They fall to shouting and arguing until I am forced to flee. I run back down the gravel path, across the lawn, and into the house, not stopping until I am in my room. Iago is startled awake by my sudden entrance and sits up, green eyes glaring at me. I stand panting, struggling to steady my breath and my racing heart, waiting, listening, fearing the hordes of spirits might follow me, might assail me with their cries anywhere now. For what is to stop them? They all know of the Elixir. Is that my fault, because I used it? Perhaps those Lazarus witches who sought to have me thrown out of the coven, or at least stripped of my position as Head Witch, perhaps they were right. I have unleashed a hunger for new life among the spirits. The Land of the Dead cannot sleep now. The war is swelling their numbers, the dark power of violence stirs them, and I have shown them that there is a way they can tread the earth once more.

They are no longer content to stay where they are. If they have become sufficiently bold to address me uncalled, to argue so vehemently, to question my actions and demand things of me, what will they do next? Will they assail the thoughts of those who are not necromancers or witches? Will they set about haunting? Will they never be at peace? It seems that by using the Elixir on Freddie I have opened their minds to the possibility of resurrection, of letting them cross back to the Land of Day!

What have I done? What have I done?

*   *   *

The steelworks at night is a throbbing cauldron of industry. The mezzanine office is set in a separate building from the furnaces, yet Bram is still conscious of their intense heat. It is as if a barely tamed dragon were kept across the yard. But it is here, in the high-ceilinged factory which used to make nothing more threatening than cutlery, that the real danger is to be found. At the start of the war Cardale’s Steel, like all other factories in the area, was commandeered to produce munitions for the war. Now, at the benches below the glass-walled office, women work with careful efficiency assembling the bombs and bullets that will, God willing, one day bring the fighting to an end.

Are we engaged in a futile mission? he wonders. We produce the means of killing in order to put a stop to the killing. It is as if the war has rendered all good sense beyond us.