“Don’t go,” said Colleen quickly. “We were just …”

“I’ll be back in a little bit, I just need some more fresh air.” He didn’t miss the look Beryl Bickerstaff gave him as he stepped out—flat and calculating, like a cat trying to decide if a mouse was worth the effort.

After just a few minutes inside the smoky campervan the night air tasted sweet and welcoming, and he walked back toward the house gratefully even as he felt a pang of regret at leaving Colleen behind. She did not like the big house, wouldn’t stay in it overnight, although she’d never been especially clear on why—it was an attitude that mystified Michael. After all, it wasn’t a run-down farmhouse surrounded by bleak fields, it wasn’t a suffocating cupboard. Halfway up the hill he came across the man coming down. The dog was nowhere to be seen.

“Good night, lad?” It was too dark to see his face clearly, but Michael heard the grin in his voice all the same.

“The Bickerstaff sisters. What do they know?”

The man turned away, and a slither of moonlight picked out his features in beaten silver; the big nose, an old man’s expansive ears, the dull sheen of his false eye. He was still grinning.

“They’re useful,” was all he said.

Michael nodded, although he didn’t agree. After a moment he said, “I wish you hadn’t made me leave that note.”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t they know your name?”

“The Red Wolf.” Speaking it aloud was thrilling, but it also gave him a deeper, unhappier ache that he couldn’t explain. It was coming too close to talking about the things they never talked about, and once they named it, he felt certain everything would vanish, like a soap bubble. “The papers have taken it. And they don’t understand. Not really.”

The man snorted. “That’s our burden, lad. To never be understood.”

For some time, Michael didn’t move or speak. He could hear voices laughing and talking some distance away, and there were points of orange light from campfires away to his right, but up here on the hill it was cold, and the darkness of Fiddler’s Woods seemed to tug at him eagerly. He longed to go there with the images that were still fresh in his head, visit the hearts that beat under the earth for him, but the thought of Colleen held him back.

“What are you doing here? With them?” He gestured down the hill even as he regretted the question.

But the man didn’t seem concerned. He bared his long teeth in a grin, looking eerily like his own dog.

“The things I do for you, lad. For my little barghest. I’ve always looked after you, haven’t I? Always provided for you?”

Michael nodded. He couldn’t argue with that.

“Then trust me.”

The man left, jogging lightly down the hill like a man much younger than his years. Michael watched him go, breathing in the dark scent of the night.