Gryff went first, pausing every now and again on the steps, ears cocked. Moll followed close behind, trying to ignore the sheer drop to her right as they made their way up. The moon was blocked by a layer of cloud, but every time it broke apart light shone down, picking out the footprints on the steps that the Night Spinner must have made. Moll was surprised to see how small they were – only a bit bigger than her own – perhaps the last Shadowmask was old and shrivelled, like Orbrot had been.

Eventually they came to the top of the staircase and Gryff paused before an archway. A rook croaked from the stonework above them, making Moll jump, then it took off and once more silence fell. Moll craned her neck as far as she dared.

‘Looks like a courtyard,’ she whispered. ‘With open arches for windows and a door on the far right wall leading into the monastery itself.’

Moll held her breath as Gryff slipped through the archway and hid in the shadows against the wall, then the rest of the group followed. The courtyard was large and lit by flaming torches and Domino had to put a hand over Moll’s mouth to stop her from gasping as she took in the creatures that held these lights: stone gargoyles that leant out from the walls, with hooded eyes, snouts and claws framed by jagged wings – and inside their gaping mouths flames flickered. There was a fountain in the middle of the courtyard, the tinkle of water the only sound to scrape the quiet night, and sitting on the stone lip, raising a cup to his mouth, was a figure draped in black robes. By his side hung the Veil, a quivering blanket of death.

Siddy flicked the catch back on the pistol Domino had given him, then he turned to Moll and in a whisper so quiet it was almost just a breath, he said, ‘Go for the Night Spinner first. We can finish off the Veil afterwards.’

Silently, Moll lifted the Oracle Arrow from her quiver. It felt heavy in her hands and her heart was thundering so fast she felt sure that she would drop it. But, when Domino placed a hand on her back, urging her on, she gripped it hard before slotting it against her bow. The flames danced all around them, the fountain trickled on and Moll knew in that moment that she would never get a more perfect shot than this. The Shadowmask’s back was turned – she had the advantage of surprise – and in a single shot she could avenge her parents’ death and put an end to the witch doctor’s magic.

Siddy was there beside her and Gryff’s body was pressed against her legs. Now. This was her chance. Moll pulled back on the bow until the string was taut, then she closed one eye, took aim at the figure’s back, where its rotten heart would be – and released the Oracle Arrow.

The silver bolt thrummed from her bow, sailing through the air before digging deep into the Night Spinner’s back. The Shadowmask slumped to the ground, the arrow too quick for one final cry, but any joy Moll felt was short-lived because what she saw next made her blood run cold.

A figure emerged from the doorway leading into the monastery: dark, robed and with a mask of stitched-up sack. The mask tilted, then a laugh slithered out as the Veil glided towards him and the shock brought Moll to her feet.

‘No!’ she cried.

Aira turned panicked eyes to Domino. ‘You said there were only six witch doctors! So who is . . .?’

The laugh grew, drowning out Aira’s words until it filled the courtyard and the flames inside the gargoyles’ mouths shivered with pleasure. Then it dropped to a snarl. ‘I am Wormhook, the last of the Shadowmasks.’

Moll glanced at the figure by the fountain; something about it was strangely familiar . . . She thought of the footprints in the snow on the staircase that had only been a bit bigger than her own. Could they have belonged to a child? A child bound up in the Shadowmasks’ curses?

‘No!’ Moll cried again, her stomach churning as the horrifying possibility leaked open before her.

Wormhook tutted as he raised a finger towards the slumped figure. ‘And I think Molly knows all too well who that was.’

Moll’s throat tightened as she raced forward. No, no, no, beat her heart. She fell to her knees and turned the body over. A black hood covered the face, but when she tore it away she threw back her head and wailed. Here was the face that had stolen into her dreams every night since she’d last seen it down by the sea: a scruff of fair hair above two shining blue eyes.

Tears rolled helplessly down Moll’s cheeks as she flung her arms round the body. ‘Oh, Alfie, Alfie! What have I done?’

The others rushed close and Gryff bent low, nuzzling Alfie’s cheek.

‘Alfie’s connection to the Soul Splinter meant that when it was destroyed he also disappeared,’ Wormhook crooned from the door of the monastery, ‘down to the depths of the Underworld. But I plucked him from the shadows before they claimed him for good. I made him real, just as you wished for, Molly Pecksniff.’

He paused, as if relishing the irony, and Moll sobbed into Alfie’s lifeless body.

‘I made him my Night Rider,’ Wormhook muttered, ‘a cursed soul without any memories of his past, to carry the Veil through your land while Orbrot sent witches, peatboggers and goblins to find you and I conjured storms. The Veil’s victims awoke jabbering about the Night Spinner, about my power to come, but no one ever suspected your little friend might be behind the poisonings. To think that you thought I was riding the Veil all that time when I only ever rode it once, to pay a visit to a kraken on the coast . . .’

Wormhook ran a cloth hand over the Veil and sniggered.

‘Alfie’s soul was cursed from the moment we stole his tears to make the Soul Splinter, Molly, but your ridiculous hope in him – your impossible dream – meant that a little part of him belonged to you. Your belief in your friend stopped me from claiming him completely, but, now that you’ve killed him, you have no impossible dream to believe in any more! Alfie’s body will fade, but his shadow, his damned soul, will remain and that will belong to me completely – and a soul that has been corrupted from innocence to darkness is more powerful than any other kind.’

Wormhook’s straw hair glinted in the torchlight.

‘I will have Alfie’s shadow join with the Veil to form a cloak of darkness so terrifying that it will drown out the sun and the stars and the moon. Then, under an eternal night, the Veil will call up the creatures of the Underworld so that I can begin my rule of terror.’

Siddy clenched his jaw. ‘Alfie’s soul was good and strong and your curses made him into a monster! He would never have done anything like this!’

But Moll was beyond the rights and wrongs of what the Night Rider had done under Wormhook’s command. This was her friend, the boy who had stormed into her life in Tanglefern Forest and helped to open up her closed heart. She buried her head in Alfie’s chest.

‘Come back,’ she sobbed. ‘Please! I kept my promise. I crossed moors and mountains to find you. I’ve come to make you real!’

Domino lifted Moll away and slipped a hand beneath Alfie’s back. He drew out the arrow, placed it in Moll’s quiver, then he felt for Alfie’s wound. His hand stilled and he glanced up at the others.

‘There’s no blood,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t even feel where the wound should be.’ He stood up and glared at Wormhook. ‘You didn’t make Alfie properly real . . . You cursed whatever was left of him when he destroyed your Soul Splinter, then you used him as a puppet to poison people’s spirits – and, when neither Orbrot nor your hideous beasts could hold Moll back, you had Alfie lure her here.’ Domino spat on the ground in disgust. ‘You’re pathetic. Moll never gave up on Alfie – she never surrendered her impossible dream – because I know that girl and nothing, not even death, could make her give up on her friends!’

And, as Domino said those words, Moll realised they were true. Even though Alfie lay motionless before her, she still hadn’t given up her hope in him. Moll ran a hand over his hair, then she gasped as she realised Alfie’s robes were fading. But he didn’t shrivel to a shadow, as Wormhook had implied. His body lay there still, but his robes vanished and Moll could see that he was now clothed just as he had been the last time she had seen him: in a duffle coat over ripped shorts and old tattered boots. This was her Alfie, not the slave to dark magic Wormhook had made him. But he didn’t move, didn’t breathe. What life he’d had left was now gone.

‘Time to admit that you’ve given up on him once and for all,’ Wormhook goaded.

Moll shook her head and rose to her feet. ‘You let him die when he never did you any wrong!’ The pain beat inside her as she said the words aloud, but, despite what they meant, she still clung to her impossible dream, her belief that somehow this might not be the end for Alfie. ‘It’s me you want. Not Alfie. And I came for you. I was ready for the fight . . .’ Moll’s voice began to crack and Siddy touched her arm.

‘Moll,’ he cut in.

Moll twisted free as the tears coursed down her face. ‘You’re a monster!’ she screamed, setting the Oracle Arrow to her bow again. ‘How could you make me kill my best friend?’

‘Moll,’ Siddy said, louder this time, firmer. ‘Alfie’s still alive.’

Moll’s bow dropped limp by her side and she looked down. Her heart quickened. Alfie’s body had faded around the edges now, but it hadn’t disappeared like his robes had. He was paler somehow, almost transparent, and to Moll it felt like looking at the ghost of a boy or an old photograph of someone from the past – but none of that mattered because Alfie’s chest was rising and falling. She had kept her belief in her impossible dream and somehow that had kept Alfie alive.

Aira raised her crossbow at Wormhook. The leader of the Highland Watch knew that it had to be Moll who destroyed the last Shadowmask, but Aira’s guard was up because Moll’s heart and mind were far from the witch doctor now and they couldn’t let him escape.

‘Alfie,’ Moll whispered, shaking him by the arms. ‘Alfie.’

His eyes met hers, but they were dull and glazed.

‘It’s me . . . Moll.’

Alfie blinked once and then his eyes travelled over Moll and Gryff and finally Siddy. But no flicker of recognition stirred; it was as Wormhook had said: all memories of his past were gone. Moll went to shake him again, but her hands fell right through him and she stumbled forward. Alfie was there still – just – but his body was nothing more than a wisp.

Siddy turned to face Wormhook and Frank bared her teeth from his pocket. ‘What’ve you done to him?’

The Veil curled round the last Shadowmask and he turned his sack mask to Moll. ‘Alfie’s soul is past the point of no return now. He belongs to the Veil and together they will conjure the eternal darkness I have been waiting for.’ Wormhook clasped his hands. ‘He’s nothing more than a ghost to you.’

Moll watched, her heart breaking, as Alfie picked himself up and walked silently away, past the fountain and across the courtyard, before disappearing into the monastery. She let the pain flood through her and when she raised her eyes to Wormhook she realised she was shaking – not with pain now but with anger – because Wormhook’s words were full of lies. Moll still hadn’t given up on her friend and, as she thought of the promise she had made to Alfie every night since he’d left, she knew that, whatever it took, she wouldn’t let the last Shadowmask steal his soul.

‘You may think that I’ve surrendered Alfie to you, but Domino’s right—’ Moll’s voice grew to a shout, ‘—not even death can stop me hoping because the Alfie I know is still out there and his soul will never belong to you!’

Wormhook lifted his hands suddenly and the gargoyles shuddered, as if waking from a very long sleep, before ripping away from the walls and beating upwards with jagged wings. Moll watched in horror as they flew over the cobbled ground towards the fountain, breathing flames from their gaping mouths.

‘Attack!’ Aira yelled, loosing a bolt from her crossbow.

The gargoyles screeched and flapped above them, raining down bursts of fire. Domino’s dagger brought down one and Siddy’s pistol another while Gryff and Aira wrestled two more to the ground and Frank tore at the stone remains. But Moll wasn’t interested in the gargoyles. Ducking and dodging, she strode towards Wormhook, the Oracle Arrow poised against her bow. The witch doctor lifted his hands and the Veil rose higher, then he pointed a tattered finger at Moll.

‘At last she is come, her quest doomed to fail,

Into the hands of the Shadowmask’s Veil.’

Wormhook glanced up at the quilt of darkness and Moll felt his words gnawing at the small shreds of courage she had left, at the hope she clung to for a boy who no longer knew her. Then Gryff bounded to her side and, as the witch doctor’s chant continued, the wildcat growled over every word and, together, Moll and Gryff advanced towards the last Shadowmask.

‘Feed on their souls, both the girl and the beast’s!

And I’ll stand back to watch as the Veil feasts.’

Moll barely heard Wormhook’s words; her ears were trained to Gryff’s growl and all the fight that was buried inside it. The Veil carved a channel through the gargoyles towards her and for a moment the darkness above was so all-consuming that Moll sensed her arms slacken. Then she felt the wildcat weave through her legs and thought of the ghost of the boy inside the Rookery.

‘This,’ Moll said through gritted teeth. ‘This is for my Alfie.’

The Veil plummeted towards Moll and Gryff, rippling with delight as it fell, and Moll let her arrow fly. It shot through the air before plunging into the middle of the quilt, but the Veil kept falling, bringing with it a clock-stopping blackness that surrounded Moll like the darkest of nights and plucked at the impossible dream locked inside her. Then, just before the Veil itself folded around her, there was a splitting, tearing sound and, where the arrow had pierced the quilt, it began to break apart in the air. Reels of glittering thread unwound on to the cobbles, the darkness crept back and Wormhook rushed forward, clawing at his mask.

He stopped abruptly as the last of the Veil uncoiled before him, then he spoke, his voice a twisted snarl. ‘You want to finish this, don’t you?’

Moll rose up with Gryff and, as the gargoyles shrieked and the others fought around her, she picked up her Oracle Arrow and turned to face Wormhook.

‘I will finish this,’ she muttered.

A gargoyle swooped down to the Shadowmask suddenly, as if bidden to silent commands. ‘Kill the boy,’ Wormhook muttered, ‘the one she calls Siddy.’

Moll’s mouth turned dry and, as she watched the gargoyle bulleting towards her friend, Wormhook slipped from the courtyard back into the monastery.

‘Sid!’ Moll screamed, rushing towards him with Gryff.

The gargoyle had her friend pinned up against the wall now and Frank had been flung to the ground, but, as the gargoyle drew breath to release its flames, Gryff leapt on to the creature’s back and hauled it away. Domino rammed it with his dagger and the gargoyle crumbled into a pile of rocks.

Siddy glanced at Moll as Frank hurtled back inside his pocket. ‘You’ve got to go into the monastery,’ he panted. ‘We can hold the gargoyles, but your fight is inside. You have to stop Wormhook.’

Moll shook her head. ‘I can’t leave you.’

Domino jabbed his dagger into another gargoyle, then he spun round to them. ‘You don’t have a choice, Moll. If Wormhook gets away, then all of this was for nothing.’

Siddy glanced up at the moon. ‘Go after him. You don’t have much time.’

The gargoyles screeched above and, as Domino, Aira, Siddy and Frank flung themselves back into the fight, Moll and Gryff raced over the cobbles and darted into the monastery – into the heart of the last Shadowmask’s lair.