20

10:30 P.M.

MINDCASTERS

"Give it one more chance, Loverboy. Please."

Rex didn't answer, didn't even stop climbing the stairs toward the attic. His expression didn't change, as if he hadn't heard her plea at all. Not that she'd expected him to sit down for a chat about it. Since that night in the desert, Rex put up a normal front for the others, but around Melissa he often let his not-so-human side show.

Even here in Madeleine's house Melissa could taste the darklings inside him, as dry as a mouthful of chalk dust leeching the moisture from her tongue. Might as well talk to the desert sand as try to reach that part of him.

But this was Rex, after all. She wasn't letting go that easy.

Melissa dashed after him, far enough up the stairs to grab his left ankle from below. She sank her nails into the leg of his jeans, bringing him to a halt with all her strength.

"Wait a damn second, Rex!"

He turned, looking down at her, emotionless. His eyes flashed in that creepy new way they did, somehow catching the dark moon's light even in normal time.

His lips curled away from his teeth, and for a horrible moment Melissa thought she'd gone too far. He would turn into a beast once and for all and devour her right there, leaving Madeleine's staircase littered with her bones.

But then the expression on his face turned into a wry smile.

"What's the matter, Cowgirl?" he said. "Jealous?"

"Just wait a minute, Rex. Please?"

He looked down at his captive boot and raised one eyebrow.

Melissa turned his ankle loose, realizing that she was half kneeling on the stairs, like some drunk trying to crawl up to bed. She took a deep breath to calm herself and turned away from Rex, sitting down on the steps. Then she pointed one black fingernail at the spot next to her.

After an infuriating pause, as if his oldest friend in the world was so hard to deal with, the staircase began to creak and shift under his weight as he descended. He sat down beside her.

"I'm not jealous of Madeleine," she said. "But you used to be, remember?"

"Vividly."

Melissa snorted. "Glad to hear that. I'd hate it if you gave up jealousy. It's probably the only thing in the world everyone's good at. Everyone besides me, of course."

"Of course."

"This isn't about me, though. It's about us." Melissa winced at her own words and glanced up at him. His eyes had gone back to normal, at least. She had the foul feeling in her stomach that she'd tasted so many times in Bixby High girls, that sour paranoia that their boyfriends' interest in them was evaporating. Melissa had always written them off as dorky and contemptible; she'd never realized that rejection was so painful.

Of course, things were bound to be awkward when your boyfriend was changing into a different species.

She took his hand, and his taste filled her. She focused on the surface of his mind - the steady, calming thought patterns of Rex Greene. Even during all those years she'd been unable to touch him, his surety and seer's focus had always been something Melissa could cling to. The old Rex was still in there.

Of course, that familiarity only made the other part of him more disturbing. How could something so comforting and reassuring be wrapped around such darkness?

"Let me try again."

"We already tried. It's useless." He shrugged. "And who knows? Maybe Madeleine can't get inside me either. But it's been a week; I don't want what I got from the darklings to fade before she has a chance to look for it."

"Believe me, Rex. It isn't fading." The blackness at his core was as solid as tar.

"Well, it isn't any clearer either, Cowgirl, no matter how many times we've done this. We need Madeleine's help. Samhain is only sixteen days away."

Instead of answering, Melissa pushed herself farther into him, letting her thoughts flow across the human surface of his mind.

This time she didn't try to crack the darkness at his center. Rex was probably right: whatever the darklings had left behind was too inhuman for her to reach. Melissa instead offered her own store of implanted memories, the accumulated legacy passed from hand to hand across the generations.

Before he went up to the attic, Rex had to know what mindcasters were capable of.

Melissa took Rex to a place in the core of those memories, an event that mindcasters had shared since the old days. A long time ago, back even before the earliest Spanish settlers had come to Oklahoma, long before the Anglos and the eastern tribes, there had been a gathering. Mindcasters from several tribes had met before a large fire to exchange images of far-off places they'd seen - east to the still waters of the Gulf of Mexico, north to where the Rockies reared up; one had traveled as far as the Grand Canyon. Since that first meeting the memory had been added to, layered with more images as it had been passed from generation to generation. It was as if the gathering had grown to a thousand mindcasters, all of those who had ever come to Bixby and discovered their power, until finally it had made its way to Melissa.

"Wow," he said after a moment of marveling at it all.

"And not a hint of guilt," Melissa said softly.

"What do you mean?"

"None of them thought that mindcasting was a bad thing, Rex. Of those hundreds of minds, not one thought it came with any cost."

Rex pulled his hand away, shaking his head to clear it. "So you're saying Angie's wrong? That the Grayfoots fooled her somehow?"

"No." Melissa glanced over her shoulder toward the top of the stairs, reassuring herself that Madeleine wasn't within listening range. "Since Angie gave us her little lecture, I've been sifting through the memories for the kind of thing she was talking about - destroying people, altering minds for profit, mass manipulation. But I haven't found them." She drummed her fingers on her knees. "For some reason, though, I still think she's telling the truth. Does that make any sense?"

Rex nodded. "Maybe they passed down an edited version."

"What they passed down was unbelievable smugness, Rex. They never questioned what they were doing. I don't think they could question it."

"How do you mean?"

She reached for his hand again and showed him an unpleasant memory from only a few weeks before - the moment when she had touched Dess against her will and pried the secret of Madeleine's existence from her. Melissa forced herself to linger over how Dess's mind had been locked by the old mindcaster, effortlessly twisted to hide what she knew. And how Melissa had torn it open.

When she felt a chill run through Rex, she released his hand.

"Why did you show me that?" he asked.

"Because you have to remember what we're capable of," she said. "Mindcasting doesn't just affect normal people. It can be used against other midnighters too."

"I know." His eyes narrowed. "But what does that have to do with Bixby's history?"

She looked up at him. "Before us five orphans came along, every midnighter grew up surrounded by mindcasters, all of them sharing thoughts every time they shook hands. But what if it wasn't just news and memories they were passing on? What if they were passing on beliefs? And what if at some point they all decided to believe that midnighters never did anything bad?"

"Decided to believe?"

Melissa leaned closer, speaking softer now, imagining the old woman upstairs listening from just around the corner. Melissa had chosen Madeleine's house to have this conversation with Rex for one simple reason: inside its crepuscular contortion, their minds couldn't be overheard.

"Over the centuries," she said, "midnighters started to believe whatever they did was okay, just like people who owned slaves used to think they were being 'good masters' or whatever. Except unlike slavery, nobody from the outside ever questioned what the midnighters were up to in Bixby. It was all secret, and anytime doubts cropped up, there were mindcasters around to squash them. It was like some clique of cheerleaders going through high school together, all thinking the same way, talking the same way, believing they're at the center of the universe... but for thousands of years."

She looked into his eyes, hoping that he would get it.

"Until we came along," Rex said.

"Exactly. We're more different from our predecessors than we thought, Rex. Maybe they really did all that evil stuff, but they didn't know they were being evil. They couldn't know."

"You haven't asked Madeleine about this yet?"

Melissa shook her head. "No way. I haven't let her touch me since Angie gave her little speech."

Rex smiled softly. "So you're an Angie fan now, are you?"

"Not really, but she has the same good point that most scumbags have: she makes me feel a lot better about myself."

"Because you never kidnapped anyone?"

"Oh, much better than that." She placed her palms together, hoping that the realization would still make sense once she'd said it aloud. "Madeleine always says I'll never be a real mindcaster - I started too late. Those memories are just figments to me; to her they're like real people." Melissa shook her head. "But what if it's a good thing that I never got indoctrinated? What if I'm not the first crazy mindcaster in history, Rex? What if I'm the first sane one?"

"Sane..." he said, not quite understanding yet.

Melissa pressed on. "Because no matter how screwed up I happen to be, no matter what I did to your dad, at least I can see that ripping the minds of a whole town for a hundred generations is not cool."

He took her hand, and all of Melissa's thoughts, which had tumbled out in clumsy words, seemed to order themselves at his touch. They flowed into him, along with the thing she hadn't said aloud.

I'm sorry about your father, Rex.

"You saved me from him, the best you knew how," he answered.

Melissa looked away, her emotions churning. Her shame at her own past, her worries that she'd already lost Rex to the darklings, her fear of what Madeleine might do to his mind - all of it squeezed into a single tear. It traveled down her cheek like a drop of acid.

Rex sat there thinking, then finally said, "I think you're right. Madeleine's going to find my new view of history... challenging."

"Then let me go up there with you, Rex. I don't care what a badass darkling you are these days. You need my protection."

He smiled again, and she saw a violet spark in the depths of his eyes. "You have no idea what I am."

She let out a short, choked laugh. "Whatever, Rex. Even if you are a monster, I don't want to lose you to her. And don't think all those creepy old midnighters in her brain won't give you a run for your money."

Unexpectedly he leaned forward and kissed her - the first time their lips had met since last Wednesday night. His taste hovered on the edge between bitter and sweet, like chocolate that was almost too dark.

But what scared her most was that she tasted no fear in him at all.

"We'll see about that," he said. "Come on, Cowgirl. She's waiting."

Madeleine sat in her usual spot in the corner of the attic, tea things arranged around her. "Both of you, is it?"

"Maybe I can help," Melissa said.

The old mindcaster gave a little snort but didn't send her away. Like Rex, Madeleine had no fear.

"Well, sit down then, both of you. Tea's getting cold. In my day, young people didn't keep their elders waiting."

The more I hear about your day, Melissa thought, the more I'm glad the Grayfoots came along.

She and Rex sat down in the corner, the three of them forming a triangle around the tea service. Melissa had never done this before - held two midnighters' hands at once - but she knew from her store of memories that mindcasting circles were an ancient practice.

No wonder they all thought the same way. All those minds tuned together and reinforcing one another's beliefs - add a few pom-poms and they'd be just like the pep rallies of Bixby High, except without anyone sneaking out the back to smoke.

Melissa took a sip of tea. It had indeed grown cold, bringing out its bitter taste even more than usual.

"What you did last week was very dangerous, Rex," Madeleine scolded. "I watched from this very spot. No one has ever survived anything like that before."

"We didn't have anywhere else to turn," he said.

"I've worked hard the last sixteen years to keep you alive, Rex. You could have thrown away all that effort in a matter of minutes."

Melissa took a slow breath. In their training sessions Madeleine never tired of reminding her why she and Dess had been made - to help Rex, the only natural midnighter in Bixby's recent history. The old mindcaster had subtly manipulated hundreds of mothers during their labor, trying to create babies born at the stroke of midnight. And all to make sure Rex had a posse to lead, like a proper seer should.

Melissa understood all too well now what the five of them really were: Madeleine's attempt to re-create the Bixby she had grown up with, a paradise for midnighters... at the expense of everyone else.

"I'm still alive," Rex said in a flat voice. The human softness he'd allowed himself to reveal on the stairs had disappeared again.

"They could have eaten you," Madeleine said.

"The things I was talking to don't eat meat," he said. "They eat nightmares."

She raised an eyebrow.

"But they wouldn't have eaten me anyway. I carry their smell." Rex gave the old mindcaster a cruel smile. He must know how much it offended her, Melissa thought, to have her little seer infected with the darkness.

Madeleine's face twitched. "You taste more like them every day. But do you really think they would tell you something useful? Why should they?"

"The darklings didn't tell me anything," he said. "They share their thoughts naturally, like animals crying out when they've spotted a kill. You know that, Madeleine. You hear them thinking all the time."

"If you can call it thinking." She made a face, as if fifty years of her own bitter tea was finally hitting her taste buds. "Well, let's see if your little experiment accomplished anything other than almost giving me a heart attack."

She held out both her hands, palms up.

Melissa caught Rex's eye, and they joined hands first with each other, waiting for a moment until their connection was complete. Her heart was pounding, and even though she was certain that the memory was all part of a big lie - propaganda, like Angie had said - Melissa recalled that long-ago mindcaster gathering, letting her wonder at those ancient images shared around the fire calm her.

As her mind stilled, she felt herself drawing strength from Rex's dark confidence. Whatever the horde of old mindcasters inside Madeleine had in store for the two of them, at least they were facing it together.

"Come now. Don't lollygag," Madeleine snapped.

As one, they raised their other hands and let her grasp them, completing the circle.

As Madeleine stilled herself, she changed, becoming a congress of minds.

Melissa was always awestruck at the vastness of it: memories stretching back to shadowy recollections of the ice age, when glaciers could be reached in a month's walk to the north. Ten thousand years of history, hundreds of generations, thousands of mindcasters.

She squeezed Rex's hand. Facing that accumulated mass of minds, she was glad for his dark presence beside her.

"What have they done to you?" Madeleine murmured. She was probing the black sphere of Rex's darkling half, searching its smooth surface for purchase. As the fingers of her mind settled in and began to pry, Rex's hand flinched in Melissa's.

"It's for your own good," the old woman muttered. Her concentration deepened, her raspy breathing slowing in Melissa's ears.

After a long moment the darkness inside Rex began to swell, like something viscous and heavy coming slowly to a boil. The muscles in his fingers twitched again in her hand, a dry taste stirring among the patterns of his mind.

Eyes closed, Melissa watched the changes shifting through him and wondered if Madeleine really knew what she was doing. Melissa could taste arrogance in the mass of memories, their certainty that they could control anything and anyone. But they'd never faced something like Rex.

Then bitter metal filled her mouth, like old pennies on her tongue.

A seam had begun to open in Rex's mind, his darkling inner core shivering, its surface cracking. Melissa tasted Madeleine's satisfaction.

Rex made a pained sound.

Melissa sent calming thoughts toward him, but Madeleine pushed her back. You don't know what you're doing, girl. Stay clear.

The old mindcaster turned her attention back to Rex, pressing harder, and the darkness inside him began to split - a black and radiant shaft spilled across the mental landscape, bleeding color from it like the dark moon's light. Images of an ancient Samhain flowed from his mind: masked humans piling up the bones of cattle and setting them alight, fires dotting the landscape for miles, raising up a slaughterhouse smell. Melissa felt a twitch of hunger at the scent and realized that the reaction was a darkling's. Soon she was ravenous, feeling the call to hunt, to kill.

Abomination, whispered the mass of memories.

They meant Rex - seer and darkling mixed; he horrified them.

Madeleine grew bolder, her mind prizing into the cracks of Rex's darkling half. He let out a short cry, and his fingernails dug into Melissa's hand.

"Stop!" Melissa whispered hoarsely. "You're hurting him."

Abomination, a thousand voices hissed. The mindcasters' memories had known nothing like him before; he had to be constrained, controlled.

But the darkness inside Rex only grew, swelling into a huge black storm cloud in Melissa's mind, spilling more visions: Bixby as the old ones had seen it fifty years ago, a psychic spiderweb of midnight glittering across the desert. In the darklings' eyes the town was an infected organism, the tendrils of a parasite extended into every fiber of its host - mindcasters quietly toiling, spreading obedience across the city, certain that it was only natural for them to rule.

Even the darklings knew what you were, Melissa thought.

Madeleine made a choking noise, the mass of memories inside her roiling as it beheld its own reflection in Rex's mind. He was an abomination, and his thoughts were an insult to ten thousand years of history.

He had to be destroyed.

A shudder of horror passed through Madeleine at the thought, but she couldn't pull her mind back. She couldn't go against the mass.

"No," Melissa whispered. Egotistical morons!

They ignored her. She tried to wrench her eyes open, to reach over and separate Madeleine's hand from Rex's, but her muscles were locked rigid.

Melissa felt hatred rising up in her, disgust at the conceited, clueless pride of her predecessors. She focused all of her loathing - everything Angie had said about the reign of the midnighters, their greed and child-stealing and brain-ripping - and hurled it at Madeleine as hard as she could.

The mass of memories reared at the insult and turned on her in a flood of contempt and arrogance. They had borne the secrets of midnight for thousands of years; Melissa was an upstart, an orphan, a nothing.

That which sticks up must be pounded down.

But before the mass could do any pounding, Melissa's mouth filled again with the taste of darkling. She'd distracted them just long enough.

The thing in Rex was really boiling now....

Like a predatory cat, it sliced straight through the mass, down into Madeleine's own memories, her deepest secrets. With a hunter's instinct it found her fears... and ransacked them.

"No, Rex!" Madeleine gasped, but he was a wounded animal now, pitiless and rabid. Melissa watched aghast as fifty years of terror erupted from the depths of the old woman's mind, every nervous minute of hiding since the Grayfoots' revolution.

You gave them Anathea, he hissed, and decades of guilt surged up in Madeleine. The mass of memories spun in a tempest, unable to order themselves in her churning mind, like rats in a house on fire.

Melissa tried to focus her mind. Rex... that's enough!

"We're knocking at your door!" he said aloud, his voice inhuman. "We've found you at last. We've come for you!"

A single choked scream of terror came from Madeleine's lips, darklings from a thousand nightmares shredding her mind; her hand jerked once, then slipped from Melissa's.

Suddenly the mass of mindcasters was silenced, Madeleine's mind gone; Melissa found herself alone with Rex in the blackness behind closed eyes. The darkling thoughts moved through him, still powerful, still hungry. Melissa watched in horror as her oldest friend transformed, the darkness consuming still more of his humanity.

She wondered if she was next.

Rex, she pleaded. Come back to me.

"Unconquerable," he said softly, his voice dry.

The storm began to subside, and what remained of Rex's humanity settled over the boiling darkness. She felt his sanity return.

With a snap her muscles were her own again. Melissa pulled her hand from his and opened her eyes.

Madeleine lay on the attic floor unmoving, shards of her shattered teacup strewn about her. Her face was locked in an expression of horror.

"It worked," Rex said, his voice calm.

Melissa stared at the stricken woman on the floor. She was still breathing, but her eyes were glazed over, her fingers twitching.

Melissa looked up at Rex, and his eyes flashed violet. "You call that working?"

"I remember now." His lips curled into a smile. "I know what Samhain really was."

Melissa tried to gather her wits and tore her eyes from Madeleine's twisted face. The darklings were coming, and thousands of lives were at stake. "Can we stop it?"

Rex shuddered for a second, as if one last memory remained fugitive in his mind. But then he nodded slowly.

"We can try."