At first I thought that this was what had happened here. The rope was still dancing and the bell swinging. Perhaps the sound of my approach through the trees had sent my visitor home. Well, no doubt whoever it was needed help, so I decided to set off in pursuit.

I walked up to the bell and examined the flattened grass, searching around to discover which way the tracks led.

“You took your time!” The voice came from behind me. “I was starting to think that you’d left on a job.”

I spun round angrily, recognizing the voice. The girl from yesterday was smiling at me, arms folded, legs slightly apart, head held high.

“I thought I made myself clear,” I said. “You are wasting my time—and your own. I neither want nor need an apprentice.”

“A man never knows what he wants until he’s got it!” she replied, her smile widening into a grin. “Then he wonders how he ever managed without it.”

Her grin was infectious, but I didn’t allow it to work on me. “Look . . .” I attempted a different approach. “It’s a very dangerous job. People die learning the spook’s trade. I was my master’s last apprentice, and there’d been twenty-nine before me. A third of them died violent deaths during their training. The one before me, Billy Bradley, got his hand trapped beneath a big stone that he was using to bind a ripper boggart. It bit off the fingers of his left hand at the second knuckle, and he died of shock and loss of blood.”

“Bad things happen,” she said, no longer smiling. “I had a cousin who was a laborer. He got crushed between a farm wagon and a gatepost. It took him almost a week to die. He kept the whole village awake with his screams.”

“I’m sorry that your cousin died, but that was an accident. My job is a constant war against the creatures of the dark; they kill us if they get half a chance. John Gregory’s own master, Henry Horrocks, was once tracking a boggart known as a bone breaker. As they crossed a field, it struck without warning, tearing off his apprentice’s hand at the wrist. It was being controlled by a witch, and she wanted it to bring her his thumb bones. The poor lad died. There was nothing Horrocks could do to save him. If you became my apprentice, there’s no guarantee that you’d even survive the first six months.”

“Now you’re talking,” the girl said brightly, the smile returning to her face once more. “You’re considering the possibility, aren’t you?”

I shook my head, regretting my words. My patience was rapidly running out, but I tried to remember my dad’s advice about being polite. I spoke to her calmly and firmly. “You’re a girl, and so not suitable for the job, as I told you yesterday. You’re too old as well. My master took me on for training when I was only twelve. How old are you?”