It has followed the Guardian through time and space—to a stone hut and to an ancient settlement, among others—but it can’t quite put its talons on what it seeks.

The sluagh turns its head this way and that, and senses . . . Ach! Some magic nearby? It can’t quite grasp where or what. But it’s not far away, and the sluagh will return to Moloch with even this small scrap of news.

But before it does, it will feed its own hunger for a human soul. The sluagh turns its head and opens its mouth and screams.

The Scots who live nearby shift in their beds and moan and dream of slavering wolves, of the haunted howes, of a ruined ness, of thin places. The boy who has fallen into and out of a strange, frightening time-travel vision in a small pub shudders and shakes.

The dread sluagh turns its head and its eyes burn like coals. It can’t put its claws on the magic, but it will find food. It screams again, hungry, angry.

CHAPTER 11

Isaac

1942

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Isaac sat straight up, sucking in a deep breath. He was in a bed in a dark room in an inn in the Orkney Islands, gripping the coverlet tight in his fist. Next to him on the bed lay the casket. Its contents—that cold orb he’d clutched in his fist that had transported him to a terrible place in the past, or was it a nightmare?—were once more concealed inside, thank all the prophets.

Then, another loud boom, and “Laddie,” came a voice from the other side of his door. The landlady of this hostelry. “If ye want to make the mainland, ye’d best be doon in ten minutes.”

Isaac, fully awake now, scrambled out of bed. He dressed as fast as he could, pausing before he shoved the casket inside his pack, as the vision began to fade.

Isaac shouldered his pack and stumbled down the stairs.

“I am to make the mainland?” he asked the landlady.

She eyed him, sharp. “Rookskill, aye? Near to Craig? Me cousin lives in Craig. Ye take the number six bus south from Scrabster.”

A farmer who spoke in an unfamiliar language—Gaelic, maybe? thought Isaac—stood in the shadowy pub, turning his hat in his hand. He was driving a lorry to the ferry in Stromness. The landlady had arranged for him to take Isaac to the ferry landing, and she’d packed a bit of food for Isaac’s journey and would accept no payment.

Isaac was so grateful he couldn’t stop thanking her, but she brushed him away.

Dawn was a thin band of orange in the east. The kindness of strangers and the morning light helped lessen the fear left from his vision. Isaac and the farmer rode in silence, the lorry bouncing down the road guided by two dim headlights.