Night came to Pine Deep like a thief.
It stole in behind storm clouds, quiet and sly, and it crept onto rooftops and along alleys and peered into every window. Dressed in threadbare clothes of shadow, it pretended to be mundane and ordinary and not at all like the villain it was. But this was night in Pine Deep, and it has never been anyone’s friend.
Some people—longtimers who had lived through a couple of the Black Summers—understood this. Surviving blight and heartbreak opens doors to certain insights. These people bought little charms at the right shops. Not the knockoffs, but the real ones. Corn crosses with a ball of garlic pressed in the crosspiece. Spikes of thrice-blessed hawthorn they drove into the wormy dirt on all sides of their homes—not in the four directions of east, west, north, and south, but where the ley lines cut across the troubled land. Little stone figures of old gods set in shrines framed by holly and wild rose. Fairy homes that did not look at all like dollhouses—not to anyone who had eyes to see.
Night and the threat of a new storm lay heavily over Pine Deep. The wise locked their doors and kept the lights on. The unwary lay down and bared their throats to the night.