She looked into his eyes, hoping that he would get it.

“Until we came along,” Rex said.

“Exactly. We’re more different from our predecessors than we thought, Rex. Maybe they really did all that evil stuff, but they didn’t know they were being evil. They couldn’t know.”

“You haven’t asked Madeleine about this yet?”

Melissa shook her head. “No way. I haven’t let her touch me since Angie gave her little speech.”

Rex smiled softly. “So you’re an Angie fan now, are you?”

“Not really, but she has the same good point that most scumbags have: she makes me feel a lot better about myself.”

“Because you never kidnapped anyone?”

“Oh, much better than that.” She placed her palms together, hoping that the realization would still make sense once she’d said it aloud. “Madeleine always says I’ll never be a real mindcaster—I started too late. Those memories are just figments to me; to her they’re like real people.” Melissa shook her head. “But what if it’s a good thing that I never got indoctrinated? What if I’m not the first crazy mindcaster in history, Rex? What if I’m the first sane one?”

“Sane…” he said, not quite understanding yet.

Melissa pressed on. “Because no matter how screwed up I happen to be, no matter what I did to your dad, at least I can see that ripping the minds of a whole town for a hundred generations is not cool.”

He took her hand, and all of Melissa’s thoughts, which had tumbled out in clumsy words, seemed to order themselves at his touch. They flowed into him, along with the thing she hadn’t said aloud.

I’m sorry about your father, Rex.

“You saved me from him, the best you knew how,” he answered.

Melissa looked away, her emotions churning. Her shame at her own past, her worries that she’d already lost Rex to the darklings, her fear of what Madeleine might do to his mind—all of it squeezed into a single tear. It traveled down her cheek like a drop of acid.

Rex sat there thinking, then finally said, “I think you’re right. Madeleine’s going to find my new view of history…challenging.”

“Then let me go up there with you, Rex. I don’t care what a badass darkling you are these days. You need my protection.”

He smiled again, and she saw a violet spark in the depths of his eyes. “You have no idea what I am.”

She let out a short, choked laugh. “Whatever, Rex. Even if you are a monster, I don’t want to lose you to her. And don’t think all those creepy old midnighters in her brain won’t give you a run for your money.”

Unexpectedly he leaned forward and kissed her—the first time their lips had met since last Wednesday night. His taste hovered on the edge between bitter and sweet, like chocolate that was almost too dark.

But what scared her most was that she tasted no fear in him at all.

“We’ll see about that,” he said. “Come on, Cowgirl. She’s waiting.”