A single choked scream of terror came from Madeleine’s lips, darklings from a thousand nightmares shredding her mind; her hand jerked once, then slipped from Melissa’s.

Suddenly the mass of mindcasters was silenced, Madeleine’s mind gone; Melissa found herself alone with Rex in the blackness behind closed eyes. The darkling thoughts moved through him, still powerful, still hungry. Melissa watched in horror as her oldest friend transformed, the darkness consuming still more of his humanity.

She wondered if she was next.

Rex, she pleaded. Come back to me.

“Unconquerable,” he said softly, his voice dry.

The storm began to subside, and what remained of Rex’s humanity settled over the boiling darkness. She felt his sanity return.

With a snap her muscles were her own again. Melissa pulled her hand from his and opened her eyes.

Madeleine lay on the attic floor unmoving, shards of her shattered teacup strewn about her. Her face was locked in an expression of horror.

“It worked,” Rex said, his voice calm.

Melissa stared at the stricken woman on the floor. She was still breathing, but her eyes were glazed over, her fingers twitching.

Melissa looked up at Rex, and his eyes flashed violet. “You call that working?”

“I remember now.” His lips curled into a smile. “I know what Samhain really was.”

Melissa tried to gather her wits and tore her eyes from Madeleine’s twisted face. The darklings were coming, and thousands of lives were at stake. “Can we stop it?”

Rex shuddered for a second, as if one last memory remained fugitive in his mind. But then he nodded slowly.

“We can try.”

21

11:56 P.M.

SAMHAIN

Every night it seemed like the secret hour took longer to come.

Jonathan drummed his fingers on his windowsill, waiting for the cold wind to be silenced, for colors to blur together into blue, for weightlessness to pour into him. He didn’t look at the clock, which never worked. Knowing how many minutes of Flatland were left only made the torture worse.

These stretches right before midnight were always the hardest. Jonathan wanted to be out there now, soaring over the still cars and softly glowing houses, feeling his muscles propel him across town.

To pass the time—to force the time to get moving—he counted off the coming days on his fingers. It was Thursday night, tomorrow was Friday, exactly two weeks until Halloween. If Dess was right, he would only have to endure this wait fifteen more times, including tonight.

And then he would be free of gravity altogether.

His eyes closed. Jonathan realized, of course, that the weakening of the blue time was a disaster; it would give the darklings free rein to hunt down thousands of people, maybe a lot more than that. His father, his classmates, everyone he knew was in terrible danger.

But he couldn’t keep his mind off one fact: for however long the frozen midnight lasted, Flatland would be erased, and the world would have three dimensions. For a guilty moment Jonathan let himself feel the pleasure the thought gave him—being able to fly for days on end, however far the blue time expanded.