Rex’s heart began to pound. “Oh my God.”

“Have you ever seen anything like that?”

“No, but I’ve always wanted to. Melissa and I have been looking for one of those since…forever.”

A frozen bolt of lightning reached down from the cloud, its motionless fire forking into a hundred tendrils that caressed the metal framework of the neon horse. In Rex’s midnight vision the arrested lightning was mind-bogglingly complex, every inch of it divided into a million burning zigzags.

He remembered all the times he and Melissa had set off on their bicycles as kids, tunneling through the rain toward some frozen flicker of light on the horizon. They’d never made it before the secret hour finished, always having to plow back through the resumed storm empty-handed.

But they’d kept trying; one of the first fragments of lore Rex had discovered was all about frozen lightning, though it had never explained what you were supposed to do when you found it.

Still, there was something in his mind….

He felt the fissures that Madeleine had made, the still-tender wounds of her attack, begin to throb. He saw it now, thrown whole into his mind by the sight of the frozen lightning. This was the last remnant of what the darklings had hidden from him.

Rex blinked. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

He couldn’t answer, a shudder passing through him. Suddenly he knew what tonight was really all about and what had to happen before the rip reached downtown and set the lightning free again. He knew the instructions that the Grayfoots had never received before their halfling had died.

And finally he understood the real reason why the darklings were so afraid of Jessica—why they had always wanted her dead.

He looked out at Jenks; the glowing red of the rip was still moving toward them. “We can stop this.”

“What, Rex?”

“We need Jessica here.”

“But they haven’t even lit the—”

“Shhh.” Rex dropped to his knees and let his head fall into his hands. In planning tonight he’d put Melissa on the front line for two reasons. She could guide Jessica and Jonathan safely there and back, through cops or darkling invasions as needed. And Rex had also known that if anything went wrong, she could taste his thoughts for miles across the secret hour, just as she had when they were eight years old, when she’d made her way across Bixby wearing only pajamas covered in pictures of cowgirls.

Now he needed her to hear him again.

“Rex?” Dess said softly.

He waved her silent and focused himself, setting all of his will to the task of summoning his oldest friend.

Cowgirl… he thought. I need you now.

27

12:00 A.M.—

LONG MIDNIGHT

IN THE RIP

Silence…

Midnight fell, extinguishing the mind noise of Jenks, turning the world blue and still and…red.

Here in the center of the rip everything began to glimmer purple—red and blue mixing together, time arrested, yet…not. The rain pattered down for a few more seconds, then petered out; the rip hadn’t expanded enough to include the heavy clouds above their heads. Melissa wondered if when it reached them, the rain would start again.