I drew in a ragged breath. There was nothing wrong with being scared; that was only natural. It didn’t mean I should turn away and run. Nobody visited a graveyard in the dead of night unless they were kids on a dare or they were planning something evil. Gareth might be young but he was no kid – and as the few clouds obscuring the moon passed, his face was momentarily illuminated. He’d stopped moving and was standing stock still, staring down at one of the graves.

The intelligent thing would have been to cast a rune to knock him dead right there and then. I might never have drawn one to cause immediate death before but that didn’t mean I didn’t know how. But I was no stone-cold killer, more’s the pity; I couldn’t strike him down without giving him the chance to speak first. I’d probably end up regretting it but I needed to be sure.

I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to attack me, however. I wasn’t completely stupid.

I skirted round until I had a clear line of sight. As I watched, he withdrew one hand from his pocket and ran it through his hair. A strangled whisper drifted over. ‘You little idiot.’

Rather than trying to decipher who he was talking about, I prepared. If I could do this while drawing blood at the same time, I would know how far I’d need to take this. A double-handed rune to bring him down, swiftly followed by a second to cut would do the trick.

I bit down hard on my tongue, tasting my own blood. It was now or never. I raised my hands. A half second later, my phone rang.

Gareth whipped round. He took a few running steps towards me, his eyes squinting as he tried to see who and where I was. I fumbled for the bloody phone, doing everything I could to silence it whilst staying in the shadows. As it mercifully stopped ringing, Gareth shouted, ‘Alistair?’

Eh? Who the bejesus was Alistair? I frowned, flummoxed. Did Gareth have a partner? Were there two necromancers instead of one? Horror poured through me. I could stop one but I doubted I’d have any chance against two. There wasn’t any further time to waste.

Knocked off my equilibrium, I breathed in and cast the runes I’d originally intended. The ground shook, a localised disturbance directly under his feet. Gareth fell forwards onto his hands and knees. As my phone started ringing again, I jabbed out the second rune, turning the very air molecules against him and slicing open his cheek. Gareth cried out, one sharp howl of pain. I had to trust in my magic. It was too dark to see whether I’d actually drawn blood.

I dragged myself forward. The combination of the spells I’d cast, along with the last vestiges of the spell that had slammed into me earlier, was taking its toll. I felt mind-numbingly exhausted.

‘Sleep when you’re dead,’ I muttered to myself. Not my normal catchphrase, of course, but given that I might soon be in that state, it seemed apt.