The mass of flying beasts began to wheel and howl.
Another torrent of lightning erupted from Jessica, then two more—four lines of fire radiating in the points of the compass, coruscating across the frozen darkness of the blue time.
Finally she felt the wild energies inside her body lessen, falling away like the shriek of a kettle picked up from the stove. The blinding light began to fade, and Jessica could feel her own breathing again and hear the beating of her heart.
The rip was almost gone, folding upon itself to make a narrow beam of red. The darkling horde was cut into fragments, reduced to scattered clouds of slithers and a few maddened darklings fleeing back toward the desert.
Jessica looked around; four streams of soft white light flowed from her, cutting into the distance toward the north, south, east, and west. The energies in her body dwindled further as she felt them spreading out across the entire globe, wrapping themselves around the earth in some sort of pattern.
Something Dess would want to see, she thought hazily.
But her consciousness was fading away.
Then she saw it through the supports of the giant horse, heading toward them from the east. The light of normal time, sweeping across the world like dawn. The dark moon overhead was falling fast.
Samhain hadn’t lasted a whole day, not even an hour….
“Jessica.” Jonathan was walking toward her across the roof. “You’re…”
“Be careful,” she said weakly. White heat still burned in her hand. She lifted it heavily before her eyes and stared into the trapped lightning there.
But why was the midnight hour over already?
She pulled her eyes away from the fire pulsing in her palm and looked out at the horizon. She saw the storm unfreezing, the blue light of midnight swept out of the world.
Just as normal time reached her, Jessica felt herself fading….
“Oh, no,” she said, casting one last glance at Jonathan’s stupefied face.
An interrupted peal of thunder rolled as midnight ended.
And then everything was gone.
32
10:30 P.M.
EPILOGUE
The car slid to a halt in front of the house across the street, setting the neighborhood dogs barking wildly.
Nice move, Flyboy, Melissa thought. Dess had told him to keep it quiet tonight. Her parents were still in major curfew mode since the Great Bixby Halloween Hysteria.
He waited for a moment, then reached to honk the horn.
“Don’t,” Melissa said. “She’s coming.”
He glowered for a moment, his impatience bitter in the air. Of course, there was plenty of time before midnight to get to Jessica’s house and still make it out to Jenks. But Jonathan was in a hurry to get tonight over and done with. It was all too emotional, and underneath his tension Melissa sniffed a sliver of fear….
“Don’t worry, Jonathan. She won’t change her mind about leaving.”
He looked at her, bristling, then sighed.
“She better not, anyway,” Melissa said. “I don’t think I can live with my parents much longer. Not with Rex’s new rules on mindcasting.” Her parents had never been psychos like Rex’s dad, but the subtle web of deceits she had woven around them over the years was beginning to collapse. Melissa had spent the last sixteen years shrinking from their very touch; she doubted she was ready for any heart-to-heart talks about her private life.
In particular, they’d started asking about her missing car. It was definitely time to get out of town.
Dess appeared, slipping from her window and crossing the threadbare lawn at a deliberate pace. Melissa felt her annoyance at Jonathan’s noisiness and saw her taking her time.
“Hey, Flyboy.” Dess pulled the back door open and slid her backpack across, then jumped in herself. She didn’t say hello to Melissa, but there was no real animosity in it, only habit.
Jonathan glanced over his shoulder at the backseat. “You really think we’ll need that stuff? I mean, are there even any darklings left?”
Melissa found herself defending Dess. “A few got away. And the really cautious ones never even showed.”
“Sure,” Flyboy said. “But they’re not in Bixby anymore. And the four of us will be there.”
Dess shrugged. “When dealing with midnight, better safe than sorry.”
Jonathan gave her his new wounded stare. “Guess that makes me sorry.”
Melissa scowled as the sour milk taste of guilt rolled out of his mind. Two weeks later and he was still wallowing in the idea that what had happened to Jessica was his fault.
She sighed softly, wondering what it was going to be like to deal with Flyboy all alone for twenty-four hours a day.
Maybe without Rex around to challenge his freedom, he’d chill out….
At the thought of leaving Rex behind, Melissa shivered a little and pulled her mind back to the present. The future could sort itself out now that they actually had one to look forward to.
Jonathan pulled out onto the street, swinging the car into a wide one-eighty that kicked up dust on Dess’s dying lawn. Then he shot down the unpaved road, tires spitting gravel and sand. As usual these days, he wasn’t in the mood to talk or watch out for cops.
Melissa settled into the front passenger seat, casting her mind across the empty spaces on the edge of town, staying alert. Since the Hysteria, curfew had a whole new meaning here in Bixby.
The official story was, of course, a big joke. A freak collision of air masses over eastern Oklahoma had caused a record number of lightning strikes and brain-rattling waves of thunder. Power had been knocked out across the county, and random electrical fields had disrupted even battery-operated devices and cars. These natural phenomena—along with statistical spikes of heart attacks, fireworks thefts, and costumed Halloween pranks—were the official reasons for the panic.
None of which explained the mutilated body of the camper found in outer Jenks or the seventeen people still missing. But it was a good enough rationalization for anyone who hadn’t been awake and inside the rip that night.
Of course, a few conspiracy types had much better theories. Melissa’s favorites were an electromagnetic pulse from an experimental plane using the new Bixby runway (which wasn’t even built yet) and psychedelic mushrooms growing in the town water supply.
It was all part of a need to understand or, more accurately, to explain away what had happened. Anything not to have to face the truth—that the unknown had come visiting.
One certainty remained, though: Halloween would never be the same in Bixby again.
They reached Jessica’s house just before eleven.
All the inside lights were off, both cars sitting in the driveway. There was no For Sale sign on the lawn yet or any other way to distinguish the Day house from the others on the street. But it looked different somehow, even before she cast her mind inside. Sadder.
“Are they really moving?” Dess asked.
“That’s just a rumor at school,” Flyboy said. He looked to Melissa for confirmation.
She nodded, her mouth filling with the burnt-coffee taste of anguish that still clung to hope. “They don’t really know. Still waiting for some kind of hard evidence, I suppose.”
“Waiting sucks,” Dess said, and Jonathan nodded.
And then they waited.
She made her way out the window about fifteen minutes later, dropping ungracefully into the bushes. Her jacket looked too big on her, and she walked hunched, her hands jammed all the way down into the pockets.
When she was halfway to the street, Jonathan flashed his headlights once. She spun toward the car, and a sudden jolt of fear shot through the air. For a second Melissa thought that she was about to chicken out and crawl right back into her bedroom.
But a moment later she was at the car window. Her anxiety pulsed in Melissa’s mind, her suspicion almost hiding the tight ball of grief in her stomach. Suddenly Melissa realized how brave Beth was to have agreed to this at all.
“Hey,” Jonathan said.