“Twenty-five seven,” Rex corrected her. “Humans weren’t the top of the food chain back then. People had to deal with tigers and bears and dire wolves. But the darklings were the worst. They weren’t just stronger and faster, they were smarter than us. For a long time we were completely defenseless.”

They sat back down at the table, the darkness of the unused corner of the museum surrounding them. Melissa looked up at Rex, her satisfied expression showing that she could taste his disappointment.

“How did anyone survive?” Jessica asked.

Dess leaned forward. “The darklings are predators, Jessica. They didn’t want to wipe human beings out, just take enough to keep themselves fed.”

Jessica shivered. “What a nightmare.”

“Exactly,” Rex said. A small group of tourists was descending the ramp, and he lowered his voice. “Imagine wondering every night if they would be coming to feed. Imagine having no way to stop them. They were the original nightmares, Jessica. Every monster in folklore, every mythological monster, even our instinctive fear of the darkness, they’re all based on ancient memories of darklings.”

Dess’s eyes narrowed as she leaned forward, also lowering her voice. “Not all darklings look like panthers, Jessica. You haven’t even met the really scary ones yet.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Jessica said. “And they all live in Bixby now?”

“We’re not sure about that,” Dess said. “But Bixby’s the only place with midnight that we know of. Even up in Tulsa, twenty miles from here, the blue time doesn’t come.”

“For some reason, Bixby’s special,” Rex said.

“Great,” Jessica said. “Mom wasn’t kidding when she said moving here would require some adjustments.”

She slumped in her chair.

Rex tried to remember the threads of his speech. “But don’t forget, we humans won. Gradually we discovered ways to protect ourselves. It turned out that new ideas scared the darklings.”

“Ideas? Scared that thing?” She looked across the room at the darkling skeleton.

“New tools, like forged metal and alloys,” Dess said. “And new concepts, like mathematics. And the darklings were always afraid of the light.”

“Fire was the first defense,” Rex said. “They’ve never gotten used to it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Jessica said. “I’ll make sure I’ve got a flamethrower next time the secret hour comes around.”

Dess shook her head. “It won’t help you. Fire, electronic stuff, car engines, none of those technologies works in the midnight hour. You think we rode bicycles halfway across Bixby last night for the exercise?”

“That’s why the blue time was created,” Rex said. “A few thousand years ago, when the darklings were being pushed into the deepest forest by steel weapons and fire, they created it as a sanctuary for themselves.”

“They made the blue time?” Jessica asked.