‘Your sister is talking to your dad about it. She’s not happy.’

‘I’ll bet.’

Ned crossed his arms, looked for something to lean on. Callie kept staring, showed no sign of leaving.

‘Was on my way home when I heard some animal being murdered.’

‘It’s just me in here.’

‘And whatever you’ve got in that apple crate.’

Ned felt heat in his cheeks, and hoped the dimness of the shed would hide the colour from her. ‘I was skinning a rabbit. Turned out it wasn’t completely dead. That’s what you heard.’

‘You skun a living creature?’

‘No. Yep. Not deliberately.’

‘Show me what’s in the crate.’

‘You never a seen a rabbit?’

She folded her arms, mirroring Ned’s posture. Blew a breath out her nose. ‘Guess I’ll just go tell Maggie you’re skinning rabbits alive. And that you’re keeping something secret up here. And that you rode her horse into a rabbit trap. And that…’

‘All right, all right. Jesus.’

Ned stepped back from the crate. His face was still hot; he couldn’t think of a bluff or excuse; he felt in his whole body the mistake of it all. But he was wedged. She was walking forward. He inched the lid off the crate, giving her room to peek in.

‘Don’t touch it.’

She leaned over the gap. Ned stayed tense, waiting for the quoll to explode upwards, to claw the skin off her bony knuckles, her narrow wrists. Nothing happened. Callie looked for a long time.

‘That a tiger cat?’

‘A quoll.’

‘It’s hurt.’

‘I trapped it.’ Saying it filled him with guilt. ‘Accident.’

She straightened up, still staring into the crate. Hair wisped away from the base of her head. Ned noticed these tawny strands escaping the grip of her hairband, then looked down, remembering the danger of the quoll. It had curled in on itself and was licking its injured foot. The wound had turned a claret colour, glistening and hard. Its pink tongue worried at the nugs of dried blood that had scabbed over the exposed flesh.

Callie glanced at him. ‘You know they kill chickens.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

Ned remembered seeing her with the shotgun, remembered what Jackbird had told him about her relentless pursuit of the hawk. He waited for her to tell him to kill it. To try to kill it herself. If she reached into the crate with death in her mind, with a knife in her hand, he didn’t know what he’d do. He didn’t know if he’d do anything at all.

But all she did was turn to him. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘I don’t know.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Does Jackbird know?’

‘No. No one does.’

Something like satisfaction drew itself across her face. She looked back into the crate, drawn to the quoll. Ned knew the feeling. The tug of its wildness.