The dark had come down, and Penzance was glowing like a casket of jewels. Caught between sea and windswept stone pines on the hillcrests, and beyond them the mystical hillfort of Lesingey Round, all the ancient town’s lights were held and reflected—dancing off the water in Mount’s Bay, carved into sculptures of wild orange cloud overhead. Gideon helped Lee out of the back of the police truck with Tamsyn. Already a pulsating beat was rising from the streets below the police station, though it was barely past six o’clock. The fire dancers had swung their blazing torches and leapt through burning hoops along Chapel Street. Gideon shook his head, listening to a distant band strike up their hypnotic drums. One, two, one-two-three—a song anybody could dance to or play, the same heartbeat you could hear at Padstow or Helstone or Kelyndar, so deep it had soaked right into the stones, the town’s bones. “Are you going to be all right on the streets with these nutters?”
“We’ll be fine.” Lee settled Tamsyn into her sling. “Text me when you’re done patrolling, and we’ll meet up for the fireworks. I’ll bring her majesty back up here if she gets tired before then.”
“Good. Go inside and get someone to make you a cuppa if you do.” Gideon stole a kiss, one from Lee and one from the enthralled baby, who was already wriggling in time to the music. “Sorry I can’t come with you. But let’s face it—how else would you get parked in Penzance town tonight?”
“Mm. It’s lovely being married to a cop.”
“I’d better go in and get briefed. Please take care.”
“Don’t worry. I somehow feel as if we should be here tonight—all three of us.”
Gideon winced. “That makes me worry more than anything else. Can’t you just go and be insignificant for a change?”
“I’ll certainly do my best.” Lee backed away, turning Tamsyn so that she could wave goodbye. With the sea behind him and smoke-misted streetlight turning him into a fine-framed silhouette, his chances of insignificance were small. Watching him go was always hard for Gideon, whose imagination—fuelled by the cradle-snatching Lilith/Elowen dreams—now provided him with a dozen fates that could befall his small family each time they were out of his sight. Lee stopped in the gateway to the car park. “Hoi,” he called back. “Text your brother. It didn’t hurt when he exorcised me, and he only thinks he’s a god-fearing Methodist minister.”
“Oh? What is he really?”
“I don’t know. But something much bigger than that.”
They were gone, the sea-fret and the veils of light dissolving them. Gideon made his way inside, dismissing his fears with an effort. Good coppers weren’t necessarily over-burdened with imagination. Nor was he, except when it came to Lee and his kid.
In the squad room, he found a gathering of the unimaginative best. To his amusement—after all, it served her right—DI Lawrence had been called in too, and was over by the whiteboard, wearily counting heads and giving orders. Jenny Spargo, his saviour from the Bodmin streets, came up smiling to show off her new sergeant’s stripes. Jim Ryde was there too. Gideon had doubted the lad’s future in the force after the killing of Jake Mandel, and he was still a constable, but there was a serenity about him now, and he returned Gideon’s wave with a small salute. All in all there was a festive air in the room, with so many familiar faces from the Truro and Bodmin squads. Gideon let himself be absorbed into the crowd, exchanging greetings, answering questions about Tamsyn with a quick flash of a photo on his mobile. Yes, she’s fine. Yes, she’s grown. Yes, she’s a year old today. We’re having her party tomorrow—come over and see her if you like.
DI Lawrence cleared her throat. The chatter in the room died down. “Montol,” she said tiredly, as if announcing a funeral. “Lovely festival. Lovely expression of community spirit, and I’m sure there’s a crying need for it, or we wouldn’t have ten thousand people out on the streets of Penzance on a bitter cold night, dressed in long flowing costumes which must on no account be exposed to a naked flame. Which brings me to my next point.” She put her hands on her hips. “Fire. Although I must say the new organisers have taken every step to ensure public safety, whenever anyone from our department or the town council raised an objection, that’s all we got. Oh, it’s a fire festival, ma’am. Well, isn’t it always? Montol, Golowan, Guldize—nobody’s happy around these parts until someone’s set something alight. In narrow, crowded streets. So there’s your basic remit, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t let anyone go up in flames, in their... What are the damn costumes called?”
“Mock posh and tatters, ma’am.”
Gideon smiled at the prompt response. He hadn’t noticed Sergeant Pendower in the crowd. A few months ago he’d have run a mile to avoid him, but Pendower was a different man these days, and a firm favourite of Tamsyn’s. “Thank you, Sergeant,” Lawrence said. “Now, if we can—”
“Interesting derivation, ma’am, and socially intriguing, too—a deliberate subversion of elegant dress, perhaps with the intent of sending up a ruling class no Cornishman has ever bent his head to, a feeling that’s perhaps more intense than ever today. That, in combination with the choice of a Lord of Misrule, and the intriguing fact that the Yule log selected for the festivities is called a Mock—”
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
Pendower, unabashed, winked at Gideon over his shoulder. Lawrence waited till the wave of laughter had died down. “Folklore aside,” she continued, “tonight’s a wild night in Penzance. I doubt we’ll be getting the busloads of thugs that were threatened, but keep your eyes peeled for anyone who wants to spoil the fun for everyone else. These aren’t our streets, so pay attention to the local officers, my Bodmin and Truro lot. Right! Uniforms, you know your beat. Plainclothes volunteers...” She paused and gave Gideon an apologetic glance for the choice of words. “Especially those who’ve come in on their kid’s first birthday, thank you very much, and just go out and do what you do best.”
“What exactly is that, ma’am?” Gideon asked innocently, unable to resist.
Lawrence grinned. “Be yourself. Well, look at him!” she added, when the room broke into laughter again. “Who ever would dare get up to mischief within fifty yards of that?”
***
The Montol was a reconstruction, a rebirth of rites so ancient that their origins were anyone’s guess. Their modern expression was just as wild and varied. Gideon entered the tide of people now moving up the herringbone pavement of Causewayhead. The street was lined with shops, some cautiously shuttered, others staying open late to catch the festive trade. A rich tang of woodsmoke and barbecue filled the air, and through this miasma danced, jogged and waltzed a menagerie undreamed of under a summer sun. Mock posh and tatters—the contents of every child’s dressing-up box, the vintage rails of the charity shops, long velvet gowns, trousers made of patchwork and lace. Everything beribboned, floating, swaying on the breeze. Faces concealed by elaborate Venetian masks, some in the shape of great beaked birds, some gilded, some polished black. And everywhere that music—one, two, one-two-three, pipes and crowdy-crawn drums...
Gideon should have felt invisible, in his thick winter jacket and jeans. Maybe Lawrence was right, though: when he moved, even slowly and calmly through the edge of the crowd, people looked his way. Just a glance, the tilt of a raven’s beak—reassured or nervous, each according to his nature. He was noticed. Before a minute was up, a four-foot monster detached itself from the parade and threw itself in his direction. On reflex he reached to catch. “Lorna,” he said, laughing and pushing back her mask. “What are you supposed to be?”
“The Beast, of course, Constable.”
“Bloody hell. So you are.” What fears had she conquered, to dress up as her own deepest nightmare? She was nine years old now, blooming with untrammelled life. “You look terrifying. Where’s your mum?”
“Right here!” Sarah Kemp came running up, barely recognisable under face-paint and pirate’s tricorn hat. “Lorna, stop it. Gideon’s a sergeant now, and you might be... I dunno, blowing his cover or something. And you nearly made me drop my Sun Resplendent.”
She was holding a giant paper lantern in the shape of a solar disk. That was one aspect of Montol everyone could agree on—the return of the light after the shortest day of the year. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble with the lantern. The sun god’s smiling face was hooked up on a wooden frame too wide for one person to handle, and Sarah wasn’t bearing it alone. “Ah,” she said, noticing Gideon’s attention. “You haven’t met Wilfred yet, have you? Wilfred, this is Sergeant Frayne, who looks after all of us at Dark. Wilf and I are... going out, I suppose you could say.” She blushed beneath her paint. “I hope it doesn’t seem odd.”
The world spun on. The sun returned from darkness every day. Wilfred stuck out his free hand and Gideon took it, shaking it cordially. “Why on earth would it seem odd?”
“Well, you’d think I’d have had enough of men, what with one thing and another. But I met him online, and he’s got two kids of his own, and he’s lovely with my brats. So we’re giving it a try.”
“All right.” Now it was Gideon’s turn to blush: she’d hardly been asking him for his permission. Then, he’d been a fixed point in her life since her husband had bailed and her brother-in-law had morphed into a child-abducting nutcase. Wilfred could meet a police sergeant’s gaze with serene cheerfulness, and something inside Gideon’s head—the new thing, the tug and the reach—told him that this was a good man. “I’d better give you your kid back, hadn’t I?”
Lorna let go of him reluctantly. “Where’s Tamsyn and Mr Tiger?”
“Somewhere up ahead of you, I should think. Are you going to the playing fields for the Midwinter Fire?”
“Yes, we are.” Sarah pulled the girl’s mask back down so she became once again a surprisingly convincing Bodmin Beast. “We’ll look out for them. What’s going on up there, do you reckon?”
The crowd was slowing down. Gideon could see leaping flames among the safer bell-shaped paper lanterns. Torch-bearing hadn’t been prohibited as such—no point in trying to bottle up that genie—but he’d thought, given the narrow streets and the ever-growing sea of revellers, that people would restrain themselves without need for a ban.
The triumph of hope over experience. Gideon ducked into the mouth of an alley that would leapfrog him past the obstruction. “I’ll go and take a look. If there’s trouble, get into one of the shops and stay clear, all right? Or ask one of the uniform lads to help you.”
Sarah tipped her hat to him, beaming broadly. “Aye aye, Sergeant. Montol lowen to you. See you tomorrow at the party.”
“Absolutely. Bring Wilfred along with you too.”
He set off at a jog along the patched tarmac, accelerating to a sprint as wild cries began to ring from the Tolver Road junction ahead. Maybe DI Lawrence had underestimated the chances of busloads of thugs. That was fine with Gideon. He wanted a happy Montol as much as anyone else, but Zeke and his sister-in-law were ever-present thorns in the back of his mind, and if his duties called him to knock a few heads together, so be it.
No. The chaos was arising from a solitary figure in the middle of the road. His costume was more fantastic still than any of the guise-dancing crowd who’d come to a halt behind him. He had a huge umbrella open over his head and was twirling it around, dancing with enormous, skinny-legged strides. “Who’s that?” Gideon asked the nearest intelligent face, with a sinking feeling that he already knew.
“Don’t you know? We got one from out of town this year, but never mind. That’s the Lord of Misrule.”
Gideon had been briefed by his Celtic Revivalist husband on the journey down. The Lord of Misrule was another Cornish yell of rebellion into the face of authority, a king-for-the-night who would lead processions, cause mischief, dance and generally help create fiery chaos all round. He couldn’t think of anyone who would be better or worse, more gifted by nature and dangerous for the part, than...
“Darren,” he said, stepping up to the gyrating figure. “You’re going to have someone’s eye out with that.”
For once the wretched boy didn’t seem dismayed to see him. He knocked up his great raven mask with one hand and issued a yowl of delight. “It’s you! How did you know me?”
“I don’t know. Just something in the air.”
“They chose me, Gideon! Chose me to be Lord of Misrule!”
Gideon couldn’t remember when Darren had ever addressed him by his first name. Constable, yes, even long after he’d been promoted. You interfering bastard a couple of times, and, once, you stupid bloody plod. He sounded like an adult when he said Gideon. He sounded almost sane. “That’s nice,” Gideon replied. “And I don’t want to piss on your chips, but isn’t it done by casting lots?”
“That’s right. The Montol beans.”
“Then... didn’t you just pick the right bean?” A terrible thought struck Gideon. “Tell me you didn’t fix the draw.”
“No, no.” Darren did another twirl, beckoning the semi-legal torchbearers close to him. “Everybody knows you can’t be chosen for Lord unless the old gods want you. Prance about, you lazy sods! Golow ha tewlder! Call back the sun!”
They were obeying him. The procession must have halted at his command so that he could perform his dance. Gideon supposed there was a place for everyone somewhere in the world. “You’d better get on with misruling, then. Don’t let them bottleneck here for too long, and keep those torches away from the kids.”
“Er, Gideon?”
He paused on his way back to the alley. “What?”
“I’ve got a place on a junior apprentice course in Liskeard. Only they need a reference.”
“You’ve got a bloody cheek, mate.”
“I know. But you’re the only one who ever gave a crap about me, really. Aren’t you?”
Again, that strange adult note. Gideon stared at him. “You can give them my name and address,” he said after a moment. “Take care, Darren.”
“Don’t worry, Sergeant. Everyone’s becoming what they should be.”
“I’m sorry?”
“If those kids are coming from out of town, they’ll go to the playing fields.”
***
Everyone’s becoming what they should be. Distractedly Gideon played the words back in his mind. Maybe they were another Montol cry, like golow ha tewlder for light and dark. He was more immediately focussed on the fact that Darren Prowse, juvenile delinquent and jailbait, had given him a tip-off. Maybe not a good one—though if the boy wanted that reference, it had better be—but worth checking out.
The streets ahead of the procession were quiet. Gideon made quick progress, not yet running. He wanted to be an ordinary man for as long as he could. Smiling and apologising, he dodged through a cluster of drinkers outside the Black Weasel pub. Behind him he could hear Darren’s parade moving on, the cries arising from it filled with excitement and laughter now. If Lee and the baby were down there, they’d be having a good time. Odd to think of leaving anybody safe in Darren’s hands...
The night hadn’t finished throwing strange encounters into his path. He bumped up against a squat, solid figure, hard enough to rock him back on his heels. “Oh. Sorry.”
“No need. It was my fault. Where’s my teaser gone?”
Not squat after all. Gideon looked up through six feet of ragged grey cloak and into the gleaming sockets of a huge horse’s skull. “Bloody hell. Is that Cosmic Ray in there?”
“Gideon!” A tiny curtain in the creature’s neck flew back. Behind it appeared the rosy, brown-eyed face of Ray Tregear from Kelyndar, wreathed in smiles. “Well, I never. What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same. Don’t tell me you’re the Montol ’Oss.”
“Oh, no. They’ve got their own chap for that. But I carried Old Penglas here so well at our last Golowan, the Penzance organisers asked me to come and dance around a bit for the kiddies. Who knows? They could end up with a two-’Oss festival, like they have at Padstow.”
“Maybe they will.” Gideon glanced dubiously up at the wicked old head. “You’ve altered him a bit, haven’t you?”
“That I have. I got this shoulder-frame made, see, so that he can sit right on top of my head instead of over it, and I can look out of his neck. I’m not the short-arsed Penglas anymore.”
Everyone’s becoming what they should be. “Yes, I can see that.”
“And because I didn’t need his eyes, I put some lovely old glass marbles in ’em. All the better to see you with! And I decided to saw through him just there, and attach a pole I can move up and down like this, so...” The hinged jaw swung in Gideon’s direction, snapping ferociously. “So he bites! All the better to eat you with.”
“Good grief, Ray.” Gideon edged back. “Those are quite some alterations.”
“I know. Wouldn’t my old man turn in his—well, in his bunk, I suppose, in whatever prison cell he’s in? But I thought, sod him. What does he matter?”
“He doesn’t matter at all,” Gideon agreed. “Is Kitto here tonight?”
“Yes, just inside there. He’s meant to be my teaser, dance around in front of Old Penglas, stop me bumping into things. He’s got a new boyfriend, though. He’s oblivious.”
Gideon glanced through the pub’s open door. On the edge of the scrum by the bar, an exquisitely beautiful curly-haired lad was talking animatedly to a skinny one in glasses. “He looks well.”
“He’s fine. They’re an odd couple, aren’t they? But Kitto doesn’t see that. It’s like he doesn’t see the outsides of people at all. Hoi, Gwylim! Bring Jem out to say hello to Gideon.”
“No, leave them. I’ve got to be getting along.”
“Oh, right. On duty, are you? Me too, I suppose.” He pulled the little curtain across his face and was instantly lost in the majestic, terrifying frame of Old Penglas. When he spoke again, his voice had altered, cheerful Falmouth burr overlain by a sonorous chant. “See me here, Guardian Frayne— a live man in the old death’s head. But that’s the nature of gateway, the solstice door. Life in death, and death in life.”
“Er... Ray?”
A shift like changing weather. “Yes?”
“Was that you, or Old Penglas?”
“Oh. Did he make another pronouncement? Kitto says I’ve got to learn to control him, but it’s easier said than... Hang on.” The great skull whipped round, narrowly missing the top of Gideon’s. “Isn’t that Jana Ragwen?”
Something black and swift-moving caught Gideon’s eye, the tail of a raggedy crow disappearing round the corner into Hob Lane. “What—Granny Ragwen from Dark?”
“Yes, your village witch. Her Madge was in my shop the other day—said she can’t let the old girl out on her own anymore.”
“She must have slipped Madge’s leash. I’ll go make sure she’s okay.”
“Right you are, Sergeant! What would any of us do without you? Say hello to Lee and Tamsyn for me.”
The lane was empty when Gideon turned the corner. A single streetlamp was shedding a cone of light onto the pavement. The alley had an air of a vacated stage, the sea-salt breeze still vibrant, as if he’d just missed the performance. There was no sign of the old lady, although that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. “Mrs Ragwen?” Gideon called. He was beginning to feel foolish. His friends and neighbours had sent him uphill like a pinball in a machine. The houses and shops here had turned their backs to him, tight-drawn curtains shutting him out from the warm indoor world. He could barely hear the music and shouts from the town behind him. He waited, listening to the bump of his own pulse. What had Ray Tregear called him—Guardian Frayne?
A shriek pierced the night. In his years as a copper, Gideon had heard almost every variation of pain and terror the human throat could produce. This was new. He began his run towards it without questioning the elation shimmering through the sound. The backyard walls were too high for Granny to have climbed them. She had to be up ahead of him, somewhere in the only building she could possibly have accessed from the street.
A derelict warehouse, once part of Penzance’s lively shipbuilding trade. It was poised on the very crest of Gwidder Hill, the town laid out below it in glimmering gridlines and clusters. The glass was long gone from its windows, the remains of its door kicked wide and sagging from one hinge. Inside it was one huge space, gutted and left empty years ago.
Nowhere for anyone to hide. Gideon paused in the doorway long enough to make sure. He found a torch in one deep jacket pocket and shone the beam around, but only cobwebs and streamers of dust glowed back at him. He was about to retreat and run on when the conviction seized him that he wasn’t alone. “Mrs Ragwen,” he repeated, quietly this time. “You’re in here, aren’t you?”
“Why, yes, Constable. How clever of you to know!”
He jerked the torch beam up. His breath caught in his throat and he had to swallow a cry of fear and laughter mixed. “Dear God. How did you get up there?”
She sat poised in the middle of a rafter, fifteen feet off the ground, her heels swinging merrily. Her feet were bare, and from somewhere she’d obtained a full-on Halloween witch’s fancy-dress costume, complete with ragged skirts and pointy black hat. “I didn’t think I still could,” she said, grinning down at him. “Screamed like a vixen with her first dog-fox, I did. And you came running.”
“Yes, I did. You’re going to be all right.”
“I know I am, dear.”
“You need to stay very still.” Gideon lowered the torch so that it wouldn’t dazzle her. “I’m just gonna get my phone out, okay? I can have the fire brigade here in five minutes, and they’ll get you down.”
She exploded into cackles. “Like a mangy old cat out of a tree! Put your phone away.”
“I can’t, Mrs Ragwen. You’re in danger, and I have to get help for you.”
“Don’t. I’ll lose my balance if you make me laugh much more.”
She began to rock on the beam, and Gideon took a few steps towards her. She was little and frail, and maybe he could catch her, or at least break her fall. He’d worry about how an old lady had got into the roofspace from ground level some other time. “Listen to me. Listen. If you’ve got problems at home, or you’re upset about anything else at all, I’ll help you sort it out. There’s no need for you to—”
“Oh! Oh, stop. You’re killing me!”
Literally, any second. He froze, holding his breath. “Please don’t.”
“All right, all right. Don’t look so scared.” She stopped her terrifying back-and-forth yaw and settled on the beam as casually as if it had been her armchair at home. “Tell me. Who did you see on your way up here?”
“Why is that important?”
“Never mind. Humour an old lady.”
“Well, I... Lots of people. Sarah Kemp and her little girl. Darren Prowse.”
“No. Who did you see?”
Gideon stood immobile. The warehouse was very quiet, and his heartrate gradually slowed. Was it just yesterday she’d stood by Tamsyn’s cradle? The solstice gate swings wide for the Frayne brood... He let her question enter his Kernowek marrow, the ancient glitter-spirals of his blood. “I saw,” he said quietly at last, “the Beast, the Lord of Misrule, and Old Penglas.”
She nodded as if satisfied. “And what did he call you, Constable, that last one? That old death’s head?”
“He called me... He called me Guardian Frayne.” He must have run up here too fast. The vacant space began to spin around him. He wiped what felt like cobwebs from his eyes. “That’s wrong, though. I’m Gideon.”
“It isn’t wrong. Do you understand, Guardian Frayne, that this world is stranger than anything you could imagine? That there is no golow ha tewlder, no light and dark?”
“I’m a policeman. Of course I know that.” Every time he arrested one bad bastard or another for some heinous crime, out would come the story. A rotten childhood, a broken home. A lost job, debt, addiction... All the nuances of twilight that brought decent men from daylight into the dark. “That’s not what you mean, though, is it?”
“No. Even your preacher brother knows it by now. Think how you’ve protected them—the little girl, the hooligan, the junkie. You don’t mix up the light with goodness, or darkness with the bad. And so the creatures show themselves to you, and so they’ll stay near you—you and the Tyack boy, and your child—like beasts on an old-fashioned shield.”
Gideon could hear sirens. They brought him to surface, from waters so deep he’d been losing his sense of the shore. “I don’t understand.”
“I know. But one day you will. Oh, in the meantime I have a message from Dev Bowe for you. He told me last time I visited him in hospital. He wants you to have the Lowen house on Morgan hill.”
“Right.” It was best to keep a suicide talking, no matter how surreal the topic. “Is he gonna buy us some lottery tickets, then?”
“Oh, there’ll be no need for that. Hadn’t you better go and see what all those sirens are about?”
“No. I’ve got to stay and look after you.”
“Well, I promise faithfully to sit here until you get back. Go on, Guardian Frayne. Save the day.”
Police, fire and ambulance. Gideon knew all their songs. More than one crying out into a Cornish night meant trouble, more than a car prang or childbirth, more than a cat—or an old lady—stuck in a tree. Drawn to their symphony, he took one step and then another towards the empty window frame. The back of the warehouse looked right out over Penzance, all the way to St Michael’s Mount in the east.
The town was on fire. “Jesus Christ,” Gideon whispered, clambering out through the window. He jumped, and landed hard on the waste ground six feet below. Spinning blue lights were threading the streetlamps and torch flares. They were homing in on Chybucca Square, an open space where the Midwinter Fire procession would stop to watch dance troupes, buy roast chestnuts and sample mulled wine from the stalls. The bank and both buildings flanking it were ablaze, smaller fires breaking out as people backed away in terror, dropping torches in their wake. Out of habit, Gideon scanned the scene for its focal point, the cause of all these effects.
Yes—there on the seaward side of the square, pouring out of the narrow road that led to the bus station. From this distance he couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if DI Lawrence’s busloads of out-of-town kids had made it to the party after all. They were grabbing torches from the hands of the revellers, chucking the brands into shop doorways and directly into the crowd. And bloody Darren Prowse had sent him off the wrong way.
Then, if he’d stayed in the streets below, he’d never have seen what was going on. The Beast, the Lord of Misrule, and Old Penglas... Higher and higher, each one of them had brought him, and in the wrong direction, but from here he had a bird’s-eye view. He pulled out his mobile and dialled the inspector’s number. She answered on the first ring, sounding frayed and grim. “They’re coming in from the bus station,” Gideon told her. “You need to send as many lads as you can down to Chybucca Square, and some of the local boys to block off access from station. From here it looks like they’ll need riot gear. I’m on my way down.”
Shit, he’d forgotten about Granny Ragwen. He ran back to the window, grabbed the ledge and hoisted himself up far enough to shine his torch inside. He’d be lucky to get any kind of rescue team out here to help her now, but...
His stomach dropped. She was gone. The rafter she’d perched on was vacant but for a huge Penzance seagull, idly preening. Bracing himself to discover her shattered remains, he directed the torch beam to the floor.
Nothing. His precarious grip on the window ledge failed him, and he half-fell back onto the frosty ground. Righting himself, he reflected that many things inside him had changed. He was puzzled by the old girl’s disappearance but not dismayed. And even a few months ago, his first reflex would have been a frantic call to Lee. As it was, the signal between them lay deep and undisturbed. Gideon knew his man—at the first sign of trouble, he’d have taken Tamsyn and carried her out of harm’s reach. That left Gideon free to do his job and ensure the harm reached no bloody further. The waste ground lay in a broad, tempting sweep all the way back down to Tolver Road. Pocketing his mobile, he began to run.
A shadow crossed his path, once then again and again. At each pass, an eerie cry rang out. Gideon spared an upward glance. There’d been horror-story news reports all that summer of rogue seagulls landing in babies’ pushchairs, trying to snatch small dogs off the pavements. Had the gull from the warehouse decided to follow him? He paused for a moment on the brow of the hill, sweeping the beam of his torch into the sky.
A witch on a broomstick strafed him. The seagull’s cry resounded from the heavens once more, cracking into wild, ecstatic laughter. The insane vision stayed with him for a fraction of a second, then a cloud passed over the face of the gibbous moon, and she was gone.
Gideon stood motionless, trying to catch his breath. There was a kind of kite or remote-controlled model shaped like a witch on her broom. He’d seen it on YouTube. Tamsyn thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, and Lee had insisted he watch the clip. The model was pretty convincing. People had pointed and shouted, and there’d been a few cries of real fear. Probably that was what he’d just seen. He didn’t know who the hell would be buzzing him up on Gwidder Hill at this hour, but...
But he didn’t know anything, did he? Not really. His whole night since leaving Lee had been a kind of dream. He’d run from one strange meeting, one mythological encounter, to the next. And these things, these monsters, hadn’t even called him by his right name. He was Gideon Frayne, Gideon—not Guardian. His head spun again and he grabbed at a fence post to stay upright. All his certainties were faltering. What if his connection to Lee wasn’t quiet at all? What if it was gone?
Fear ate him whole. He tapped up Lee’s number from the phone’s memory, sweat-damped fingertips barely able to manipulate the screen. Still clinging to the fence post with one hand, he listened to the call ring out and out, and finally click to voicemail.