Some time ago—before Jessica, or even Jonathan, had moved to Bixby—the town sheriff had vanished out in the desert. Only his gun and badge had been found, along with his teeth and all their fillings—the darkling-proof, high-tech alloys of dentistry.

The rumor was he’d been killed by drug dealers, but between Rex’s lore and her careful mapping of the blue time, Dess understood what had really happened.

She cleared her throat. “Well, you know that darklings have to eat, right? Even if they only live one hour in twenty-five, predators still need prey to stay alive. Normal animals can step through into the blue time if they’re in the wrong spot at exactly midnight. So darklings mostly eat unlucky rabbits and cows, but every once in a while a human being slips through.”

“Hmmph,” Madeleine said. “In my day, people knew where not to be at midnight.”

“Yeah, well, your day got canceled,” Dess said.

“Wait a second,” Jonathan said. “I thought darklings couldn’t hurt normal people.”

Dess shook her head. “Once you poke through into midnight, you’re part of that world for that hour. And eligible to join the darkling food chain.”

Madeleine nodded. “We sometimes brought daylighter allies through so that they could see the blue time for themselves. A special treat. The strange thing was, once that midnight ended, they became frozen, just like darklings during normal time. They stayed that way until the sun struck them.”

“Like Anathea,” Jonathan said softly. “Trapped in midnight.”

“Great, so we could have civilians running around in the blue time,” Rex muttered. “And you said the eclipse was focused around these contortions?”

Slowly Madeleine’s wrinkled hand drew shapes on the scratched table. “Not exactly, Rex. What the eclipse seemed to do was make more of them.”

“Make them?” Dess said. The wrinkles in midnight were baked into the map with numbers. “You can’t just change longitude and latitude like they’re property lines!”

“And the darklings moved toward the ruptures,” Melissa added quietly. “They could feel them too.”

Maddy stood, walking around the table to place a hand on Melissa’s shoulder. “But we haven’t compared experiences yet. We’ll tell you when we know more. I’m sure you can amuse yourselves.”

The two headed up to the attic together.

Rex looked screamingly jealous for an ill-concealed moment, then got all official. “Okay. I’ll check some of your older lore books,” he said to Maddy’s departing footsteps. “Just in case.”

Dess sighed. “And while those two are having mindcaster time, I’m going to take a look at some maps.”

Rex looked at Jonathan, raising one eyebrow. Without Jessica around, Flyboy was sort of hopeless—couldn’t read lore, couldn’t do math, and here in the afternoon couldn’t even fly. Dess felt sorry for him. What was he supposed to do? Wash the curtains?

“Um, I was wondering,” Jonathan sputtered. “Does she have a TV?”

The house was starting to smell less old and musty, as if having its first visitors in half a century had breathed some life into it. But whenever Dess moved anything, pulled a book or map from the shelves, dust rose into the air, threatening to make her sneeze. Going home from a long night’s work here, her fingers always felt dry and brittle, as if the ancient, thirsty dust had sucked the moisture from them.