“Yeah,” she answered. “That was kind of hard to forget.”

“Well, I’ve got a few ideas about how the rip works. And they have to do with you. But we need to do a few experiments. I want all of you to meet me in Jenks tomorrow morning. At six-thirty.”

Dess let out a snort. “Hold on there, Rex. There’s a six-thirty in the morning now? No one told me about that.”

“Yeah, really,” Jonathan said.

Rex rose from his seat, suddenly inhumanly tall, his bulk seeming to crowd against the ceiling. His features shifted on his face, the eyes growing as long and wide as a wolf’s and burning violet. His hands slammed down onto the table, crooked like claws, then scraped across the wood in one slow, deliberate movement, his fingernails catching every imperfection.

Jonathan swallowed—the creature had come out from behind the mask.

“Do you think we have time to waste sleeping?” Rex said, his voice gone cold and dry and ancient. “Thousands will be killed, and for some it will be worse than dying. The old ones will suck them dry first, wringing out every drop of fear. They’re coming for you, don’t you see?”

He stood there, glaring at them all, while the old house filled with the echoes of his words, like whispers coming from every corner. Jonathan thought he saw the piles of junk around them glow brighter for a moment, their soft blue metal rimmed with cold fire.

A vague, choking noise came from Madeleine upstairs, as if she was crying out in a dream, but Jonathan didn’t dare look up. The four of them just stared at Rex in stunned silence. Even Melissa looked bowled over by his sudden transformation.

A long moment later he sat back down, taking in a slow breath. “I know this is hard. But you can catch up on your sleep after Halloween.”

His voice had gone back to normal, but they all still sat there, dumbfounded. Jonathan wished he could think of something to say, anything at all to break the silence. But the whole concept of language—hellos, goodbyes, jokes, mindless banter—it all seemed to have fled from his brain.

Rex was suddenly so alien. It would be like making small talk with a snake.

Finally Dess cleared her throat. “Okay, then. Six-thirty A.M.. it is.”

Jessica looked up at Jonathan, mouthing the words, Let’s go.

Jonathan didn’t have any problem with that. Some serious flying was what he needed right now, stretching his limbs and soaring away from the earth, as far as he could get from Rex’s weirdness.

But he remembered to ask, “So, Melissa, will you guys need a ride out there? I mean, since your car’s all busted.”

She looked at Rex, who shook his head no but didn’t say anything more.

Great, Jonathan thought. Maybe they’ll fly out with one of his darkling pals.

There was still time, so the two of them headed toward downtown.

“So what the hell is up with Rex?” Jonathan said softly, once Madeleine’s house was safely behind them.

“Don’t ask me,” Jessica answered, squeezing his hand. “Did you notice what he said at the end, ‘They’re coming for you’?”

“As in us—not him. Makes sense, though. He’s on speaking terms with the darklings these days.” Jonathan waited until they’d caromed from the long top of an eighteen-wheeler on Kerr Street, then added, “But I guess we’re safe, you and me.”

“Oh, that makes me feel a lot better.”

He glanced at her. “I just mean, we’re safe as long as we stick together.”

She didn’t say anything, just squeezed his hand again.

They climbed the buildings of downtown like stepping-stones, bounding to the summit of the old Mobil Building. This was where they had hidden in the days before Jessica had found her talent, back when the darklings were desperate to kill her—before she discovered who she was.

Jonathan looked out across Bixby, laid out before them in the even, deep blue glow of the secret hour. He looked in the direction of Jenks, trying to see the rip, but its red tinge didn’t show on the horizon.

Not yet, anyway. It was growing every time an eclipse fell.

“We haven’t been up here in a while,” Jessica said.

“Yeah. I was kind of missing Pegasus.” He looked up. The huge neon Mobil sign in the shape of a flying horse hovered over them protectively.

“That’s not all I missed,” Jessica said, a smile playing on her lips. “You remember what happened here, right?”

Jonathan nodded. “You mean, us hiding from the darklings?”

“Yeah. But not just that.”

He thought for a moment. They hadn’t really been up here since those early days. He shrugged.

Jessica let out a groan. “I can’t believe you. This is where we first kissed!”

“Oh, right!” He swallowed. “But that was around the same time, yeah? I mean, I just said how we were hiding here, and that was when we…” Jonathan stumbled to a halt, realizing that explanations were only making things worse.

He took her hands, hoping that his midnight gravity would bring her smile back.

She just stared at him. “I can’t believe you forgot.”

“I didn’t forget. I just didn’t know what you were talking about.”

“Ugh. That’s even worse!”

“Why?”

“Because it’s like you’ve totally forgotten.” She pulled her hands away, looking out over the blue-lit city. “We haven’t exactly… This last week we’ve hardly touched each other.”

“No, I guess not.” He sighed. “It seems like we’re always in crisis mode.”

“I guess it’s not that big a deal, compared to the whole town getting sucked into oblivion. But shouldn’t that make us closer or something?” She looked at him for an answer, like this was a particularly tricky problem from physics class.

“Look at it this way, Jessica,” he said, putting his arm around her. “Once Samhain comes, we’ll get to spend a whole day flying together.”

“Jonathan!”

“What?” He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying.”

She groaned, turning away from him. “I knew you were thinking that way.”

“What way?”

“You’re excited that this is going to happen, aren’t you?” she cried. “You’d probably be happy if it went on forever: blue time, all the time. No more Flatland. What could be better?”

He rolled his eyes but couldn’t bring himself to contradict her aloud. After all, he’d been thinking that exact thing as midnight fell.

But that didn’t make him a terrible person, did it?

Jonathan took a deep breath. Usually with Jessica, explaining things just seemed to make an argument go downhill. But for some reason, he always tried anyway. You had to keep talking to each other or nothing ever got resolved.

He began nervously. “Listen, Jess. Haven’t you ever imagined the world ending? I mean, kind of fantasized about a nuclear war or a plague or something wiping out everybody—except you and a few friends? And of course it’s all tragic and everything, but suddenly the whole world belongs to you?”

“Mmm… no, actually.” She frowned. “In my fantasies I’m more of a rock star who can fly. And has no little sister.”

He smiled, took her hand, and nudged them both a few feet into the air. “Well, one out of three isn’t bad.”

“Are you saying I’m not a rock star?”

“You don’t even sing.”

“I do in the shower.” A smile finally crossed her face as they settled back to the rooftop, but then she pulled away again. “Jonathan, the problem is that this isn’t a fantasy. It’s real. I feel bad even joking about it.”

“But Jessica, we didn’t make this happen. It’s not our fault. All we can do is try to save as many people as we can.”

“And enjoy the extra flying time?”

“No! If we can stop it, we will. But maybe we should leave the planning to Rex. It’s what he’s good at, even if he’s been a weirdo lately.”

“Even if it means keeping Flatland on its current schedule?”