12

12:07 P.M.

LUNCH MEAT

"Okay, guys," Dess said. "There's some good news and some bad news."

The others looked at her tiredly, already shell-shocked from the weirdness of the last fifty-three hours. Dess was glad she'd waited until all five of them were here; no sense explaining this twice.

Dess found it oddly comforting to be sitting here at the old corner table, the one farthest from the windows, where she and Rex and the Vile One had always eaten together, back before Melissa had revealed her totally evil side. The lunchroom rumbled along around them in its familiar state of chaos, daylighters jockeying for prime table space, unaware of the major trouble that was on its way.

Rex, of course, spoke up first. "Okay. What's the bad news?"

Dess shook her head. "Sorry, Rex. But it's one of those things where the good news has to come first. Otherwise there's no punch line."

"Come on, Dess," Jessica said. "This is serious. Don't you think this is serious?"

"Good question." Dess stared down at her pile of extremely rough calculations. On the one hand, all their information had come from Constanza Grayfoot, which made it inherently suspect. Her instant TV-star status had sounded more like a psycho-cheerleader wet dream than a prophecy of the end times. Dess often wondered how the same family that had managed to undo thousands of years of midnighter rule in Bixby had also produced Constanza.

But as the girl's revelations in study hall had gotten weirder and weirder, Dess had stopped smirking and done her own calculations. The numbers were grim.

The four of them stared at her expectantly, but she just waited. That was the good thing about being the one who actually did the math. Other people had to play by your rules.

Finally Jessica sighed. "Okay, Dess. What's the good news?"

Dess allowed herself a victorious smile. "Well, it doesn't look like the whole world is going to end."

That got a reaction. Rex raised both eyebrows, and Jonathan managed to stop eating for five whole seconds. Jessica was already freaking out, of course, but her expression angsted up a notch. And Melissa... Well, the bitch goddess looked like she always did at lunch: a bit pained by all the mind chaos of the cafeteria, even though she was supposedly in control these days.

"Of course, the math isn't 100 percent sure at this point," Dess admitted.

"So wait," Rex said. "What's the bad news, then?"

"The bad news is that Bixby County, including the whole area of the blue time as we know it, plus definitely a big chunk of Broken Arrow and probably Tulsa, and possibly the top half of Oklahoma City - and hell, let's just throw in everything from Wichita to Dallas to Little Rock while we're at it - might very well get sucked into the blue time. In about three weeks."

Dess took a deep breath, feeling a rush of relief now that the proclamation had been made. It was sort of like being the first astronomer to spot one of those big dinosaur-extermination-sized asteroids on its way toward Earth. Sure, this was majorly unpleasant news for everyone, including Dess personally, but at least she got to announce it. Doing the calculations always gave Dess a feeling of control. After all, it was better to be one of the astronomers headed for the hills than, say, one of the dinosaurs.

"And you just found this out," Rex said slowly, "in study hall?"

"The library is a wonderful place to learn new things, Rex."

"It was Constanza," Jessica said.

"You got this from that cheerleader?" Jonathan snorted. "Well, that makes me feel a lot better."

Jessica gave him a nasty look. "This isn't about Constanza. Her grandfather - who's definitely not a cheerleader - knows something. He's evacuating his whole family."

"Evacuating?" Rex said. "But they don't even live in Bixby."

"That's the point, Rex." Dess spread her hands. "Remember when I said the blue time might be expanding? Well, it looks like Broken Arrow isn't far enough away from the darklings anymore. So the Grayfoots are bailing out, running away, heading for the hills. Got it?"

Rex paused for a moment before saying, "That's... interesting."

"And how far away is the old guy going?" Dess continued. "Tulsa? Nope. Oklahoma City? Sorry, too close. What about Houston, oilman's paradise? Five hundred miles away but still not far enough, apparently. Because he's taking himself and his whole extended family, including his annoying granddaughter, all the way to California."

"Yeah," Jessica added. "And there's not much oil business in LA."

Dess leaned back and crossed her arms, waiting for their tiny little brains to catch up. She wished she had a map to show them. When astronomers in movies had to explain that the world was getting clobbered, they always had those fancy computer simulations to make the disaster come to life, or at least a whiteboard.

"But how does he know anything?" Flyboy asked, his jaws still working on a peanut butter sandwich. "Anathea's dead. There's no other halfling to translate for them. So the Grayfoots are cut off from the darklings, aren't they?"

"Exactly," Rex said. "And probably that's why Grandpa's freaking out. Maybe since the darklings have stopped answering his messages, he believes those words we left for him: YOU'RE NEXT."

Jessica shot Dess a puzzled look. Apparently she hadn't thought of that one.

Dess had, though. "I admit he's afraid of the darklings, Rex. You made sure of that. But he's not just nervous; he's working on a schedule."

"A schedule?" Rex leaned forward. "How do you mean?"

"Okay: history lesson." She leaned forward, addressing Rex directly. "Grandpa Grayfoot kicked Constanza's parents out of the clan when they moved to Bixby, right?"

"Because he knew about mindcasters," Melissa said. "He didn't want anyone in the family business here, where we could rip their memories."

A shudder went through Dess. "Lovely choice of words, Melissa. But basically, yeah. So maybe he doesn't care what happens to her parents because they disobeyed the no-Bixby rule."

"But Constanza's still his favorite granddaughter," Jessica said.

"Mystifyingly," Dess muttered.

"She's really nice," Jessica said defensively. "And it's true, he really likes her. He buys her tons of clothes."

Melissa nodded. "We've seen the closets."

"Lucky you," Dess said. "But closets full of tacky clothes are nothing compared to what the old guy's bribing her with now. He's invited her to come live in Los Angeles and promised that she's going to be a TV star. But there are two catches. One: she can't tell her parents about it."

A guilty look crossed Jessica's face. "Actually, she wasn't supposed to tell anyone at all."

"Yeah." Dess chuckled. "Good move, telling Constanza to keep a secret. It would've been smarter to just come by in a van and grab her. Worked on Rex, after all."

"Like I said, he thinks the darklings are coming after his family," Rex said. "But that doesn't prove the world's ending."

Dess shook her head. "No, it doesn't. Which brings us to catch number two: Constanza has to get her butt out to Hollywood by the end of the month or, and I quote, 'the whole thing's off.' And Grandpa's moving the rest of his clan out there in two weeks - from Broken Arrow, Rex, where the darklings can't reach. Not yet anyway."

She let that sink in for a moment. The noise of the lunchroom seemed to grow around them, like the rumble of a coming storm.

"But how would he know the blue time's expanding?" Rex said. "There's no halfling to tell him."

"Maybe he already knew," Melissa said suddenly. She squinted, chewing her lip. "The oldest darklings did."

Rex shook his head, still unconvinced. Dess realized what the problem was: he refused to believe that the Grayfoots knew something he didn't.

Jessica spoke up. "It's so sad. Constanza thinks that she's going to an audition and that she'll get an agent and acting lessons and stuff. But she's leaving her parents behind forever."

"She's one of the lucky ones," Dess said. "At least she'll be out of town before October 31."

"Hey," Flyboy said. "That's Halloween!"

"Um, yeah." Dess raised an eyebrow. "I hadn't thought of that. It's kind of... interesting, but it's not numbers." She frowned at Rex. "Anything about Halloween in the lore?"

"Of course not." He shrugged. "There was no Halloween in Oklahoma until about a hundred years ago."

Dess nodded. "Fine, enough with history. Here's the math: when you boil it into numbers, October 31 seems like no big deal at first. I mean, the sum is forty-one, and you get three hundred-ten when you multiply. No relevant numbers there. But in the old days October wasn't the tenth month, it was the eighth. You know, October, like an octagon, with eight sides?" They all looked at her blank-faced, and Dess suppressed a groan. Next time she was definitely bringing visual aids. "Come on, guys. Eighth month? Thirty-first day? And eight plus thirty-one is...?"

"Thirty-nine?" Jessica said.

"Give the girl a prize."

"Wait a second, Dess," Flyboy said. "I thought thirty-nine was a major antidarkling number. Like all those thirty-nine-letter names."

"Magisterially Supernumerary Mathematician," Dess supplied. "An instant classic. And yes, the number thirty-nine is totally antidarkling. The real problem is the next day."

"Isn't that All Saints' Day or something?" Jonathan said.

Dess let out an exasperated breath. This wasn't about spooks or ghosts or saints; it was about numbers. "Don't know. Don't care."

Melissa brought her fingers up to her temples. "Hang on, guys."

Dess ignored her. "But November 1, here in the modern era, is the first day of - "

"Guys!" Melissa cried out.

They were all silent for a moment, and Dess thought she heard the hubbub of the cafeteria fade for a few seconds, as if a chill had spread through the room. Her fingertips were tingling, and a trickle of nerves filtered their way down to the pit of her stomach.

"Something's coming," Melissa whispered.

As the words passed the mindcaster's lips, a tremor rolled across the room, the shudder of the spinning earth halting in its tracks. The roar of the cafeteria was sucked away all at once, leaving the five of them surrounded by almost two hundred stiffs, faces blue and cold and waxen, caught throwing food and picking their noses and chewing with their mouths open.

"What time is it, Rex?" Dess's own voice sounded small in the awesome, sudden silence.

Rex looked at his watch. "Twelve twenty-one and fifteen seconds."

Dess wrote the number down and stared at it, wondering how long this one was going to last.

Jonathan bobbed weightlessly up from his chair. "Cool, this again."

"What are we supposed to do?" Jessica said softly.

"We just sit here," Rex said. "We wait it out. And get down, Jonathan!"

"Why?" Jonathan said. "I can fall from here, no problem."

"There are people all around, Jonathan. If you fly off someplace and the blue time ends, they'll see you disappear."

"Come on, Jonathan." Jessica reached up and took his hand. "Plenty of time to fly when the world ends."

"All right, whatever." Jonathan sighed, settling back onto his chair like a deflating balloon.

No one said anything for a moment. Dess's eyes were drawn to the tray in front of Rex, whose cafeteria lunch had already been left to congeal during the discussion. Its waxy layer of interrupted time made it look even more unappetizing, his Jell-O glowing blue, its wobble arrested.

Melissa held her head tipped back, tasting the air to her heart's content, and for once Dess was glad that the mindcaster was around. At least they'd know if an army of darklings was on its way.

Of course, this wasn't the end of the world, not yet. You could tell just by looking. If the secret hour had snapped completely, all the stiffs around them would still be moving, having been sucked into the blue time along with everything else within a few hundred miles.

Dess didn't have to do any math to know what the result of that would be. All those predators suddenly escaping from their midnight prison, unleashed on their prey - maybe millions of people, if the blue time really expanded across the whole state. No phones, no cars, not even fire, and only the five midnighters knew how to defend themselves.

Dess fixed her gaze on a constellation of french fries hovering over a motionless food fight across the lunchroom. She wondered if what she'd told Jessica yesterday after school was really true. Could you make it to the border of the blue time, freezing yourself at the edge until the long midnight ended?

Not too many people would be lucky enough to make it that far. Not with all those hungry darklings pouring in from the desert. And what if the blue time never ended? What if everyone on the outside was permanently frozen and everyone in the inside was lunch meat - most of humanity gone with a whimper, the rest with a bang?

"So, Dess?" Jessica said, finally breaking the silence.

She pulled her gaze from the hovering french fries. "Yeah?"

"In study hall, what were you scribbling on those papers? You said Halloween was safe. What's wrong with the next day?"

"Oh, yeah." Dess looked down at the papers before her, tinged blue by the eclipse. "Well, the weird thing is what happens at midnight, Halloween, if you switch from the old system to the new. October 31 was an antidarkling fiesta back when October was the eighth month. But now November's the eleventh month. Right?" Dess spread her hands. "Man, you guys are hopeless. So it's November 1. And eleven plus one is twelve, as in midnight. As in darklings."

They were all silent for a moment.

Finally Jonathan asked, "How long is that from now?"

"Twenty-three days, eleven hours, and thirty-nine minutes," Dess said. "Minus fifteen seconds."

"Three weeks." Jessica looked at Rex. "So what should we do?"

Dess was glad to see him scratch his brow, at least pretending like he was coming up with a plan. However messed up Rex's head was, the coming end of the world might screw it on a little bit tighter.

"I'm not convinced yet, Dess," he said after a minute. "But I guess we have to find out more about what the Grayfoots are up to."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Jonathan said. "Just drive over to Broken Arrow and ask them?"

He smiled. "Maybe it's better if we get them over to Bixby."

Everyone stared at him, but Rex didn't blink.

Dess leaned back into her chair, wondering what Rex was smoking. When the last bunch of midnighters had gotten in Grandpa Grayfoot's way, he'd made a hundred prominent citizens disappear overnight. Less than two weeks ago the Grayfoots had kidnapped Rex right out of his own house, then left him in the desert to have his humanity stripped away.

But for some reason he wasn't scared of them. Dess might not be a mindcaster, but she could see that. What the hell was happening to him?

It was funny, but ever since the bitch goddess had gotten under control, Rex had gone six kinds of crazy. It was like the five of them only had so much sanity to go around.

"Rex, be serious," Jessica said softly.

"I am serious." He reached into his jacket and threw a piece of paper on the table. It was covered with scrawled lore signs. "This is a message from Angie."

"That psycho who kidnapped you?" Jonathan asked.

"That's the one."

"Um, Rex." Dess shook her head. "Why didn't you mention this earlier?"

"Sorry. It only showed up yesterday morning, and I wasn't sure what to do about it - until now."

"Burn it, maybe?" suggested Dess.

Rex ignored her. "From what Angie says, the family is closing ranks, leaving outsiders like her in the dark. She's just as freaked out as we are." His fingers drummed the table. "Which means that Dess might be right."

"About burning it?" Dess said.

"No, about what's going to happen in three weeks and that the Grayfoots know more about it than we do. So I guess I should meet with her."

Jonathan stared at the piece of paper with a horrified expression, like a live rattlesnake had flopped onto the table. "What the hell, Rex? You're actually going to trust her?"

"I don't trust her at all. But I've been wondering about this message and figuring out a way to get Angie over to Bixby, whether she wants to come or not. We'll all have to work together, though." He looked around at them, a seer-knows-best expression on his face.

Dess sighed, wondering if anyone else had noticed how every time all five of them did anything together, things went totally haywire.

"Hang on, guys!" Melissa said suddenly. "It's ending."

Rex snatched the scrawled paper from the table. "Get ready."

Jonathan pulled himself firmly down onto his seat. Melissa put her fingers back on her temples, the way she'd been when the eclipse had hit. Dess tried to remember what she'd been doing - probably looking at Melissa and wondering what the hell she was yelling about.

She turned toward the mindcaster and gave her a suitable look of contempt.

A few seconds later the world shuddered again. The cold blue light was swept from the cafeteria, which exploded around them into a mass of motion and sound and sunlight. The seventeen french fries sailed on their various trajectories, two hundred mouths resumed their chewing, and Rex's Jell-O began to wobble once more.

Dess pulled at Rex's arm and looked at his watch, comparing it with the time on her GPS device. This eclipse had been shorter than the first one, lasting only seven minutes and twelve seconds. But it had followed a similar pattern: three times 144 seconds.

Now that it was over, Dess allowed herself a long sigh. However certain she'd been that the big event was three weeks away, it was a relief to know the end hadn't come.

Not this time, anyway.