“We were, a bit,” said Samuel.

“I knew,” said Hilary Mould, “that there was a great force of Darkness somewhere out there in the vast reaches of space.”

He gestured grandly at the stars surrounding them. A finger flew off into the blackness.

“Just pretend that never happened,” said Hilary Mould. He continued: “I felt this Darkness calling to me. I heard the lost voices. And I knew what I had to build: an engine, a great supernatural machine in the form of a pentagram, and then the Shadows would come.”

“What did they promise you in return?” asked Nurd.

“Eternal life!” said Hilary Mould, and added a “Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” for effect.

“And how is that working out for you, now that you’re falling apart?”

“It’ll be fine,” said Hilary Mould.

His nose twitched.

“This decay is only temporary, I’m sure.”

There was definitely a sneeze coming. He could feel it.

“Blast this dust.”

Hilary Mould sneezed. His nose shot past Angry, who made a vain attempt to catch it but succeeded only in breaking it with his fingertips.

“If it’s any help,” said Wormwood, “I know just how you feel.”

“I am not worried,” said the now-noseless Hilary Mould. “The Shadows will restore me to my original form, and they will give me the Earth to rule as my reward.”

Samuel looked doubtfully at the Shadows looming above their heads, still waiting for their way into this universe to be revealed. He didn’t think that they were likely to keep their side of the bargain with Hilary Mould. If they got through, there wouldn’t be an Earth left for him to rule.

“But the engine didn’t work, did it?” said Maria. She stood beside Samuel, seemingly fearless. She made Samuel feel braver, too. “Not like you thought it would.”

“There were, apparently, some problems,” Hilary Mould admitted. “The Shadows still couldn’t enter our world. There wasn’t enough chthonic power, not in an engine designed only by a human. That was why I hid myself away in the basement, waiting for circumstances to change. The Shadows told me to be patient. They said that, in time, humanity’s own inventions would weaken the barriers between dimensions. And they were right: that was precisely what happened, but still, still it was not sufficient. One final ingredient was required: a force greater than the Shadows, greater even than the most advanced machines of men. It was—”

“A heart,” said Samuel, finishing his sentence for him.

For the first time, Hilary Mould looked surprised, and a bit disappointed. This was to have been his big revelation, and now a boy had deprived him of it. The dwarfs had been bad enough, but this was just too much. He decided that, once the Shadows had entered the universe, he was going to have a long lie-down and not talk to any dwarfs or children for eternity.

“Yes, a heart,” he said, making the best of the situation. “A heart of purest evil; a heart capable of pumping its poison into my engine, providing it with the fuel that it required to break down the walls, to shatter the barriers between universes; the heart of a demon with a hatred for the Earth to match the Shadows’ own.”