Later this night there would be snow. Everything would be white and everything would be very, very silent. And, just after midnight, in the basement meeting room of the Old Town University, Terrence Deer-Hart would be presenting himself for the first time to the secret meeting of the Fifteenth Order of the Diberi, originally based in Vienna, but lately moved to new headquarters in the Old Town.

Which meant he had to take special care doing his hair with his heated comb, and so he had already started, just as the moon came up, which it did so early on these last days of the year. Terrence had already given up writing for the day. He had too many freaking projects on the go, and his head was spinning.

Terrence Deer-Hart was a famous children’s writer who unfortunately hated everything about writing. He hated paper, and pens, and pencils, and words. For Terrence, even one project was one project too many. And yet here he was with three different freaking piles of paper on his desk, each in its own different way thin and pathetic and ridiculous.

The nearest pile was the beginning of his first novel for adults. Now that he was allowed to swear as much as he liked, and write without limit about violence and kissing, he suddenly didn’t want to. He had only got three pages in, although he’d been telling everyone it was going to be a great epic with multiple volumes.

The second pile looked like a school project that had been left on the bus, damaged by rain and half-chewed by a dog. A lot of work and thought had gone into it, and it interested Terrence far more than his novel. These pages formed Terrence’s dossier on the children who’d killed his beloved Skylurian Midzhar. They had buried her alive, the freaking brutes! Terrence was intending to get revenge, but as he was very afraid of blood, and violence, and, if we’re honest, children, he was relying on the Fifteenth Order of the Diberi to get his revenge for him. That was one of the main reasons he intended to join them. They were properly evil, and would be able to come up with a suitable death for each one of the revolting brats who had been involved with dear Skylurian’s death. Sadly, whenever Terrence tried to think of, say, boiling Effie Truelove alive, he got a migraine.

Anyway, their names and addresses were all here. Euphemia Truelove. Alexa Bottle. Raven Wilde. Maximilian Underwood. Wolf Reed. Terrence had already given a copy to the Diberi, who had been pleased, as it turned out they were looking for children to use in some kind of evil spell. Was one of the children to be sacrificed somehow? Maybe on Midwinter’s Eve? Terrence couldn’t quite remember.