‘What should I do to her?’ the person leaning over Alice, a young-sounding woman with a high-pitched, eerily excitable voice asked.

‘Just shut her up and get back to work, all right? There’ll be plenty of time for fun when we arrive.’ The way the second voice, a richer, deeper female voice, paused on the word fun made Alice’s skin crawl. Her repulsion and her terror at that sentence was the last thing she felt for a while. The first person, evidently frustrated, grumbled and cursed, before Alice felt a heavy blow to her temple.

The world fell silent and black once more.

Chapter Five

Oh, no … not her, not now. Lily expelled a heavy breath and turned slowly, painfully towards the direction of the unwelcome speaker. Why doesn’t she just call me by my name?

A short middle-aged woman was charging towards Lily, her cheeks flushed with exertion. The woman had greying hair scraped back into a bun that forced her face into a permanently surprised expression. Somehow, through the stretched skin, she still managed to arrange her features to display complete and utter disdain with a sprinkle of meddling curiosity.

‘Apothecary,’ the woman said again, now practically nose to nose with Lily, panting from rushing across the square to catch her. Her breath smelled of rancid fish.

‘I’m actually just in the middle of something, Jemima, so I can’t stop to chat today. Terribly sorry.’ Lily attempted to go around her, but Jemima stepped sideways to block her path, an asinine smile plastered across her face.

‘Off to pander to the beck and call of the witch-girl, are we?’

‘Excuse me?’ Lily growled through gritted teeth. She could feel her face growing hot and her eyes were prickly with tears. She wasn’t ready for a showdown with Jemima Darroch; she just wanted to get on a stagecoach and disappear before she could lose any more of her fading courage.

‘I said—’

‘I heard what you said.’

‘Now then, child. Your uncle is an upstanding member of our community. Any more of that attitude and we’ll be forced to assume he hasn’t brought you up as well as he should.’

Lily blinked, dumbfounded.

‘We’ve all stood by whilst you’ve spent your time dawdling up to wherever her little hovel is, but no more. You’ve heard the tales, haven’t you? She’s cursed our town, but that wasn’t enough, so now she’s cursing the whole of the Shadow Lands. Demons are haunting us, demons of her creation, I’m sure of it. She’s conjured an army of shadows to do her bidding. And now look! Children missing, livestock slaughtered and stolen from their barns, strange goings-on across the moors and down to the sea.

‘Isn’t it time she moved on and left us all in peace? We won’t stand for it anymore, and we certainly won’t stand for one of our own sympathising. If you don’t tell her to get gone,’ Jemima poked Lily with a wizened finger in the centre of her chest, ‘believe me, child, we will.’