13 Days of Midnight

When I wake up on Friday morning, I hear a man’s voice coming from Mum’s room. I run in to her and find there’s a crude star drawn in black paint above her headboard: a slashed, spiky rune that takes up half the wall — the same symbol the Shepherd had tattooed on his palms. She’s lying still and straight, bedsheets covering her body up to her neck. Her hair is tucked behind her ears. She looks peaceful. I can’t tell if she’s breathing or not. The voice I could hear was her CD player, a man’s cheerful voice reciting some self-esteem exercise.

“Only you have to power to effect lasting personal change,” the CD player says to itself.

I shake her by the shoulders. She doesn’t wake. I can’t find her pulse, but her arm feels warm. I hold a hand mirror to her face, and she breathes the faintest film of fog over it. She’s alive, then, whatever they did to her. I sit on the floor beside her bed. I should’ve said something to her, but I don’t know what I could have told her. She believes in the spirit world as an abstract place full of energy and good vibes rather than as a malicious storm of darkness. How would I have explained the Prisoner or the Shepherd to her? I should call an ambulance . . . and then what? They’ll give her a CAT scan? Put her on a drip and wait for her to wake up? I’ll get put in foster care. I can’t think of people who’ll be less responsive to my stories about evil spirits than a gang of paramedics and social workers. I’m on my own. Whatever the Host has done to her, I have to deal with it.

I turn the CD player off so hard that the power button breaks. I leave her room, shut the door, and walk out onto the landing. I feel like the ghosts must be watching me, watching Mum, waiting to see what I’ll do.

“Show yourselves!” I’m shouting. “Come out! What have you done to her? Don’t hide from me! Show yourselves!”

There’s a sharp rapping at the front door. My spine fizzes, like it’s been filled with electrified ice. My throat tightens. Ham starts to yelp in the kitchen.

Whatever’s at the front door doesn’t answer. Peering down the stairway into the hall, I can see a dark human shape, silhouetted beyond the door’s pane of rippled glass. I’ve met five of the eight ghosts.

There’s another flurry of knocks. I make my way down the stairs, one step at a time. The figure outside grows closer but no clearer. The morning is overcast, the dim light coming into the hallway almost feels like dusk. Ham yowls behind the kitchen door. I realize I left my meat skewer up in my bedroom, although what good it would do I don’t know.

“I waited for you all of yesterday. You were supposed to come to my place? What’s going on? Is your Host here?”

There’s a light drizzle falling. She’s wearing muddy combat boots and a black wool peacoat that looks like it was cut for someone twice her size. She gives me an impatient look.

“Am I talking to myself? Look, my hair’s getting wet. I’m coming inside.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “There have been, like, developments. . . . I haven’t been able to come by. I didn’t get your . . . how do you even know where I live?”

“Internet,” she snaps. “Your house feels haunted. Incredibly haunted. I don’t even like standing in the hallway. What happened?”

“Nor do I. I thought this would keep me straight, it usually does”— she holds up the stone that she wears around her neck — “but feeling what it’s like in your house, I don’t know.”

“Wyrdstone. Has a naturally occurring hole. They’re very rare. Druids used them to ward off evil spirits. Is that your dog I can hear in the kitchen?”

I lead her down the hallway and open the kitchen door. Ham leaps up at me, dragging his paws down the front of my pants.

“Hmm. I was expecting a terrier or something. Hello,” she says to Ham. She grabs his head and starts rubbing the skin behind his ears. He grumbles with joy. I walk into the kitchen, not sure what I’m going to do. What does Elza want? Can she actually help me? What am I going to do about Mum? She’s lying above us right now, trapped in sleep.

“So this is it,” Elza says behind me. I turn around. She’s still petting Ham, but she’s looking at the kitchen table, at the Book of Eight.

“Now, your dog is bigger than I was imagining.And yet the fabled book is smaller. It’s practically pocket-size.”

She pushes Ham away and picks up the Book. Her fingers start to work at the clasps.

“No, what happened? You look completely hollowed out. You look like someone died.”

“It’s Mum. The Host tried to take over yesterday afternoon. This ghost, the Shepherd, he tried to trick me and kill me. Then they did something to her. . . . She won’t wake up.”

I take Elza upstairs, with Ham trotting along behind us. I let us all into Mum’s room. It’s exactly as I left it: Mum’s tribal masks still hanging on the walls, her books about ley lines and communication with angels still on her bookshelf. There’s a single slipper on the floor, halfway between the bed and the doorway. It looks lost.

Elza steps past me and moves toward the bed, looking at the enormous spiky star on the far wall. She’s still wearing her boots, and they leave small dabs of mud on the carpet. She looks up at the ceiling, then kneels down and lifts the sheets on Mum’s bed, looking into the space beneath it.

“Looking to see where the spell is coming from. I imagine it’s produced by the obvious mark on the wall, but you never know. There’s nothing under here, anyway.”

“I don’t think so. I mean, we could try, but you won’t be able to wash it off. A mark like that, it’s more than paint. Maybe if we took the wall out with a crowbar. But even then . . . I’d be worried about your mum if we did. It might make things worse.”

“Do you know how to break the spell?” I think it’s a measure of how much my life has changed that it doesn’t even sound like a stupid question anymore.

“No,” Elza says, “not really. When it comes to magic, I’m like someone who can turn a TV on but doesn’t know how to build one. I have a wyrdstone and I can make hazel charms, but I don’t know why they work. I just know they do.”

“I can’t wake your mum up, Luke. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know how to start.”

Ham is standing beside Mum’s bed, sniffing eagerly. He starts to nuzzle at her pillows and whine. I look away. My eyes feel hot and swollen.

To my surprise Elza steps forward and wraps me in a tight hug. She smells of cigarettes. I rest my chin on the rough, damp wool of her coat. I barely knew her two days ago, and here we are, embracing. Even with my eyes blurred by tears I start to smile. I don’t know what Holiday would make of this. After a few moments, Elza slaps me hard on the back and lets me go.

“I think that’s how you rugby boys handle emotions, right? Lots of backslaps? Someone downs a beer? I didn’t bring any cans with me, unfortunately.”

“I don’t want to spend any longer here than we have to,” she’s saying. “This house isn’t secure, and I don’t think I can make it safe for us to work in. I still think you should come across to my house in Towen Crescent. Bring your beast as well.”

“Luke, I get that you’re very worried about your mum. I’m worried, too. But realistically, the best chance you have of doing anything for her is not calling a doctor, and it’s not sitting up every night next to her bed until Halloween. The best thing we can do is try to get the Book of Eight open and find out what’s inside. Find something that’ll help us.”

“I don’t even know if I want to open that book. The Shepherd, when he opened it up, the stuff I saw inside was —”

“Well, I don’t think we have another choice. And I’m not staying here — they’re probably listening to every word I’m saying. My house is warded with hazel charms, so uninvited spirits can’t enter. The best thing you can do now is get everything your dad left you and bring it to my house immediately.”

“Then she’ll die,” Elza says. Her eyes are muddy green, the irises wide and dark. Her gaze doesn’t leave mine. “She’ll die. You’ll die once they find a way to break their bonds. We all might. But today she’s alive, which suggests to me that if they were going to kill her, they already would’ve done it. She’s your blood, your mother, and that can be important for some types of magic. I think your ghosts have some plan for her, and the sooner we find a way to stop them, the safer she’ll be. I can keep your book at my house without raising suspicion, but even if we put your mum in a wheelbarrow or something and take her over there, the first thing my parents are going to ask is ‘Why is there a woman in a coma lying in our spare room?’ and I won’t have an answer for them. She’ll be off to the hospital before you know it, and hospitals aren’t good places. Lots of people die there, they’ll be full of spirits. The walls between here and Deadside will be thin. Bad place to be come Halloween. The best thing you can do for her is leave her. Come with me. Now.”

I look at Mum, at her bronze hair, her lined, worried-looking forehead, the sheets dipping and raising ever so gently as she breathes in her sleep. Ham butts at her pillows. They could come back and kill her right now and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. I have to learn to use the Book. Just because I’m leaving doesn’t mean I won’t come back.

I drag my gaze away from Mum and look at Elza, thin-lipped, arms folded, a wet strand of hair trailing over her face.

“Good,” she says. “Because, honestly, I need to get out of this house right now. I feel like I’ve got a nosebleed in a shark tank.”

I go into my bedroom, grab all of Dad’s papers, and shove them back into the document wallet Mr. Berkley gave me. Elza is in the hallway with the door open, holding the Book of Eight in one hand and Ham’s leash in the other. I don’t know how long this is going to take, and I can’t leave him here with nobody to feed him.

I notice the raincoat I wore to Berkley’s office hanging in the hallway, and it nudges at my memory. So many things have happened since Monday afternoon, and I’d forgotten some details. I dip into the inside pocket and bring out the metal case full of Dad’s rings.

“We’ve got company,” she says, ignoring me. She gestures out through the open door.

I put the rings in my backpack, alongside my keys. I look out through the door, to where she’s pointing. My stomach lurches. A woman, dressed all in white, stands at the end of our driveway with her back to us. She’s still as a stone, despite the rain, and I notice her dress doesn’t move as the wind blows.

“New to me,” I say. Hopefully she’s come to apologize for the behavior of her colleagues. Which, admittedly, seems unlikely.

“We don’t have to go past her,” Elza says. “Fastest way to my house is out back, through the fields.”

“I want to know what she has to say. She can’t hurt me. Can she hurt you?”

I lock the front door behind us, and we make our way down the driveway. The gravel crunches under my feet, and rain hisses at the hood of my coat. The bare trees by our gate move in the wind. Their branches are black webs against the sky. Ham flattens his ears against his head as we approach the ghost. Hearing our footsteps, she turns.

It’s two spirits, I realize: a woman and a baby. The woman is wearing what looks like a wedding dress, white and ornate, with a full veil that obscures her face completely. Her feet are bare, but her arms are swathed in extravagant silk gloves. The second ghost, the baby, is wrapped in a well-washed blue blanket. Not one inch of its body is visible, but I see the blanket shifting as something moves inside. I’m amazed, as always, by how utterly real the ghosts are: every bobble and nub of fabric on the baby’s old blanket is clear and sharp to my eyes.

“I am the Oracle,” she says. Her voice is soft and low, calming. “I bear the Innocent.”

“I bring omens, Master,” the Oracle replies. “I have tasted the wind. I have observed portents in the flight of birds.”

“You will shake hands with an ageless man. There will be no lines on his palm.”

“I’ve got the Book and Dad’s notes, and the Shepherd’s going to be sorry he even looked at my mum,” I say. “Tell the Host that.”

The Oracle doesn’t respond. The baby, the Innocent, makes a small sighing noise from within its blanket. I suddenly don’t want to be anywhere near the ghosts.

The Oracle steps aside. We make our way through the front gate. Ham flattens himself against me, shying as far away from the ghosts as he can. The woman’s veiled head tracks me as we leave.

Towen Crescent, Elza’s neighborhood, is a part of Dunbarrow I’ve never had a reason to visit before. It’s a fairly recent development, stuck right out on the northwest edge of the town, and Elza shows me a shortcut across some of the sheep fields behind my house. The houses were built between the smoke-spewing industrial estates and the highway, so the Crescent doesn’t have much in the way of central Dunbarrow’s tourist appeal. It’s a borderland, somewhere you go if you don’t fit in with the rest of our town. It makes sense to find Elza living out here.

“Of the Oracle? Never seen anything like it. Ghosts are never that keen to talk to living people. Your Host isn’t shy.”

“I don’t ‘believe’ in ghosts, Luke, and neither do you. I can see them. When I see someone’s prophecy come true, I’ll accept that as fact as well. Until then, I’ll have my doubts.”

The roads are deserted, the pavement dark with rainwater. The houses are pebble-dashed with steep orange roofs, the gardens cluttered with evergreens and the anemic stalks of telephone poles. Elza’s house, number 19, is at the end of a cul-de-sac, right on the edge of the Crescent. The front of the house boasts a small unkempt lawn, a stone birdbath, a few shrubs.

The house’s hallway is cramped and dark; most of the floor space is occupied with various plastic boxes, stacks of bathroom tiles, and planks of wood. The wallpaper is dark brown, the carpet is scuffed earthy red.

“Excuse the mess,” says Elza without a trace of shame. “We’re still in the process of unpacking.”

“How long have you lived here?” I ask, unleashing Ham, who follows her into the kitchen.

“About twelve years. Mum and Dad both blame each other for how it looks around here. I think for either of them to start unboxing things now would mean they were admitting defeat. You might meet them later, I don’t know. Mum’s working, Dad is off for a fortnight, bird-watching.”

“Oh, yeah. He was laid off last month, so now it’s away to the lakes whenever he can. He loves it; he’s in heaven. Every day is the weekend for him. Practically springs out of bed. It’s quite sickening.” Elza shakes her head with mock disgust. She’s set the kettle to boil.

“My father happens to be extremely passionate about observing British birds. I hope you’re not trying to cast aspersions on his interest, about the lameness or pointlessness of such an activity, because I would be offended on his behalf.”

“It’s totally a cover story. Your dad’s a crack dealer. He goes off to London to resupply.”

“That would delight me. Anything but the truth. He used to take me with him when I was younger. Hours of sitting in a hide, almost motionless. No music. No sweets, because if you rustle too much, birds won’t settle. Plus there’s always some Roman legionary who died out there and you have to watch him wandering around with a Pict’s ax stuck in his head. It was torment.”

“Huh. Mum’s gotten keen on birds recently. They’d probably get along. Do your parents have second sight?”

“No,” says Elza, pouring water into her teapot, “they don’t. They got pretty worried about me, how I just wouldn’t grow out of having imaginary friends. I took my pills for a few years, but the dead people didn’t go away, and I realized there was nothing wrong with me. It was everyone else who couldn’t see things right.”

“It’s life,” she says. “I don’t blame them for it. What would you have done? Second sight is hardly a recognized medical condition.”

“What I still don’t understand is how you were born with it, and I’ve only just developed it. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Which part?” she asks. “Your story makes more sense than mine. Dominion over a Host of spirits binds your soul to theirs. You’re closer to Deadside than other people are; they’re pulling you into it, as if you were tied to enormous helium balloons. As soon as you signed that contract, you started to get pulled upward, or deathward, whatever you want to call it. I’d be more surprised if you couldn’t see ghosts. Me, though, I’ve never known why. Best I can do is maybe there was a witch or necromancer somewhere in my family, centuries ago. My parents are totally normal.”

“It might be genetic, like a recessive trait. Is there any research into this stuff?”

“I mean, how do you even go about proving your premise that second sight exists? Ghosts are harder to prove than you think. And necromancers are usually a secretive bunch. Your dad was a bit of an anomaly on that front.”

“Right here,” I say, tapping my bag. “The Host definitely can’t get in here, can it?”

“I’ve got hazel charms on the front and back doors, and around my bedroom walls especially. Spirits can’t enter this house, except perhaps on Halloween. All bets are sort of notoriously off on Halloween, as I have already mentioned.”

Ham has taken advantage of our distraction to rear up at Elza’s sink, and is busy extracting a Bolognese-encrusted wooden spoon from the sink. He drops it with a start and slinks back down to floor level.

“Uh, no, I named him myself when we got him. I wasn’t that old. He’s named after my favorite sandwich filling.”

“Of course. I suppose it was a bit much to expect any literary allusions from you.”

“Yes, yes. All right, bring your tea upstairs and we’ll get started. Do you mind if we shut Hamlet out in the garden? I can’t say I trust him in the house, sadly.”

I grab Ham’s collar and lead him out through the glass door into Elza’s back garden. Ham drags his feet on the tiles, scrabbling in protest. I apply extra pressure to his neck, and he stomps outside in a huff. The backyard is long and thin, with a tumbledown shed and a scrawny apple tree. The hedges loom above head height, so he shouldn’t be able to escape. I turn back into Elza’s cramped kitchen. She’s standing in the doorway that leads into the hall, watching me.

She gives me one of her infuriating grins and walks out into the hallway, then up the stairs. I follow her across a landing cluttered with cardboard crates and half-assembled furniture and into her bedroom.

Elza’s room is exactly what I expected. It’s tiny, and there’s stuff covering every available surface. There are old mugs and dirty plates in a greasy heap by her bed. There are posters for the Smiths and the Cure, David Bowie and Nick Cave. The wall above her unmade bed is covered in black-and-white photos of dead leaves, broken mirrors, abandoned buildings. Another wall is taken up by a bookshelf, which is collapsing under the weight of secondhand paperbacks and glossy art books. I can’t see any poetry, but I figure she’d probably hide it.

Elza slumps onto her bed and pats the space beside her. The sheets smell of cigarettes. She unzips my backpack and pulls out the Book of Eight and the bundle of Dad’s papers, scattering them all over the purple duvet. She frowns at his nonsense writing.

“And we can’t get this open”— she gestures at the Book — “because the clasps won’t come away. But you’ve seen one of your Host open it, so we know it’s possible.”

Elza looks at the Book of Eight for a few more moments, then leaves the room and comes back with a hammer and a chisel.

“I mean, opening it is a matter of urgency. If you don’t mind me damaging it a bit, I think this is the best way to go. Those clasps look ancient. If you don’t mind,” she repeats, giving me a look that suggests she’s going to smash the Book open whether I mind or not.

I shrug. Elza puts the Book on the floor, kneels beside it, and arranges the chisel so it’s pointed directly into the hinge of one clasp. She raises the hammer in her right hand, then stops. For a moment I think she’s just trying to find the right angle to strike at, or is having second thoughts about breaking the Book, but she holds this position, kneeling, hammer raised to head height, for far longer than looks comfortable. Her arm is starting to shiver with tension.

She’s frowning. Her jaw is clenched. Just as I’m starting to get properly worried, she sighs loudly and brings the hammer back down to the floor. She lets go of the chisel and sits back, looking at the Book with confusion and anger.

“Elza, what are you talking about? You didn’t even try to break it open. You just sat there looking at it with the hammer raised.”

“I don’t think you should try to break into the Book again. I don’t think it appreciates people doing that.”

Elza picks up the chisel and examines the tip for damage. Finding none, she frowns and puts it down. She runs her hands through her storm cloud of black hair.

However irritating I find Elza’s air of being Someone Who Knows About Things, she proves far more enlightened about the mechanics of Dad’s code than me. After a few moments of intense concentration on the pages spread out around her, she goes over to her desk, picks up a small makeup mirror, and holds it to the side of one of the coded pages.

“OK,” Elza says after a moment of peering at the mirror, “it’s like I thought. Some of this is mirror writing. Not the most difficult encryption method in the world to break. I wonder why he even bothered.”

I bend down and hold my head at a weird angle so I can see the reflected page. What was reversed is now the right way around.

“Why on earth would you write some of this backward? It’s coded anyway, right?”

“Very cryptic,” Elza replies. “So: What are these numbers? Are they dates?”

“Could be . . . No, I’m wrong, they make no sense that way. Look at the spacing.”

Elza sits back against the wall. She winds a strand of black hair around her fingers.

“Maybe it’s a spell in itself? Numerology? There’s meant to be power in some numbers. Maybe you say them out loud?”

I slide down onto the floor, spin the Book of Eight around to face me. I try the clasps, but they’re locked tight. I put one hand on the cover.

“Seven,” Elza says, “a one, but it’s reversed, four, three, but the three’s also reversed . . . OK, seven, five —”

“I just don’t think there’s a combination lock to the Book that takes more than a few seconds to use. I mean, how many sheets of this stuff are there?”

Elza sits back upright, lays the hand mirror flat on her duvet. She riffles through the pages of notes Dad left me.

“I mean, am I going to just repeat all of them? I don’t think it works like that.”

“Good point. So the numbers mean something, but we don’t know what. Some are reversed, but we don’t know why. We have a book we can’t open, that resists any effort to break inside. So what else do we — OK, this sheet isn’t just numbers. What’s this?”

She’s holding a sheet of yellowing letter paper with Dad’s handwriting scrawled over it. It’s less densely packed than some of the other pages.

I — the Shepherd. Leadership — vision — speaks for the dead.

II — the Vassal. Loyalty — honor — thankless service.

III — the Heretic. Dissent — naysayer — unloved by God.

IV — the Judge. Reason — closed-minded — pragmatism.

V — the Oracle. Intuition — wide-minded — prophecy.

VI — the Prisoner. Desire — ravenous — an insidious thief.

VII — the Innocent. Peace — purity — the kindling of being.

VIII — the Fury. Power — rage — enemy of life.

IX — the Necromancer. Mastery — sigil bearer — opener of the gate.

“Obviously. But is this about your Host or every Host? Is there always a Shepherd and a Heretic, et cetera? There’s so much I don’t know . . .”

“The Vassal told me a bit but not much. And who knows if what he said was true? He acts helpful, but there’s so much he never says a word about.”

“This part here: ‘The Necromancer — Mastery — sigil bearer.’ What does that mean? That’s talking about you, right? You’re the ninth member of the Host. Their master. So what is the sigil?”

“Hmm.” Elza gets up off her bed, walks to her overstuffed bookshelf, and with cautious Jenga-playing movements eases a fat dictionary out from the bottom of a pile of hardbacks. Standing, she rests the dictionary on the edge of her desk and flips through the translucently thin pages. “OK: ‘From the Latin sigillum, “seal.” A magician’s mark, through which his power is exercised.’ So that’s interesting. This note of your dad’s says you’re supposed to bear a sigil. Where’s your sigil?”

I reach into my backpack and take out the metal case full of rings. I unscrew the lid and let all nine tumble out onto Elza’s floor: golden rings, silver rings, a ring made from smooth green stone. A ring that’s lion-headed, another a silvery skull, a ring set with red stones, another studded with sapphires. Elza raises an eyebrow.

“These are Dad’s,” I say. “He left them to me, with the Book. Do they fit the bill?”

“Quite probably,” she replies. “A seal . . . Traditionally seal rings had designs engraved so they could be pressed into hot wax. Animal sigils . . . maybe this lion?”

She picks up the lion-head ring, turns it over in her hands. She holds it close to one eye, squinting, like she’s trying to see through it, peek at whatever’s hidden inside. She puts it back down.

“What even makes you so sure only one of these is the sigil?” I ask. “Maybe I have to wear all of them. There’s nine, right? One for each of the Host.”

“Sure. And one for the necromancer. The note says ‘the sigil’— singular. I don’t think you’d want people knowing exactly which ring was your sigil. If you wore only one, it’d be obvious. If you wear lots, it’s not as clear. Best place to hide a leaf . . .” She trails off. She closes her eyes, and runs her hands over the pile of rings. She bites her lip and picks one up, eyes still shut. “. . . is a forest,” she says, opening them. She’s holding a dull silver ring with a black stone set into it. “It’s this one,” Elza continues. “I’m certain.”

Elza hands the silver ring to me. I weigh it in my palm. It’s no heavier or lighter than you’d expect, no hotter or colder either, but I notice the black stone is cut into an octagonal shape. The eight-sided black stone doesn’t seem to reflect the light of Elza’s room but instead swallows it, the stone appearing totally black and opaque. I slide it onto the ring finger of my right hand. Although I remember Dad’s hands as far chunkier than mine, the ring is a perfect fit.

I sit back down, the Book in front of me. I pull at the clasps and to my delight and horror they spring open like the mechanism of a trap, with a small, sharp click. The cover is still shut. Elza kneels down on the floor beside me. Her eyes are wide, almost luminous. She’s winding and unwinding a frond of hair in her fist.

I grip the underside of the front cover, about to turn it and read the first page, and the Book swings open by itself, yellowing hand-cut pages thinner than any dictionary’s, thinner than new skin. The pages flow, moving by themselves in a blur, faster than my eye can follow, a torrent of pages that seems like it’ll never end. I see flickers of writing, of drawings and diagrams, and then the Book of Eight comes to a rest, open at what looks like the very middle pages. They’re both blank.

I reach out with my ring hand, my sigil hand, and turn one page to the right. This spread is blank as well. I turn again, and again, each time finding the pages blank and unlined, trackless, dumb.

I turn the pages faster and faster, leafing through ten at a time, grabbing at the Book in desperation, turning pages by the hundred, and each one is blank, blank, blank.

Friday doesn’t get much better from there. the Book of Eight remains blank, no matter how we try to read it. Pleading with the Book, commanding it, threatening it, all result in empty yellowing pages. What’s more, the pages seem to be inexhaustible. No matter how many blank pages I try to turn, we’re always in the exact middle of the Book. Whether it’s a hallucination or some kind of strange defense, we can’t decide.

Instead we turn our attention to Dad’s coded notes. Elza tries numerous code-breaking techniques she found online, without success. After a few hours of this, I’m gnawing at the walls. We need to try something else.

“You’re not giving up, are you?” she asks, glaring over the top of her reading glasses.

“There has to be another way. This isn’t going anywhere. We’ve been trying for three hours now. I can’t just sit here copying numbers while my mum —”

“What do you suggest?” she asks. “We’ve got the sigil, the Book, your dad’s notes. That’s it. What else can we turn to?”

“There’s got to be something else . . . like . . . Berkley and Company! My dad’s solicitor. We could speak to him.”

I think of Berkley’s electric-blue eyes, his predator’s grin. Vellum. . . . We have a man in Cumbria. He knew something, I’m certain. He knew what I was signing for.

“He definitely does,” I say. “Let’s go and ask him about it. And I don’t think we should bother phoning ahead to make an appointment.”

It’s raining when we get into Brackford. Elza’s face is tinted pink by her red umbrella. She clacks along in battered boots, pushing through the rolling horde of shoppers. Ham’s nearly choking on his collar with excitement at how many new friends he can see. We pass a shop window with a display of orange plastic pumpkins, all cut with black leering smiles. I feel like they’re mocking me. Halloween next Friday. We’ve got one week. The idea of Dad’s solicitor offering any kind of advice seems remote, but I feel sure he must know something. I run my thumb over the stone set in Dad’s ring.

“Oh, he went to university in September. London. Two weeks in he tells me he’s met someone else. So screw him, and screw Stephanie from Leeds, too. And no, I didn’t stalk her online.”

“It’s all right. I’m down to Mouthful of Lemon on the bitterness scale rather than Rubbing Salt into Both Eyes.”

“There were signs, let’s say that. So how are things with you and the princess?”

“Well! We used to be friends, believe it or not. Back in lower school. And then we got to high school and suddenly she doesn’t want to know me, going around with Alice, telling everyone I was a lesbian because I liked David Bowie. Or the time they took my woodcut of Edgar Allan Poe that I had made in art class and —”

“— plus the way she throws her hair about like there’s a shampoo ad camera crew about to rush into school and start filming, and how she always smiles really wide like she’s reaaally interested in what you’re saying, she looks lobotomized —”

“She’s not a bad person,” I say, though I don’t really know Holiday that well, and it seems like Elza might be better placed to judge her than I am. Elza makes a sour face. “Anyway,” I continue, “we’re here. This is the place.”

Elza pushes through the double doors, which make a soft hooshing noise as they swing open, and we’re in the lobby, all bright marble and frosted glass. Nothing’s changed since Monday. A pair of plastic trees stand guard by the elevators. A group of old accountant guys pass us, trim gray hair and neat suits, glaring at Ham through rimless glasses.

An elevator arrives. Ham looks at his reflection in the mirrored wall with bemusement, then turns his attention to nibbling Elza’s hand.

“Look at the signs. It’s not listed here. There’s Hodge and Ridgescombe, Moebius and Sons, Vostok Incorporated, Goodparley and Orfing, but no Berkley and Company anywhere.”

“I know this is the right place. Floor seven. What does it say for seven? That was where they were.”

The elevator rushes upward. Ham grumbles, but I place a reassuring hand on his head and he settles. After a few moments the doors slide open.

The lobby of Berkley & Co. has vanished. The secretary’s desk, the leather benches, the stack of rumpled magazines — gone. The room is bare concrete and brick. Someone is halfway through stripping the wooden paneling from the walls. There are big sheets of transparent plastic to catch the dust, and power tools lying on the floor.

I move into the lobby and pass through one of the doorless entrances toward Berkley’s office. This hallway is stripped, too, with a pile of tiles lying under plastic at one end. The walls of his office have been hacked away with crowbars, revealing the insulation foam and wiring beneath. I cast one desperate look around the bare bricks and then come back through into the lobby. Elza is talking to a man in a fluorescent yellow jacket and work boots.

“You can’t be here,” he’s saying. “No safety gear or nothing. Bringing your dog up and all. Dunno what you’re playing at.”

“Renovation,” he says, rubbing his face. “This floor’s been closed for months.”

“I was here just this week! What happened to the old tenants?” I ask him. “They’re my lawyers.”

“I don’t bloody know, do I? I’m a contractor, mate. Go ask downstairs if it’s that much to you. Bye-bye.”

“He had a big office and an expensive suit. I didn’t ask beyond that. That guy said this floor’s been empty for months . . .”

“All right, so Berkley and Company are obviously involved with the Host somehow. Did you see them handle any other clients?” Elza asks.

“Further confirmation they knew what was going on. Do you think the Shepherd put them up to this?”

“Weird that you had to sign for them at all,” Elza remarks. “Who knew black magic involved so much paperwork?”

“Maybe it’s like with vampires. You have to invite them in. But I don’t see why the Shepherd would want me to sign for them. All they want is to be freed.”

“Perhaps someone has to actually be their master before the bonds can be broken,” says Elza. “Otherwise they’d just end up bound forever, without anyone they could even kill. That would give them plenty of motivation to set you up like that.”

We’re wandering and talking. Elza is so aggravated, she’s walking at double pace, elbowing past shoppers and businesspeople. It’s nearly five o’clock, and the storm clouds are turning a plummy purple in the low sun. The street is gray, everything in Brackford is gray: the people, their coats, the flat shapes of the buildings, the gauze of rain. We make our way to the city center, a paved plaza with a tall monument to some war hero, looming over the crowds. Among the jumble of gray and black I catch a hint of something luminous and unearthly.

The Shepherd seems less to stand up than to unfold like an awful black wing. I notice the small gold clasps on his boots as he adjusts his trouser legs. He tugs at his beard with a fungus-white hand and grimaces.

The Shepherd grins. His teeth are as regular and gray as the buildings that press around the square. He seems larger today, fuller, somehow brighter than even the living people around us. The lenses of his eyeglasses, previously dark, shine with an internal light. Ham growls like a band saw and spools himself around Elza’s legs, ears tucked back against his head.

“It speaks,” the Shepherd says. “The witchlet speaks. Well, hear this: I lived for ten centuries and my life-in-death has lasted two more. Your hedge magic holds the bare scrapings of power. It is power’s palest reflection. Stand with Luke and you too shall fall.”

“If you’re so strong,” Elza says, “why am I still here? If you’d really won, we’d both be dead already, but here we are. I’m alive, and Luke is, too, because you can’t kill either of us. And since you’re so good at magic, I know you know what this is.”

“A trinket,” the Shepherd says, “nothing more. On Halloween, with the dead’s power at its height, I believe we shall come for you first, witch child. We shall see how your talisman helps you then.”

They’re standing almost face-to-face. Elza moves her hand with the wyrdstone until it’s almost touching his waxy face. She stares into the glowing lenses of his glasses. Ham cringes back. The people walking through the plaza are moving to avoid us, although they don’t seem aware they’re even doing it. The Shepherd shakes his head.

“A brave show,” he says, “but I feel her fear. Now, I came to say something to you, Luke. My colleague the Prisoner, although not exactly talkative, has ways of communicating when there’s a need. He mentioned something to me about a party tonight? A girl. Holiday?”

“We’ll be there,” the Shepherd tells me. “What is a Halloween celebration without its ghosts? We shall manifest at the Simmon girl’s house. We shall see how brave —”

Elza thrusts the wyrdstone into the center of the Shepherd’s face. He explodes soundlessly, ripping apart like a cloud of smoke in a sudden wind, and he’s gone. Elza lets out a heavy breath.

“For now. Wyrdstones protect against evil spirits, like I said. The Shepherd, things like him, they can’t touch me if I’m wearing it. But if it touches them, there’s a reaction, and they find they have to be somewhere else.”

“I don’t know,” Elza shrugs. “Somewhere that’s not here. That’s always seemed enough for me. So you can see, I’m safe. Now let’s go home.”

Back at Elza’s house, we’re having our first real argument. We sit in her kitchen, a pan of water hissing on the stove while we hiss at each other. What’s happening is my fault. I signed the contract for the Host, knowing it was wrong even if I didn’t know why. Holiday has no idea what’s been happening to me, has no idea how bad the trouble I’ve gotten her into is. I keep replaying the scene in my mind: Holiday talking to me, all smiles, with the tongueless Prisoner leering over her shoulder. Listening to every word we say.

“We don’t even know if they will go there,” Elza’s saying for the hundredth time.

“It’s so obviously a trap. They want you away from your house and away from here.”

“The Shepherd never said that,” Elza says, sounding like she’s not even convincing herself.

“Who’s stopping him? Should we call the police? They’re evil spirits. They’re dangerous, you said it yourself. We have to do something.”

“I know,” Elza snaps, “I know, but what? What can we do? The Book’s a blank, this lawyer Berkley has vanished into thin air. We’ve got a sigil you don’t really know how to use and a wyrdstone with enough juice to protect just me. That’s all we’ve got. How do we keep a party’s worth of drunk Dunbarrow High kids safe?”

“We bluff the Host,” I say. “We show up with the Book and sigil and we bluff.”

“I thought you said the Shepherd was an old dead necromancer? He’ll sniff you out a mile off, Luke, like he did already. You don’t just point and shoot with black magic. It takes years, decades of learning . . .”

“We stay here, work on the code. I’m sure there’s something in your dad’s notes, the numbers . . . I need more time with them.”

“Work on the code? That’s your only plan, sorting through Dad’s stuff. It’s gotten us nowhere. I’m supposed to sit and look at a book while all my mates get killed?”

“You know what? You don’t even care, do you? You don’t like Holiday! You said it yourself. You don’t care if they die.”

“Of course I care if Holiday Simmon dies. The whole reason I’m helping you is to stop people from dying!”

“All right. So help me. I’m going up to Holiday’s house. Either come or don’t.”

The clock on the kitchen wall ticks. I watch the second hand flick around the clock’s face, slow, unstoppable, time passing like the tide coming in.

“I mean, it’s obviously a trick. You’re nuts to be falling for it. I don’t support this at all. I think it’s reckless and will end badly. . . . But I see that I can’t convince you of that. We’ll have to do the best we can.”

“All right. Thank you.” I stand up and breathe deeply. What’s going to happen at Holiday’s house, I can’t imagine. Showing up with Elza Moss in tow will raise more than a few eyebrows, but I need her help.

We eat, barely speaking, and then shut Ham in Elza’s kitchen and leave the house. I’m wearing the sigil on my right hand, and Elza has the Book of Eight in her backpack. It’s past dusk, and Towen Crescent is lit by street lamps. I can smell wood smoke. The moving shadows of tree branches are spidered across the road. A toad sits in the gutter by Elza’s gate, slimy shoulders tinted orange in the lamp’s glare. It sees us and flees across the road, moving with jittery haste. I press my hands down into my pockets and start to walk, heading against the wind.