10
11:49 P.M.
MEMORY FIX
The mind noise of Jenks rumbled softly at this time of night. A fair percentage of the locals seemed to be awake - most watching the late-night dreck of unemployment TV - but this area was sparsely populated compared to Bixby. The thinly sprinkled minds dotted the mental landscape like lazy fireflies.
"Anybody near the tracks?"
She opened her eyes, licked her lips, and shook her head. "No, Rex. Nothing bigger than a squirrel."
Her old Ford was parked in the same field as the night before, facing the long hump of the railroad line. Melissa couldn't taste any human minds among the trees, which was one less thing to worry about.
Rex was almost being his old self, getting anxious over everything. He'd been worried that Cassie Flinders had told her friends everything she'd seen last night - or worse, spilled the beans to the local news channel.
Of course, Melissa had to admit, a bunch of thrill seekers showing up to dare "haunted" railroad tracks would be a pain. It was bad enough out at the snake pit, having to crawl over frozen teenagers playing games with so-called magic rocks. But this rip in the blue time was actually dangerous - they didn't need any more Cassies crossing over and causing all kinds of inconvenience.
As Melissa cast her mind across the contortion, she realized that she could faintly taste the rip. There was something unnatural and vaguely wrong about this place, like the smell of chlorine on your own skin after swimming. She wrinkled her nose, wondering if the rip had grown since last night or if it only got bigger during eclipses.
"Maybe it's too soon," he said. "Any rumors Cassie started haven't had much time to spread."
"Well, we can come out here again tomorrow night if you want." She flexed her fingers. "Scare the hell out of them. Of course, it does seem like a waste of effort."
"What do you mean?"
"Saving every little kid who wanders into darkling land when all of Bixby's fixing to get turned into one big buffet." She saw his fists tighten, felt the tension course through him, and sighed. "Kidding, Rex. You know me, always happy to rescue people."
He relaxed, took a breath. "Well, you rescued me."
She smiled. The great thing about Rex was, he'd never forgotten the night she'd walked across Bixby to find him, back when they were kids. Even after all these years, all the mistakes they'd made, he was still that eight-year-old, forever grateful to her for showing him that the blue time was real, not just some recurring nightmare.
But what was he so nervous about tonight? Even with her new and improved skills, Melissa still couldn't tease out the details sometimes. Not without physical contact, anyway, and Rex had been very edgy about touching today.
"Maybe Cassie hasn't told anyone," he said. "Maybe she really does think it was a dream."
"I don't know. She tasted really... clever." Melissa paused, unsure if clever was what she meant. The kid was tough, and Melissa had detected a crafty streak in her that was a mile wide. Cassie Flinders might not have said much last night, acting very much like a kid in shock, but she'd listened to everything the midnighters had said in front of her, recording it all. The sooner Melissa rejiggered her memories, the better.
"Just don't push too hard, Cowgirl."
Rex's guilt washed over her, sour milk mixed with battery acid, and she groaned. "That's all behind us, Rex. No more screwups. I'll be light as a feather in there. Just trust me, all right?"
"Okay." He looked at his watch. "So what do we do for eight minutes?"
"Jeez, Loverboy, if you have to ask..."
He smiled and turned to her, leaning across the car seat. But his movements were tentative.
What are you hiding, Loverboy? she wondered.
As they kissed, she felt Rex's nervous energy buzzing across his lips. She ran her tongue lightly across them, transforming their flavor from anxiety into desire, drawing him closer. Melissa's own excitement - her anticipation of midnight, of using her new skills to manipulate Cassie's frozen mind - began to build. It overwhelmed Rex's tension, mixing with his arousal like two sharp tastes colliding in her mouth.
He reached to grasp her shoulders, his hands gloved against the accidental touch of steel, and pulled her closer. She ran a hand inside his jacket, feeling her mind begin to spin. She could taste the ferment of Rex's ongoing transformation and wondered at its sweet electric taste, like Pop Rocks under her tongue, fizzing as it trickled down her throat.
Usually when they touched, her generations of mindcaster technique ensured that Melissa kept herself under control. But tonight Rex's newfound confidence, the strength in him that grew every day, threatened to overpower her. She caught glimpses of what had happened the night before, saw through his eyes the darkling in its dance, acknowledging him as another predator. Talking to him, almost.
And then the real cause of his guilt and anxiety came through: how close he had come to letting his darkling side boil over. She wondered what would be left of Cassie Flinders if that had happened....
Her ancient memories cautioned Melissa that Rex was becoming something no mindcaster had ever kissed before. There were shadows in him, ancient and terrifying.
But she ignored the warnings - this was Rex, after all. He was the only reason she had survived this long. All through those years while her mind had been untutored and undefended, this was all she'd wanted: to be able to touch him. Melissa felt herself let go of everything Madeleine had given her, all mastery and control, and allowed herself to sink into the darkness inside him.
Like the old minds across the desert, the things down there didn't have words, just images she could barely grasp - lore signs, a pile of bones, the smell of burning... the glorious rush of taking prey.
There was a moment of sharp pain, and then he pulled away, his body shuddering.
Melissa sat for a moment, watching his eyes flash violet in the moonlight, the echoes of what she'd felt in him subsiding slowly. She tasted salt and wondered for a moment what sort of mind noise it was, then realized that the taste was real - blood in her mouth.
"Crap," she said, putting a hand to her lips. "I bit my lip. How lame is that?"
"It wasn't you." He turned away. "Sorry... if that was weird."
"It's okay, Rex." Melissa touched her wounded lip tenderly. "I had some spooky stuff in me too the first few times we touched. Remember?"
He turned back to her and pulled off one glove. He reached out, his fingertips lightly touching her mouth.
A shudder traveled through the car at that moment, all the random mind noise around them extinguished at once. Blue light swept across the world, and against the suddenly quiet mental landscape, the visions she'd taken from Rex's mind grew clearer.
She saw a piece of paper covered with the spindly symbols of the lore and knew that those unreadable signs were what had made him so edgy tonight.
Melissa squinted in the dark moon's light. "What the hell?"
"I found it this morning." Rex's voice was rough.
He reached into his jacket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. He opened it, revealing the same scrawled symbols she'd seen in his mind.
"So this is what's got you spooked?" She settled back onto the driver's side, sighing. "Ancient seer wisdom about the end of the world?"
He shook his head. "Not exactly ancient. Look."
She peered closer. The symbols were written on lined paper, three-hole punched, with a confettied edge from being torn out of a spiral notebook.
"I don't understand. These are your notes?"
"I didn't write that. I found it on my kitchen table this morning."
"Wait a second." Melissa's mind spun. "But it's written in lore signs, Rex."
He nodded. "That's right, Cowgirl. A slightly odd dialect, but readable."
"And it just showed up on your kitchen table? But no one knows how to write the lore besides you. And... oh, crap." Melissa placed the nail of her ring finger between her front teeth and bit down on it furiously. Her teeth slipped from the fingernail with a jarring snap. "Those dominoes that the Grayfoots used to communicate with the darklings - they had lore symbols on them."
"That's right. With the same slight differences as this one. It's even signed." He pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of the page, where a cell phone number was written next to three spindly symbols grouped by a circle. "Ah-nu-gee."
"What the hell is ah-nu-gee?"
"Each lore sign usually stands for a word, but when you put a circle around them, they turn into sounds, like using the alphabet. It's a way to spell out names and write about objects that didn't exist a few thousand years ago."
She raised her eyebrows. "And people back then didn't have ah-nu-gee? I repeat: what the hell?"
He laughed softly. "What they didn't have back then were certain sounds. It was a Stone Age language, after all. 'Ah-nu-gee' is as close as they could get to 'Angie.' "
"Angie." Melissa's blood ran cold at the name. Angie, last name unknown, was one of the Grayfoots' agents. She'd translated the darklings' messages, had been in the desert that night Anathea had died, and it was her - Melissa was certain - leading the party that had kidnapped Rex. "She wrote to you?"
He nodded. "She wants to meet me."
"Meet you? What the - ?" Melissa pressed herself back against the car seat and growled, fists tightly clenched. "Is she crazy?"
Rex gave that question a shrug. "More scared than crazy, sounds like. The Grayfoots are up to something, and she doesn't know what. She says that after Anathea died, they cut her out of the loop because she's not family."
"Oh, poor Angie," Melissa hissed, her fingernails cutting into her palms. "This is such crap. They just want to kidnap you again!"
He shook his head. "Why? The darklings can't turn me into anything. Jessica burned away their special halfling-making spot."
"So they just want to kill you, then. Spiteful little creeps. Finish what they started fifty years ago."
"Melissa," he said with maddening calm. "They left it on my kitchen table, while I was sleeping. If they wanted to kill me, I'd be dead, right? What she wants is to exchange information. Like I said, she's scared."
Melissa got herself under control, concentrating on her heartbeat until it slowed. "Okay, then, Rex, an exchange of information sounds like fun. Why don't you offer to meet her at your house, say, around eleven fifty-five at night?" She felt her lips curl back from her teeth. "I'll show her what scared really means."
"I thought you were all featherlight these days."