She felt a mental nudge from Melissa, standing close by, and stood straighter, swallowing her self-pity. Jessica had made her choice on that building top, after all, knowing that sticking her hand into the bolt of lightning would change everything.

“Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?” Beth said. “The whole time, you could have let me know.”

Jessica was ready for this. “Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”

“Tell them…?”

“About this. Are you going to tell them you saw your missing sister appear on some railroad tracks in Jenks?”

Beth thought for a moment, then shook her head. “They’d probably send me to a shrink.”

“Exactly.” Jessica nodded. “So you have to keep it secret. Like I did. That’s just the way it works. But Beth, at least you’ll know I’m… somewhere.”

“Somewhere isn’t good enough, Jess! You’re leaving me all alone.”

“I’m not. You’ve still got Mom and Dad.”

Beth clenched her teeth. “Mom cries all the time. She thinks it’s because she was working so much that you disappeared. And Dad’s an even bigger zombie than before.”

Jessica closed her eyes, her tears hot on her cheeks in the cool of the blue time. The thought of her parents missing her, not knowing what had happened, was too much to bear. “They need you, Beth.”

“They need you. Maybe they could come here and stand here like I did. I’ll think of some way to get them out to Jenks. I’ll make them come….”

“No.” Jessica took a step forward, put her left arm around Beth. “The rip is fading. And besides, I won’t be here anymore. Jonathan and Melissa and I are leaving Bixby.”

Beth kicked at the gravel, tears appearing in her eyes. “You are leaving me.”

“Midnight’s spreading, Beth. There are going to be more people like me, waking up and finding themselves in the blue time.”

“And lying to their little sisters?”

“Probably, at first.” Jessica nodded. “Right now they need our help.”

“I need you too, Jessica.” Beth was sobbing now.

“I know.” She drew her little sister into a left-handed hug and sighed. “I’m so sorry, Beth. Maybe it wasn’t fair, bringing you out here.”

Beth shook her head.

“But you’ll have to keep everyone in the dark, just like I did,” Jessica said. “You’ll have to lie about it.”

Beth raised her head. “Not to everyone. There’s Cassie.”

Jessica nodded slowly. “That’s right. She saw the rip, anyway. I guess you could tell her about me too.”

Beth sniffed once. “Already did.”

“What?”

“When Jonathan was trying to convince me to come out here. I had her spend the night, and she hid in my closet. And listened.”

A momentary wave of annoyance, all too familiar, went through Jessica. But then it turned into a feeling of relief and she let out a chuckle. “You little sneak.”

“There have to be more people in Bixby who know about all this, who’ve figured out how it works.” Beth pulled away a bit, staring fiercely into her sister’s eyes. “And believe me, Cassie and I are going to find them. Don’t think you’ve gotten away from us yet.”

Jessica looked down at her little sister, a smile spreading across her face, suddenly certain that Beth was going to be okay, with or without her big sister around.

* * * * *

Dess let herself wander along the tracks, looking into the trees, searching for any sign of life. It was almost too quiet these days; she wouldn’t mind the sight of a slither among the leaves. Certainly she was safe enough, between Counterfeiter in her pocket and the flame-bringer a few hundred feet away. Jessica hadn’t tried out her new, softly sparkling right hand on any darklings yet, but Dess was pretty sure she didn’t need a flashlight anymore.

Dess hadn’t slain anything herself in ages now. Why had they all run away? Darklings were like tigers, she figured. You didn’t want them eating you, but you didn’t want them going extinct. The world was less interesting without them.

Of course, after a few thousand years in one crappy town, Halloween had probably looked like Christmas to the darklings who’d survived.

When Jessica had sealed the rip, the energies built up along Bixby’s fault line hadn’t disappeared—they’d spread across the globe.

Dess shook her head. After all her work on the geography of the secret hour, it seemed a shame to throw out all those maps. Still, she couldn’t wait for Jonathan and Jess to start exploring the 36th parallel, finding out how far midnight stretched in the aftermath of Samhain.

Did it extend along the whole 36th parallel? And the 12th, 24th, and 48th as well? Was it wrapped around the entire globe, or did it only pop up at the intersections of multiples of twelve?

Or was midnight simply everywhere now? Were lucky midnighters waking up in every city and town, amazed at the blue and frozen world?

Dess heard the crunch of gravel and turned. Flyboy was bouncing along behind her, looking unhappy, like he needed someone to talk to.

She sighed. “So when do you three leave?”

“Probably soon.” He pointed his chin back toward the girls. “Now that this is over and done with.”

“It’s going to be lonely, only seeing Jess an hour a day.”

“It’s already lonely.”

Dess shook her head, wondering if he’d bothered to do the math on that little conundrum. Jess lived only one hour to his twenty-five, which meant she’d be hitting her nineteenth birthday just about the same time Jonathan was dying of old age. And sometime way before that, things were going to get… icky.

“Oh, well.” Dess smiled wryly. “You’ve always got Melissa to talk to.”

He looked up from the tracks. “Why do you still hate her? She saved Jessica that night, you know. And Beth. Maybe everyone in the world.”

“I don’t hate her.” As the words left her mouth, Dess realized it was really true—her hatred of the mindcaster had quietly expired. “Still, she’s not exactly road trip material.”

“Maybe not.” He smiled. “But without her, we’ll never find all of them.”

“All of them? Flyboy, there’s lots more than you think.”

Jonathan looked at her, then shook his head. “Any idea how all this happened? I mean why it happened?”

Dess just snorted at that one. Let Rex bury himself in the lore, still trying to figure that stuff out, how the time-quake and the lightning had chosen the same moment to strike. But Dess knew that was nuts. Not that she was against doing the math—explaining why and how things happened was the credo of the Discovery Channel, after all. But sometimes the numbers would never add up, no matter how hard you calculated.

After all, the chances of a bolt of lightning hitting the center of Bixby on the exact stroke of midnight on Halloween were… rather low. And if you thought for too long about why it had happened in exactly that way, you weren’t doing your brain any favors. In which case it was better to leave the math the hell alone.

She looked into the sky and saw that the dark moon reached its apex. “Come on, Flyboy. Time for your party trick.”

“Okay.” He swallowed. “You really think this will help?”

“Of course it will.” Dess led Jonathan back toward where the other three stood. She knew the two sisters had more stuff to work out, but sometimes apology math was funny: no number was ever high enough, and you just had to get over it.

They were holding each other, as if already out of words. Melissa stood off to one side, eyes closed. Prompting? Controlling? Or just eavesdropping? Dess wondered if this new non-evil style of mindcasting really helped or was just another crock.

Dess waited until she caught Jessica’s eye, then pointed at Jonathan.

Give the poor kid this much at least.

Jessica nodded back and pulled away. “Come on. I want to show you something about midnight. Something not horrible. It’s a little weird but… trust me?”