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3:27 PM
DREGS
"Milk, no sugar, correct?"
"Yes, please" Dess smiled politely, but the bitter taste of Madeleine&039;s tea was already trickling through her iue
By rights, this secret place should have been her playground Dess was the one who had found Madeleine, after all She&039;d struggled through sleepless nights to decode the weird dreams the old mindcaster had sent her; she was the one who&039;d done the math
But it had all been in the service of Melissa and Rex They were the ones really enjoying themselves here in Madeleine&039;s crepuscular contortion, her little secret hideaway Rex finally had all the lore he could possibly want Years of reading awaited hihters of the last generation had
And Melissa she had totally scored
Dess noticed that as Melissa took her cup and saucer froers brushed for a moment Then they both sht made her flesh crawl The two of the a word to each other Dess wondered what they were saying to each other right now
On the other side of the big dining table, Rex was also watching them Besides Rex, Madeleine was the only person whom Melissa allowed to touch her - not that anyone else would want to - but he didn&039;t see sessions, when the two mindcasters sat for hours at a stretch with eyes closed and fingers interlocked, that et all territorial
Of course, Melissa did have so up as a lone mindcaster, she&039;d never learned the old tricks that should have been taught to her by the previous generation A trove had awaited her inside Madeleine&039;s brain - the thousands of years of ossip accumulated since the first e from hand to hand
Dess wondered how that eneration of mindcasters took all their memories and forwarded them onto the next bunch, who then passed theirs onto the next, who added theirat soe becoher and higher, until the whole thing collapsed at once?
Maybe the ate of thoughts and feelings, like the syined a big H hovering over Madeleine&039;s house, warning of a high-pressure center of bitchiness
"Don&039;t rattle the cup when you stir, Jonathan!"
Speaking of which, Dess thought as Jonathan exchanged an eye roll with her He kept stirring his tea, adopting a sarcastic little spoon twirl that Madeleine didn&039;t seem to notice
At least they didn&039;t have to edit their thoughts here Madeleine&039;s house was built on a whopping big crepuscular contortion, a wrinkle in the blue time that made it almost impossible to plunder anyone&039;snext to a power line that screwed up your TV reception
This contortion was the only thing that had protected Madeleine for the last five decades She was invisible to the darklings here, hidden along with her antiques and books, all the leftovers frohters had ruled Bixby instead of skulking in the shadows
Dess looked at the junk piled in the corners of the roorams in rusted steel, all the patterns of thirteens and thirty-nines that had once guarded the town&039;s key citizens Soraved with old-tiraph and paterfamilias She had to admit: Rex and Melissa weren&039;t the only ones who&039;d found stuff to play with here
Still, it bugged Dess that those two had gotten anything at all out of her discovery Especially since the sweaty work of protecting Madeleine had been left to Dess, Jessica, and Jonathan The three had spent hoursdefenses Then Dess had made sure every piece had its own brand-new thirteen-letter name and mounted them all around the house as a last line of protection should the darklings ever find Madeleine&039;s hiding place
And what thanks had they gotten? Mostly getting yelled at fortoo much noise
"So, now that we all have tea," Madeleine pronounced, "perhaps we should discuss the little incident this ers traced the deep scratches in the wood of the table It had been corams before she&039;d cleared the room to make it habitable
Madeleine arched an eyebrow "Well, then, Desde feisty, perhaps you&039;d like to start"
"Me? What do I know about it? We were sort of hoping you could tell us so nuhed "Well, we checked Rex&039;s fancy watch after the eclipse was over He resets it everyto the time on Geostationary, which is always perfect" She felt the coht of the GPS device in her pocket "Turns out it had gained twenty-one th of time the dark moon was up That&039;s nine ti nu"
"But you don&039;t knohat?" Madeleine said
"Not yet" Dess sipped at her tea Maybe the bitter taste of it would focus herlike this in the lore," Rex piped up "Not that I&039;ve read You don&039;t have any oldwhile to respond, as if she was filtering out an answer froht echoes in her head Voices in her head That didn&039;t sound particularly sane Maybe the weight of all those piled-up memories had driven Madeleine madder and madder as she&039;d hidden in this house, alone Maybe whatserene and knohen all of the Madeleine and Melissa, were actually as nutty as bat guano
Dess smiled to herself Maybe Madeleine could use a new mental nickname
"No, Rex," Maddy finally said "Like the lore, ourof these events I&039;m certain this is all quite unprecedented"
Dess allowed herself a s to be any help This was a job for numbers, maps, and GPS precision
"That&039;s what I was afraid of," Rex said glumly
"Afraid, Rex?" Madeleine snapped "Chicken-fried baloney! Inafraid They spoke of action!"
It was Rex&039;s turn to roll his eyes He covered the expression by raising his own teacup and wincing at the acid taste
Soht Maddy didn&039;t even know that everyone hated her tea
"Well," Jonathan said "YouMelissa said the darklings were celebrating You think they were expecting this to happen?"
"Ah, now you&039;re headed in the right direction," Maddy said
Rex shot Jonathan an annoyed look for asking the obvious next question and scoring extra Maddy credit for it
Very clever, Dess thought The old ainst each other Dess had found a few old photographs of a youthful Madeleine around the house, and she&039;d been quite the 1940s cutie
Of course, it orth re that Maddy had been the one to spill the beans back then, coughing up the secrets of the blue tihter, Grandpa Grayfoot (probably one of her boyfriends) So in theory she could be bla, the exterhters, and the fact that the five of them had been left orphaned and clueless
"So what did you taste?" Rex asked
Maddy paused dramatically, then looked across the table at her pupil
Melissa stopped chewing her lip and said, "We aren&039;t sure yet We haven&039;t had a chance to" - she glanced at Rex - "compare notes"
"But there were soht felt very thin"
"Places?" Dess asked, her ears perking up Places could be expressed as longitude and latitude - sweet numbers "You mean like this crepuscular contortion?"
Maddy nodded "Yes, but not hiding places Spots where the barrier between the blue world and ours seemed almost to disappear"
"Oh" One hand inside her jacket pocket, Dess gripped Geostationary harder "You mean like Sheriff Michaels?"
"Sheriff Michaels?" Jonathan asked "That guy who disappeared?"
Everyone was quiet for a o - before Jessica, or even Jonathan, had moved to Bixby - the town sheriff had vanished out in the desert Only his gun and badge had been found, along with his teeth and all their fillings - the darkling-proof, high-tech alloys of dentistry
The ru dealers, but between Rex&039;s lore and her carefulof the blue time, Dess understood what had really happened
She cleared her throat "Well, you know that darklings have to eat, right? Even if they only live one hour in twenty-five, predators still need prey to stay alive Norh into the blue tiht So darklings mostly eat unlucky rabbits and cows, but every once in a while a huh"
"Hmmph," Madeleine said "In ht"
"Yeah, well, your day got canceled," Dess said
"Wait a second," Jonathan said "I thought darklings couldn&039;t hurt norh into ht, you&039;re part of that world for that hour And eligible to join the darkling food chain"
Madeleine nodded "We soh so that they could see the blue ti was, once thatnormal time They stayed that way until the sun struck theht"
"Great, so we could have civilians running around in the blue time," Rex muttered "And you said the eclipse was focused around these contortions?"
Slowly Madeleine&039;s wrinkled hand drew shapes on the scratched table "Not exactly, Rex What the eclipse seemed to do was make more of theht were baked into the itude and latitude like they&039;re property lines!"