Wolf usually played rugby on a Saturday. There were away matches which involved long, precarious trips in the school bus, and home matches, where Wolf had to help make orange squash and lay out the afternoon tea, which was the bit he hated most about being captain of the Under 13s. But tomorrow there were no sports matches because of the Winter Fair. There was nothing on Sunday, either. Wolf had a completely free weekend in front of him.

Was that why he couldn’t sleep? Usually on a Friday night his mind was full of rugby. Coach Bruce had just started his Master’s course in sports psychology at the Old Town University and was always experimenting on Wolf and Effie and other members of his sports teams. Wolf had been taught to visualize, and so that was what he was usually doing at this time on a Friday night. He would imagine himself taking a high kick and then building an attack and coming down the wing to score a try on the blind side. Then he would repeat the whole thing with the attack going wide.

But tonight something else was on Wolf’s mind.

After tossing and turning for a couple of hours, he realized what it was.

It was that stupid book. The one that Monsieur Valentin had left on the table earlier.

Wolf had known for a while that there was something odd about this book. Every time he’d gone to the military strategy shelves in Leonard Levar’s bookshop it had seemed to sort of glow at him. This was why, embarrassing though it was to admit, he was a little frightened of it. It had some strange magic about it, and Wolf didn’t like it. Wolf didn’t do magic himself—well, not exactly—and he was a bit afraid of it. Which was stupid, of course, because he wasn’t afraid of anything. Not the book, and not magic, either.

Wolf had never opened the book. Which now got him thinking. If he was to prove that he was not afraid of anything, then he should get up right now—out of his camp bed—and go over to the desk and open it. Just to prove he wasn’t scared. And then he would go back to sleep.

He would count to five, and then he would do it.

Ten.

Twenty.

He got up.

There was no need to light a candle or use a flashlight. The moon was still bright enough that Wolf could see his way around the bookshop. There it still was on the desk. The Answer.