Holiday lives at the top of Wight Hill, the classiest part of Dunbarrow, where every front lawn is as soft and green as the felt on a pool table. Her house is mock Tudor, white walls ribbed by dark wooden beams, with first-floor windows textured by interlocking diamonds of lead. It has a two-car garage and a large front lawn full of well-behaved shrubs. Elza walks beside me, head down, wrapped in her outsize man’s coat. I’m thinking how out of place she’s going to look, how awkward this is going to be. The drive widens into a turning circle at Holiday’s front door, which is painted sunrise-pink. I have to really punish the doorbell before I can get any attention. I see someone moving behind the door’s pane of frosted glass, and for a horrible moment I expect the Shepherd to emerge, waxy face twisted into a smile.

Holiday opens the door, She looks bemused.

“Hello?”

“We’re here for the party?”

“Well, of course,” Holiday says. “You brought Elza, too?”

“Uh . . . we were walking the same way.”

“Oh, OK. Where were you today? You remembered it was a costume party, right?”

Holiday looks, as always, stunning, wearing a slim black dress, a pair of felt ears perched above her sleek hair. She’s painted whiskers on her cheeks. I try to focus on the mission, the horde of evil spirits that might arrive at any moment.

“Well,” Elza says, “clearly we didn’t.”

To her credit, Holiday’s smile looks only a little fake.

“Why don’t you both come in?” she says, taking my hand and pulling me into the house.

I follow her into the kitchen, which is spotless, tiled in slabs of rough gray stone. There’s a long table covered in bowls of sweets, popcorn, large plastic bottles of cheap cider, and soft drinks. I see bat-shaped streamers hanging from the curtain rods, a pumpkin with a jolly face carved into it. There’s a woman staring into the open fridge.

“Mum,” Holiday says, “what are you doing here?”

“You father forgot the cherries. Is that a crime?”

Holiday’s mum smiles at me and Elza, so we know the joke was for us as well. I force a little grin. Elza’s standing behind me, as far from Holiday and her mother as she can manage.

“This is Luke,” says Holiday. “And you remember Elza Moss?”

“Hi,” I say.

“Thanks for having us, Mrs. Simmon,” Elza says.

Holiday’s mum is tan and thin, wearing a cream sweater and faded jeans. Her hair is cropped short, and it looks like she dyes it, but aside from that, you’d think she was barely ten years older than us. Good genes. She gives us both an A-list smile.

“Oh, it’s Elza! We haven’t seen you for a while! And Luke, so nice to meet you at last. Holiday tells me you’re keen on rugby.”

“I play for the school, Mrs. Simmon.”

I’ve actually missed all the practices this week, another sacrifice I’ve made since the Host arrived in town. I’ll catch some grief from Mark tonight for that. It’s weird how far away all of this seems. I thought I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I’m starting to feel more like it’s my real life that I don’t believe in.

“Well, Dad’s the man for that, isn’t he?” Holiday’s mum says to Holiday.

“Don’t make him talk to Dad . . .”

“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” her mum says to me. “The ingratitude of some children. Don’t fret, your father and I are firmly decamped to the summer house for the duration. I’d hate to make you look quote-unquote lame in front of your friends, ha-ha-ha.”

She doesn’t so much laugh as loudly pronounce the sounds laughter would make.

“Mum —”

“All right, all right. Come on, Bach.”

Holiday’s mum scoops up a white cat, and leaves, having forgotten the cherries. Holiday grimaces.

“She’s so annoying.”

I think about Mum lying in the dark, face drenched in sweat. I remember all the days I’ve left for school and come home in the evening to find her still sitting in the same place. I think of her now lying motionless, her body a glacier.

“She seems OK.”

“I can’t believe she — like, I don’t talk about you! I mentioned you once. She makes it sound like I’m your fan club or something!”

“When nothing could be further from the truth, right?”

“Shut up. Look, come on, we’re watching trash TV. I’ll get you a beer?”

“Sounds great.”

I’ve got no intention of drinking a drop, but I’m not about to explain that to Holiday. Elza has moved past both of us and is staring out the windows at the far end of the kitchen, looking into what must be the backyard. I tense up, thinking she’s seen something outside, but then she turns away and gives me a little shrug. I can’t feel the icy cold that accompanies the Host, so I presume we’re safe for now.

Holiday presses a beer into my hand.

“Can I get you anything?” she asks Elza.

“I’m not drinking tonight,” Elza replies.

“Oh,” Holiday says, “are you doing a detox?”

“No. I just think, you know, what if something terrible happened tonight and I was drunk? I wouldn’t be able to deal with it.” Elza fixes me with a volcanic glare.

Holiday, who is either an amazing actor or genuinely the kindest person in the world, appears to be giving serious consideration to this. “Sure,” she says. “I get anxious, too, you know?”

I’m not really drinking, I mouth at Elza behind Holiday’s back. Act more normal.

“I think the only sane way to live,” Elza says to Holiday, “is anxiously.”

Standing in my crush’s kitchen, waiting for the arrival of my dad’s horde of evil spirits, listening to Elza and Holiday coproduce a strong contender for Most Awkward Conversation of the Year Award, I decide that I am going to have a drink after all.

The living room is twice the size of the kitchen, done in whites and creams, with a sixty-inch plasma screen installed in a cavity at one end. There’s a real log fire, grumbling to itself behind a black fire screen. The party so far is nonexistent. There’s just a few of the top-tier girls from my class, dressed as cats, nurses, and Disney princesses. They all look up at me and Holiday and Elza as we enter. I feel like I’m on display, a show pony she’s leading into the ring. The reaction to Elza is more like she’s been buried up to her neck in an anthill. None of Holiday’s friends say a word, but I can see their expressions, tiny communications as they catch one another’s eyes: scorn, shock, amusement. It’s like watching a group of sadistic computers communicate via Wi-Fi. I pretend not to notice and sit down with Holiday on the largest sofa, facing the television. Elza stands against the far wall and looks at her boots.

“So we’re watching, like, this totally ridiculous show,” Holiday’s saying. “Nightwatch. They’re having a marathon of it, since it’s nearly Halloween. Have you seen it?”

Ouch.

“Never,” I say.

“Oh, it’s just the best,” says Holiday. “The guy who presents it is, like, this total weirdo. He’s called Dr. Manchett —”

“No relation,” I say with a forced grin.

“I heard he, like, just died, or something?” one of her friends says.

“Yeah, they had that on the news the other day?” says another.

“Really,” I say.

The screen is dark. I can see stars, a suggestion of trees in the black against black. There’s the crunch of footsteps.

“Are you OK?” whispers Holiday.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“You’re all tense. Are you, like, scared?” She grins.

“As if this is going to be scary.”

I’m swiftly proved wrong by the face that appears on-screen. Hair falling back across a shiny scalp, hair growing across cheeks and chin like an unmanicured lawn. I’m very glad that I’ve inherited more of Mum’s genetic material than Dad’s. He’s wearing a lime-green shirt and is lit at close range in the dark by a powerful white lamp, which makes him look embalmed.

“In all my years as a paranormal investigator,” he says, “I cannot remember another case quite like this one. What you are about to see is disturbing, and may make you question everything you think you know about life . . . and death.”

The credit sequence begins. It’s pretty lackluster, and I find myself wondering how big a budget Dad was given. The opening rolls over what is presumably stock footage of forests and castles, mixed in with some night-vision shots of basements and dungeons. The music is low and ominous-sounding, occasionally rising to a crescendo when the camera focuses on a full moon or a sinister-looking empty doorway. Eventually the screen freezes on a night-vision shot of a skeleton lying on the ground, and the word Nightwatch comes up in green Gothic lettering accompanied by a screaming effect.

The scene changes. It’s daylight, under a lead-gray sky. The camera is in a moving vehicle, driving through a forest. The plants are dull and autumnal. The camera glides around a bend in the road, and we see a squat stone building standing in the midst of an unkempt lawn. The trees lean over the house in a silent canopy.

“This is Coldstane Rectory,” says the narrator, “built in the late eighteenth century. The building has had a ghastly reputation for more than two hundred years. Current occupant Michael Aulder thought that the house would be the perfect rural getaway for his family. Michael says that he never believed in ghosts, but after buying the rectory, the Aulder family have changed their minds. Please note that all footage on this show is real. Nothing has been faked and no special effects are used. We do not use actors in our reality programming.”

Mr. Aulder is hard-faced, with a full head of graying hair, his stout body barely contained by a white oxford shirt. He’s standing in bright sunlight under a wide blue sky. It’s obviously summer, in notable contrast to the earlier shots.

“Well, of course, people said things to us,” says Mr. Aulder, “warning it was haunted, giving me all the talk. Never listened to them, though, did I? I’ve never believed in all that, ghosts and such.” He laughs, exposing gray teeth. “I’ve a different view now.”

“The Aulder family lived in the property for a little over a month before the paranormal events began,” says the narrator, “mainly occurring around three o’clock in the morning — the traditional haunting hour.”

Cut to Mrs. Aulder, blond and round-faced, wearing a yellow dress. She stands in the kitchen in front of a brass kettle and a green stove. She’s nervous, looking away from the camera.

“I thought at first it was kids,” she says, “messing around. That was bad enough. There were noises, you know, in the roof and outside in the yard. Our daughter, she’s only six, she was scared. She said she wanted to go back to the old house. My husband thought it was rats.”

Cut to Mr. Aulder. “I often slept through the early occurrences, if I’m honest. I have a heavy workload, and I’m a heavy sleeper, too. I thought she was making things up.”

Mrs. Aulder: “It wasn’t until things started moving around that Michael began to take it seriously.”

“What kind of things?” asks a voice off camera.

“Everything.” She swallows hard.

Cut back to the outside view of the rectory. It’s autumn again. A pair of white vans pull into the gravel driveway and grind toward the house.

“The Aulder family have not had a night’s peace since summer,” says the narrator. “They report unnatural noises at night, poltergeist activity, ectoplasm leaking from the walls, sensations of extreme cold, food in the house rotting within hours of purchase, excessive junk mail, shadowy figures stalking the garden at night, orbs of spiritual energy disrupting Christmas dinner, and, in one memorable occurrence, the television set leaked blood.”

“I think that was the most disturbing manifestation,” says Mr. Aulder in his sunlit garden. “I was watching the news, and the set began to dim. I walked over to adjust the picture, and I discovered there was a thick liquid running down the plasma screen. When I put my hand on it, I realized it was, in fact, blood.”

“And this is when you decided to call the Nightwatch team for help?”

“Yes. Yes, it was. I can’t live like this.”

Cut to a van door opening. A pair of bright-orange shoes step down onto the gravel.

“Dr. Horatio Manchett is Britain’s most respected paranormal expert,” announces the voice-over, “with more than a hundred hauntings successfully exorcised.”

“Dr. Manchett owns Britain’s campest collection of shoes,” I say, “and has plans to purchase many more flamboyant shoes in the near future.”

“Quiet,” hisses Holiday, giggling.

Dad is on-screen, wearing a dark-red suit.

“— and this has frightened you?”

“Very much so,” says Mrs. Aulder.

“Well, it seems,” says Dad, turning to the camera, “that this family is experiencing a paranormal event of some magnitude. What we are going to do is take a look around the house, a preliminary look, as it were, and see what occurs. We’ll be taking an especially close interest in the kitchen and living room, as these are the rooms where the family reports the most intense activity.”

Dad gestures at the cameraman, who follows him as he sweeps through the low square doorway and into the kitchen.

“Well, this is an excellent example of period architecture,” he remarks, “and the family has kept it in really beautiful condition. The question is, Are we going to feel any kind of presence here?”

The Aulders stand, looking on, nervous while Dad strides around the kitchen in his garish suit, opening cupboards and muttering in what I assume is Latin. As he rummages under the sink, asking them about auras they may have experienced in the house, I see a figure standing in the corner of the room. It’s a woman, gray-faced, wearing a very old-fashioned dress. She’s looking at my dad with a vacant expression. The Aulders, as well as Holiday and her friends, see no sign that she’s there at all. This confuses me enormously. You read all kinds of stuff about ghosts appearing in photographs, but this is the first time I’ve even thought about it. Are they giving off some kind of energy that’s beyond the normal visible spectrum? How are the cameras capturing it? I remember what the Vassal said to me when I first asked him about life after death: Better minds than yours or mine have chased their own tails for lifetimes regarding such questions. Some of these things I’ll never understand.

“I think maybe we should try to address the spirits directly,” says Dad to the camera, “to see if I can get any idea of how many there are and what they want from these people.”

“How will we do that?” asks Mrs. Aulder nervously.

“They’re often responsive to a confident voice,” Dad says. “Are there any spirits within this house?” he asks loudly.

Nothing.

“I said,” he shouts, “are there any spirits within this house? If there is a presence within this house, I demand that you make yourself known!”

Dad raises his hands and makes some kind of gesture. I notice the sigil on his right finger and quickly hide my right hand in my pocket. I don’t want anyone noticing that we’ve got the same surname and wear the same ring. There’d probably be some questions about that.

“Make yourself known!” yells Dad. The Judge and the Prisoner come in through one wall of the kitchen. The Prisoner grabs the female ghost by the hair and drags her out of the room through the opposite wall. Before I have time to think about what’s happening, they’re gone. The Judge kicks the stove as hard as he can with his boot. Holiday jumps and grips my leg like a vise.

“Did you hear that?” she says.

“It’s just a bang. They edit those noises in.”

“That was so a ghost. Don’t be a spoilsport!” The other girls are laughing and shrieking.

“Tell me what it is that you want,” proclaims Dad in the rectory’s kitchen, “and I can let you leave in peace.”

The Judge strides to the kitchen counter and with some relish lifts an unwashed pot up into the air. The cameraman notices and audibly gasps, shifting his gaze from Dad to the pot hanging in the air.

“Uh, Dr. M,” says the cameraman, clearly unscripted, “by the sink.”

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” says Dad, turning toward the Judge. “Either you talk to me, or I shall expel you from this place.”

The Judge rolls his eyes and throws the pot at the wall.

Holiday and her mates shriek.

“I’m not sure about this,” says the cameraman. “Like, are we insured for this?”

“Everything is fine,” says Dad. “Nobody panic.”

The Judge picks up a knife and slowly waves it about. Mrs. Aulder starts to hyperventilate.

“I think maybe we should all go outside,” says Dad, placing himself between the floating knife and the couple. “Let’s go outside and regroup. I think I have the measure of the haunting now: There is definitely a hostile presence here.”

The camera crew don’t need to be told twice and make an undignified exit, running out the door and into the daylight. This part is clearly unrehearsed, and several members of crew, including the sound guy, are caught on film as they make their escape. The Aulders join the crew on their lawn at a run. Dad comes last and the Judge slips out after him, lighting another cigarette. I’m guessing Dad neglected to tell the camera crew that the ghosts are real. There are no live actors on the show, but there are plenty of dead ones.

In the background I can see the Prisoner moving toward the woods at the back of the house, dragging the female ghost — presumably the ghost that was haunting the Aulders in the first place — along behind him by the hair. While Dad talks Mrs. Aulder down, I watch the struggle in the background. As they reach the tree line, I see something else, just for a moment, something that looks like a moving shadow, darkness that flows out from behind a tree and engulfs the rectory’s original ghost. The hairs all along my arms stand on end, but the camera cuts away before I can get a good view of what happened. I look over to Elza, to see if she saw it as well, but she’s not in the room anymore.

In the next scene Dad and Mrs. Aulder conduct a sort of séance in the family room, trying to contact the spirits and pinpoint how many there are so they can be exorcised. The Judge provides some restrained raps on the table and walls, and then the Prisoner walks through the wall and starts running his scarred hands over Mrs. Aulder, gurgling softly. I stiffen in my seat.

“Oh, I feel,” she gasps, “I can feel something. Oh, no. Oh, I just . . . it’s so angry. They feel so angry, so full of hatred.”

The big climax of the show is a midnight exorcism of Coldstane Rectory, with night-vision cameras and heat sensors and something called a Spectral Reader, which looks suspiciously like a Geiger counter with extra parts soldered on. My father, wearing a purple robe, chants and burns various herbs, and then waves his hands around while the camera crew follows him from room to room. The Judge bangs stuff and throws furniture about, occasionally, to my amusement, missing his cue. The Vassal and the Heretic put in guest appearances for the benefit of the heat sensors, walking through the walls and moaning. At the climax of the exorcism, someone cuts the lights in the rectory and the Shepherd himself appears, emitting an aura of green fire that you clearly don’t need second sight to see. Holiday and her mates scream.

“Luke,” Holiday says, “did you see?”

“It’s CGI,” I say.

The credits roll, luminous against a moonless night. Some text informs us that the Aulders remained in the house after the show and have not reported any further paranormal events. The exorcism was successful.

I’m left utterly confused. Dad raised terrifying spirits from the dead so that he could exorcise houses of their resident ghosts? Wouldn’t it be easier to just fake it? What happened to the actual ghost haunting Coldstane Rectory anyway? Where did she go? What was that moving shadow that came from the tree line?

Was that Dad’s demon?

“So do you guys believe in ghosts?” one of Holiday’s friends asks.

“After that,” Holiday says, “I’m not sure. That was, like, the scariest one yet.”

“When the knife was floating —”

“Come on,” I say, “are you serious? Those were the lamest effects I’ve ever seen. It was so plainly on strings.”

“You’re such a cynic,” says Holiday, punching me in the arm.

I just kind of grin and shrug and then we watch some reality show about people with fake tans yelling at one another. They all live in this house by the beach, and the weather is always sunny. There’s still no sign of Elza. I’m not sure what she’s doing, if she’s scoping out the rest of the house or what. I’d like to know what she made of Dad’s show, whether she thought there was anything useful in there. We shouldn’t be separated anyway: The Host might show up any moment, and then I’d need the Book. Holiday’s leg is resting against mine, and I really wish I could just relax and enjoy the night. On TV the tanned people are arguing in their bright kitchen. It doesn’t look like the people on the show ever think about being dead.

By half past ten Holiday’s house is packed. Everyone who’s anyone in our year is dancing in her front room or mixing drinks in the kitchen. Mark and Kirk are here, with the rugby team in tow. They’ve got me surrounded in Holiday’s garden, and they’re all chanting in a tribal way. I’m holding the bottle of vodka they gave me. I lost any hope of finding Elza the second they arrived, and for all I know, the Host is already here, and I can’t explain any of this to them. I end up taking the smallest mouthful of the stuff I can get away with and passing it to the next guy. The drink sears my nose and throat. I’m coughing. Kirk, who’s dressed as Superman, grabs me and pulls me out of the circle.

“Manchett, where’ve you been this week?” he’s asking.

“Ugh. Bleh. Mum’s ill, man. I’ve been at home.”

“Headaches again?” Mark asks. He must have ditched the circle, too. Mark is Captain America. His shield is a painted garbage-can lid.

“Yeah. She just needs me around.”

Behind us the drinking circle is roaring so loudly that I can barely hear what anyone’s saying. I keep scanning the drunk faces around me, waiting to see one of the ghosts, waiting to feel the chill. The vodka isn’t doing my mood any favors.

I feel sick.

“You want to get some home help,” Kirk’s saying. “Get nurses in. You shouldn’t be looking after her by yourself.”

“I’m really fine, guys. Thanks.”

“Only you missed all the practices this week,” Mark’s saying.

“Ah, sorry, man, you know? Really. My head’s just not been in it.”

I try to smile. Neither looks that convinced.

“You’ll have to get back in it,” Mark says. “Coach is about to go nuclear on you.”

“Are you really all right?” Kirk asks. “You look bad, mate. Where’s your costume?”

“Ah, I forgot.”

“Alice was saying you came here with Elza Moss?” Mark says.

“We just walked the same way,” I say. “Barely know her.”

“Alice said you were talking to her yesterday, outside school,” he’s saying with a grin. “She said you were acting really shady about it.”

I’d like to find Alice Waltham and strangle her. I force a laugh.

“Elza just asked me for a cigarette,” I say.

“You’re sly,” Kirk’s saying, laughing. “I know what you’re up to, Luke. You’re trying to get into Elza, aren’t you?”

“You don’t have to be ashamed, mate,” Mark says. “Beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

“She written a poem for you yet?” Kirk asks.

“I need a piss, lads,” I say through a rictus grin, and turn away back to Holiday’s house. Behind me, obviously preplanned, the rugby guys break into a chorus of “Manchett and Elza sitting in a tree.” We mess with one another like this all the time, but I’m really not in the mood for it tonight. They’ve got no idea what’s happening here. Elza’s risking more for me than any of them ever has.

I push my way into the house, through the crowds of people in the back room and kitchen, half of them guys from the year below who didn’t even come in costume, just wore tracksuits and sneakers with neon laces. There are hip-hop videos blasting from the TV in the front room now, no more Nightwatch. I find Elza sitting at the bottom of the stairs. She’s staring into space, about as glum as I’ve ever seen her.

“You all right?” I ask.

“Absolutely horrible, thanks.”

“No sign of the Host?”

She shrugs. I sit beside her.

“You think they’re actually going to come?” I say.

“I’m starting to hope they do. I’ve been standing around on my own for two hours, listening to people have the most inane conversations on the planet, except half the time they’re drowned out by the worst music on the planet. Not to mention everyone looking at me like I sprayed myself down from a septic tank rather than showering this morning.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“How are you friends with these people? A guy told me to take my Halloween costume off. We’re at a Halloween costume party. Like, the other three hundred and whatever days of the year aren’t enough for you to use that insult?”

“We’re here because of the Host . . .”

“But that didn’t stop you from having a few with your rugby mates.”

“I’m trying to act normal? Fit in? I can hardly explain to anyone what’s going on.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I just can’t wait until high school is over and I’ll be able to go to the college in Brackford or something. I seriously — AIIIEE!”

Elza screams like she’s been scalded and jumps to her feet. There’s red running down her face, and I’m grabbing her, thinking she’s bleeding, the ghosts are here, the Shepherd — and then I hear drunk human laughter coming from above us. Alice Waltham and another girl I don’t recognize are standing on the upper landing, looking down. Alice is holding an empty wineglass.

“Sorry, Elza,” Alice says. “My hand slipped.”

Elza stares up at the two smirking girls, wine soaking into her dark cloud of hair, wine dripping from her shoulders onto the cream carpet. There are flecks of pink blooming everywhere around her. I realize I’ve still got my hand on Elza’s hip. She’s vibrating with rage, like a chain saw being revved up.

“Go clean yourself off, you mutt,” says the other girl.

Elza opens her mouth, and I think she’s going to scream at them, but instead she just whispers, so quietly only I can catch it, “I was here to save you.”

She breaks away from me and runs into the kitchen, heading for the door. I’m following her, pushing past groups of lads, past the table with the grinning jack-o’-lantern, out the door, her boots crunching on gravel.

“Elza!”

“I’m going home,” she says.

“Come on, please — I need your help . . .”

“With what? We’ve got no plan. I’m covered in wine. I’m not sitting around in Holiday’s palace for another hour getting drinks poured on me, waiting for ghosts to come and kill me. I’m going home.”

She takes the Book of Eight out of her backpack and thrusts it into my hands, then turns without another word and walks away into the dark. I watch her back as she disappears. The clack of her boot heels fades and then finally cuts out altogether. The night is cold and clear, with stars freckled like white paint on a smooth black canvas. I wait for Elza to come back, but she doesn’t, and after a few minutes I turn back up the drive, to Holiday’s house.

Holiday herself is standing in the front doorway, her body haloed in bright white light, cat ears still perched on her head. Music and loud voices leak out around her into the quiet street. I stop a few paces from the door.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi.”

“Someone said maybe you left.”

“I came back.”

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Not really.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Holiday pushes open a white door with a gold H nailed to it. Her room is dark, lit by a string of blue and pink lights that are looped over the poles of her four-poster bed. Her hair is threaded with the cool light that seeps from the bed frame. Downstairs, the music is thumping, like a headache you’re about to have.

“I cannot believe someone got red wine on the hall carpet,” Holiday’s saying. “Like, all over it! I just barely convinced Dad to even let me have people here . . .”

“It was Alice.”

“Oh, are you kidding? That girl — she just spray-painted my bathroom with vom as well, I had to put her to bed in my brother’s room. Thank god he’s not here.”

“She dumped wine all over Elza. That’s why there are stains.”

“Oh.” Holiday sits on the edge of her bed. “That wasn’t kind of her. Is that why you were outside?”

“Uh, yeah. Elza was angry, obviously. She went home.”

“You did come here with her, then?”

“She’s a friend.”

“Only a friend?” Holiday asks.

She holds my gaze with a delicious intensity.

“I . . . Holiday, I can’t do this right now.”

“Can’t do what?” she asks, smiling.

“Look . . . I can’t explain. . . . I’m, like, way over my head. I’m dangerous.”

“What, you’re a heartbreaker?” she says.

“No, look, it’s . . . my dad,” I say, not quite believing we’re suddenly having this conversation. “He died last week. We weren’t close, though.”

“I’d like . . .” Holiday’s saying, “I’d like us to be close, Luke.” She’s lying back on her bed, clearly out of it. I wonder if she’ll even remember this conversation in the morning.

“I’d like that, too,” I say. “But you look like you want to sleep right now.”

“You don’t have to go,” she says, almost a whisper.

“You’re very drunk. I think I should,” I say. She doesn’t answer. Her breathing is slow and deep. She reminds me of Mum suddenly, and I have to turn away. The music has stopped downstairs. They must be changing the track or something. I hope that’s what’s going on.

I open Holiday’s door and come face-to-face with the Judge.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, though I already know.

“Sorry, boss,” he says, rubbing his stubbly head. “Can’t be helped.”

Before I even know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed him with my right hand. The sigil is cold, freezer-burn cold, like a tiny star of frost on my finger. I grab the Judge around his fat throat and lift him up into the air. He strains and squirms in my grip, his outline starting to blur like captive smoke, but I won’t let him go.

“Boss, please —”

“Shut up. I’m talking. I’m your necromancer. I’ve got the Book,” I say, holding it under his nose with my left hand. “I know how to use it. Where are the others?”

“Boss —”

I squeeze his throat tighter, cutting his protests off into a squawk. The sigil blazes even colder; my right hand feels like a shape carved from ice. Sparks are dancing in my teeth.

“Where are they? Where’s the Shepherd?”

“I’m here, Luke” comes his dry, clipped voice, right behind me.

Still holding the Judge, I turn to face the room. The Shepherd is standing a few feet from me, regarding me through the black discs of his glasses. His hands are clasped at his waist. He looks calm, like someone waiting for a bus.

“I’ve got the sigil here,” I say. “You make one move and I’ll —”

“You’ll do nothing,” the Shepherd says, “or the girl dies.”

With a sick lurch, I realize the shadows clotted around Holiday’s sleeping body have taken a man’s form. The Prisoner is crouched over her, staring down at her sleeping face with rapt delight. With his left hand he’s holding what looks like a thread of white light, which is connected to Holiday’s forehead, between her eyes. He’s pulling it out of her, whatever it is, and in his other hand . . . I see his shears are poised to snip the thread. He gives me a toothy tongueless smile.

“If you touch her —” I say.

“Empty threats,” the Shepherd says. “You have the sigil and Book, but you’re no necromancer yet, Luke. Give them up. Or my colleague will cut her thread and she’ll be gone.”

I’m frozen in place, the Judge still struggling in my grip.

The shears begin to close around the white thread, a millimeter at a time. The Prisoner doesn’t take his empty gaze off mine for a second.

I can’t let Holiday die because of me.

I release the Judge, who gurgles and falls to the ground. I drop the Book of Eight onto the floor and push it toward the Shepherd with my foot.

The Prisoner doesn’t move away from Holiday.

“The sigil as well,” the Shepherd says with a slight smile.

I pull the painfully cold ring from my finger and throw it at his smirking waxy face. He catches it in midair without any apparent effort.

“What are you waiting for?” the Shepherd asks. Is he talking to me? Why would I be waiting for anything? “Could it be you remain loyal to the necromancer?” he continues.

I turn to look at the Judge.

“Nothing personal, boss,” he mutters. He raises his hand, and I can see an empty bottle held in his fist. He’s wearing a sovereign ring on his thumb. It catches the light, a miniature sun. I have time to wonder whether it’s a real bottle or somehow the ghost of one, and then he breaks it over my head with a flat white

Snap.

I wake up stretched out on Holiday’s bed. My neck feels like there’s a fire lit inside it. I’ve got a headache with a pulse and my mouth is dry. When I move my head I can feel hair itching at my shoulders and back. Holiday is lying next to me, eyes wide open.

“Holiday?”

I hold my hand to hers. It’s still warm, and I can feel the faintest heartbeat hidden there in her wrist. They didn’t kill her, and they didn’t kill me either. It’s not Halloween, so if what Elza said is true they can’t. My skeleton feels more like a collection of dry, weak twigs than the trusty lattice of bones I normally depend on. The room is still dark, but it’s closer to deep blue than black. Sunrise can’t be far off.

The shadows by Holiday’s dresser deepen. There’s the glint of spectacles, the slight mushy sound of lips moving.

“Luke,” says the Shepherd.

“What have you done to her?”

“Me personally? Nothing. I can’t speak for the Prisoner, of course. He does rather drain people.”

His voice has music in it. I want to throw myself at him, wrap my hands around his waxy throat, but I can’t. I gave up the sigil. I want to feed the Shepherd his own heart. Instead I stand, fists crunched up in my jean pockets.

“She’s got nothing to do with this. Nobody here does.”

“I quite agree, so I’d rather not get into any unpleasantness. Do exactly as I say or we’ll kill all of them.”

“All right.”

“Open the door and go downstairs, to the back garden. I will follow you. If you run, if you try anything, this girl here will suffer and then die. And don’t think we’ve forgotten that seer-child either.”

“Good luck getting to Elza. She knows all about you.”

“You really don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you, Luke? I have traveled through the cold beyond. I spoke with the Black Goat in the deepest woods. I plundered the ruins of Babylon and Solomon’s tomb. In life, there were kings who came to me on bended knee. Did you think the witchlet could help you against me? Against us?”

“Elza knows more than you think,” I say. “All you’re proving is you’re old. And I’m not afraid. I know you can’t kill me.”

I hope.

“Downstairs,” he says.

I haul my aching body through the door and across Holiday’s broad landing. The house is utterly silent, without a murmur or thump of footsteps. A clock reads 6:00 a.m. I run my eyes over a pile of neatly folded clothes, a gold-framed photograph of Holiday at eight or nine on a chestnut-colored pony. What have I brought down on their home?

Sitting in a white chair on the landing, there’s a blue bundle that starts to shift and murmur as we approach.

I’m a baby, the bundle says.

I walk past the ghost, chill crawling over my skin.

Pick me up, it says. The Shepherd doesn’t acknowledge it either.

“Are you familiar with the Innocent? A story lies therein,” he says, as we reach the bottom of the stairs.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“As you wish. Another time, then. Closer to your death.”

Nobody has left the party; everyone is still here. Every guest stands in place, hands clasped behind their backs. There’s not a human sound to be heard: no breaths, no coughing. Their faces have the flattened, sad expression of sleepers. Bottles and cans and glasses lie on the ground, surrounded by long-dried splats and spills of liquid. Whatever happened to them, it happened fast. I suppose this is real black magic. I didn’t realize, didn’t know the ghosts had this kind of power. Is this what Dad would use the Host for? If you could do something like this to people, freeze them like statues, then you could get away with just about anything. It’s not a nice thought. I remember learning about Pompeii, looking at all the plaster casts of the Romans who didn’t have the sense to leave town when their mountain started to smoke. Their eyes are open, but nobody is looking at anything in particular. None of them respond to my gaze. Everyone — every sexy cat, every Frankenstein, every Dracula, every Superman or cowgirl or zombie — all of them are facing the same way, staring toward the open back door.

The garden is dark, grass tinted white with frost. Beer cans glint beneath the bushes that surround the lawn. There’s a wide circle of people standing on the grass; some are living, some dead. I think of the guys’ drinking circle out here last night, and I smile a bitter smile. I see Holiday’s mum, and a gray-haired man with a paunch who I assume is her dad, standing beside each other with clasped hands and the same sleepwalker’s expression. I guess they came back early. Too bad for them. Kirk and Mark stand with their backs to me, still in their superhero costumes. Between the seven warm bodies stands the Host, filling out the circle: the Judge, the Prisoner, the Vassal, the veiled Oracle, the flaming form of the Heretic, who for once stands silent, and the blue-swaddled baby, somehow moved down from the landing, on the ground next to Holiday’s parents. And at the opposite side the circle stands another figure, something I can’t quite make out, a strange hunched shape like a mound of cloth that’s breathing. No, that’s not quite right either: It looks more like a shadow being boiled.

The Fury. I remember Dad’s notes: Power — rage — enemy of life.

Just when you think things can’t get worse.

“Is the whole Host accounted for?” asks the Shepherd behind me, loud, near my ear. When nobody answers, he carries on. “Come stand with me, Luke. We’ve left space for you.”

I follow him through the damp, flattened grass, and my stomach lurches as we step into position. In the center of the circle is Holiday’s white cat, Bach, with a syrupy red slit in his belly. He lies still, like a toy someone dropped.

“Right there,” the Shepherd says. I’ve got the Heretic to my right, the Shepherd to my left. The circle is complete: eight living, eight dead. I stand where he indicated, fists clenched, head throbbing, and the Shepherd reaches up and touches the center of my forehead with my sigil. Cold spreads from the black ring throughout my body, faster and deeper than it did when I grabbed the Judge’s throat. I find that I can’t move. I’m frozen in position, like the others. All I can do is watch.

“There,” says the Shepherd after a moment, enjoying my discomfort at suddenly being paralyzed. “Our circle is complete. Allow me to introduce an infamous servant of your father. The Fury.”

At this, the boiling shadow, at first only waist high, unfurls like a great dark flag, and I realize I was looking at something wearing a black robe, kneeling on the ground with its back to me. It stands and stands, expanding upward until it’s past seven feet tall, its shoulders level with the taller ghosts’ heads. The Fury turns to face me, and I realize that each time I think I’ve seen everything, there’s just one more level of screwed-up weirdness.

The thing has long, thin arms, hands that fall down below its knees, fingers like groping roots. The demon’s skin is ink-dark, and I can’t tell where its cloak begins or if it’s actually wearing anything at all. It looks like a three-dimensional shadow, a shadow with depth and mass, like a sculpture made out of black smoke. The head is the lean, sharp head of a dog or jackal. The demon’s eyes are like keyhole views of a furnace, smoldering orange holes punched into the darkness of its face. It sniffs at the air and then opens its mouth, which also shimmers with red heat. Unlike the Heretic, shrouded in flames, this creature is burning from within. There’s a faint, awful sound, like someone screaming and shouting two streets away.

“Hear me now,” says the Shepherd. “The Fury and I have decided that Luke is lacking in the correct authority to manage this Host.”

The demon adds nothing. Its furnace eyes bore into mine.

“Luke has continually proved himself incompetent, slothful, and inconsequential. His grasp of necromancy is effectively nil. We believe him to be an unworthy owner of the Manchett Host, and we are relieving him of command.”

The Prisoner gives me a curdled smile.

“This is mutiny,” says the Vassal quietly.

“Shut it!” hisses the Judge.

“The first order of business,” says the Shepherd with an expansive gesture, “will be breaking our bonds. As you’re all aware, Halloween is seven days away. Our power will be at its apotheosis, its apex. I feel confident we will be able to slay our necromancer, and thence shall be free. Luke is weak, and such a chance may never occur again. Do you want to end up like the monk”— he points at the Heretic — “forever lost, mind worn down to nothing by centuries of service? We must break free!”

Nobody disagrees.

“Just in case anybody has some misplaced loyalty . . . consider this a warning, all of you.”

At this prompt, the Fury leaps at the Vassal and smothers him in its robe. The black shape billows and beats like a heart, and then the struggle is over. The Vassal is kneeling in the middle of the circle, looking down at the dead cat. His hands and feet are bound with what look like black briars. The Fury stands over him, blazing eyes empty of expression. Nobody looks pleased or smug anymore, not even the Judge. I’m guessing whatever’s about to happen, the Shepherd didn’t fill him in on this part of the plan.

The Shepherd speaks to the Host. “The Vassal is domesticated, a mewling house pet. At every chance for freedom, this traitor blocked the path.”

“Luke!” cries the Vassal, on his knees in the grass. “Luke, save me! If you have any goodness, any compassion, please save me! Stop this now!”

I try to speak, and my mouth won’t work. I’m frozen in place, totally silent. All I can do is stand and watch.

“Please! Oh, God, please don’t let it eat me! Please!”

The demon reaches inside its body and draws out something that glows with a hungry light: a long whip of flame, an impossible cord of boiling orange that swings down from its black hand to singe the wet grass.

The Vassal raises his head, eyes glinting in the fierce orange blaze of the whip. I can’t tell him how sorry I am, how much I appreciate what he’s tried to do for me, but he must be able to read my gaze.

“You are forgiven, sir,” he says quietly.

The Fury swings the whip in a wild arc, up into the air, where it spurts like the trail of a time-lapsed firework before tumbling onto the hunched shape of the Vassal. The whip hits his back with a hungry sizzling noise, and the Vassal screams in agony. I see now why Dad used the demon: to control the other ghosts, because I think you’d do anything to avoid what it’s doing to the Vassal. The scourge eats through the ghost’s body completely, and now the Vassal is split in half at the waist, and both halves are lying on the ground in the dawn-lit orchard.

“The lash of Tartarus,” the Shepherd says quietly, sounding almost awed.

The demon swings the whip in a tight circle, catching the Vassal’s kicking legs. The legs are held in the coils of the whip, and the Fury reels the limbs in. The monster raises the Vassal’s legs up to its snout and inhales. The spectral body parts dissolve into a fog and are sucked into the demon’s white-hot gullet. The Vassal screams again, higher and higher, like a siren.

He doesn’t last long after that first bite. The demon was hungry, it seems, and goes into a frenzy, lashing at the Vassal’s twitching body with the whip until he looks like a statue that’s been smashed with a hammer. The demon bends down at the waist and starts to suck and grunt, vacuuming up the shards of ghost. Eventually there is nothing left, and the monster recoils the burning lash.

“Thank you, my brother,” says the Shepherd. “I hope this has been instructive for you all. Follow us and glory awaits. We will be freed, and not only that, reborn. We can take new bodies, new lives!”

For a moment there is silence. The wind rises and the trees begin to murmur and rustle to one another. I’m shivering, muscles cramping, unable to move or turn my head or close my eyes. Then the Host kneels as one, the ghosts all touching the ground with their hands and faces. Even the Heretic manages a shaky, halfhearted bob.

“You’re dismissed,” the Shepherd tells them, and the Host vanishes like candles being snuffed out. Only the Shepherd and the Fury remain.

“Your father kept the Fury regularly fed with souls,” the Shepherd says to me. “You see the need, of course. A demon’s hunger is limitless.”

I can’t even turn my head to look at him. I can only hear his voice.

“We are unable to kill you, as you know. I could ask you to commit suicide. Hold Holiday and your mother ransom. Your life for theirs. But suicide is a great, bleak sin, and there are certain . . . interested parties whose involvement in this game we have here would complicate matters. We can’t attract their attention.”

“Fortunately, the Fury here had some excellent suggestions. Really quite ingenious, demons. Came up with some masterpieces of cruelty.”

The Fury examines me closely, like I’m an ant crawling over a plate it was thinking of using, and then bends down to the dead body of the cat. It reaches into the slit in Bach’s belly and draws out something that at first I take for guts but that turns out to be some kind of shifting red light, far deeper red than the whip, a red that’s almost black. The light streams out from the cat’s body and embeds itself in my chest just over my heart. It looks like we’re anchored together now, me and Bach, by the dark pulsing rope. It feels warm, actually, like a restful bed after a long night of walking and searching. The blue dawn sky is darkening again, sunrise in reverse, the sky fading to a black I never knew existed, black past black. The Fury reaches out with a surgeon’s careful hand and breaks the red rope.

I’m asleep, I think — I’m having this crazy dream. I’m in Holiday’s yard, except it isn’t really a yard at all. It’s this dining room, with dark stone walls, and it goes on forever. I’m sitting at the table, there’s someone else at the other end, and I realize it’s Dad. He looks bad, really ill, he’s sweating from the heat. It’s sauna hot and stifling in here. He’s in a white suit and violet shirt, and he’s got a napkin tucked into his collar. We’ve got rare steak in front of us, big bloody slabs. Dad starts to talk, but I can’t hear him properly, like a radio with bad reception. His voice doesn’t sync with his mouth as it moves.

I’m sorry, he says, I’m sorry (I didn’t think) we don’t have much time (I’m sorry) Luke.

“Sorry for what?”

I never meant for — (this this sorry sorry) the Book of Eight — (the Book is a labyrinth) I never meant for this.

“I can’t — Dad? You’re not making any sense!”

(the sequence shows the path) I’m sorry Luke (my papers my sequence) I’m so sorry I (regret) that this ever (the Book is a labyrinth) I’m sorry Luke.

“What do I have to do?” I’m shouting now. “What sequence? What do I have to do?”

Dad looks at me, blinking. There’s something in his mouth. He’s choking. I’m trying to get up, but I can’t, I’m stuck in my seat, I feel so heavy —

Dad raises one hand to his face and opens his mouth. He’s choking and spluttering, and I can’t get up to reach him.