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11:03 PM

COORDINATES

Rex and Melissa were late

Dess looked at her watch Only threeout to the snake pit was getting tight Melissa&039;s rusty old heap could only get them so far They&039;d have to walk the last half one out to the snake pit after school to set up her hardware Dess wished now that they&039;d stayed there; coo to sleep had been a du cos halfway across the Bottom

But Rex had to make sure his crazy dad was in bed before he left As if taking care of Melissa weren&039;t enough

Dess counted to thirteen, forcing herself to relax She reached into the guts of Ada Lovelace&039;stheave theher predictions

Ada jumped into motion, always ready to dance, but the new steps didn&039;t co lift of her left arm went forward instead of back Dess shook her head She could see it now: she&039;d turned one of the gears around the wrong way

It was Rex and Melissa&039;s fault she was so anxious If they&039;d been here on ti all nervous, and she and Melissa could rag on him and be the calm ones They&039;d be on their way to the snake pit, where Dess&039;s masterpiece in metal would draw oohs and aahs from all concerned as slithers burned theain Still no crappy Ford cruising to a stop in front of the house two doors down, the usual spot for pre, and it o, filled with state-of-the-art antidarkling weaponry, backups in case the defenses around the snake pit failed And she&039;d left a very special new toy on the roof for Jonathan to pick up on his way out She&039;d done her bit

So where were Rex and Melissa?

Dess itched to call, but that would be totally stupid Melissa&039;s parents let her do whatever she wanted, but Rex&039;s dad was aout histhis very

Besides, they&039;d better already be on their way

Eleven-oh-six In forty seconds it would be exactly forty thousand seconds after noon More importantly, it would be a ht Dess could feel the blue ti toward her at a thousand ht A bit faster than that, really The earth&039;s circumference was 24,860 ht would have to move at about 1,036 miles per hour to make it all the way around the earth once per day

She&039;d seen it on the Discovery Channel, froe of darkness that htacross the world, bringing the blue tiht would be about nine hundred miles east of here, in the next time zone Of course, as far as any of thehters or blue tiured that one out Dess wondered if a little less lore and a little ht solve the puzzle

She looked out theStill no Rex and Melissa

For a horrible moment she wondered if they had left her behind Just taken off for the snake pit without her The old feeling of isolation gripped her

It was all Melissa the Mindcaster&039;s fault She&039;d tracked Rex dohen they were both eight years old Dess was only a year younger, but it had taken Melissa another four years to find her Melissa&039;s excuse was that Dess lived too close to the badlands and that back then all the darklings and slithers had confused her unformed talent

That sounded like a load of crap to Dess Melissa could pick Rex up froht; in the blue tihter was like a flare on a dark horizon She&039;d found Jonathan and Jessica within days after they&039;d arrived But for the four years that Rex and Melissa had been alone together, all Dess had knoas slithers, the lonely surety of math, and Ada Lovelace

She reached into Ada&039;s box and switched the errant gear around, wound her up again "Dance, my pretty"

Dess was sure that her isolation in those early years had been purposeful Melissa had played for tiether The scheme had worked By the tiht that nothing could ever come between them And Melissa&039;s psychic hold on Rex made it impossible for him to even think about what Melissa had done

Dess sed and stared out the

They wouldn&039;t dare leave her behind tonight Even with the snake pit already set up to repel darklings, they needed her in case so When it came to steel, only she could improvise Without her this whole mission would be impossible

It wouldn&039;t be so bad if Jonathan Martinez hadn&039;t been such a disappoint the group together Maybe Jessica would bring him around, once the two of them reappeared from the couple zone

Dess shook her head She had to stop thinking about this stuff before they got here She didn&039;t want to give Melissa the satisfaction of knowing she felt this way

As she always did to hide her thoughts, Dess let the numbers take over her brain "Ane, twa, thri, feower"

Seconds later soed in the back of her head: another ht," shetoward Bixby at 1,036 miles per hour It would only move that fast at the equator, the one line of latitude that went around the earth&039;s true circumference, like a tape measure around the widest part of a fat man&039;s belly

Dess could see it in her head now The farther north you were, the slower ht (or dawn, or whatever) swept across the earth A ht woulda whole day to crawl in a small circle

She looked out theStill no rusty Ford, and ht 2,978 seconds away

Noas really bugging her: How fast wastoward Bixby? Why wasn&039;t her brain just telling her, giving her the answers like it always did?

She counted to thirteen, relaxing and letting the calculations ure it out, she needed to kno far away from the equator Bixby was

She turned from the emptyand pulled her social studies textbook off the shelf, opening it to the back Flipping through it, she found a e stamp like Bixby wasn&039;t on it, of course, but she knew the toas just southwest of Tulsa