He’d been there many times, but had never entered Callie’s room. He wasn’t even sure where it was. He called her name, and a noise came through a door down the hall. He knocked, went in. She was lying in bed, a sheet pulled up to her waist. Her arm was in a white sling. A large purple bruise splashed out onto her collarbone from under her shirt.

Ned felt awkward, like he shouldn’t have come. He stared at her arm. ‘That doesn’t look good.’

She looked at the wall, at her lap. ‘No good,’ she eventually agreed. ‘But the doctor said I’ll be all right in a few weeks.’ She glanced down at her mottled skin. ‘Hurts like hell, though.’

‘I bet.’ He looked around the room. Realised he might be prying, turned his attention to the world outside the window. ‘Did you hit it?’

Callie sat up. ‘No.’ Life in her face. ‘The gun kicked up. Missed by a mile.’

Ned felt something within his chest relax. Callie shifted, winced. As she moved, she noticed the crate under Ned’s arm. Her eyes went wide.

Ned lowered it to the wooden floor. ‘Thought it might cheer you up.’ He made sure the door was closed. He checked the window, closed the drawers and cupboards of Callie’s wardrobe. Then he removed the tin lid from the crate and stepped back.

The quoll’s nose twitched up. Whiskers vibrating in the air. Its front paws latched onto the side of the crate, and it pulled the front half of its body over the side. Eyes dark and wet and large, blinking, adjusting to the light. Rich fur, twisting muscle. It lunged out of the crate and onto the floor. Callie ripped in a breath.

This course of action, which had felt so right an hour earlier, was now revealing itself to Ned as idiotic. The quoll could do anything in this room. He waited for it to try to escape, to slash the curtains and sheets, to scream, to turn its claws and teeth onto him. But it only sniffed at its surroundings, and began gingerly padding about. Brushing its whiskers across everything, flinching and turning on the floorboards. There was a slight limp to its injured leg, but it did not stop it from leaping onto the bed, where it nosed at Callie’s feet, before climbing higher, onto a bookcase.

Callie’s face had blanched. She and Ned watched it move, taking in the fullness of it. The glow and shine of its browncream pelt. The long stretch of its tail. The soft art with which it moved.