Jessica ignored Rex’s hand and slid off the car hood toward the front. She pushed off from the bumper and took a few quick steps away, peering into the shadows beneath it. But the snakes did seem to have disappeared.

“I wouldn’t stand in front of it either,” Rex suggested mildly. He looked at the tires. “It’s probably going about fifty miles an hour.”

Jessica followed his gaze and saw that the tires weren’t actually round. They were oval, compressed out of shape and tipped slightly forward. They looked how wheels in motion were drawn in cartoons. But the car was absolutely still. The driver still wore the exact same expression, oblivious to the strange events going on around her.

Rex pointed up at the dark moon. “And when that bad boy goes down, it’ll jump back into regular motion. No hurry, like Dess said, but good to keep in mind.”

Something about Rex’s calm voice annoyed Jessica. Possibly the fact that nothing he said made any sense whatsoever.

She looked up at the moon. It was still moving across the sky quickly, almost half set.

A gasp came from the other three. She dropped her gaze to them. They stared back at her.

“What is it?” Jessica asked sharply. She’d had enough of their weirdness.

The girl whose name she didn’t know took a step closer to Jess, peering closely at her face with an appalled expression.

“Your eyes are wrong,” the girl said.

10

12:00 A.M.

MIDNIGHTERS

“My eyes are what?”

“They’re…” The girl took a step closer, peering into Jessica’s eyes. Jessica raised a hand to her own face, and the girl flinched as if afraid of being touched, then looked up at the sky with a puzzled expression.

As her eyes met the moon, Jessica cried out. They flashed a deep indigo, just like the panther’s.

Jessica took a step back from the three of them. Those reflecting eyes belonged to cats or raccoons, owls or foxes—things that hunted in the dark. Not people. The girl’s eyes looked normal now, but after that momentary reflection, she seemed less human.

“Melissa’s right,” Dess said.

Rex quieted the other two with a wave of his hand. He took a step closer, peering into Jessica’s eyes with a calm intensity.

“Jessica,” he said quietly, “look up at the moon, please.”

She did so for a few seconds but dropped her eyes back to Rex suspiciously.

“What color is it?” he asked.

“It’s…” She looked up again, shrugged. “No color. And it gives me a headache.”

“Her eyes are wrong,” repeated the other girl, whom Dess had called Melissa.

Dess piped up. “Today she said the sun doesn’t bother her. I told you she was totally daylight. No dark glasses or anything.”