The school sounds around them seemed to vanish for a moment, as if the blue time had somehow arrived in the middle of the day. For once Jessica knew she wasn’t dreaming.

She looked at Jonathan, trying to gauge what he was thinking. He seemed tired but relaxed, relieved to see her. His hair was a little damp, as if he’d just taken a shower. Jessica realized that he must have come out to school just to see her, and her smile broadened.

“What happened?”

“St. Claire, the sheriff here in Bixby, just wanted to make a point,” Jonathan said. “It’s no big deal. He talked my dad into this thing where they could lock me up all weekend until Dad picked me up this morning. But it was all a joke. I wasn’t even arrested, not for real. Just detained in custody.”

Jessica shivered. She had imagined him being “detained” all day. None of the images in her mind had been comforting.

“How was it?”

Jonathan shivered. “Completely skyless. And not enough to eat. Spent the secret hour bouncing off the ceiling. But the rest of the time it was mostly…smelly. I’ve been taking showers all day and listening to my dad apologize.”

“But you’re okay?”

“Sure. How are you?”

Jessica opened her mouth, wanting to tell Jonathan about Rex’s plan, to ask him more about jail, about midnight gravity, about how they’d escaped the darklings. Then she saw her dad’s car crawling through the buses and shouting kids and decided to summarize.

“Well, I’m wanting to go flying again.” She grinned hopefully. He smiled back.

“Great. How’s tonight?”

19

11:49 P.M.

MINDCASTER

“Whizz way’s town?”

Melissa took one hand off the wheel and pointed to her right, toward the great mass of sleeping humanity. The center of town tasted bloated and sweet, pulsing with slow and vapid dream rhythms, laced with a few sharp nightmares like undissolved chunks of salt. One good thing about Bixby was that people went to bed early. On a Wednesday night the mind noise started to fade about ten, and by eleven-thirty the few waking thoughts were merely annoying, like mosquitoes at the edge of hearing.

Rex grunted, spreading out the map with both hands and clenching a small flashlight between his teeth. It had been his idea to take the car tonight.

“I know how to get there,” Melissa complained. “Let’s just get onto Division. We’ve only got ten minutes.”

“Donwannagesstopped,” he mumbled around the flashlight.

Melissa sighed.