Thursday passes with the jangling queasy feeling you get from standing on a high-dive board. We meet with Ash after school in the place we agreed, the parking lot of the supermarket in the middle of Dunbarrow. My stomach is a writhing sack of insects. I see pigeons squabbling over a crust in the dirt. I see my own face distorted in an oily puddle. A chips bag flails in the branches of a nearby tree.

Ash is waiting by her car, wearing a white overcoat, white jeans, what has to be one of the only pairs of white hiking boots in existence. The wind ruffles her white hair as we approach her. She doesn’t look quite real.

“How’s everyone feeling?” Ash asks as we draw near. I feel like she’s exaggerating her accent again, chirping like some peppy cheerleader before the big game. I remember last night, how she bared her throat to Elza, told us to kill her. I remind myself what lies under her surface.

“All right,” I say. “Do we have everything?”

“Sure. I got the paint. We’ve got the Book of Eight in the reading machine in case we need it. You brought your sigil. Elza has the witch blade. Right?”

Elza pats the front of her leather jacket.

“So that’s everything?” I ask, holding up my hand so Ash can see the sigil ring.

“I think so,” Ash says. “The rite itself isn’t complicated. Once the demon is summoned, we should be able to bind it inside a devil trap.”

“What’s that?” Elza asks.

“Well, I only have one,” Ash says. “It’s an old mirror. Luke already tried it out. It will be kind of heavy and awkward to lug out there, but it’s the best way, I think.”

“And I’m not binding the demon to me?” I ask.

“We went through this,” Ash says. “You’re allowed to summon it into the living world. You still have that right. But the demon won’t be part of your Host. You broke that bond. You don’t have a Host anymore.”

“So it can kill me this time.”

“Yes,” Ash says. “It can. You don’t have any protection. It can kill all of us. So no mistakes.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Elza says.

We get into the car. I sit passenger side. Elza crams herself into the backseat next to the case with the reading device. I can see the mirror Ash trapped me inside propped up in the back, half-wrapped in cloth.

“How did Holiday take the news?” I ask.

“Oh, that I’m missing her charity fashion show? She was heartbroken,” Ash says. “So was I, actually. I was really looking forward to strutting my stuff.”

I laugh despite myself. You can almost imagine that we’re all friends, heading off on a road trip somewhere exciting. We pull out of the parking lot, heading through town, past the main street and over the bridge on the river, uphill, heading out of Dunbarrow. It’s nearly six o’clock, and the roads are full of people coming back from work in Brackford or Throgdown. The Devil’s Footsteps is pretty close to the high school, but you have to walk across the playing fields and then quite a way uphill through woodland. There’s no way we’re going to carry Ash’s mirror all the way up there. There is a more direct path, but finding where it joins up with the roads is difficult. We leave Dunbarrow as though heading for Brackford, then loop back around, looking for the entrance to the trail. After half an hour of arguing and jostling with the map — Elza is a backseat driver extraordinaire — we manage to find it, the National Trust road sign obscured by an overgrown hedge.

We drive down the lane for a few miles, the farmland turning to forest around us, trees thickening and darkening, the hedges pressing in like the shaggy flanks of an ungroomed monster. The road becomes muddy and rutted, and there are several points where I think we’ll end up getting out and carrying our equipment on foot. Eventually we round a familiar bend, and I recognize the tree I found Mum’s yellow car parked underneath, back on that morning in October. I remember not being sure I’d ever see Elza again, then her getting out of the car, the dawn light streaking her face. I think that was one of the best moments of my life.

“This is it,” I say, and Ash pulls to a halt.

We get out without much ceremony, dividing everything we need to carry between us. I take the mirror, Elza lugs the reading machine (although the idea of assembling the contraption and carefully arranging its spokes while we battle the Fury is funny, in a black, hopeless kind of way), and Ash carries the paint. We make our way down the path, turning off beside the rotten birch tree, climbing a shallow stony ridge and down the other side again, through dead orange bracken and the green exploratory shoots of this year’s growth. Before I know it, we’ve come out into the clearing, and I can see the Devil’s Footsteps.

The stone circle hasn’t changed since the last time I saw it. There are three standing stones: one tall and upright, maybe seven feet high, accompanied by two smaller, rounder stones, the lowest of which is almost like an angled table. If they weren’t set in the exact center of the clearing, you might think they were natural. We walk over spongy moss and clumps of needle-thin reeds. The ground is boggy, and some of the clearing’s hollows are half-full of stagnant water. The whole scene is overshadowed by a canopy of enormous ancient oak trees.

Ash puts the paint can down, gives a low whistle.

“Now, this is a passing place,” she says.

“Dunbarrow’s finest,” I grunt, resting the mirror faceup on the moss.

“How old do you think these are?” Ash asks us. “Iron Age? Older than that?”

“They’re supposed to predate metal tools, I think. The carvings are very crude,” Elza says.

“Do the standing stones make it a passing place?” I ask Ash. “I never understood that part.”

“Sometimes you can create a passing place. Sometimes they just happen on their own. But I’ll tell you one thing —” Ash pauses, seems to be listening to something in the air. “Whoever made these stones, I don’t think they were trying to get a doorway open. I think they wanted to keep one shut.”

“What makes you say that?”

Ash shrugs. “Just a hunch. There’s tension here. It’s easy to feel. I think this gateway to the other place was wider, long ago. Passage was granted more frequently. Whoever put the standing stones here was trying to choke the path off. Keep traffic more manageable.”

“Should we even be using them?” Elza asks.

“It won’t make a difference,” Ash says. “You can never keep a place like this entirely closed, but the gateway is more like a crack now. Bringing one spirit through won’t change that.”

“If you’re sure,” I say. There is something about this clearing, now that Ash has pointed it out. It’s hard to say what it is. It’s like a sound just beyond your range of hearing, something about to be said that never quite will be. It’s not that the stone circle feels evil, exactly, although some inarguably bad things happened to me here. It’s more that it feels uncomfortable, out of balance. You feel like you might look through the stones and see something else on the other side of them. Last time we came here it was midnight, and we were in a hurry, and I didn’t have much time to drink in the ambience. In the light of late evening, as the shadows lengthen, I feel like you can almost taste the world beyond the stones.

Setting up doesn’t take us long. Using a can of white aerosol paint, Ash draws a neat circle around the standing stones, walking backward and bent double. It looks uncomfortable, but she doesn’t complain. Once she’s done with the major circle, she adds a smaller one, just outside the main circle, a few feet in diameter, and then links them with a double line of spray paint.

“The circle’s done,” Ash says.

I make my way into the middle of the big circle, in the midst of the standing stones, and take a ring from my pocket. It’s not Dad’s sigil — I’ve still got that on my finger. This is one of his other rings, a golden band studded with red rubies. Elza and me missed a few tricks back in October, but Ash set us straight. I inherited nine rings from my father: a black-stoned sigil and eight binding rings. Each member of the Host had their own ring, and Dad would keep the spirits inside them when they weren’t needed. I don’t know why we never figured out what the other rings were for. I thought Elza was going to spit blood last night when Ash casually explained it to her.

This ring, gold with red stones, was the Fury’s binding ring. Ash told me I’d be able to feel which spirit had been inside which ring, the same way you know where your body is, even when you close your eyes. They were my Host, and I was linked to them; my spirit merged a little with theirs, and I found that I can still feel their presence in the binding rings. I place the ring on the moss in the middle of the Devil’s Footsteps. It ought to act a little like a fishhook, or maybe a magnet. I get confused sometimes, trying to compare magic with the real world. Anyway, Ash says we’ll get a faster result if I use the ring as the focus of the rite. I’m not entirely sure I want a fast result — part of me is really hoping the Rite of Return just won’t work — but it’s Ash’s show, and she calls the shots.

I make my way out between the standing stones and take my position in the smaller magic circle. My stomach is churning like a washing machine.

“OK,” Ash says loudly. I turn to look at her, standing beneath an oak tree, reading machine and mirror set next to her. “Let’s run through the safety basics again.”

“Yes, let’s,” Elza says.

“Luke remains inside his magic circle until the rite is complete and the demon has been bound inside the mirror. As long as Luke stays in the small circle and nobody crosses the boundary of the larger circle, we should be fine.”

“And if something does go wrong?” Elza says.

“I can summon the Widow. She’ll arrive within a few seconds.”

“And we all scatter,” I say.

“Do you think the Widow will be much good against that monster?” Elza asks Ash.

“They’ve fought before,” Ash says.

I grimace, remembering the Fury leaping on my Vassal, a fight so one-sided it barely seemed worthy of the name. My entire Host was terrified of the creature. Ash’s servant seems powerful, but when the chips are down, I have my money on the ravenous, merciless, soul-consuming demon.

“Her spear isn’t for show,” Ash tells me, obviously sensing my unease, “and demons aren’t invulnerable.”

“And if she can’t beat it?” Elza asks. “What then? We’ll have this thing loose in Dunbarrow, completely unconstrained.”

“There are other measures,” Ash says.

“Like what?”

“Nothing is going to go wrong,” Ash replies. “It’s a simple procedure.”

“Luke,” Elza says, “I changed my mind. This is —”

“Sorry, Elza,” I say. “Sorry. We have to do this. I can’t . . . I don’t want to go crazy. I just can’t.”

“We already agreed,” Ash says, hard-faced.

“Yes,” Elza says. “I suppose we did.”

“Let’s just get this over with,” I tell them.

Before I can think twice about the rite, I turn away from the girls and face the stone circle. I take a deep breath, like I’m about to dive down under the water, and raise my right hand, pointing my sigil toward the binding ring.

“What once I was, I will again be. By the stone and the hand and the ravendark tree, I beg my Fury: return to me.”

The leaves of the oak trees rustle.

The sigil is growing cold on my finger.

I speak again:

“What once we were, we will again be. By the river and the eye and the everburning tree, I beseech my Fury: return to me.”

The sigil is sending waves of power through my arm, up into my head, my teeth, my tongue, and now my voice is as loud and cold as the crash of Arctic waves.

“What once I was, I will again be! By the lake and the heart and the barrenwhite tree, I bid my Fury: RETURN TO ME!”

I finish the last words of the Rite of Return in an echoing yell. There’s a moment of perfect silence, stillness, and I feel amazing; the ritual feels important, like you’re important and you matter and just in this moment, the universe can hear your voice, dances to your tune, and the ring of stones seems like an invitation, a message written in a language you could read if you only looked closer —

“Luke!”

I come back into myself. One foot is poised to walk toward the Devil’s Footsteps and cross the line of my protective circle. I withdraw it and stand totally still.

My sigil is pulsing with cold, like a frozen heart.

“Are you all right?” Elza’s shouting.

“I’m fine,” I say. “It’s OK, really.”

“Did it work?” Ash asks me.

“Yes,” I say.

For a moment, nothing does seem to be happening. I’d almost think I got it wrong, except I know I didn’t, the way you sometimes know you’ll score a goal even before your foot touches the ball. The rite worked.

Then, silently, the golden ring lying in the middle of the Footsteps seems to explode, like someone struck oil under the mud and moss. Black smoke boils up out of the ground, and I see the hungry orange glint of flame. A screaming noise is building, a sound beyond the human and beyond even the animal, a cry of elemental rage. It builds and builds until the stones of the circle themselves must be vibrating, and I’ve got my ears plugged with my fingers as the black mass within the circle surges and grows. It shoots out tendrils of shadow, probing the boundaries of the magic circle like an ink-dark jellyfish searching for a crack in a bottle.

The probing lasts only a few moments, and then the demon contracts, molding itself into a pillar of dark smoke maybe nine feet tall, higher even than the largest stone. The top of its mass congeals into a familiar jackal-like head, with two blazing pinpoints of flame where the eyes would be. The thing looks at me, then turns its head to take in Elza and Ash as well.

The Fury opens its volcanic jaws and treats us all to a deafening bellow.

Being careful not to move so much as an inch toward the boundary of my circle, I turn to look at the girls. Elza looks anxious, disgusted, one hand cradling the knife inside her jacket.

Ash’s face is impossible to describe.

She walks toward me, her gray eyes fixed on the stone circle, on the demon trapped inside. She approaches until she’s standing nearly beside me, and then gets even closer. She’s right beside the flattest stone, looking over it at the Fury. The demon stares back, leaning its awful black jackal head toward her, but she doesn’t shy away an inch. The white-haired girl and the beast of pure shadow take each other in.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” Ash asks it.

The Fury gives no response at all.

“We were six,” Ash tells it. “We were little girls. I don’t suppose it matters to you how old I was. I don’t even know what you are, what it’s like to be you. Whether you feel afraid, if you feel anything at all.”

Ash’s white hands are clenched into fists.

“Afraid or not,” she says to the demon, “sorry or not. I’m still going to kill you. We’re going to break you apart. There’ll be nothing left.”

The Fury still hasn’t said a word. It’s impossible to read emotion in those burning eyes, the strange sculpted smoke of its body. It has as much reaction to Ash’s speech as the stones around it.

“If you’re waiting for it to beg,” I tell her, “we might be here a long time.”

Ash doesn’t reply.

“Let’s put it in the mirror,” I say. “It doesn’t have anything to say to us.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Ash screams at me.

“Ash! Can we just —”

“You don’t know! You have no idea!”

“Ash!” Elza yells.

“And you!” Ash shouts at her. “Both of you —”

“Ash!” Elza screams back. “There’s someone here!”

“What?” Ash asks. Her anger is gone, like it was never there.

I follow her gaze. Ilana is standing at the edge of the clearing — long, dirty hair, mint-green hospital gown, her left arm missing. She’s staring at Ash and the demon.

Elza is backing away from the ghost. “Is that your twin?” she asks Ash.

“What’s she doing here?” I ask.

“I don’t . . . She must have followed us. . . .” Ash says. She calls out to Ilana in their twin-speak, but the spirit doesn’t respond. She’s still looking at the demon.

Just as I’m wondering what on earth Ilana is thinking about, she starts to scream. The scream is high and brittle and seems to split the clearing in half.

The Fury opens its mouth and screams in response, a deafening choir of agonized voices.

“Ash!” I’m yelling. “Get the mirror! Seal it away!”

Ilana is making noises that actually beat the demon for volume. Elza is cringing on the ground, hands clapped against her head. Ash can’t hear me; she’s pelting headlong at her sister, shouting in their shared language.

“Ash! The mirror! Ash!”

Ash reaches out to Ilana, and her one-armed twin grabs at her and, still screaming, lowers her mouth to Ash’s. Ash lashes out with her sigil hand, but Ilana ignores it. White light is streaming from Ash’s nose and mouth into Ilana. It’s more than last time, much more.

“Elza!”

I still can’t move from the magic circle. All I can do is watch.

“What can I do?” she yells. “Is that her sister?”

“Get Ilana off her! She’s going to kill Ash!”

“How?” Elza asks.

“Use your knife! Do something!”

Elza pulls the pale knife from her jacket, and at the sight of it, the Fury cringes, the first emotion I’ve seen from the thing since we summoned it. The demon isn’t scared of us, but it knows what that blade means.

Elza steps toward the twins. Ash is lying on the moss, eyes open, not moving, and Ilana, no longer screaming, is sucking long, greedy drafts of white light out of Ash’s mouth.

As Elza approaches them, witch blade held toward Ilana, something comes rocketing out of the trees, striking the twins with enormous force. Elza gasps as Ilana is literally sent shooting right through her, twirling high into the air and drifting down to earth as though she were made of feathers.

The Widow stands over Ash, spear held in her right hand. She bellows at Ilana in twin-speak, and Ilana screams back. The one-armed girl turns and flies away into the woods.

“Help us!” I shout.

The Widow doesn’t reply. She rockets off after Ilana, ignoring me, Elza, and the demon.

“Yeah, thanks so much!” I yell as the ghost vanishes into the trees.

Elza leans down over Ash.

“Is she alive?” I ask.

“I think so. She looks . . . old.”

“How do you mean?”

“She’s gotten wrinkles. It’s bizarre.”

“Well, what do we do now?” I wave my arms. “I’m stuck in this circle! We’ve got the Fury here and . . . Elza, the mirror! Get the mirror!”

“How do we use it?”

“I . . . I don’t know! Ash didn’t explain that part.”

I look helplessly back toward the demon. The Fury is floating in the middle of the standing stones. The creature is just waiting for me to break my circle, I realize, and then it’ll be free as well. I can’t mess this up.

“So we don’t know how to bind it?” Elza asks.

“No! Not until Ash comes around.”

“Oh, fantastic,” Elza says. “So we can just sit up here all night, then.”

She slumps down next to Ash, knife still held in her right hand.

“It could be worse,” I say, sitting down as well, slowly and carefully. The magic circle gives me room to sit cross-legged, but sleeping isn’t going to happen.

Elza rests a hand against Ash’s neck.

“Heart’s beating,” Elza says, “but who knows when she’ll come around?”

“What a mess,” I say.

“Her twin . . . What on earth was happening?”

“I think Ilana got upset,” I reply, “because she saw the demon. I don’t think she really knew what she was doing. She just wanted the thing that makes her feel better.”

“Ash’s life,” Elza says, running a finger over the knife blade. “Yuck.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes. The clearing is darkening rapidly. I don’t know if we brought flashlights. I think there’s one in the car. It doesn’t seem too cold, at least.

When I glance over at the demon, I see that it has contracted into an orb of shadow, swirling and twisting like a gas giant. It’s strangely beautiful, something I never expected to say about the Fury.

There’s something I haven’t thought of.

The Book.

“Elza,” I say, “the Book of Eight! It’s still inside the reading machine.”

“I don’t want you looking at it again,” Elza says sharply.

“Come on! Ash could be gone for hours! And I’ve got the reading machine this time —”

“No, Luke. We don’t know what it’ll do to you. What if you go into a fit and break your circle? What if me passing it into the circle counts as breaking it?”

“Point,” I say.

“Besides,” Elza says, “the Book is —” She cuts herself off and gets to her feet, putting the witch blade back inside her jacket.

“There’s people,” she says.

“What?”

“Voices,” Elza says. “People are coming up here.”

“No,” I say, looking from the magic circles to the demon to Ash, lying unconscious on the damp moss. Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get worse.

Because Elza’s right. I can hear voices now, a girl’s laughter, coming this way. And through the dark trees, I can see the searching glare of a flashlight.

I’m willing them to choose somewhere else, but the light comes closer and closer. I can hear voices now, two of them, male and female.

“Hide!” I hiss at Elza, but she shakes her head.

“What’s the point?” she asks me. It’s true; I can hardly go anywhere. Ash is still laid out on the wet moss, unconscious. I think of telling Elza to drag her somewhere at least, into the bushes, but there’s no time. The Fury still seems to be sleeping, or waiting, whatever it’s doing. It hangs silently in the middle of the Devil’s Footsteps, expanding and contracting slowly, occasionally letting a tendril of blackness escape its main body in order to probe the edge of the circle. It looks like ink dropped into a glass of water.

The voices are audible now, a boy and a girl.

“— telling you, it’s creepy up here.”

“I’m terrified,” the girl’s saying, but in a teasing voice.

“Really,” the guy says, “it’s spooky. It’s some pagan stuff. They say the Devil put the stones here.”

“I can’t believe it’s so near the school,” the girl says.

I think I recognize the voices.

“Yeah. Well, better than Holiday’s thing, I’m telling you.”

“I can’t believe she would say that to me. I mean, I worked so hard on this fashion show with her. It was my idea, basically, and then she says Emily can go before me —”

“Harsh,” the guy says. “Well, we can have some fun, right?”

“Yeah.” The girl laughs.

Elza looks over at me with panic. The couple are right on top of us, just coming through the bushes at the far end of the clearing.

“I’m telling you,” the guy says, “they used to have human sacrifices —” The flashlight’s beam sweeps over me, the light searing my eyes.

“What the hell?” the girl shrieks.

“Hello,” I say, palms open, making sure to stay inside the circle.

The Fury has formed back into the dog-headed human shape it likes to take and is watching the new arrivals with unpleasant interest.

“Is that Luke?” the guy asks.

“Yeah, mate,” I say. “It’s me. Hey, Kirk. Hey, Alice.”

“What are you doing here?” Kirk Danknott asks.

“Oh, my god!” Alice Waltham shrieks. “His dog’s here, too!”

At first I think she means Ham, that Ham’s followed us somehow, and then I realize Kirk is pointing the flashlight at Elza. With the light off my face, I can see the pair of them in the dimness: Kirk in a gray tracksuit and neon-orange sneakers, Alice dressed in jeans and a hooded red Adidas jacket. She’s holding a big bottle of beer.

“What are you doing?” Kirk asks me.

“There’s someone on the ground!” Alice says. “Kirk! There’s someone on the ground! It’s Ashley!”

Oh, great.

“Look, if we can all calm down —” I begin.

“They’re sacrificing her!” Alice screams. “They’re trying to sacrifice Ash! I said they were, like, satanists! I told you!”

“We haven’t hurt her,” Elza says as calmly as possible under the circumstances. She’s squinting in the flashlight beam.

“Oh, yeah?” Kirk says. “Looks pretty hurt to me.”

“She’s . . . asleep,” I say lamely.

Alice gets her phone out and waves it at me like she’s holding a gun.

“I’m going to call the police!” she says. “I’m calling them now!”

“There’s no signal here,” Elza says.

From the way Alice is frowning, I imagine Elza’s right.

“Look,” I say, “you should really just go. This isn’t a safe place.”

“Why?” Alice snaps at me. “What are you two freaks doing?”

“They’re psychos,” Kirk says. “Let’s just go.”

“What? And just leave Ashley?” Alice sneers. “Are you scared of them?”

I remember Kirk in the park, watching my body eating an entire dead bird. I think he’s pretty scared of me.

“We’re not going to hurt anyone,” Elza says. “But you really should leave.”

“Or you’ll what?” Alice asks. “You’ll put a spell on me?”

“No,” Elza says sharply, “of course not.”

Alice turns to me.

“This is your idea, isn’t it, Luke? You’re playing a game? You think you’re magic?”

“Yeah,” I say, “it’s a stupid game.”

“Come over here,” Alice says. “Help us with Ash. Your game’s not funny. She needs a doctor or something.”

“I can’t,” I say.

“Oh,” Alice laughs. “You’ve got to stay in your magical circle. Is that the game?”

“No,” I say.

“So come here and help me with Ash.”

I don’t move.

Alice Waltham stalks over to me. She’s grinning.

“You’re really messed up, aren’t you?” she says.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I say to her.

“Alice, seriously,” Kirk says.

“Run away,” she says to Kirk. Alice turns back to me. “What if I go in your magic circle?” she asks.

“You’ll die,” I say, staring at her, trying to convince her with my expression.

Alice just laughs.

She takes a step toward the rim of the circle, the big one, the circle binding the Fury. The demon is pressed up against the magic barrier, as close to her as it can get. One of its long black hands is nearly touching her shoulder. Alice turns to me again.

“You’re ridiculous,” she says.

“Alice!” Elza runs toward her, trying to drag her back, but Kirk blocks her with his body. Elza screams at him and draws out the witch blade. Kirk leaps out of the way, but it’s too late.

“You need to get this into your weirdo heads. There’s no such thing”— Alice steps across the spray-painted white line, into the middle of the Devil’s Footsteps —“as magic.”

She turns to look at us, grinning, and the Fury pushes one of its spidery black hands into her face, through her eye.

Alice is still smiling, but she’s frozen in place, like a statue. The Fury, seeming to find what it was looking for, slips into Alice’s face, dividing into strands of living black smoke that crawl into her body through her ears, her eyes, her mouth, her nostrils, and the pores of her skin. Within a second, the demon is completely inside her. She’s still facing us. Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes look desperate. They roll in their sockets, as if she’s trying to move her body and can’t. Then they close.

I’m moving backward, breaking my magic circle (what does it matter now?), backing away toward Elza and Kirk, who’s looking from Alice to the knife in Elza’s hand as though he doesn’t know which to be more frightened of. Alice’s eyes are still closed. Her mouth is open as if she’s screaming, but no sound is coming out.

“What?” Kirk gasps. “What?”

“Shut up,” Elza says. “She’s being possessed.”

I point my sigil toward Alice, and Elza takes her place beside me, holding the bone knife out toward the stone circle. Kirk is still whining to us.

“What the hell do you mean, she’s possessed? That’s not real. You’re nuts. I’m gonna get the police, mate. This is, like, a human-rights abuse —”

“Be quiet!” Elza snarls.

Alice’s eyes snap open. Her mouth is drawn out into a pained-looking smile.

Before any of us can say anything, she lets out a shrill scream and turns away from us, vanishing into the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing. She’s gone before I can even let out my breath. Kirk’s flashlight illuminates an empty stone circle.

“What just happened?” he breathes.

“She’s been possessed by a demon,” I tell him.

Kirk looks at us with the panicked eyes of someone who’s been told the plane is going down and there aren’t any parachutes.

“Mate,” he says, “are you . . . are you, like, magic?”

“Yes!” Elza shouts. “We’re, like, magic! And we’re all in big, big trouble!”

“Kirk,” I say, “thanks to you and Alice, there’s an evil spirit loose in Dunbarrow. I hope you’re happy.”

“I’ve got human rights,” he repeats.

“This thing isn’t human!” Elza yells.

“Well, what did you bring it here for?” he asks us.

“Excellent question! Kirk bloody Danknott hits the nail right on the head!” Elza shouts. Why did we bring it here, Luke?”

“What we’re going to do,” I tell Kirk, “is go and kill it. You”— I point at him, letting him see my sigil, in the vain hope it might confer on me some kind of authority over the living as well —“are going to stay here. And you are going to make sure she”— I point down at Ash —“is OK. And if she wakes up, tell her Alice Waltham is possessed and she went toward the school. Are you clear?”

He doesn’t look at all clear.

“Sit down!” Elza snaps in a schoolteacher tone. “Look after Ash!”

Kirk sits down. He looks like he’s going to cry. He scratches his stubbly head.

“I’m going to sue both of you,” he says. “This is, like, emotional abuse.”

“I look forward to hearing from your lawyer,” Elza says. “Luke, we have to go!”

I give Kirk one last look, and then I turn and rush off into the forest. We’ll just have to hope he stays put. Alice has a head start, but I can clearly hear her crashing through the undergrowth downhill. The demon is covering ground fast, trying to get out of the woods. Elza has taken Kirk’s flashlight, and the beam casts crazy roiling shadows over the landscape as she runs. I’m already breathing hard; I haven’t been training properly since I got kicked off the school rugby team. I slip in mud, get my jeans caught in brambles.

I can hear Alice ahead of us, and at one point the light illuminates a flash of her red Adidas top in the distance. I think we’re gaining on the demon. What I don’t understand is why it’s running.

“Where is it taking us?” I yell to Elza.

“I think it’s afraid of the knife!”

“How do we get it out of Alice?”

“I don’t know, Luke!”

Hurtling downhill in the dark takes its toll. I fall twice, scrambling in the wet earth, pulling myself up and running on without even thinking about it. My Lacostes are going to be completely ruined. Branches clutch at my face and slap my arms; stinging nettles brush my hands and cause patches of welts to rise on the back of my fingers. We keep running.

We break out of the woods, into the empty lot that separates them from the school playing fields. It’s full dark now, with a big white moon hanging above the rugby grounds and Dunbarrow High.

There’s a small silhouette sprinting across the moonlit grass, heading for the school.

“I can’t believe this,” Elza gasps beside me.

“Bad luck,” I say.

“I knew this was stupid! I said so!”

“Yeah,” I say, watching Alice recede across the school grounds, “you did. Come on, we have to follow her.”

Elza is flagging.

“It’s the cigarettes,” I say. “Clog up your lungs. I’m always telling you.”

“Shut up,” she rasps, “just shut up and run.”

The possessed have the advantage of endless stamina, as far as I can tell. We manage a pained half-jog across the playing fields, and by the time we reach Dunbarrow High, the demon-ridden girl is nowhere to be seen. Elza has to stop and lean against a wall to catch her breath.

“Where do you think it went?” I ask.

“I’m not sure. . . .” Elza huffs. “I think those doors that are wrenched off their hinges might be a good clue.”

Sure enough, the doors that lead into the school from the main yard have been smashed open. We make our way across the yard, crunching as we step in the broken glass around the doors.

Alice Waltham is lying in the entrance hall, facedown.

We approach her, Elza first, holding out the witch blade.

Alice groans. “Who’s that?”

“It’s Elza and Luke,” Elza says. “Can you move?”

“I cut my hands,” she says.

“Elza,” I say, “is that her? Where is it?”

Elza reaches down and rolls Alice onto her back. There’s no frantic grin on Alice’s face anymore. Her eyes look up at us, sad and empty. Her face and hands were cut by the glass, and there’s blood on the tiles.

“What the . . . what did you do to me?” she asks.

“We didn’t do anything,” Elza says.

“It’s somewhere else,” I say. “It isn’t in her. It’s somewhere else in the building.”

“What are you talking about?” Alice whimpers.

“The thing that hurt you,” Elza says. “We have to take care of it. Stay here.”

“Holiday’s fashion show,” I say to Alice, “the charity show. Is it still happening?”

“Yes . . .” Alice says, confused.

I look at Elza. She nods, and we leave Alice behind, hurrying off into the darkened corridors of the school. We make our way to the main hall, heading for the sound of applause.

We open the double doors as quietly as possible, slipping into the back of the room. The school auditorium has been transformed for the big event. There’s a catwalk protruding out into the middle of the room, surrounded by circular tables draped with white cloths. The tables are ringed with parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters. I don’t think anyone is here who isn’t related to the girls who organized the show. Holiday is raising money for a charity that supplies clean water to African villages. There have been several announcements about this in assembly.

“I never thought I’d say this,” Elza whispers, “but I feel bad leaving Alice like that.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“Can’t we tell a teacher she’s there?”

“And then what? They’ll ask us how we knew, and what we’re doing here anyway. She won’t die.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Elza says. “I’m so angry with her. I could’ve strangled her after what she did up at the Footsteps.”

A few people at the nearest tables are looking over at us. I realize how we look: scared, breathless, covered in mud. Elza has twigs stuck in her hair. I wave uneasily at someone’s mum, and she looks away in a hurry. I scan the faces in the crowd, looking for someone holding their smile a little too long, someone with something other than joy in their grin. This is a nightmare, with so many potential hosts for the demon to hide inside.

Holiday is up onstage, holding a microphone. “Next we have Evelyn,” she says, her voice echoing through the PA system, “modeling an exciting spring look.”

Evelyn Elkhart, one of Holiday’s courtiers, saunters down the catwalk. Her exciting spring look seems to be some kind of military jumpsuit, paired with neon-pink boots. She strikes a pose, to muted applause.

“This thing could’ve gone anywhere,” Elza hisses.

“I know. Let’s just keep moving.”

I press on, smiling apologetically as we block people’s view. Holiday frowns when she sees us crossing the space in front of the catwalk, but her cheerful commentary doesn’t miss a beat. Evelyn has been replaced by Maddy, who’s wearing a polka-dot dress and some kind of vest made of fur. We’ve made it across the school auditorium, and I duck behind a long blue curtain that hangs at the side of the stage. Nobody’s around; we’re backstage, out of sight. Applause ripples through the hall behind us. This is eerie. If it was going to attack us anywhere, it would be here. There’s a doorway that leads into some rooms I’ve never been in before, which seem to be the school kitchens. We turn in the opposite direction, heading for an unmarked fire door.

“Where are we going?” Elza asks.

“Who knows?” I reply, swinging the door open.

I’m faced with a bedlam of half-dressed girls, racks of clothes, mounds of shoes. This seems to be where the “models” are changing in between their walks. Before I can so much as open my mouth to apologize, one of them spots me, and chaos breaks out: screaming, swearing, several girls throwing shoes in the direction of the door, which seems a bit much. I narrowly avoid having my eye taken out by a six-inch silver stiletto.

“Yeah, not that way,” I tell Elza, slamming the door. “What do we do now?”

“I have no idea, Luke!” Elza pinches the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know! The Fury could be anywhere! It might not even be in the school anymore! I just . . . How are we supposed to find it?”

“When Ash —”

“Oh, Ash doesn’t know what she’s doing! None of us do! This was so stupid!”

“Look, let’s just keep calm.” I rub Elza’s shoulder. “We can deal with this. We dealt with the Fury before.”

“Luke Manchett?” comes a voice behind us. “Elza Moss?”

I turn around. Mr. Hallow is standing behind us. It seems like he’s just come out of the kitchens. I nearly jump out of my skin, but my math teacher makes no move to attack us. He stares at us with an odd expression.

“I’ve been looking for the pair of you. I found a girl in bad shape in the southern hallway — very upset. Alice Waltham. She says you are responsible.”

Shit.

“We, er . . .” I start to say, gesturing in the air.

“The thing is —” Elza begins, smiling innocently.

The fire door behind us slams open, and a girl stands there, hair tangled, wearing a tie-dye jacket. “Mr. Hallow,” she begins, “Luke just came in and looked at us all changing —”

“I’m dealing with it, Stephanie,” he says. “Thank you.”

“— and he was taking pictures on his phone,” she continues.

“I was not!” I protest.

Stephanie doesn’t even argue with me. She just gives me and Elza a chilly android expression of contempt.

“Stephanie, I’ll speak to you later,” Mr. Hallow says.

Stephanie nods and closes the fire door again.

“This is very serious,” the teacher continues once she’s gone. “The police have been called.” His mouth twitches. For a moment there he almost looked amused. Some teachers like nothing better than to exercise their authority, I guess.

Elza bites her lip.

Where did the demon get to? How are we supposed to find it if we get locked up for assault?

“I need you to come to the receptionist’s office,” Hallow tells me, leaving no question that we’re supposed to follow him. Elza’s still got the witch blade in her jacket; that’s going to look bad if they search us. Mr. Hallow leads us back out through the main hall, into the darkened corridors of the school.

How are we going to get out of this? What did Alice tell him? Is she safe? What’s happened to the demon? I feel like we’re going to the gallows. We could not have screwed this up worse than we did. Ash is probably still unconscious in the forest, under the dubious care of Kirk. We’re both going to get expelled. Elza should ditch the knife somewhere . . . but how? Hallow’s watching us. What did Alice tell him? Did she say she found us trying to sacrifice Ash?

We pass halls of locked classrooms and round a corner, and we’re in the main entrance hall of the school, receptionist’s office on the left. There’s nobody else here.

I turn to look at Mr. Hallow for the first time since we started walking, hoping maybe I can find some excuse for Elza to go to the bathroom or give him the slip or something. He’s standing in the dark doorway, staring at the two of us. His face, normally slightly irritated-looking, like there’s a bad smell somewhere in the room, has twisted into an expression of ferocious joy.

Elza’s first reaction is to scream, which I think is pretty sensible. My first reaction is to aim my sigil hand at Mr. Hallow, with the vague hope that something might happen. The ring refuses to oblige me. Elza’s second reaction is to grab at my sleeve, pulling me backward and off-balance. I stumble and fall hard on the linoleum tiling of the school hall.

The demon was inside him the whole time! Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should’ve noticed, should’ve thought . . . but the demon had never spoken to us before. It must have learned more about how to control people’s bodies. I should’ve been more alert, and now we’re right where the demon wants us — alone.

He advances toward us, his shoes clacking on the tiles. The hall is lit by the glow of street lamps out in the parking lot. The demon-possessed Mr. Hallow is between us and any plausible exit. Behind us is the empty entrance hall and the large front doors of Dunbarrow High, which, since it’s after hours, are locked. Elza screams again, but we’re about as far from the fashion show in the auditorium as you can get; I doubt anyone is going to hear her.

Mr. Hallow shrieks like a bird of prey, a mockery of Elza’s own cries, and lunges for her. Elza’s boots leave scuff marks on the floor as she twists, waving the witch blade at him, unwilling to actually strike. I can’t imagine it’ll help us much if she does stab Mr. Hallow, since the demon can leave his body anytime it wants to. Knifing a teacher to death after hours seems like it would have a pretty severe effect on your college choices.

The demon knows this, too. Mr. Hallow lunges at Elza again, heedless of her blade, and knocks her down onto the floor. Elza’s struggling, trying to get free, but he’s got her trapped tight by the hair, fist crunched into a death grip right at the crown of her head. She’s shrieking like a banshee. Hallow’s smile is unchanged. He gets Elza’s throat in his other hand and starts to squeeze. I try to pull him off her, but his body is like a statue, immovable.

I punch Mr. Hallow as hard as I can in the face. He doesn’t even look at me.

He’s got Elza’s knife hand trapped now.

She can’t breathe.

What do I —

I need to knock him out. The demon can’t use Hallow’s body if he’s unconscious.

The fire extinguisher. There’s a fire extinguisher in the corner of the hallway. I’ll hit Hallow with it and —

There’s an explosion of cold, like an icy wave breaking over us, and Mr. Hallow goes limp, his body collapsing forward. Elza wrenches his hand from her throat, gasping. Mr. Hallow falls onto her like a man-size rag doll. I pull him off her.

The whole thing happened in moments.

“You’re OK,” I say. “You’re OK.”

Elza is gasping. At least she can breathe.

I look up to see what’s happened to the demon.

The Widow, her bare feet tensed against the floor, is holding her broken spear with both hands. The spear is stuck into a writhing mass of black shadows that I realize is the Fury — she hit the demon so hard, it was knocked clean out of Mr. Hallow’s body. The Widow seems to be trying to force the demon flatter into the ground, both arms tensed against the spear, but the demon’s body flows out and around the spear point, and the black mass forms back into the humanoid shape I’m all too familiar with, jackal-headed and furnace-mouthed. The Fury roars and unfurls its whip of flame. The whip is a thin lash of brilliant orange fire, which the demon uses to take unfortunate spirits apart. The Widow takes a step back, keeping perfect poise, never once taking her eyes off the whip.

The Fury sends the lash curling toward the Widow, who jumps nimbly aside and strikes out with her spear, catching the Fury in the shoulder. The blow doesn’t seem to do any lasting damage, but the demon doesn’t like it. The Fury bellows and answers with a flurry of blows from the whip, sending the flames coiling in impossible contortions toward the Widow, who somehow avoids every blow. The demon is clearly becoming frustrated. The Widow bends backward, almost double, to avoid a horizontal swipe — she moves with the frightening grace of a leopard — and yells to us, “Ashana is coming!”

“Where?” Elza screams, her voice back, and she’s answered by a sudden flash of white light all around us. I turn and see light flowing in through the main doors of Dunbarrow High, accompanied by a tremendous noise. I barely have time to register the light as coming from a car’s headlights when Ash rams the double doors, breaking them open.

The doors don’t explode like they might in a movie; they just collapse inward. Ash reverses her car, which is still running fine, even though the front is now crumpled like a half-finished origami, the car apparently being one of those invincible ancient models that could probably survive a nuclear blast. Me and Elza rush out through the broken doors into the staff parking lot. Ash has brought her car to a halt and is already out of it, running around to the back.

“It’s in there!” I shout. “With the Widow!”

“I know!” Ash says.

“The alarms!” Elza’s saying. “The alarms!”

“The what?” I ask her.

“Burglar alarms!” Elza screams at me. “You don’t think anyone will notice we just ram-raided Dunbarrow High? And Hallow already said he called the police! We need to go! Now!”

“Not yet,” Ash says. She opens the trunk of her car and is struggling with the mirror. I rush to help her. We heft it down onto the asphalt of the parking lot. Ash tears the wrapping off it, inspects the mirror for damage.

“Ash!” Elza yells.

I turn to look. The Widow is falling back, dancing through the broken double doors, jabbing this way and that with her spear. Her long black hair flows as she dodges and pirouettes. I have the greatest respect for her grace and skill, and I’ve never seen any other spirit go up against this thing and stand even the slightest chance, but she’s clearly in trouble. As it comes after her, into the parking lot, the Fury seems bigger than ever, longer and lither and thinner, like a sketch of someone’s nightmare that they scribbled down as they were waking. The demon is clearly a match for Ash’s servant, and the flaming whip is coming closer and closer to its target. As I watch, the Widow ducks a fraction of a second too slow, and the demon’s whip shears into her trailing hair, causing the ghost to cry out.

“Help her!” I say to Ash.

“It’s OK,” Ash says to us, smiling. “We’ve got it.”

She taps the mirror with her left hand and says a word I don’t understand. The mirror flares with white light, brighter than the headlights of her car, so bright I have to cover my eyes with my hands. There’s a high ringing tone, like a bell. The Fury roars in response, seeming to realize too late what’s going on.

A wind starts to blow, air being sucked into the surface of the mirror. Through my fingers I can see the demon frantically trying to escape, Widow forgotten, flying as fast as it can away from the parking lot, trying to get back into the school. The demon manages to make it a few paces toward the broken front doors, but the force emanating from Ash’s mirror becomes stronger still. The scene is beyond surreal, the whole parking lot and front of the school floodlit by the incredible radiance coming out of the mirror. Despite the Fury’s efforts, it can’t move any farther away from us. The Fury expends more and more energy just to keep itself in the same place, and then, as the ringing of the bell becomes louder and higher, the demon is drawn back toward the surface of the mirror. It shrieks and struggles, becoming longer and thinner, scrabbling at the asphalt with frantic fingers, but the ground might as well be made of ice for all the purchase the Fury can gain on it. With a final squeal of rage, the demon is drawn out as flat and long as a black ribbon, stretching an impossible distance, and then, like smoke being pulled into an extractor fan, the demon’s body is sucked into the surface of the mirror.

The shrilling bell fades. The light cuts out, and I take my hands away from my face, my vision streaked with those purple-and-green afterimages you get if you look at the sun. Elza looks equally dazed. My ears are still ringing.

“Well,” Ash says, “that could totally have gone worse.”