Maude picked up a book and lay back on her bed. She’d finally found one that promised to be about magic and stuff, and there was even a little bit about patterns like the ones on the beam – ‘witch marks’, they called them: the act of carving the protective design may in itself hold power, the intention being just as potent as the image itself. It seemed to Maude though that whoever had written the book hadn’t been too sure about their facts. She found herself reading the same short paragraph over and over again, tying to make sense of it.

She looked up, from time to time, staring so hard at the flowers and repeated initials on the beam above that she thought if she closed her eyes, they would still be there, printed onto her retinas. It was Nell’s fault that her dad had gone, you could tell from the look on his face when he’d said goodbye; he’d looked relieved, like he’d wanted to get away.

She ruined everything.

She read for a little while, skipping from chapter to chapter, there were lots of odd stories mixed up with scientific-sounding explanations – but there was nothing connecting Elder House and these marks in particular. Nobody else seemed to know about them.

Maude dropped the book on the floor and stood up, opening the nearest dormer window as far as she could. The diamond-shaped panes of glass looked a little smoky, as if the lead was bleeding into them. She leant forward and breathed onto one, and then traced her initial into the mist. Her jagged capital M echoed the ones up on the beam. Maude. Maude. Maude.

In the corner of her eye, the shadows under the roof seemed to shift. But when she turned to look, there was no one there.

*

She found Nell sitting at the dining table with a mug of coffee, shoving her bits of glass around like they were counters in a game. She hadn’t said much more once Dad had left, just given Maude a not-quite-there smile, and gone upstairs to get dressed as if everything was totally fine.

Maude wandered over, Nell was playing with the darker colours, the emerald greens, and bright leafy shades. She had arranged them like a chart, by size and depth of colour; and had picked out a couple for closer examination.

‘Maude?’ Nell had a funny expression on her face, she looked worried, worried and a bit cross. ‘Have you been – tidying up the bathroom?’

‘No.’

‘Moving things around?’

‘No.’ She pointed to the table. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

Nell looked at her closely, as if she was trying to catch her out. ‘Nope. There’s some in the bowl, on the draining board.’

‘Can I sort them?’

There was a pause and Maude wondered what it was she was supposed to have done now. Nell’s phone lay abandoned on the kitchen counter, still broken.