11

9:28 A.M.

MARKS OF MIDNIGHT

Beth was in fine form the next morning at breakfast.

"Mom, Jessica was sleepstalking last night."

"Sleepwalking?" Mom asked.

"No. Sleepstalking. She was creeping around my bedroom, stalking me while I was asleep."

Jessica's parents looked at her, raising their eyebrows.

"I was not stalking you," Jessica said. She dug her fork into the huevos rancheros - cheese and eggs - that Dad had made, wishing this topic of conversation would just go away. She should have known that Beth wouldn't keep quiet about her visit last night.

When Jessica looked up, everyone was still staring at her. She shrugged. "I couldn't sleep, so I went in to see if Beth was awake."

"And to give a little speech," Beth said.

Jessica felt her face flush. Her little sister always instinctively found the route to maximum embarrassment. She wanted every uncomfortable fact out in the open. Every awkward moment desperately needed her commentary.

"A speech?" Dad asked. He sat across the table in one of his sleeping T-shirts. The shirt was emblazoned with the logo of some software company he used to work for, the once bright colors faded. His hair was scruffy, and he hadn't shaved for a couple of days.

Mom was eating standing up, already dressed for work in a two-piece suit, the collar of her blouse blindingly white in the sunlit kitchen. She'd never dressed up this much for work in Chicago, but Jessica guessed she was trying to impress her new bosses. Mom had never worked on Saturday before, either. "Why couldn't you sleep?"

Jessica realized that there was no way to tell the truth on that one. Before she'd showered this morning, the soles of her feet had been almost black, a lot like the feet of someone who had walked a mile on asphalt barefoot. Her hands still had faint red marks on the palms, and she had a bruise on the hand the slither had bitten.

Of course, there was still the barest chance that it had all been a dream, complete with sleepwalking and sleep-fence-climbing. She would be checking that possibility in a couple of hours.

"Jessica?"

"Oh, sorry. I guess I'm kind of tired today. I've been having these weird dreams since we moved. They wake me up."

"Me too," Dad said.

"Yeah, Dad," Beth said, "but you don't come into my room and make little speeches."

All three of them looked at Jessica expectantly, Beth smiling cruelly.

Normally Jessica would have made a joke or left the room, anything to escape embarrassment. But she had already fibbed about why she couldn't sleep. She decided to make amends in the truth department.

"I just thought that I'd tell Beth," she said haltingly, "that I knew moving was tough on her. And that I was here for her."

"That is so lame," Beth said. "Mom, tell Jessica not to be so lame."

Jessica felt her mom's fingers lightly on the back of her head. "I think that was really sweet, Jessica."

Beth made an ugh noise and fled from the kitchen with her breakfast. The sound of cartoons came on in the living room.

"That was very mature of you, Jess," Dad said.

"I didn't do it to be mature."

"I know, Jessica," Mom said. "But you're right - Beth needs our support right now. Keep trying."

Jessica shrugged, still a little embarrassed. "Sure."

"Anyway, I've got to go," Mom said. "I get to try out the wind tunnel this afternoon."

"Good luck, Mom."

"Bye, sweethearts."

"Bye," Jessica and her father said together. The moment the front door had closed, they took their breakfasts in front of the TV. Beth scooted aside on the couch for Jessica but didn't say a word.

At the first break between cartoons, however, Beth picked up her empty plate to take it away, hesitated, and looked down at Jessica's dish.

"You done?"

Jessica looked up. "Yeah..."

Beth bent down and stacked up Jess's plate on her own, then carried them both back, rattling in her hands, to the kitchen.

Jessica and her father exchanged surprised glances.

He smiled. "Being lame does work sometimes, I guess."

An hour later Dad decided to be Mr. Responsible. He stood up and stretched, then muted the TV. "So, you guys are going to finish unpacking today, right?"

"Yeah, sure," Beth said. "Got all day."

"We really should get some work done before your mother gets home," Dad said.

"Actually," Jessica said, "I have to go to this museum downtown. The Clovis Museum or something. For homework."

"Homework already?" Dad asked. "Back in my day you didn't get any homework the first week. You were just supposed to hang out for a while, then they'd slowly reintroduce the concept of work."

"So not much has changed for you, has it, Dad?" said Beth.

Dad gave his new, defeated sigh. He didn't put up much of a fight against Beth anymore.

Jessica ignored her. "Anyway, Dad, it's not that far away. I think I'll just bike it."

The streets and houses from the night before were still there, recognizable in the daylight. She checked her watch. No chance of being late - she still had an hour to get to the Clovis Museum.

There were so many questions in her mind. What were darklings and slithers, and where did they come from? How had Dess scared off the giant panther with a hubcap? Why hadn't Jessica ever seen the blue time before coming to Bixby? And how did Rex and his friends know any of this stuff, anyway?

Jessica rode slowly, retracing her steps to piece together where everything had happened the night before. The route from her house to the street where she'd first seen the panther was the fuzziest part of her memory. She'd been following the kitty-slither, dreamily looking around and not paying attention. But it was easy to find the corner of Kerr and Division and, from there, the spot where the frozen car had stood.

Of course, it was gone now. Jessica tried to imagine it jumping suddenly into motion as the secret hour ended, the driver calmly continuing down the road as though nothing had happened. There were no marks in the street, no burned hubcap, nothing to show that a battle had taken place there just eleven hours ago.

From there she traced her path backward, remembering all too clearly the way she had run while the panther was tracking her. She found the narrow alley and followed it to the backyard fence she had climbed over to escape it. Jessica wasn't about to climb back over during daylight, and the thought of standing in that high grass still made her nervous, so she circled around to the street side of the house.

The old willow dominated the block, like a huge umbrella blotting out the hot sun. Jessica dismounted and walked her bike over the unkempt lawn to the tree. In the darkness below its shade she spotted the three gouges in the trunk, the claw marks of the giant panther.

Her skin crawled as she traced one of the cuts with a quivering finger. It was more than an inch deep, as wide as her thumb. Her finger came out sticky. She teased the trace of sap between her fingers, realizing that the tree had bled instead of her.

"Sorry about that," she said softly to the willow.

"Hey!"

Jessica jumped, looking around for the voice.

"What're you doing on my lawn?"

She spotted a face in the window of the ramshackle house, barely visible through the sunlight reflected from the mosquito screen.

"Sorry," she called. "Just looking at your tree." Okay, Jessica thought, that sounded weird.

She pulled her bike back to the main street and climbed onto it, shading her eyes with one hand for a moment as she looked back. The face had disappeared, but Jess recognized the thirteen-pointed star on a plaque mounted next to the door. Dess had been right: they were everywhere in Bixby.

An old woman emerged from the house, wearing only a wispy nightgown that clung to her frail frame in the light breeze. She was clutching something to her chest, a long, thin object that glimmered in the sun.

"Get away from my house," the woman shouted in a voice that was bigger than her tiny body.

"Okay, sorry." Jess started to pedal away.

"And don't come back tonight either," a final shout followed her down the street.

Come back tonight? Jessica wondered as she rode. What had the old woman meant by that?

Jessica shook her head, checking her watch. The marks on the tree proved that the secret hour was real. She had to face the fact that something really had tried to kill her last night. And she had to find out how to protect herself before the blue time came again.

Jessica rode fast toward downtown.

She hated being late.