“You guys covered the fireworks with plastic, didn’t you?” Dess asked.

Rex just looked at her. There’d been so much preparing and planning this last week, rain was one thing that had slipped his mind. The fireworks were on the other side of the door, outside, hidden under some old cardboard boxes. They’d be reduced to a soggy, useless mass if they didn’t get out there soon.

“Didn’t you hear the weather report?” Dess cried. “They’ve been predicting rain all week!”

“I can’t watch TV anymore.” Since Madeleine had unleashed the darkling part of his mind, the clever, human flickering box in his father’s house gave him fits to look at.

Dess groaned.

Rex took a few steps back, as much of a running start as he could get in the small stairwell shed, and threw himself against the door again. It budged outward another inch against the chain. Still not enough gap between door and frame to squeeze out onto the roof.

The rain outside was falling harder now.

Rex noticed that the metal was bending outward from the center, where the chain held it. Maybe if he focused on pounding the bottom half of the door, he could open up enough room to crawl through.

He drew his foot back and kicked the metal, sending another booming sound echoing down the stairwell.

Dess looked down the stairs. “Jeez, Rex. Make some more noise, why don’t you?”

“I didn’t smell anyone on the way in.”

“But if someone locked that door today, they might still be around.”

“So?” he said. “At least they might have the key.”

“They might have a gun too.”

“Humans don’t scare me anymore.” He gave the metal another kick; it scraped outward a little farther. Inside his cowboy boot Rex’s foot stung, but he ignored the pain, focusing on raising up the darkness inside himself.

Black spots appeared in the corners of his eyes, and he felt his body shifting within his skin. Pain turned to anger, and he began to thrash at the door harder and harder, ignoring the damage it was doing to his foot.

Wild thoughts eclipsed his human mind: the flat metal expanse was his enemy, the clever alloys inside it an abomination. He had to escape this human structure and get out under the open sky.

The door buckled and twisted under his assault, its bottom hinges tearing from the wall. Flakes of paint flew from the battered metal, which cried out dully with every kick. Finally the ring that held the chain snapped off, and the entire door tumbled outward onto the roof, like a drunk passing out cold.

“What the hell, Rex,” Dess said softly. “Are you okay?”

Rex got himself under control, letting the darkness fade, taking deep breaths and feeling the pain swell in his right foot.

“Ow,” he said softly, turning to the stair rail to peer down. If anyone was in the building, they must have heard that.

But no sound of approaching feet met his ears.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re behind schedule.”

He followed Dess out onto the roof, every limping step pure agony. The cold rain fell on his face and hands, stronger now.

The fireworks were still there under the rain-spattered boxes, still dry. Ignoring his foot, Rex helped Dess drag the whole pile across the black tar and through the door into the shelter of the stairwell.

He checked his watch: four minutes to midnight.

Dess started throwing the boxes down the stairs, clearing some room in the tiny stairwell shed. The bomb sat atop the other fireworks, a paint can with a three-foot fuse protruding from its top.

“There’s my baby,” Dess said with a smile.

Rex had watched her make the bomb, the terrifying smell of its contents almost panicking him. The soldered-shut paint can was stuffed full of gunpowder emptied from a dozen packages of M-8Os. Its purpose was simple: to create as loud a boom as possible. Dess had calculated that its shock wave would set off car alarms for miles in every direction, waking people up all over this side of town.

Of course, for that to work, they had to set it off in the next four minutes, before the long midnight fell.

“I’ll take it from here,” he said.

“No way. My toy.”

She lifted it with both hands and carefully carried it out into the rain. Still limping, Rex followed her to one corner of the roof, where a cell phone repeater sat, a five-foot-tall antenna that faced out toward the suburbs. Dess balanced the bomb atop it. She’d explained to Rex that it had to go up high so the roof wouldn’t muffle the shock wave before it could travel out across Bixby.

“Okay. Let me do this part,” he said.

Dess looked at the bomb for a long moment, then nodded. “Fine by me. But if that fuse starts to burn too fast, run like hell.” She paused. “You know what? Run like hell no matter what.” She stepped back.

Rex took a deep breath and pulled out his lighter. His foot was throbbing dully now, keeping time with his quickening heartbeat.

He reached down and lit the long, dangling fuse. It sputtered to life and began crawling slowly upward toward the paint can.

“Okay, let’s go,” Dess said.

He watched the fire climb for a long moment to be sure the rain wouldn’t put it out, finding himself fascinated by the shower of sparks that were carried off in a little trail by the wind.

“Rex!” she called from the other end of the roof. “Come on!”

Then thunder boomed overhead, and for a split second Rex thought the bomb had gone off. He stumbled backward onto his bad foot and, swearing at the pain, turned to limp after Dess. They huddled against the far side of the stairwell shed.

“Are you sure we’ll be okay back here?” he asked.

“According to my research, Rex, bombs can kill you in two ways. Stray bits of flying stuff, which this shed is solid enough to protect us from, and the shock wave. My little baby isn’t strong enough to crush our heads, but make sure you cover your ears unless you want to go deaf.” To reinforce this point, she placed her own palms flat against her head.

Rex checked his watch. Only a little more than one minute left.

Then a terrible thought occurred to him. They’d used the slowest-burning fuse they could find, three feet of it for the maximum amount of time. But kicking through the door had already put them behind schedule….

“How long did you say that fuse would take?” he asked.

“About two and a half minutes.”

“Good. There’s just about a minute to go before midnight.”

“Really?” She looked at Geostationary. “Sixty seconds? Crap, Rex, we took too long!”

“But the bomb will go off before midnight.”

Dess shook her head. “Shock waves travel at the speed of sound, Rex, which is slow—almost eight seconds to go one mile. The shock waves have to get out to the suburbs, and then car alarms have to go off long enough to wake people up. That’ll all take extra seconds we don’t have!”

Rex took a breath, then peeked around the corner of the shed.

About a third of the fuse had burned. Dess was right; he’d lit it too late.

After a second of panicked deliberation Rex swore loudly, then hobbled back toward the bomb, pulling out his lighter.

“Rex, what the hell are you doing?”

“Dealing with it!”

He stumbled up to the bomb just as the fuse reached the halfway mark. Thrusting his lighter out, he aimed its flame at a point only a few inches from the top of the can. The lighter sputtered out once, a direct hit from a big raindrop extinguishing it.

“Come on,” he muttered, flicking it back to life.

“Get back here!” Dess cried.

Finally the flame caught. A foot-long section of fuse dropped to the roof, lit at both ends now. The shorter piece attached to the can sparked and hissed in the rain, then steadied and began to crawl its last few inches.

Rex didn’t stick around to watch. He spun on his left heel and ran back toward the stairwell shed, his hands already over his ears.