The blond boy looked sheepish. “Just messin’. I’m Bailey. This is Charlie and Marco.”

“Hi.” Aster’s greeting was cool. “So, whatcha doing?”

The trio exchanged looks and Bailey shrugged, appeared to think for a moment and then nodded to his friends.

“See that house over there,” said the boy called Marco, pointing to a run-down property with a butterfly pinned to the brick. “The guy that lives there murdered his wife.”

Aster’s eyes widened. “No way.”

Charlie grinned. “He’s a fucking weirdo. Always staring out the window and working on his creepy dolls, the goddamned freak. He doesn’t bother to wash or anything. His shoes have got holes in them.” He laughed as if this were the funniest thing he had ever heard.

“We think he’s behind all these killings,” said Bailey. “And he deserves to be punished for his crimes.”

“But surely the police—” Aster didn’t want to say it aloud, to undo the fragile peace between her and the boys, but the they frightened her with their cavalier attitude to justice.

“—are doing fuck all.” Bailey grinned around the group. “So we’re going to do it for them.”

“What are you going to do?” She flicked a wary look at her own front door. She didn’t want Evan to be privy to this.

“You’ll have to wait and see.” Bailey grinned and they laughed again, but there was a cruel edge to it. “Come on.”

The boys began to wheel their bikes up the path of the house. Aster hovered uncertainly behind them. Charlie unhooked the shopping bag from his handlebars. A fly buzzed around the opening and the boy swatted it away.

Aster felt sick. She sensed something bad was coming, but she lacked the strength to walk away.

“There,” said Bailey, and pointed to a trailing rose growing around a wooden stake in the old man’s front garden. He loped onto the lawn, grabbed the stem of the plant and yanked it free. “Shit,” he said, sucking the bloom of blood from the bulb of his thumb. “It’s stuck.”

“Let me see,” said Aster. Her fingers closed around Bailey’s warm palm. A thorn was embedded in his skin. She pulled at the thorn gently and it came free, leaving a streak of blood on its barb.

“Thanks,” said Bailey, and winked at her. Aster’s insides liquefied.

“Hurry up,” said Marco, throwing a glance up the street, “before someone comes.”

Bailey flung the ruined rose onto the grass. “Come on, Charlie. You’re up.”

Charlie swaggered onto the lawn and stuck two fingers up at the window. The shopping bag was swinging from his other arm, and Aster caught a stink of iron, earth and death.

She put her hand over her mouth.