Touching Darkness

Touching Darkness

Touching Darkness cover
Author	Scott Westerfeld
Cover artist	Kamil Vojnar & Karin Paprocki
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Midnighters Trilogy
Genre	Science fiction novel
Publisher	EOS Books
Publication date	2005
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	306 pp
ISBN
OCLC	68772744
Preceded by	The Secret Hour
Followed by	Blue Noon

Touching Darkness is a young adult novel by Scott Westerfeld. The second book in his Midnighters series, it was released in 2005 through EOS Books, a now-defunct branch of HarperCollins. Hola

Touching Darkness begins shortly after The Secret Hour ends. It starts with Jessica's meeting Jonathan in the secret hour. As they return home, Jonathan discovers a "stiff" - non-midnighter - outside Jessica's house, taking multiple exposures of her window across midnight. Meanwhile, Dess has been having strange dreams, which have led to some theories about co-ordinates affecting the secret hour. She discovers a GPS co-ordinate finder in her father's map drawer, and begins to use it to map the secret hour.

Investigating Jessica's stalker, Melissa overhears someone thinking about Jessica. She and Rex visit his house in the secret hour and discover people there are using dominoes with lore symbols on them to communicate with the darklings at midnight, with the help of a 'halfling' -Anathea- a girl who has been merged with a darkling. Melissa discovers that the halfling is sick, and that the darklings will soon try to take Rex, another Seer, to replace her. They steal some of the dominoes so that the darklings will not be able to communicate about the Midnighters to their human allies. They also find that the house belongs to Ernesto Grayfoot – a cousin of Jessica's friend Constanza Grayfoot, who says that even though her grandfather used to live there, he left nearly fifty years ago – around the time the Midnighters seem to have disappeared from Bixby – and now the rest of her family avoid the town at all costs – her father was even cut off for moving there.

Meanwhile, Dess discovers a house in which another Midnighter – Madeline – has lived hidden for nearly fifty years. Madeline explains that fifty years ago, when the town's population boomed suddenly, someone let out the secret of the Midnighters to an outsider - Constanza's grandfather - who learned how to communicate with the darklings, and got rich doing their bidding. The darklings used him to kill off the Midnighters, leaving only the new, younger generation, who were seen as harmless with no one older to teach them. They also made the halfling using a young girl called Anathea, to communicate with the darklings better. She also explains that her house is in a contortion in the secret hour which hides her, and that Dess must keep the knowledge of it hidden from the others so that the darklings do not find it.