A/N Hey everyone, here's a new chapter. Sorry for the delay, the stupid site wouldn't let me update...

Disclaimer: I don't own any of Scott's characters or plot points

Chapter One: Would You Just Let Me Drive??

Melissa paced around Jonathan's car, waiting. The desert sand cracked beneath her boots as she finally stopped and leaned against the car with a grunt. The Blue Hour would be over soon, thank goodness. She really didn't know which was worse: Jonathan and Jess's sickening thought-waves during the Blue Hour or Jonathan's depression during the day.

She ran her fingers through her stubbly hair, burned away while saving the world, and sighed. The Blue Hour was no fun anymore: nothing to kill, no one's mind to mess with, no Rex to... She blinked and forced her thoughts to the back of her mind. The gushy, nauseatingly sweet feelings Jonathan and Jess blasted made her want to puke on a nightly basis, but most of the time it made her want to turn around and run back to Bixby as fast as she could.

She rubbed her hands together uncomfortably, trying to keep them from tingling as she tentatively tried to find Rex. She was so far away she didn't know if she could do it. She couldn't help but smile a bit as she caught the smallest flicker of him. Not enough to talk, not enough to do anything really, but he was there, the same taste, the same glimmer of darkness rippling through his core. He was slowly getting control of his Darkling side.

"Oh, Loverboy, what am I going to do without you?" she muttered, a mischievous half-smile playing across her lips as a deep-rooted sadness gripped at her heart. She immediately caught herself and forced her mind to ignore her pain. She couldn't get upset. What would she do when she was too far away to feel him? Break down like Jonathan? Not a chance.

She was trying to focus on her fingernails when she felt a gentle, casual stroke against her mind. She gasped and sat up straight, throwing up barriers and grabbing hold of the intrusion. For a brief instant she connected with someone else: another mindcaster. She tasted age and knowledge, but most of all, she tasted the link. This Mindcaster had been given access to the memories of every other Mindcaster before him, just as Melissa had when she'd met Madeline.

The connection was immediately broken, but not before she'd received a glimpse of what was going on. She shivered and reached out to Jonathan. She rolled her eyes at his feelings and pushed through them.

"Jonathan, get back here now!" she shouted. She knew that he had heard her, and she also felt him trying to decide whether to come or not. "Now, Jonathan!"

He obeyed, though reluctantly. Melissa's mind spun with what she had felt. Someone had been trying to mess with her mind. Someone who seriously needed his butt kicked.

"This better be an emergency," Jonathan grumbled as he and Jess landed nearby. Melissa shielded her eyes from Jessica's new glowing hand and glared at Jonathan.

"No, I was just desperate to see you," she retorted. "Seriously, would I interrupt your little love-fest if I didn't have to? Midnight's almost over - "

"Don't remind me."

"Would you just shut up for a minute and let me talk? We have to get to the other side of New Mexico as soon as possible."

"What's going on?" Jessica inquired.

"Something bad. We have to leave the second we can."

"Why?" Jonathan continued.

"Because someone just tried to mindcast me, Jonathan."

"What?" Jessica gasped.

"That's right, someone tried to get into my head and mess with things a bit. I stopped it, and now I know that something's going down in New Mexico."

"Like what?" Jessica pressed.

"If I knew, I would have told you."

Jonathan and Jess both exchanged looks, their thoughts lined with worry, confusion, and a hint of regret. Melissa made an obnoxious gagging noise a their emotions and Jonathan sent her a warning glare.

They all looked up at the sky. The Blue Hour was ending. Jonathan immediately pulled Jessica close and kissed her mournfully, holding her tightly as the dark moon slowly sank beneath the horizon and Jessica disappeared.

Melissa felt as if she'd been stabbed in the chest as Jonathan's sorrow settled around her, as cold and lonely as space; a salty, bitter taste flicking across her tongue.

"Come on, you said we have to go," he muttered as he climbed into the car and started the engine.

"You sure you want to drive, Flyboy?"

"Yes," he announced.

Melissa sighed. He was going to be like that all morning. She grumpily climbed into the backseat and stretched out across it, grabbing for her CD player and slipping her headphones over her ears.

"What are you doing?" he called back.

"Sleeping. If you're going to sit up there, taking all you frustration out on the road, sending off angry thoughts, then go right ahead. That doesn't mean I have to listen to your tantrum. Just follow the road, wake me up in a few hours."

"But what am I -"

With an annoyed roll of her eyes, Melissa pressed the play button, the screaming of heavy-metal music blocking everything out. She could feel Jonathan's frustration and grinned before succumbing to the music and falling asleep as the car rumbled beneath her and Jonathan peeled out onto the road.

The blissful oblivion of sleep was shattered as Jonathan reached back and jabbed Melissa in the side.

"What?" she growled as she sat up, lowering her headphones.

"Food," he announced as he held up a fast-food bag.

She carefully climbed up and sat in the passenger seat. A brief flutter of fear rippled across her skin as she remembered flying through her windshield only a few months before.

"Where are we?" she questioned as she dug through the bag.

He was feeling better, she could tell. At least he could keep his thoughts under control.

"We just passed some little place called Clayton, I'm heading down to Santa Fe."

"What?" she exclaimed.

"Santa Fe, big city? It will take us down to the other side of New Mexico."

"You're going the wrong way! Turn around! How could you be such an idiot?"

"Well how was I supposed to go? You didn't tell me!"

"Get off here, we have to get onto highway 64, we're heading toward Farmington."

"Well then what am I supposed to do, I don't know New Mexico, Melissa."

"Turn here."

"What?"

"Turn here!"

"All right," he grumbled.

"Now turn there."

"Do you even know where you're sending us?"

"Do you? I said turn there!"

"Would you just let me drive?!"

"Don't yell at me, it's not my fault that you went the wrong way."

"Are you serious? You never told -"

"Jonathan watch out!" she screamed as a man seemed to appear out of no where. Jonathan swerved out of the way, running over the curb before coming to a jerking stop. Melissa could barely breathe as she grabbed the seat with white fists, her heart speeding in her chest. Old pains returned across her body, the sound of shattering glass ringing in her mind, remembering that horrible night.

Jonathan swore and turned to Melissa. "You all right?"

She unclenched her fists and forced herself to calm down before nodding and watching Jonathan race out of the car toward the man who was pulling himself off the ground. Melissa took a deep breath and got out of the car as well, her legs shaking a bit as she ran toward Jonathan, who had helped the man to his feet. He didn't seem to be hurt, though he was old enough that she had to wonder.

"No, you didn't hit me, I wasn't looking where I was going," the man protested.

"Are you sure? I mean, I wasn't paying all that much attention -"

"No, I'm fine, believe me."

Melissa watched the man oddly. There was something different about him...

"Nathaniel Havard. Nice to meet you, Jonathan. And you?"

He turned to Melissa, extending his wrinkled hand. She looked down at it suspiciously, but she could still sense a kind of oddness in him. Fighting her discomfort, she reached out and shook his hand, lightly searching his mind as she did so. She immediately felt elated; joy flooding her senses, the feeling of wind in her face and freedom. A cool taste settled along her tongue, filling her mouth with cold air. She had only felt that once before.

She looked at him in a new light, and she turned to Jonathan. "We have to go."

Jonathan glanced back at Nathaniel and seemed to want to argue, but he could tell by her face that she was absolutely serious. "Yeah, you're right. You sure you're all right?"

"I'm just fine. It was nice to meet both of you, regardless of how it happened," he chuckled.

Melissa was already walking back to the car.

"What was that all about?" Jonathan questioned as he got back in the car and carefully pulled back onto the street. No real damage, thank goodness.

"That man was an acrobat."

"Really?" he wondered, turning to look back.

"Keep your eyes on the road, idiot!" she shrieked. He immediately turned back around.

"That's kind of cool, though. I mean, now that midnight is everywhere -"

"No, Jonathan, that wasn't my whole point. He's an acrobat, and he was one before. He was flying when he was your age."

A heavy silence settled between them. "Um, how is that possible? We're the only Midnighters from Bixby. Well, us and Madeline. The rest were killed."

"I know," she muttered as she stared out the window. She reached out toward Farmington again, feeling the unrest, the bitter taste of a plot brewing and the salty tang of fear. "Go faster, Jonathan."

He looked at her nervously, knowing how worried she had to be to ask him to go faster, and stepped on the gas.

"Stop here," Melissa muttered the next morning. Jonathan pulled over without question, his normal morning depression still seeping his thoughts with grief.

Melissa climbed out of the car and looked around. "Glad I wore black," she muttered.

"Where are we going?" Jonathan called as he walked toward her.

"A funeral," she answered as she tromped through the grass and over a small hill, a sea of white head stones coming into view.

"Uh, Melissa, I know that you're all into the goth scene or whatever, but do we have time for this?"

She glared at him and began walking down the hill. He followed without talking. He was learning.

She wandered the cemetery a bit before casually joining a grave-side memorial, standing in the back, trying to blend in. She studied the crowd, finding the people she was looking for. A small cluster of teens stood near the grave, their faces pale, their thoughts sour with grief and guilt. She softly walked toward them, trying to find what she wanted, waiting for the ceremony to end. She realized a bit disappointedly that she was going to have to talk to them. Not that she necessarily needed to ask them what they knew, but they needed to know what she did. She swore softly and walked toward the young Midnighters as the rest of the crowd separated.

"Sara?" she called, naming the polymath of the group. She was silently doing multiplication in her head, her mind spinning with logic. She was thinking much clearer then any of her friends.

"What? Do I know you?" she wondered as she pulled away from her group.

"I could say something really sage-like and mysterious right now, but I don't have any time. I know what you are, I know what happened -"

"You know what happened? I seriously doubt that."

"That he was killed by a monster?" Melissa stated, crossing her arms. Darkling wouldn't mean anything to them.

Sara's eyes widened and then squinted closed again with the same examining expression Melissa had seen on Dess hundreds of times. Dess would like this one.

"You know about Dreamland?"

"The Blue Time, yeah, I do, and I know who you are. Now what happened here? What were those boy's powers?"

"We didn't mean anything by it, really!" one of the teens called out, tears running down her cheeks.

"Yeah, we were just goofin' around, how were we supposed to know some crazy monster was waiting for us?"

Jonathan looked at Melissa intently, looking for some clue as to what she knew. She would tell him later. He'd survive.

"He saw things, told us what was going on, kind of."

"A seer," she confirmed.

"Yeah, and now Jason's gone too, probably eaten by that thing in the desert."

"Jason?" Jonathan wondered aloud.

"He could hear things. Read our minds. He disappeared."

Melissa nodded, everything exactly as she'd thought. She grabbed one of Jonathan's old receipts she'd stolen from the car and a pen she'd found in his glove box and jotted down an E-mail address. It had taken her nearly an hour the day before to convince Dess to create an E-mail account, and another half-hour to make her promise to actually check it.

"This is a friend of mine. Write her, tell her Melissa sent you. She can tell you what to do, what that monster was, and how to stop it. If you meet other people like you, other Midnighters, tell them to write her to. I'd help you more, but I don't have the time," she mumbled. She could have passed them everything they needed to know through a touch of her hand, but the thought of spreading word like the old mindcasters, of touching someone like she had Rex… she wouldn't do it. Not when they could learn just as much on their own. Besides, how strong would they be if they just had the information? Let Dess deal with it.

Sara took the paper and glanced down at it. "Thanks, I guess."

Melissa tasted suspicion in the girl, but the first time she attacked a Darkling she would believe. As she turned to leave, Jonathan following in confusion, her attention was caught by one of the Midnighters, kneeling beside the grave sight, her head in her hands. She had loved the dead seer. She felt a chill race along her spine, and turned away, purposefully turning her back on the scene.

"So what was that all about, because it seemed kind of pointless," Jonathan muttered once they got back in the car.

"The Darklings are a lot fewer in number, but they're starting to group together again. That kind of thing is happening all over the place. The Darklings are targeting seers."

"What?" Jonathan questioned. "On purpose?"

"Gee, why don't I just go up and ask one?" she rebutted. "I don't know whether it's on purpose or not."

"What about what that one person said, about the mindcaster disappearing? That a coincidence to?"

Melissa sarcastic demeanor vanished. "No. That's happening everywhere too."

He looked at her questioningly, waiting for her to explain more, but she didn't seem willing to continue. He huffed and Melissa sensed his frustration. He thought she was hiding something from him. Little did he know, she knew just about as much as he did. Someone didn't want her to figure anything out, and that just made her more determined to do it.