Jessica tested her weight on the ankle. “Ow.”

“Okay, let’s just stay here a few more minutes. The rally’s almost over anyhow. We’ll blend in when it breaks up, get our stuff, and go to physics.”

“Sure, great.” She winced. “Only I think I’ve already had my physics lesson for today.”

“Guess you have,” Jonathan said. He knelt and began to rub her ankle tenderly. At first she flinched at his touch, but then the wrenched muscles began to loosen. “Guess I have too.”

“How do you mean?”

He sighed. “Well, it was kind of stupid, flying around when we didn’t know what the hell was going on.” Jonathan looked up at the gym roof. “I could’ve taken a real fall.”

Jessica reached out and brushed his hand with her fingertips. “That would have sucked.”

“Yeah, well, the next time that happens, I’ll listen to Rex.”

She smiled, amazed to hear words “listen to” and “Rex” coming out of Jonathan’s mouth in the same sentence. But then her mind played back the first half of what he’d said, and she frowned.

“Hang on. The next time it happens?”

Jonathan looked at her blankly, then laughed as he worked on her ankle. “Do you really think that whole thing was just an eclipse or whatever? That it means nothing and will never happen again?”

“Yeah, well.” She swallowed. “I mean, it could be like Dess said. A totally random event…”

He chuckled.

“What, Jonathan?”

He stopped his massage and looked up at her with a wry smile. “Yeah, sure, could be totally random. Just like all the other totally random stuff that’s happened since you arrived in Bixby.” He started counting on his fingers. “The darklings go crazy and try to kill you, the Broken Arrows kidnap Rex, Madeleine reappears after fifty years in hiding…. How much more random could things get?”

The car alarm next to them switched off with a two-syllable dweeping sound, finally running out of steam.

“Great,” Jessica said softly into the sudden, ringing silence. “The flame-bringer rides again.”

4

2:59 P.M.

MAJORETTE

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you over to Madeleine’s at midnight.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jessica answered. “After you guys have already talked about all the important stuff this afternoon.”

Both Dess and Jonathan sighed and looked away, apparently tired of her whining.

Jessica rubbed her ankle, which wasn’t helping her mood. It had been getting gradually better all day, but it still twinged with pain. The three of them were sitting on the school’s front steps. Around them students were spilling out of Bixby High, slowly sorting themselves among the line of idling school buses. The lawn was dotted with clusters of people saying goodbye or arranging rides home. The sound of a tuba warming up for band practice drifted across the football field.

Jessica, of course, was waiting for her father to pick her up for a final night of being grounded.

“You won’t be missing anything, Jess,” Dess said. “Madeleine probably doesn’t know any more about what happened this morning than we do. I doubt this is a mindcaster issue.”