Lilith has set up a chanting. The small collection of people nearby has thinned as men lead their women away from the lunatic and her ailing friend. Someone has summoned a keeper, but he stops short when he sees the wildness in Lilith’s eyes as she holds her arms wide, her voice growing ever stronger and louder. Bram is aware that he has no breath left in his body, and if he does not take in air very soon, he will pass out. Try as he might he cannot force his chest to expand, cannot overcome the force that restricts him.

The gentle morning has been transformed into an atmosphere of turmoil, with an unnatural wind stirring up dust and whipping the branches of the nearby hazel bushes and birch trees. Lilith is shouting now, her words whisked away by the swirling gusts that snatch at her clothes. Her hat flies from her head, her hair is tugged from its pins, so that it billows out and tangles about her face. Bram sees she is giving her all, but that it might not be enough. His vision is beginning to blur and dim at the edges, and unconsciousness cannot be more than seconds away.

And then what? Then what?

He staggers along the iron fence, causing the black wolf to spring toward him, barking and snarling. He knows he must do something to stop himself from falling into that darkness. Summoning his last vestige of strength, he pushes his hand through the railings directly in front of the wolf. Instinctively, the animal lunges forward and sinks its teeth into Bram’s flesh.

He screams. And that scream forces his reluctant, failing body to take a deep, life-giving gulp of air. Oxygen surges through him. And in that instant, when he is stronger, and Willoughby’s hold is weakened, Lilith works her magic, and the spirit is sent spinning away. Far away.

In the time it takes a wood pigeon to alight on a nearby branch and cease its flapping, the normality of the March morning is restored. The wind disappears. Birds take up singing once more. The wolves, puzzled, lope off to find shade. The keeper inquires after Bram’s health and, once reassured, returns Lilith’s hat to her. Lilith takes it from him and swiftly works a spell of forgetting on the keeper and the startled onlookers. She may well have been recognized, and it would not do for gossip to spread and the incident to be reported in the newspapers. She and Bram hurry down the winding path away from the scene.

Bram pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wraps it around his bleeding hand. He puts his arm around Lilith’s shoulders partly to protect her, and partly because he fears his legs might just give way beneath him without her support. They find a bench at the far side of a picnic area. It is still sufficiently early in the day so that the place is empty, so that they will not be overheard. He sits down heavily, his hair falling in his face, willing his racing heart to steady itself once more. Beside him Lilith tenderly takes his wounded hand and examines the bite.