“He’s a good boy,” she said. “But how’s he ever going to show his face at the contest? He’ll be arrested as soon as he shows up…oh, dear….” She was going to cry, so I kissed her swiftly and left. Another party of guests entered as I did so—that’d give her something to do. I’d never seen the village so full.

I stopped outside the police station on the way back, because I saw Sergeant Snitsch nailing up a poster outside and I couldn’t help wondering if they were offering a reward for Peter already. They weren’t—but the poster bore out the truth of what he’d told us in the kitchen.

The sergeant, a great red-faced man with ginger whiskers, nailed this to the wall, stepped back to see if it was straight—and put his foot right in the middle of a cowpat. When I laughed, he glared at me as if I’d put it there myself, on purpose, and told me to be on my way and not to loiter with intent on the public highway. He always talked like that: in phrases out of the police handbook. Then when he bent over to pick up a stick to clean his boots with, a cart trundling by splashed mud all over the back of his trousers—and just as he stood up to shake his fist and bellow at the driver for using a vehicle in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace, the door of the police station flew open and out scampered Constable Winkelburg.

The constable was a thin, unhappy-looking man with a droopy mustache, a droopy nose, and droopy shoulders. He was so agitated now that he couldn’t stand still but kept jumping from one foot to the other.

“Sergeant! Sergeant! The prisoner—the prisoner—”

“What? What? Get a grip on yourself, Constable! Don’t stand there quivering like a jelly! What about the prisoner?”

“He’s gone, Sergeant—he’s vanished—”

So I decided to vanish, too, and let them find out for themselves that Peter had escaped. It was bound to come out; I was surprised they hadn’t discovered it already.

And later, at the castle, I discovered something myself—something that made my blood run colder than it’d run since I’d listened with Peter to the stories of the Demon Hunter through the cracks in the floorboards….

Chapter Three