“I suppose there’s a chance the fire’ll last till dawn, if we rake it narrower and just try to maintain a bit of flame and coals. Do you . . . Is there a possibility that . . . that thing doesn’t like the sun, as well as fire?”

“I don’t know. But I wouldn’t count on it. From the little I heard my friend Sam talk about it at school, Free Magic creatures roam the day as freely as they do the night.”

“Maybe it’ll run out of puff,” said Ripton. “Like you said. Dorrance didn’t even expect it to wake up, and here it is running around—”

“What’s that noise?” interrupted Nick. He could hear a distant jangling, carried on the light breeze toward him. “Is that a bell?”

“Oh no . . .” groaned Ripton. “It’s the volunteer fire brigade from the village. They know they’re not to come here, no matter what. . . .”

Nick looked around at the ring of red fire, and beyond that at the vast column of spark-lit smoke that was winding up from Dorrance Hall. No firefighter would be able to resist that clarion call.

“They’re probably only the first,” he said quietly. “With this moon, the smoke will be visible for miles. We’ll probably have town brigades here in an hour or so, as well as all the local volunteers for a dozen miles or more. I’ll have to stop them.”

“What! If you leave the circle, that monster will be on you in a second!”

Nick shook his head.

“I’ve been thinking about that. It ran away from me after it drank just a little of my blood. Dorrance was yelling something about getting it other blood to dilute mine. It could easily have killed me then, but it didn’t.”

“You can’t go out,” said Ripton. “Think about it! It’s drunk enough in the last hour to dilute your blood a hundred times over! It could easily be ready for more. And it’s your blood that revved it up in the first place. It’ll kill you and get more powerful, and then it’ll kill us!”

“We can’t just let it kill the firemen,” Nick said stubbornly. He started to walk to the other side of the circle, closer to the drive. Ripton hurried along beside him. “I might be able to hurt . . . even kill . . . the creature with this.”

He pulled out Sam’s dagger and held it up. Fire and moonlight reflected from the blade, but there was green and blue and gold there, too, as Charter Marks swam slowly across the metal. Not fully active, but still strange and wonderful under the Ancelstierran moon.

Ripton did not seem overly impressed.

“You’d never get close enough to use that little pigsticker. Llew! Llew!”

“You’re not catching me like that again,” said Nick, without slowing down. He stowed the dagger away and picked up a rake, ready to make a gap in the burning barrier. A glance over his shoulder showed him the huge-shouldered Llew getting up from where he was braiding flowers. “If I want to go, you’re going to let me this time.”