to kill.