Lily had always been a comfortably caged being, happy to be restricted by routine and logic and life. She had discovered a strange, new purpose in this expedition to find and recover Alice, and something about the company of someone who sympathised, who perhaps even understood, was helping her to heal a little. ‘So now you can tell me everything. What do you know? Why have you been tracking them?’ The questions spilled out with uncontrollable fervour, like a waterfall of terrified curiosity.

Jem laughed. ‘This is going to take a lot longer to explain than just tonight!’

‘But we don’t have time. I don’t have time.’ She was growing tired of his know-it-all nature. Why couldn’t he just give her a straight answer for once?

He made eye contact with Lily and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I had, or rather, have, plans in place to attack when the moon comes to the end of its waning gibbous phase. I am going to explain everything you need to know over the course of the next few days and give you all the information you will need to join me in beating them. You’ve come this far. Are you ready?’

With a deep, nervous exhale, her throat still burning, Lily nodded. All right, so maybe he’s going to be useful.

‘As you know, there is a legend surrounding this lighthouse that we call our humble home – that it is haunted. We rely on that to keep us safe. With Kelseth and the surrounding villages convinced that this place houses a group of bloodthirsty killers hellbent on revenge, they feel like it is riskier to provoke the Lightkeepers than it is to fight us. All we have to do is keep the legend alive, and we can live here without persecution. We’re safe.’

‘There was a man … at The Old Silent Inn… He, and the other strange man in Ardnaroch, they had a strange symbol hanging around their necks. Could they be connected somehow?’

Jem shrugged, frowning. ‘I haven’t heard much about men. I don’t think the Shadow Sect even recruit men… What did you say the symbol was?’

Lily scrambled across to the desk and tore off a small piece of paper. She dipped the nib of a pen in a bottle of ink, and drew the strange, crooked tree encircled in gold metal that she’d seen the men wearing. She handed it to Jem.

His eyes narrowed and he scratched his head. One finger traced the circle Lily had drawn. A look of realisation passed over his face and he dashed over to the pile of books by the side of his bed. He flicked through several until he found the one he was looking for. He let it drop open, and pulled out a piece of paper hidden inside.

‘This’—he handed it to Lily—‘this is the only symbol I could find related to the Shadow Sect. I couldn’t uncover the relevance of it and it wasn’t helping me progress, so I hid it away, intending to come back to it another time. But look.’ He pointed and Lily looked properly at the parchment. On it was a crude sketch of an encircled tree, but this one was split by a huge lightning bolt, cutting the tree almost in half.