Jonathan pulled away, stepping back from her. “Okay. Be quick now.”

“Farther, Jonathan.”

He nodded, leaping to the edge of the roof. Behind him the crimson wave was almost upon them, a towering sheet of falling water and screaming predators.

Suddenly a hissing squadron of rockets rose up to meet them, bursting into showers of white light. Darklings wheeled and spun to avoid them.

“Dess,” she whispered. The other building, only one jump away, was now inside the rip.

Jessica Day thrust her hand into the lightning….

The frozen storm surged through her like an explosion. Thunder filled her ears, and wave after wave of pitiless energy rolled through Jessica until her body seemed to disappear and she could feel nothing but the primordial power locked inside that one instant of lightning. It built inside her, white spots flooding into her vision, her ears popping, the taste of metal skating across her tongue.

She felt like it was going to tear her apart.

Then the white heat burst out in a flood, shooting toward the approaching wall of the rip, cutting through its face and into the hordes of darklings and slithers, fire spreading from one midnight creature to the next in a mad zigzag pattern.

The mass of flying beasts began to wheel and howl.

Another torrent of lightning erupted from Jessica, then two more—four lines of fire radiating in the points of the compass, coruscating across the frozen darkness of the blue time.

Finally she felt the wild energies inside her body lessen, falling away like the shriek of a kettle picked up from the stove. The blinding light began to fade, and Jessica could feel her own breathing again and hear the beating of her heart.

The rip was almost gone, folding upon itself to make a narrow beam of red. The darkling horde was cut into fragments, reduced to scattered clouds of slithers and a few maddened darklings fleeing back toward the desert.

Jessica looked around; four streams of soft white light flowed from her, cutting into the distance toward the north, south, east, and west. The energies in her body dwindled further as she felt them spreading out across the entire globe, wrapping themselves around the earth in some sort of pattern.

Something Dess would want to see, she thought hazily.

But her consciousness was fading away.

Then she saw it through the supports of the giant horse, heading toward them from the east. The light of normal time, sweeping across the world like dawn. The dark moon overhead was falling fast.

Samhain hadn’t lasted a whole day, not even an hour….

“Jessica.” Jonathan was walking toward her across the roof. “You’re…”

“Be careful,” she said weakly. White heat still burned in her hand. She lifted it heavily before her eyes and stared into the trapped lightning there.

But why was the midnight hour over already?

She pulled her eyes away from the fire pulsing in her palm and looked out at the horizon. She saw the storm unfreezing, the blue light of midnight swept out of the world.