“Turn off the engine,” the Djinn said.

“You’re out of your mind. We leave it running.”

“How will you hear the demon if he comes before you are ready?”

Begrudgingly, Brine turned off the key. “Go!” he said.

Brine and the Djinn jumped out of the truck and ran around to the bed. Brine dropped the tailgate. There were twenty ten-pound bags of flour, each with a wire sticking out of the top. Brine grabbed a bag in each hand, ran to the middle of the yard, paying out wire behind him as he went. The Djinn wrestled one bag out of the truck and carried it like a babe in his arms to the far corner of the yard.

With each trip to the truck Brine could feel panic growing inside him. The demon could be anywhere. Behind him the Djinn stepped on a twig and Brine swung around clutching his chest.

“It is only me,” the Djinn said. “If the demon is here, he will come after me first. You may have time to escape.”

“Just get these unloaded,” Brine said.

Ninety seconds after they had started, the front yard was dotted with flour bags, and a spider web of wires led back to the truck. Brine hoisted the Djinn into the bed of the truck and handed him two lead wires. The Djinn took the wires and crouched over a car battery that Brine had secured to the bed of the truck with duct tape.

“Count ten, then touch the wires to the battery,” Brine said. “After they go off, start the truck.”

Brine turned and ran across the yard to the front steps. The small porch was too close to the ground for Brine to crawl under, so he crouched beside it, covering his face with his arms, counting to himself, “seven, eight, nine, ten.” Brine braced himself for the explosion. The seal bombs were not powerful enough to cause injury when detonated one at a time, but twenty at once might produce a considerable shock wave. “Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, shit!” Brine stood up and tried to see into the bed of the truck.

“The wires, Gian Hen Gian!”

“It is done!” Came the answer.

Before Brine could say anything else the explosions began—not a single blast, but a series of blasts like a huge string of firecrackers. For a moment the world turned white with flour. Then storms of flame swirled around the front of the house and mushroomed into the sky as the airborne flour was ignited by successive explosions. The lower branches of the pines were seared and pine needles crackled as they burned.