IT’S BEEN SO long since I last saw Pantoufle. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to have him nearby, watching me with his berry-black eyes, or sitting all warm on my knee, or on my pillow late at night in case I get scared of the Black Man. But Zozie’s already at the door, and we have to catch that Changing Wind—

I call Pantoufle in my shadow-voice. I can’t just leave without Pantoufle. But he doesn’t come, just sits by the stove with his whiskers twitching and that look he gets, and it’s funny, but I can’t remember ever being able to see him so clearly, every hair, every whisker etched in light. And there’s a scent of something, too, coming from that little pan—

It’s only chocolate, I tell myself.

But it smells different, somehow. Like the chocolate I used to drink as a child, all creamy and hot with chocolate curls and cinnamon and a sugar spoon to stir it with.

‘Well?’ she says. ‘Are you coming or not?’

Once again, I call Pantoufle. But once again he doesn’t hear. And of course I want to go, to see those places she told me about, to ride the wind, to be fabulous – but there’s Pantoufle sitting by the copper pan, and somehow I just can’t turn away.

I know he’s just an imaginary friend, and here’s Zozie, so real and alive, but there’s something I have to remember somehow, a story Maman used to tell about a boy who gave his shadow away—

‘Come on, Anouk.’ Her voice is sharp. The wind feels cold in the kitchen now, and there’s snow on the step and on her shoes. Inside the shop there’s a sudden noise, I can smell the chocolate and hear Maman calling me—

But now Zozie’s taking my hand, and she’s dragging me through the open back door. I can feel the snow sliding under my shoes, and the cold of the night creeps under my cloak—

Pantoufle! I call for the last time.

And finally he comes to me, shadowy across the snow. And for a second I see her face, not through the Smoking Mirror, but through the shadow of Pantoufle – and it’s a stranger’s face, not Zozie’s at all, but twisted and bent like a handful of scrap metal, and old, old, like the oldest great-great-grandmother in the world, and instead of the red dress like Maman’s, she’s wearing a skirt of human hearts, and her shoes are all blood in the drifting snow—

I scream and try to pull away.

She claws at me with the sign of One Jaguar, and I can hear her telling me that we’re going to be fine, not to be afraid, that she’s chosen me, that she wants me, needs me, that none of the others would understand—