Chris shook his head. “Old Dave will deal with it.” He returned his attention to me. “Though I’m surprised Gary Damson cared for your company—he was getting over-certain about how the world should work. I wouldn’t think you’d have fit his family’s tidy view of things. As for you, sis—I’m beginning to think Mitch might have a point.”

“Thank you, thank you very much,” muttered Mitch. I was glad of the interruption. Fever and infection could be dealt with.

“We have to get him to hospital.”

But Chris kept talking to Mitch—or himself. “She might have what we need, after all. We’re missing something—Dad’s touch, as it were. And if it worked for Nerida…” He nodded judiciously. “Nothing to be lost by finding out.”

“What—” I began, but Mitch had stood up behind me, and his fingers grasped my throat through the mesh.

I grabbed his hand, but his bony fingers were strong. “Nothing personal, Tink,” he said in my ear. I struggled for breath, kicked and tried to drop free, but Mitch’s grip only tightened. “Mitch!” I choked. “Chris!” The light flickered.

Chris moved as if he were underwater. From of the leather holder on his belt he took a pocket knife. He unfolded the longest blade, turned it casually so it flashed through the gathering dimness. I still thought he would save me.

“Unless Mitch has any more bright ideas,” he said calmly, through the thunder of blood in my ears, “I’m sorry if I don’t get this right first time. I’ve never actually gone for the heart before.”

TRISH’S STORY

THE RETURN

Trish never asked to be in a story, never believed them. That would tie her to all the injustices and angers of her father’s family, to the great absence of her mother.

She spent her childhood closing her eyes to the tawny-grey ghost that smoked through the bush when she went outside of Runagate. Something not a dingo, not a feral dog, trailing her through the trees. She’d ignored it, explained it away, although it glimmered through her dreams until she’d tattooed it on her shoulder in … defiance, she supposed.

She almost convinced herself it wasn’t her fault that, with her return from university, the impossible creature began to be seen again in Old Pinnicke’s haunts. Later, she would say she hallucinated everything. There wasn’t any evidence, after all.

Trish went to Gary’s truck to fetch the torch. She stood a moment under the molten sky, breathing. Inglewell was both too small and too large. In the city, nothing tried to prise open her skull, her ribs until she believed in curses and miracles, witches and vengeance.