“Yes.” He was silent for a moment, looking for words. “I don’t hate the world the way it is, Jessica. I don’t want my dad and your family and everyone else sucked into some nightmare. I know the difference between a stupid fantasy and the real end of the world. Okay?” He paused, not quite believing what he was about to say. “And whatever Rex comes up with, I’ll follow his orders.”

“You promise?”

“Sure. I promise. Even if he’s acting totally crazy. Anything to stop this.”

She looked at him, then finally nodded. “Okay.”

He took her hand, felt his midnight gravity connect them. “Let’s not worry about Bixby right now.”

She smiled faintly and leaned toward him. His eyes closed as their lips met, and for a moment the rest of the world really did fall away. Jonathan pushed them up into the air until they seemed suspended in a dark blue void, with only each other to cling to.

When they parted, he said softly, “Whatever happens in the long midnight, we’ll be okay—you and me. You know that, right?”

She shook her head, a sad look crossing her face, then silenced him with another kiss.

22

6:29 A.M.

FIREWORKS

“If Rex doesn’t show up on time, I’ll kill him.”

Jonathan looked tiredly at Dess, then at his watch. “He’s got another minute.”

“One minute to live, you mean.”

“Not really,” Jonathan said. “Either Rex gets here in one minute, in which case he’s on time and you don’t kill him. Or he’s late, which means he won’t be here, so you can’t kill him. Either way he has more than one minute to live.”

Dess cast a cold glance at Flyboy. He was making logical sense, which was totally unfair at this time on a Saturday morning.

“Jess,” she said. “Tell Jonathan to stop making sense.” Jessica, her head leaning sleepily on Flyboy’s shoulder, started to answer, but a yawn consumed her words. She wound up waving her hand noncommittally.

“Wait a second,” Jonathan said. “Is that them?”

Jessica sat bolt upright. “What? In that thing?”

Dess felt her jaw dropping. “No way!”

A pink Cadillac was rumbling toward them through the field, its vast frame bobbing across the furrows.

“Rex said he had a new ride,” Dess said with quiet awe. “But I didn’t think he meant his mom’s car.” She felt a smile break across her face. Teasing him about this was going to be so much more fun than killing him.

Rex’s mother worked selling Mary Kay cosmetics door to door, and in recognition of her millionth facial or whatever, she had received a pink Cadillac. But Dess had never actually seen the fabled machine before; Rex refused to ride to school in it, and she’d never imagined him actually driving it.

Yet there he was, cruising through Jenks at daybreak like he owned the whole town.

It rolled to a stop next to Jonathan’s car, and Flyboy barked out a short laugh as the front window came down. “Wow, Rex. Ding-dong!”

“That’s Avon, actually,” Melissa said as she stepped out of the Cadillac’s passenger side. “You’re not even trying.”

“Oh, right,” Jonathan said. “Well, it’s not like I have to try that hard. I mean…” He spread his arms to indicate the car. “It’s so pink.”

Flyboy’s voice trailed off as Rex stepped out, looked down at the car, and said, “Hey, yeah, it is. I hadn’t noticed.”

Then he turned back to them and cracked a smile.

Dess breathed a sigh of relief; that was the first joke he’d made in days. His messed-up morning hair made him look more human than he usually did. Maybe the effects of Maddy unleashing the darklings in his brain had worn off a little.

“How did you get your mom to lend it to you?” she asked. Since his father’s accident, Rex’s mother hardly ever showed her face in Bixby. Dess couldn’t imagine her handing over the keys for an early morning joyride.

“She dropped by for a visit night before last,” Rex said. “And I got the idea of pulling her starter cable out.”

Dess’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“It was easy. I snuck out while she was in the bathroom and pulled out the starter cable.” Rex gave his new evil smile. “She was in a hurry to get somewhere else, like always, so I called her a cab. She’s already rented another Caddy, so this one’s mine until I tell her it’s fixed.”

Dess and Jonathan exchanged a glance, and she saw that even Jessica had woken up enough to be impressed.

“Rex,” Dess said. “That is so cold-blooded.”

“True.” He nodded. “But I needed a car. We have important things to take care of.”

“Like getting us all out of bed at six-thirty on a Saturday morning?” Flyboy asked.

“Exactly.” Rex looked at his watch. “Come with me.”

He led them across the field toward the rip, and Dess found herself glad that she’d worn a skirt that didn’t fall below her knees. At this time of morning the long grass was heavy with dew, and her sneakers got soaked as fast as if she’d been strolling through a car wash.

As they marched, the sun began to crest over the distant tree line, its glaring eye finally putting a dent in the fierce pre-dawn chill.

“This better be good, Rex.”

“Don’t worry, Dess,” he said. “I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“At six-thirty in the morning I was hoping for better than ‘interesting,’ Rex.”

“I’m sure Jessica won’t disappoint us.”

Dess looked at Jessica, who just shrugged back at her.

Suddenly Dess noticed that Melissa hadn’t walked with them. “Hey, where’s the bitch goddess? She’s not back at your Caddy sleeping, is she?”

Rex shook his head. “She’ll be along in… two minutes.”

“Great. More split-second timing.” Dess sighed. “Hope this goes better than your last little scheme.”

“There’s just one thing, guys,” Jessica said nervously. “Cassie Flinders lives right over there. What if she sees us?”

“She won’t remember us.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Rex raised an eyebrow. “Why would she?”

Jessica looked over at the Flinders’ double-wide with an unhappy expression on her face. “Well, I wasn’t going to mention this, but she and my sister have been… hanging out. I was afraid to tell you guys in case…” She didn’t finish.

In case the bitch goddess decided to rip your little sister’s brain in half, Dess thought.

She looked at Rex, wondering if he was about to do one of his psycho transformations. But after a pause he only shrugged. “Everyone will know about the blue time soon enough, Jessica. It doesn’t matter.”

“Wow,” Jessica said, looking stunned. “That’s actually kind of a relief.”

Flyboy put his arm around her, smiling, but the idea of Rex not caring about secrecy sent a minor shudder through Dess. As she turned away to study the rip, the realness of how Samhain would change everything sank in yet another notch.

The rip wasn’t glowing red here in normal time, but Dess could see its current shape in the color of the grass, as if the contortion were a giant piece of lawn furniture. Maybe the dark moon was mutating the chlorophyll or something. She noted the rip’s geometry: a long, thin oval pointing almost due east and west.

She took out Geostationary and noted the coordinates of its center. Almost exactly on the 36th parallel.

Maybe not worth getting up at six-thirty in the morning for, but interesting.

“Okay, good. No daylighters around,” Rex said.

“That’s because they’re all in bed,” Dess pointed out.

Rex ignored her. “I want to do a few experiments here today, and I want all of you to see them. When Samhain comes, all of Bixby—at least—is going to be swallowed by this contortion. And as we’ve noticed, the rip isn’t exactly the same size as the blue time. You’ve all seen those leaves falling at midnight?”