“Okay,” Constanza began once the ritual was complete. “Remember when my house got trashed by those weirdos?”

Everyone nodded, eyes wide. Jessica tried to put on her not-guilty face. She’d witnessed the aftermath of Rex and Melissa burgling Constanza’s house, back when they’d first been looking for evidence about the Grayfoot-darkling conspiracy. Not that the damage had all been their fault; there was nothing like a horde of midnight monsters showing up to leave a mess.

“Well, you probably remember how that totally freaked out my grandfather. He’s always had this thing about not living in Bixby.”

“You guys stayed with him in Broken Arrow after that happened, right?” Liz asked.

“We did. And let me tell you, I was totally sick of commuting to school. So…” Constanza leaned closer, indicating that the top secret part was coming up, and Jessica dared a glance at Dess, sitting in her usual corner. Dess held her trig book up to cover her face, which meant she was listening to every word. She needed to study trigonometry about as hard as a darkling needed to study scary.

“Well, Grandpa must have had a slow leak about me coming back to Bixby,” Constanza continued. “You know, he cut my dad out of the family oil business when he and Mom moved here, ages ago. He still hardly talks to them, even when we were staying out there. So anyway, he called me last night, trying to convince me to leave town.”

“What’s his problem with Bixby, anyway?” Maria asked.

Constanza shrugged. “He never tells anyone what happened. He grew up here, but something weird went down when he was a teenager. I think the Anglos chased the family out of town during the oil boom because we’re Native American and everything. He hasn’t set foot in Bixby in, like, fifty-something years.”

Except for slipping across the edge of the midnight border to leave his little messages, Jessica thought. Then a horrible notion occurred to her.

“He wants you to go live in Broken Arrow?” Jessica asked. She’d always wondered if the old man knew that Constanza and she were friends. Maybe he planned to finally bring his granddaughter into the real family business—working for the darklings.

“Excuse me, Jess? Me, living in puny little Broken Arrow?” Constanza shook her head and snorted. “No way.”

“So where, then?” Liz asked. “Tulsa?”

“No.” Constanza lowered her voice still further, and Jessica saw Ms. Thomas, the librarian, straining to hear. “You know how I’m going to be an actress?”

Everyone nodded, a few of them exchanging glances. You only had to know Constanza for about ten minutes to hear about that aspiration.

“Well, my grandfather said that if I wanted to start right now, I could come stay with him. Because in a couple of weeks he and a whole bunch of my cousins are moving to…now get this…LA!”

“Los Angeles?” Maria cried.

“No, Maria,” Liz said with a sneer. “Lower Argentina. That’s the new LA. Haven’t you heard?” She turned to Constanza. “Los Angeles? I hate you. You are so lucky.”