Cat’s friends nodded sagely. They were all familiar with Granny Mary and could well imagine her threatening a supernatural being.

‘Granny told me to go back to sleep and when I woke up the next morning, Granddad was gone.’

For a moment, no one said anything. Cat looked down at her feet. She hadn’t meant to make things awkward. Suddenly, the bell rang out, breaking the silence and summoning them all back to class. Reluctantly, they trudged toward the building.

‘Did you really see a Banshee?’ asked Shane, slowing down to walk beside Cat.

‘Maybe,’ she said carefully, ‘or maybe I’m just trying to freak you all out before Halloween.’

Shane rolled his eyes. ‘I knew it,’ he muttered and stalked off.

But it wasn’t a lie. Cat really had seen a Banshee. Or at least, she thought she had. It been so long since she had seen the pale woman, she was starting to doubt it had really happened at all. Granny never doubted though. A few days after Granddad’s funeral she sat Cat down and told her she had ‘the Sight’, just like all the other women in the family.

Well, almost all the women. Cat’s mam didn’t believe in the Sight and would give out to Granny every time she brought it up, telling her to stop filling Cat’s head with nonsense.

‘Every so often the Sight skips a generation,’ Granny said with a sniff. ‘I blame your granddad, bless his soul. He was a lovely man, but he wanted for a bit of imagination.’

Ever since then it had been their secret and, truth be told, it was the reason Cat was so excited for Halloween this year – she could finally swap ghost and fairy stories with Granny without her mam pursing her lips in disapproval.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a pleasant haze. It was almost midterm break, so Mr Brennan decided to take it easy on the class. Instead of their usual Friday maths and spelling lessons, he allowed them to spend an hour painting Halloween-inspired pictures. Cat painted a creepy doll with haunted eyes and sighed. Maybe next year …

Chapter Two

An Armour Against the World

When the final bell rang, Cat and her friends grabbed their coats and scarves from the back of the classroom and ran out the door, eager to enjoy what little was left of the afternoon. Up until this year, Granny would pick Cat up at the school gates, but now she was in fifth class Cat felt she was old enough to make her own way home. Surprisingly, her mam had agreed – as long as she came straight home and didn’t dilly-dally. This was not a hard promise to keep because there wasn’t much to dilly-dally over in Clonbridge. It wasn’t a big town – there was Main Street with the usual scattering of pubs and chip-shops, a church with an imposing white steeple, a corner shop that had seen better days, and a well-manicured sports field. The building of the motorway had seen the population of the town begin to grow in recent years, but it was still small enough that everyone knew everyone else and there were plenty of people to tell her mother if they caught her doing anything remotely forbidden.