“What on earth are you talking about?” Jessica suddenly cried, surprising herself. She hadn’t meant to shout, but the words had launched themselves out of her.

The startled looks on the others’ faces were somehow satisfying.

“I mean—,” she sputtered. “What’s going on? What are you talking about? And what are you doing in my dream?”

Rex stepped back and put up his hands. Dess giggled but half turned away as if embarrassed. Melissa cocked her head.

“Sorry,” Rex said. “I should have told you: this isn’t a dream.”

“But—” Jessica started, but sighed, knowing suddenly that she believed him. The pain, the fear, the feel of her heart pumping in her chest had all been too real. This was not a dream. It was a relief not to pretend to herself anymore.

“What is it, then?”

“This is midnight.”

“Say again?”

“Midnight,” he repeated slowly. “It’s 12 A.M. Since the world changed color, this has all happened in a single moment.”

“A single moment…”

“Time stops for us at midnight.”

Jessica peered through the car windshield at the frozen woman at the wheel. The look of concentration on her face, the hands tight on the wheel…She did look as if she were driving but trapped in a frozen instant.

Dess spoke up next, her voice without its usual nasty edge. “There aren’t really twenty-four hours in the day, Jessica. There are twenty-five. But one of them is rolled up too tight to see. For most people it flashes by in an instant. But we can see it, live in it.”

“And ‘we’ includes ‘me’?” Jessica said quietly.

“When were you born?” Rex asked.

“Huh? You mean this is because I’m a Leo?”

“Not your birthday, what time of day?”

Jessica pondered the question, remembering how many times Mom and Dad had told this story.

“My mom went into labor in the afternoon, but I wasn’t born until thirty-something hours later. Not until late the next night.”

Rex nodded. “Midnight, to be exact.”

“Midnight?”

“Sure. One out of every 43,200 people is born within one second of midnight,” Dess said, smiling happily. “Of course, we’re not exactly sure how close you have to get. And we’re talking real midnight here.”

“Yeah. My birth certificate says 1 A.M.,” Melissa said glumly. “Lousy daylight savings time.”

Rex looked up at the moon, his eyes catching its nonlight with that inhuman flicker. “In a lot of cultures people believe that those born at the stroke of midnight can see ghosts.”

Jessica nodded. That actually sounded familiar. One of those pirate books she’d read for English last year—Kidnapped? or Treasure Island?—had been about that. Some kid was supposed to find treasure by seeing the ghosts of dead men buried with the gold.

“The real story is a bit more complicated,” Rex continued.

“I’ll say,” Jessica said. “If that panther was a ghost, we seriously need new Halloween decorations.”