“What am I supposed to see? A garden? There’s a shed. There’s –”

“No!” said Milly. “Ernie, look. Near the shed, on the lawn.”

“What is it? Some kind of hole?”

“Firepit,” said Ellie. “Sunk in the middle of the lawn. What were we just saying?”

“You think there’ll be wood in the shed?”

“Got to be,” Ellie said. “Got to be something we can use.”

Unless the owners had used up their stocks of fuel, or stopped using the firepit. But it was so much closer than the woods. If – if – there were wood and firelighters in the shed, they could keep a fire going till morning.

But what about the house itself, if the fire kept spreading along the row? Ellie tried to gauge the distance between building and pit, which stood near the far end of the lawn, where a row of pines grew. “This place might do it,” she said. “All depends what’s in that shed.”

The glow dimmed; clouds of black smoke were shrouding the flames. The fire must have reached something that burned poorly. The lawn began fading from view, and pale shapes that the light had driven back began edging across the grass.

“So what do we do?” called Julie.

The flare hissed into life, spilling smoke and red light. Ellie leant outward, practising the throw: too far and she’d miss the conservatory roof; not far enough and the flare would fall down the rake into the plastic guttering.

She let it drop; it spun, bouncing off the slates. Ellie’s breath caught, but it landed inches from the conservatory roof’s edge, the red glow pooling around it.

“Okay,” Ellie muttered. “Here we go.”

She’d no idea whether or not the flare would damage the glass of the roof, or how long she’d have before it did. At the same time, she couldn’t rush her next move, or she might miss the conservatory roof and land in the back garden, where the things were waiting.

Ellie brought her leg over the ridge, gripping onto it with both hands. She thought she saw smoke escaping from the eaves of the neighbouring house – that was how fires spread along a terrace, from roofspace to roofspace – but couldn’t be sure. She let her weight drop, sliding feet-first down towards the conservatory, keeping flat against the rake as she slithered down it. A couple of tiles clipped her cheek. Her boots caught in the guttering, halting her descent. She rocked, almost overbalancing, but thankfully settled flat against the rake again.

The gap between the guttering and the conservatory roof was less than a foot; Ellie stepped down, swaying, then held the flare out over the edge of the conservatory so it illuminated the lawn. The creatures were there, waiting in the shadows. The flare-light licked the firepit’s edges, filling its snow-clogged interior with flickering shadows, and reached past it to the shed.