“Yeah, but first they had to drive back around the cactus to pick up whoever was in the other car.”

“What? They’re too nice to just leave them out here?”

“Those were all Grayfoots.” She let out a snort. “And they’d never leave family behind.”

He looked at her. “Just you.”

Angie nodded slowly. “Just me.” Her dazed eyes took in the slowly clearing dust, the empty desert, and finally dropped to stare at her watch. “I guess I’m screwed. Your little mindcaster friend will be here soon, won’t she?”

The smell of terror from Angie had become almost overwhelming. Her hands were shaking now, as if she were even more afraid of a mindcaster entering her brain than of the Grayfoots catching her.

Rex let out a slow breath, willing his thudding heart to calm down. With Angie’s fear scent filling the car, a hunting frenzy threatened to take over his mind. But he needed to keep control, to keep talking to her.

“Let me be honest, all right?” he said through gritted teeth. “It was always my plan to trap you in Bixby for midnight. That’s why I only had so much gas.”

“So you knew the Grayfoots were going to show up? And you came anyway?” She whistled. “You’ve got guts.”

“Well, not exactly. Things didn’t quite go the way I planned.” He sighed. “But listen, Angie, have you really been telling me the truth about the past? The way the old midnighters—” Rex’s voice choked off as his nose suddenly caught the sharp smell of stainless steel. Angie’s knife flashed in her hand. “Hey, what the hell?”

“Listen, Rex, I know that in fifteen minutes you can do anything you want to me, make me drooling and stupid like your father, maybe turn me into your slave. But that doesn’t mean I can’t even the score.”

“Hold up, Angie! No one’s going to turn you into a vegetable!”

“Yeah, right.” She snorted. “So you lured me out here to steal my bank card password?”

“No, to make sure you were telling the truth!” The knife came closer, and his darkling mind writhed at the smell of steel. “We had to do this! If the world’s ending, we had to know for sure!”

Angie paused, her eyes narrowing. “What did you just say? If the what’s ending?”

“The world…or at least a great big chunk of it.” Rex spoke quickly, his eyes never leaving the knife. “We think the blue time is expanding far enough to swallow millions of people. They’ll be defenseless against your darkling pen pals.”

She shook her head. “That’s crap, Rex. Darklings can’t hurt normal humans.”

“Not usually. But the barrier between normal time and the secret hour is weakening. In certain spots daylighters can slip through. You know that girl on the news this week, the one who disappeared in Jenks? She walked into the blue time.”

“Come on, Rex,” Angie said. “Didn’t she turn up the next day?”

“Yes, because we saved her…from a huge, hungry darkling, I might add.”