Melissa held her head tipped back, tasting the air to her heart’s content, and for once Dess was glad that the mindcaster was around. At least they’d know if an army of darklings was on its way.

Of course, this wasn’t the end of the world, not yet. You could tell just by looking. If the secret hour had snapped completely, all the stiffs around them would still be moving, having been sucked into the blue time along with everything else within a few hundred miles.

Dess didn’t have to do any math to know what the result of that would be. All those predators suddenly escaping from their midnight prison, unleashed on their prey—maybe millions of people, if the blue time really expanded across the whole state. No phones, no cars, not even fire, and only the five midnighters knew how to defend themselves.

Dess fixed her gaze on a constellation of french fries hovering over a motionless food fight across the lunchroom. She wondered if what she’d told Jessica yesterday after school was really true. Could you make it to the border of the blue time, freezing yourself at the edge until the long midnight ended?

Not too many people would be lucky enough to make it that far. Not with all those hungry darklings pouring in from the desert. And what if the blue time never ended? What if everyone on the outside was permanently frozen and everyone in the inside was lunch meat—most of humanity gone with a whimper, the rest with a bang?

“So, Dess?” Jessica said, finally breaking the silence.

She pulled her gaze from the hovering french fries. “Yeah?”

“In study hall, what were you scribbling on those papers? You said Halloween was safe. What’s wrong with the next day?”

“Oh, yeah.” Dess looked down at the papers before her, tinged blue by the eclipse. “Well, the weird thing is what happens at midnight, Halloween, if you switch from the old system to the new. October 31 was an antidarkling fiesta back when October was the eighth month. But now November’s the eleventh month. Right?” Dess spread her hands. “Man, you guys are hopeless. So it’s November 1. And eleven plus one is twelve, as in midnight. As in darklings.”

They were all silent for a moment.

Finally Jonathan asked, “How long is that from now?”

“Twenty-three days, eleven hours, and thirty-nine minutes,” Dess said. “Minus fifteen seconds.”

“Three weeks.” Jessica looked at Rex. “So what should we do?”

Dess was glad to see him scratch his brow, at least pretending like he was coming up with a plan. However messed up Rex’s head was, the coming end of the world might screw it on a little bit tighter.

“I’m not convinced yet, Dess,” he said after a minute. “But I guess we have to find out more about what the Grayfoots are up to.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Jonathan said. “Just drive over to Broken Arrow and ask them?”