It was too soon; the darklings weren’t here yet. She had to put the fire out before the rockets and flares and sparklers began to explode, wasting all their ammunition.

Melissa threw herself down on the gravel, rolling across the flaming oil, trying to stifle the flames. Her long black dress was still soaked, wet from trudging through the falling rain from Jonathan’s car. Waterlogged enough to protect her body. But her hands burned, and she inhaled the bitter smell of her own hair igniting, its damp, sizzling strands shooting across the corners of her vision. A rocket shot into space beside her, climbing until the upward edge of the rip silenced it.

Melissa rolled back and forth, spreading out her dress as far as she could. She smelled its singed cotton, felt the muffled hiss of a bottle rocket trapped under her, its detonation like a quick jab to her ribs.

When she opened her eyes a moment later, they stung with smoke, but she saw that the fire was mostly smothered. The last flaming tendrils of oil spread across the wet gravel, sputtering out.

Melissa sighed with relief. Her hands and face were blistered, her hair felt like a total disaster, and she smelled like a wet dog that had been set on fire. But she’d saved the cache of fireworks. Jenks wouldn’t die because of her mistake.

A second later she frowned, realizing her new problem.

The hurricane lamp was destroyed, her only fire extinguished, and Jessica was off chasing her little sister. Until the flame-bringer returned, Melissa was defenseless.

She sent out her mind and soon found a coppery taste on the midnight landscape—the familiar, metallic flavor of flame-bringer. Jessica was still moving, thrashing through the rain-heavy trees on her way to the cave. She hadn’t reached her little sister yet.

Off to the east Jonathan was just now closing in on Rex, climbing toward the last-stand building in leaps and bounds.

And from the deep desert darklings were coming, old ones.

Lots of them.

“Come on, Jessica and Jonathan,” Melissa said, rising to her feet. “Hurry the hell up!”

28

12:00 A.M.—

LONG MIDNIGHT

FLYBOY, FLY

“Where are they!” Rex shouted.

“Who?”

“Jessica! Melissa!”

Jonathan spread his hands. “They’re still back in Jenks.”

Rex let out a half-animal howl, his hands twisting into claws. Dess looked up from where she knelt inside her thirteen-sided arrangement of fireworks and shrugged. “He wanted you to bring Jessica,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m getting that.”

Jonathan was soaked. Barreling through the suspended rain at seventy miles an hour had been like swimming in his clothes. If the secret hour wasn’t so warm, he probably would have died of exposure by now.

And some thanks I get.

“Why didn’t you bring them?” Rex cried.

“Listen, Melissa didn’t know exactly what you wanted, so she said I should come and see.” He coughed into a fist; he’d inhaled a lot of water on the way here. “Plus Jessica had to sort of look for her, um, sister.”