They were under a state of siege. The elves had surrounded the house, but so far had failed to enter it. They had found the double glazing on Mrs. Johnson’s windows harder to break than expected, mostly because their little arms weren’t strong enough to hurl stones at the glass with sufficient force to do any damage, while attempts to squeeze through the spring-loaded letter box had resulted only in severe injury to the elves involved.

In desperation, the elves had resorted to fire.

Nurd and Wormwood had looked on as a gang of elves struggled under the weight of a can of petrol, along with some matches and various rags, all stolen from the shed of Mr. Jarvis, who lived next door to the Johnsons and was currently away on business.⁴⁰

“Mr. Jarvis won’t like that,” said Nurd. “He doesn’t even allow people to borrow his lawn mower.”

This was true. Mr. Jarvis was very mean. If Mr. Jarvis had been a ghost, he would have charged people for frights.

“What are they going to do with that petrol?” said Wormwood.

“I’m not certain, but I suspect that they’re going to try to burn us out.”

“They do know that we’re demons, right?” said Wormwood. “Demons don’t burn very well.”

“No,” said Nurd, “but this house will burn nicely, whether we’re in it or not. What do you think Samuel’s mum will say if she comes home from bingo and finds her house on fire?”

“She won’t be happy,” said Wormwood.

“She won’t be happy at all.”

“Will she blame us?”

“She might, unless we can show her some elves with matches in their hands, but I’d prefer it if the house didn’t burn to begin with.”

“I’ll start filling buckets with water,” said Wormwood.

“That would be helpful,” said Nurd.

He continued to watch the elves. Even by the standards of not-very-bright creatures, the elves were spectacularly unintelligent. Perhaps it was because they were made from supernaturally animated wood. Say what you like about wood, but if you’re on a quiz team and one of your team members is made from birch, or if you and your fellow prisoners are trying to come up with a cunning plan to escape from prison and one of you is carved out of oak, there’s a limit to how much help the wooden representatives are going to be. Animated entities made from wood are usually not clever. So it was that the elves were splashing petrol around, and failing to light matches, and getting themselves wrapped up in bits of rag like small wooden mummies. More and more elves arrived to help, adding a second can of petrol to the first, and more matches, and even more confusion. They began carrying everything to the front door, spilling more petrol as they went.

“Tut-tut,” said Nurd.

“What?” said Wormwood, who had arrived with a bucket of water.

“Very dangerous, mucking about with fire. Someone could do himself an injury, and I think a lot of wooden someones are about to do just that.”