“Heather, we’ve got our hands full here, and I’m not even in London …”

In the bar, Heather closed her eyes, wincing.

“… but maybe when I’m back?”

She put the glass down. “Absolutely. Give me a shout.”

From there the conversation became awkward, and she sensed him mentally retreating from her. Standing in the bar, her cheeks were warm with embarrassment, but she couldn’t feel entirely bad about asking him out so blatantly—later she would go back to an empty house, with nothing to think about but murdered women and the mystery of her own mother’s death. Was it so terrible to want company? The whisky was sour in her throat, and after she said her goodbyes, she downed the rest without pleasure.

CHAPTER

14

BEFORE

MICHAEL LIVED AT the big house, but Fiddler’s Wood was his home.

He spent most of his days out there, whatever the weather, tramping through the undergrowth, sitting with his back against a tree or following half-hidden paths to places that seemed significant; a dead tree, blasted black and white by lightning decades ago; a deep ditch riddled with dog roses; a trio of birches, growing up together, twisted and light-dappled. Under the rain and wind and ever weakening sun, he grew taller and stronger. The marks on his wrists and neck faded, and the hair at his temple grew back, although it was the color of moonlight now.

There were still nightmares most nights. He dreamed of the cupboard, or he dreamed of his mother’s thick fingers twisted in his hair, her face contorted with rage, or slack and absent. Sometimes, he dreamed of a flat, red landscape, the sky the color of dusty roses, and there were things on the land, desperate, howling things, and from these dreams he still woke screaming, but the knowledge of the wood outside his window—dark and cool and green—was a balm to him.

Michael did not go to school, although he could not really remember ever going to school. He had some very vague memories of being left at a place with lots of children who did not want to speak to him, and he had an impression he had not been there for long. Instead, the man let him look at the books in the one room in the house that was full of them, and to Michael’s surprise he found that the words did make some sort of sense. The man largely left him to his own devices, providing food when Michael reappeared from the woods, covered in mud, or sometimes walking out with him across the fields, the big black dog somewhere in the grass ahead.

One day in the spring, the man caught him at the door just as he was hopping into a pair of boots.

“I’ve got something to show you today, lad,” he said. “Come on.”

He whistled between his teeth and the dog skittered across the wooden floor, and then they were out under a sky the color of cornflowers. Instead of heading to the woods, the man took them toward an old shed. Michael had always ignored it. A shed wasn’t the woods, after all.