Jessica held up her finger. “I cut myself. Then things got earthquakey.”

Rex ran back down to the stone. He peered closely at the shelf.

“It worked,” he said softly.

Jessica came up beside him, staring into the little bowl. Her blood had twisted into long threads, turning dark and staining the rock. The threads of blood formed a symbol, what looked to Jessica like a crescent-shaped claw holding up a spark.

“What does it mean, Rex?”

He paused, blinking.

“Two words, linked together…flame-bringer.”

Jessica shrugged. “Which is what?”

He took a step back from the stone, shaking his head. Jessica turned around, looking at the other midnighters. They all looked as puzzled as she was.

“I don’t know,” Rex said. “Flame-bringer? There’s no such talent.”

“There is now,” Jonathan said.

“Well, it better be something good,” Dess announced. “Because in about five minutes we’ve got company.”

29

12:00 A.M.

FLAME-BRINGER

“What do you mean, Dess?” Rex asked.

“When the defenses ate Jessica’s darkling, my clean metal got very dirty. It’s starting to sputter out.”

Jessica looked up at the edge of the pit. The ring of lightning surrounding them looked weaker. The flashes no longer blinded when they shot up into the sky, the bolts of blue pale and tentative.

“I know,” Rex said. “But I thought you could fix it.”

“We did what we could. I don’t have enough clean steel. Someone left my duffel bag out on the desert.”

“You walked away from your duffel bag,” Rex replied, “when you were getting all Amazon with your spear.”

“Somebody had to kill that tarantula,” Dess shouted.

“You didn’t kill it, you turned it into an army,” Rex yelled, “which some of us almost drowned in.”

“You don’t drown in an army!”

“Stop it!”

Melissa’s cry silenced Rex and Dess. Jessica saw that their argument had drained the color from her face. She was doubled over in agony.

“Sorry, Melissa,” Rex said. He took a deep breath.

“There’s nothing I can do, Rex,” Dess said softly.

Jessica looked up into the sky. Through the sputtering ceiling of lightning she could see slithers swirling around the snake pit. At the lip of the crater a host of tiny eyes gazed down at her. The spiders had surrounded the pit and peered down at them expectantly.

“It’s up to you, Jessica.”

She looked at Rex helplessly. “What am I supposed to do? You all keep acting like I know something. Like I’m someone special.”

Jonathan grasped her hand, and she felt his reassuring weightlessness flow into her. “It’s okay, Jess. We’ll figure it out.”

“What does ‘flame-bringer’ mean, Rex?” Dess asked.

“I can’t be sure. I’d have to do more—”

“There isn’t time to go look it up in the lore, Rex,” Jonathan interrupted. “What do you think it means?”