There was a moment of sharp pain, and then he pulled away, his body shuddering.

Melissa sat for a moment, watching his eyes flash violet in the moonlight, the echoes of what she’d felt in him subsiding slowly. She tasted salt and wondered for a moment what sort of mind noise it was, then realized that the taste was real—blood in her mouth.

“Crap,” she said, putting a hand to her lips. “I bit my lip. How lame is that?”

“It wasn’t you.” He turned away. “Sorry…if that was weird.”

“It’s okay, Rex.” Melissa touched her wounded lip tenderly. “I had some spooky stuff in me too the first few times we touched. Remember?”

He turned back to her and pulled off one glove. He reached out, his fingertips lightly touching her mouth.

A shudder traveled through the car at that moment, all the random mind noise around them extinguished at once. Blue light swept across the world, and against the suddenly quiet mental landscape, the visions she’d taken from Rex’s mind grew clearer.

She saw a piece of paper covered with the spindly symbols of the lore and knew that those unreadable signs were what had made him so edgy tonight.

Melissa squinted in the dark moon’s light. “What the hell?”

“I found it this morning.” Rex’s voice was rough.

He reached into his jacket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. He opened it, revealing the same scrawled symbols she’d seen in his mind.

“So this is what’s got you spooked?” She settled back onto the driver’s side, sighing. “Ancient seer wisdom about the end of the world?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly ancient. Look.”

She peered closer. The symbols were written on lined paper, three-hole punched, with a confettied edge from being torn out of a spiral notebook.

“I don’t understand. These are your notes?”

“I didn’t write that. I found it on my kitchen table this morning.”

“Wait a second.” Melissa’s mind spun. “But it’s written in lore signs, Rex.”

He nodded. “That’s right, Cowgirl. A slightly odd dialect, but readable.”

“And it just showed up on your kitchen table? But no one knows how to write the lore besides you. And…oh, crap.” Melissa placed the nail of her ring finger between her front teeth and bit down on it furiously. Her teeth slipped from the fingernail with a jarring snap. “Those dominoes that the Grayfoots used to communicate with the darklings—they had lore symbols on them.”

“That’s right. With the same slight differences as this one. It’s even signed.” He pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of the page, where a cell phone number was written next to three spindly symbols grouped by a circle. “Ah-nu-gee.”

“What the hell is ah-nu-gee?”

“Each lore sign usually stands for a word, but when you put a circle around them, they turn into sounds, like using the alphabet. It’s a way to spell out names and write about objects that didn’t exist a few thousand years ago.”