Where else could she be at midnight?

“You actually let her touch you?” Dess asked.

“Melissa was there to protect me,” Rex said.

Jonathan glanced at Jessica, and they both flinched, waiting for the nasty response they knew was coming, but Dess just coughed into her fist and rolled her eyes. Eerily, the scar the darkling had left over her eye was shaped just like one of Melissa’s.

Jonathan was glad she kept quiet. Tonight Rex was scary enough without anyone provoking him. His expression seemed vacant somehow, as if there were some other creature inside him, showing off the Rex mask it was going to wear while trick-or-treating.

He looked weird enough in daylight, but in the secret hour the new Rex was almost too much to face.

“The darklings remember Samhain,” Rex said.

“So that goth holiday is the real thing, huh?” Dess asked, shaking her head.

“It isn’t a Gothic holiday,” Rex answered. “The Goths were from Asia. Samhain was Celtic.”

“From Asia?” Dess said, then groaned. “No, Rex, not the guys who conquered Rome. I mean the kids in black.”

“Um, Dess?” Melissa said. “Mirror check.”

“This dress is charcoal,” Dess said.

“Probably the Goths had something like Samhain too,” Rex kept going. “A lot of cultures have festivals at the end of October. The Feast of Souls. Something called Shadowfest. The Death of the Sun.”

Jessica raised an eyebrow. “Shadowfest? That sounds… festive.”

Dess let out a long sigh. “Why are we even talking about this? All that pagan stuff is from the Old World, but here in Oklahoma, Halloween is just an excuse to sell a bunch of candy and costumes to little kids. Like Angie said, the darklings hid themselves way before any Europeans got here.”

Jonathan cleared his throat. “Actually, Dess, it’s not just a European thing. You know the Day of the Dead down in Mexico? Even though it’s the same day as All Hallows’ Eve, the natives already had a holiday around then.”

Rex nodded. “And some Native Americans had festivals celebrating the Old Crone around this time.”

Dess laughed. “Excuse me, Rex. The Old Crone?” She looked around at the others. “And what were those other ones? Shadowfest? Death of the Sun? Dawn of the Dead? Is it just me, or do all these holidays have a trying-too-hard-to-be-creepy ring to them?”

“Of course they do,” Rex said, his scary mask unruffled by her teasing. “Look at the bare trees outside, the gray sky, the dead grass everywhere. The word Samhain is Celtic for ‘summer’s end.’ The beginning of winter.” Suddenly Rex’s voice sounded dry, like he’d been out in the desert without water for a few days. “The dying of the light, when warmth turns to cold.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, even Melissa looking a little spooked by Rex. Jonathan heard a creaking noise above his head. So Madeleine was here. But why was she hiding upstairs?

He glanced at Melissa, wondering what exactly had happened between the three of them the night before.

Dess broke the mood, letting out an exasperated breath. “This isn’t about spooks and ghosts, Rex, it’s about numbers. The eleventh month plus one is twelve. That’s all it is.”

Jonathan frowned. Back in Philadelphia, his mother had always taken him to church on All Hallows’ Eve. Even the Catholic version of Samhain had given him the willies.

“So tell us, Rex,” he said. “Way back when, before Halloween got all cutesy, what was the point of Samhain?”

“Well, believe it or not, people did wear costumes,” Rex said. “But the most important ritual was building bonfires. They burned everything they could, even the bones of their slaughtered cattle, hoping to drive away the night for a little while longer. Of course, they knew winter was going to win sooner or later. Samhain recognizes the coming of darkness.”

“Hey,” Dess said. “Now there’s a snappy greeting card: ‘Hope that you and yours have a lovely coming of darkness.’ ”

“I agree,” Rex said. “It doesn’t seem like the best time of year for a holiday. But for some reason, the coming of darkness wasn’t a bad thing.”

“Like I said, it’s a goth holiday,” Dess muttered.

“Yet during all of recorded history, it was a time of celebration,” Rex continued. “But what were they celebrating? Think about it. Back then winter must have been a pretty scary time of year.”

“Because everyone starved?” Jonathan said.

Rex’s face curled into something resembling a smile. “Everyone but the darklings. Remember, even before the secret hour was created, darklings hunted at night. In winter, nights get longer and longer. So originally those bonfires weren’t symbolic; they were designed to keep the predators away for as long as possible.”

The rapturous expression on Rex’s face made Jonathan shiver; his eyelids were fluttering, as if he was mainlining darkling memories. Jessica reached over and squeezed Jonathan’s hand beneath the table.

He coughed. “Sure, Rex. That’s not something a normal person would celebrate.”

“No. But one Samhain a long time ago, everything changed. The darklings never showed up again, even after the bonfires burned down. They had retreated into midnight. So those bonfires changed in meaning. Instead of a last-ditch survival maneuver, they were now an act of celebration. Halloween is the anniversary of the beginning of the secret hour, the day humanity finally reached the top of the food chain.”

Dess sat up straighter. “Huh. So maybe this whole history thing does actually make sense. I mean, if the darklings really did disappear on October 31, that’s why it was such a good day in the old system. It was the day when everyone was finally safe from them forever.”

“Not forever,” Rex said.

“Oh, right.” Dess’s voice softened. “November 1 is going to be a darkling holiday from now on, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “They’re going to turn the food chain around again. But the good news is this long midnight won’t last forever—just for twenty-five hours, a single day by the old reckoning.”

Jonathan knew he should be relieved, but somewhere deep inside him, he felt a little spark of disappointment.

“Okay, Rex,” Dess said. “What’s the bad news?”

“The long midnight will happen every Halloween, the rip getting bigger and bigger every time. From now on, humans are the candy.”

Jonathan’s disappointment lifted a little. A whole day every year.

“So what do we do about this?” Jessica said. “Wasn’t that the point of you talking to the darklings? To find out some way to stop it?”

Rex didn’t respond for a while, his face strangely unmoving. Jessica looked over at Jonathan, who only shrugged. He realized that some part of him was scared that the seer already had a plan, something that would shove the secret hour back into its bottle. Which would be a good thing, of course, saving thousands of lives at least.

But it would also mean Jonathan would never fly for more than one hour a day….

Finally Rex spoke. “We’ll try to stop it, to do whatever we can. When it comes, we’ll gather people together and teach them how to fight for themselves.”

“Um, Rex?” Jessica said. “What about keeping the secret hour a secret?”

“We don’t anymore. After the long midnight we won’t be able to.” He looked down at the table. “And after what we saw in Madeleine’s mind last night, I’m pretty sure I don’t want us midnighters to stay in shadows anymore.”

Everyone was silent for a moment as the idea that the blue time wouldn’t be secret any longer slowly sank in.

Jonathan wondered again why the old mindcaster wasn’t down here with them. But there were more important questions right now, he supposed. “So how do we organize a whole town in one night?”

Rex shook his head. “I don’t know yet.” He turned to Jessica. “But you remember how Angie said Samhain had something to do with the flame-bringer?”