I laid Hatun’s fishing pole on the ground and fumbled with the knot, resolving after a few failed attempts to simply snap the line. I held out the pear-shaped metal sinker.

Jackaby looked unimpressed. He looked, in fact, only more annoyed.

“It’s lead!” I exclaimed.

My employer’s expression did not improve. “What are we supposed to do with a thimble’s worth of lead?” he asked, his eyes darting back up to the path above us. “That little bauble could hardly coat his big toe! Tell me, Miss Rook.” He looked back at me. “If you could outrun the fastest man in the world, how significantly do you think three or four grams of lead around your big toe would slow you down?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “But you never said how you intended to use it! There are lots of ways people use lead.”

Jackaby shook his head and began back up the path. I scooped up the old books and stuffed the sinker like a bulky bookmark into one of them as I scrambled up after him.

“All you said was that lead could kill it. Shouldn’t it be silver, anyway? Isn’t it usually silver in the stories?”

Jackaby pushed his way through the foliage ahead of me, pulling out a little collection of tinted lenses to hold up in the moonlight. He peered through a few of them before seeming to lock onto a path, which he followed with increased intensity.

“First of all,” he responded on the move in a hushed voice, “I never said lead would kill him. It won’t. I only said it would help slow him down. Second, silver appears in the lore as a weapon against werewolves, occasionally witches, and, in one brilliantly odd legend, a Bulgarian tailor—but not against . . .” Jackaby froze, his head cocked to one side, and I thundered into him, almost knocking us both to the ground.

“Not against what?” I whispered after we had stood still for several seconds. “If he isn’t a werewolf, then what . . . ?”

“Hush!” Jackaby hushed me, clapping a hand over my mouth and listening intently.

After another long pause I heard the rustling of something moving very quickly through the trees. It seemed to be ahead of us at first, and then fading back in the direction of the bridge, moving impossibly quickly through the brush. I thought it must be gone, and was about to speak again when a sudden, strangled cry cut through the forest. A gunshot rang out, and Jackaby burst into a run, his gangly legs hurdling bushes and vaulting him toward the sound.