“What?” Rex cried. But then he remembered the ancient tales: when mindcasters detected newly born midnighters nearby, war parties had been dispatched to steal them. More recently, offers of jobs and money had been sent to their parents. Rex found himself wondering, though—if those inducements hadn’t worked, had the old midnighters resorted to stronger tactics? There wasn’t anything like that in the lore, but what if they had just pretended it hadn’t happened?

“Well,” he said, “maybe a long time ago they did some things that seem weird now, sort of like…George Washington having slaves or whatever.” Rex shook his head firmly. “But we’re not like that!”

“I’ve seen your father, Rex,” she said calmly. “Did a stroke leave him that way?”

“That was…” His voice broke. “We were just kids.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Born monsters, like I said.”

They were silent for a moment, Rex’s head spinning from everything Angie had said. When he’d seen her name in lore symbols at the bottom of the note, there had been a moment of curiosity; even if she wasn’t a seer, here was someone else who could read the lore, who knew the signs of midnight. But after just a few minutes of talking to her, he felt his oldest sureties in danger of crumbling.

Was she making all this up? Could there really be a secret history behind the secret history?

He took a deep breath, checking his watch. The only way to find out was to stick to the plan; Melissa could get to the bottom of this.

“In any case,” Angie said. “I didn’t come here to debate midnighter ethics. Just don’t sit there pretending like I’m some kind of demon, all right?”

“Fine.” Rex forced himself to calm down. This was nuts, sitting here questioning what was what. It was probably the new predator part of his mind, willing to believe anything said against the humans who had dared to challenge the darkling kind.

He just had to let the plan unfold. Keep stalling and make sure that Angie stayed nervous.

“Just one quick question,” he said. “Your employers? The nice people who ‘freed’ Bixby. What would they do if they knew you were here talking to me?”

She let out a short, dry laugh. “Probably cut me into small pieces. Maybe you too.”

Rex allowed a grim smile to show on his face. He’d been hoping she would say something like that. “Talk about monsters.”

“I never said they were perfect. Far from it.” She crossed her arms. “All right, since it’s a school night and everything, shall we move on from the mutual recriminations? I told you some of what I know in my note. Maybe I’ll have more to tell you later. But you go first.”

“Okay.” Rex glanced at his watch. He still had fifteen minutes to kill. “There have been signs of change in the blue time.”

“Blue time?”

“You know, the secret hour.” Rex blinked. He’d forgotten that “blue time” had originally been Dess’s term—not part of the lore. “Everything turns kind of blue when time freezes.”