Thunder rumbled again, this time right over their heads.

He looked at his watch. They still had time to get to Jenks, but by midnight it would be raining like crazy.

“Perfect night for fireworks,” he said, turning the engine back on and putting the car in gear.

26

11:49 P.M.

THE BOMB

Rex threw himself at the roof door again, ignoring the horror that trembled through his body at the sharp smell of its bright, unrusted steel. As his shoulder hit, the door pushed outward another few inches.

“Can you fit through there yet?” he asked.

Dess looked at the narrow gap between the door and its frame. “No way.”

Rex stepped back and hissed through his teeth. He and Jonathan had been up here just the night before to dump off most of the fireworks, and this door had been unlocked. Now it was secured with a chain an inch wide and a padlock as big as his fist.

Rex hit the door again, his shoulder banging against steel with a dull thud, pulling the chain tauter and winning another inch of space.

“Still too small,” Dess said.

Rex cursed. The fireworks show at Jenks wouldn’t keep the darklings at bay for a whole twenty-five hours. They couldn’t afford for this part of the plan to fail.

They’d chosen an empty building on the west side of town, tall enough that it could be seen from pretty much everywhere in Bixby. Once the rip reached downtown, anyone who was awake would notice that their TVs, radios, and phones weren’t working. Hopefully when they stumbled out of their houses and into the blue time, they would spot the shower of rockets shooting up from this roof. Anyone who made it here could shelter under the protection of the flame-bringer until the long midnight ended.

But the first trick was to make sure as many people as possible were awake at midnight. And to do that, they had to get out to the roof, where Dess’s makeshift bomb lay hidden.

Thunder rolled overhead, and Rex smelled a change in the air.

“Oh, crap.” He thrust his hand out through the crack in the door, and a few drops struck his palm. “Perfect. It’s raining.”

“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.