Rex knelt on the tracks and sniffed. He could smell the uncertainty of the lost girl, could see her fear in the tentative distance between the steps. It made his mouth water, his palms sweat. This was a young one, weak and ready to be cut from the herd.

“Get a grip, Rex,” Melissa said softly.

He shook the hunting thoughts from his head. “Okay, I’m going to track her. She might still be close by. You guys stay here. But yell out a countdown for the last thirty seconds, Dess.” He slid down the loose gravel bank of the rail bed and plunged into the thick bushes.

“Rex!” Dess shouted. “There’s only four minutes left! Get back here.”

“Quit showing off, Rex,” Melissa called. “Once midnight falls and her brain starts up again, I’ll find her right away.”

Rex glanced back. The two of them were standing inside Polychronious, a large and complex tridecagram that Dess had laid down on a patch of clearing, using a spool of fiber-optic cable stolen from Oklahoma Telecom a few midnights ago. The cable smelled bright and buzzy to Rex, like cleaning detergent fumes going up his nose, and the thirteen-pointed star Dess had woven with it made his head spin. They would be safe from darklings inside it, even if the flame-bringer was a few minutes late.

“Just give me that countdown,” he called back.

“Rex!” Dess wailed.

He noticed that she and Melissa were standing as far apart as they could inside the tridecagram, like two rival cats locked in a small room together.

Whatever. They’d live.

Rex pushed his way deeper into the underbrush, fighting the bare, brittle branches of mesquite. He could see in the dark better than ever now, and the spaces between leafless trees and scrub seemed to open up before him. He soon realized that his prey’s slender marks of Focus followed a narrow path, probably an old animal trail.

As Cassie’s footsteps went deeper into the brush, they began to grow more sure and purposeful, as if after the first few minutes of confusion in the blue time, she’d headed for someplace where she felt safe.

A branch caught Rex, bending taut, then whipping backward, leaving a long rip in his shirt. The girl must have grown up around here to move so easily through this overgrowth. He could tell she was much shorter than him—from her footprints, she had walked almost upright underneath branches that he was forced to crouch beneath.

Her footsteps grew farther apart; moving more swiftly now, as if coaxed forward by some goal. Rex swore—he wasn’t going to find the girl before midnight fell. She’d had twenty-one minutes to get wherever she’d disappeared to, and he had only…

“Thirty seconds, Rex!” Dess’s voice called through the trees.

He paused. To make it back to safety, he should turn around now and start running. Inside Dess’s ring of protection, they could wait for the flame-bringer. In the blue time Melissa would be able to taste the lost girl’s thoughts even if she were miles away.