“Big patch of rainbow cactus.”
“What the hell? Are you trying to get us killed?”
“No. But we’re about to run out of gas.”
“What?”
“Long story. This way at least we’ve got a chance.”
“Of what? A quick death?”
His answer was cut off by a sudden bang beneath the car, a sound like a watermelon hitting concrete at eighty miles an hour. More collisions rocked the Ford, Angie crying out as each cactus struck. The shock of the impacts shot up through the car seat, jolting Rex like a series of kicks in the butt.
Behind them a pair of headlights dropped back. One of the Mercedes had ground to a halt, with either a tire burst or an axle busted. As Rex watched in the shuddering rearview mirror, the car was overwhelmed by its own cloud of dust.
Only one to go.
Then, with a parting bang, the cactus patch fell behind them. Melissa’s Ford was wobbling, its right-front tire making a sound like a rubber flag in a strong wind. But the engine kept rumbling underneath Rex, and the desert still flashed past in front of their headlights.
“They’ll be getting nervous now,” Angie said, looking back.
“Nervous?”
“If they lose the other car, they’ll have no way to get out of the county in time. They’re Grayfoots, brought up so they’d rather die than be in Bixby at midnight.”
Rex blinked. After all his careful planning for tonight, would his insane, wildly improvised idea of barreling through a cactus patch be the one thing that actually worked? Inside him, the darkling half of his mind was quietly pleased.
“Rex, did you say something about running out of gas?”
“Well—” he started, but suddenly another explosion shook the car. The steering wheel jerked out of his hands, and the car began to swerve out of control across the desert floor, swinging into a bootlegger’s reverse, tipping so far to the right that Rex thought it was going to roll over. The horrible screeching of bare metal skimming across rocks and hard-packed sand filled his ears, and a cloud of dust rose up to swallow the world around them.
Somehow the Ford didn’t roll over, but when they finally skidded to a halt, it was listing to one side like a sinking ship. Rex was pretty sure that both right tires had been reduced to rubber confetti.
The engine died then with a cough, finally realizing that it had run out of gas.
Rex waited for a pair of headlights to lance through the dust swirling around them. The other Mercedes couldn’t be far behind.
The view gradually cleared, revealing a starry sky, the dark mountains in the distance—and a pair of red taillights receding into the desert.
“What the hell?” he said. “They totally had us.”
Angie took a while to catch her breath, her hands slowly releasing their grip on the upholstery. “It’s too close to midnight.”
Rex looked at his watch. “But they still had fifteen minutes. Plenty of time to kill us and get to the county line.”
“Yeah, but first they had to drive back around the cactus to pick up whoever was in the other car.”
“What? They’re too nice to just leave them out here?”
“Those were all Grayfoots.” She let out a snort. “And they’d never leave family behind.”
He looked at her. “Just you.”
Angie nodded slowly. “Just me.” Her dazed eyes took in the slowly clearing dust, the empty desert, and finally dropped to stare at her watch. “I guess I’m screwed. Your little mindcaster friend will be here soon, won’t she?”
The smell of terror from Angie had become almost overwhelming. Her hands were shaking now, as if she were even more afraid of a mindcaster entering her brain than of the Grayfoots catching her.
Rex let out a slow breath, willing his thudding heart to calm down. With Angie’s fear scent filling the car, a hunting frenzy threatened to take over his mind. But he needed to keep control, to keep talking to her.
“Let me be honest, all right?” he said through gritted teeth. “It was always my plan to trap you in Bixby for midnight. That’s why I only had so much gas.”
“So you knew the Grayfoots were going to show up? And you came anyway?” She whistled. “You’ve got guts.”
“Well, not exactly. Things didn’t quite go the way I planned.” He sighed. “But listen, Angie, have you really been telling me the truth about the past? The way the old midnighters—” Rex’s voice choked off as his nose suddenly caught the sharp smell of stainless steel. Angie’s knife flashed in her hand. “Hey, what the hell?”
“Listen, Rex, I know that in fifteen minutes you can do anything you want to me, make me drooling and stupid like your father, maybe turn me into your slave. But that doesn’t mean I can’t even the score.”
“Hold up, Angie! No one’s going to turn you into a vegetable!”
“Yeah, right.” She snorted. “So you lured me out here to steal my bank card password?”
“No, to make sure you were telling the truth!” The knife came closer, and his darkling mind writhed at the smell of steel. “We had to do this! If the world’s ending, we had to know for sure!”
Angie paused, her eyes narrowing. “What did you just say? If the what’s ending?”
“The world… or at least a great big chunk of it.” Rex spoke quickly, his eyes never leaving the knife. “We think the blue time is expanding far enough to swallow millions of people. They’ll be defenseless against your darkling pen pals.”
She shook her head. “That’s crap, Rex. Darklings can’t hurt normal humans.”
“Not usually. But the barrier between normal time and the secret hour is weakening. In certain spots daylighters can slip through. You know that girl on the news this week, the one who disappeared in Jenks? She walked into the blue time.”
“Come on, Rex,” Angie said. “Didn’t she turn up the next day?”
“Yes, because we saved her… from a huge, hungry darkling, I might add.”
Her eyebrows raised. “I don’t remember that part being on the news.”
“Well… no.” Rex swallowed. “We may have asked her not to say anything about the, uh, incident.”
“You erased her memories,” she said coolly.
He narrowed his eyes. “We had to.”
The knife drew closer, the tip barely touching his cheek, where it burned like a spent match tip. Rex’s eyes focused on the pulse in Angie’s throat, the darkling part of his mind set on edge by the steel against his flesh, thinking killing thoughts. He knew that if he lost control, the short, brutal fight between them would be more evenly matched than Angie would expect, knife or no knife. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything. They had to communicate, not kill each other.
“And what will you do to my memories?” Angie said softly.
Rex tore his eyes from her throat. Would she believe that he’d wanted to change as little as possible inside her mind? Just find out what she knew about the Grayfoots leaving town and maybe introduce a strong phobia about kidnapping people in the future. Unless, of course, Melissa lost her temper in the middle of the whole thing and forgot her promises…
If that happened, Rex wouldn’t want to be in Angie’s shoes.
Maybe there was another way to do this—one that didn’t involve any mindcasting.
Rex tried to ignore the knife in his face. “Do you really believe all that stuff? About how the old midnighters were totally evil?”
“I don’t believe it, Rex, I know it. I’m a real historian, not some amateur. Before I found out about the secret hour, I was researching a book on Oklahoma’s early statehood. I’ve documented everything the old man told me about his childhood. I’ve found the court records in Tulsa, from when they got his parents.”