There was a muffled but mighty crash from the hallway—the sound, Alex was certain, of the main doors smashing open under a life-sizer’s fists. The buzzing grew louder, a depressing, toneless song from under the floorboards. His grandfather took the box of salt and strode over, surrounding the spot with a thin circle, then pouring a larger mound at its center.

“Should buy us some time,” he said, returning and spreading another line on the floor in a semicircle before them. “Well, a few seconds. Still, better than nothing. We can save these last handfuls of salt for throwing. How many shotgun shells did you manage to prepare?”

“Six,” said Metz, setting them out on the blanket over his knees. He was breathing fast, Alex saw, but holding himself together.

“Three each then,” Kingdom said, pulling her sword sheath across her back and breaking open a shotgun. As they worked preparing their weapons, Alex stepped closer to his grandfather.

“How’s the improvising going?”

“Have to confess, I’m having a bit of an off day on that front, Alex.”

Alex noticed the old man’s hand was trembling badly. Sweat stood out on his brow. “Grandad, couldn’t you just . . . take the potion again? To stop you aging?”

“Hmm? Oh. No.” The old man wiped his brow, then looked down at his shaking hand, tightening it into a fist. “No, I’ll never do that.” His voice dropped to a murmur. “Alex, you asked me why I left my father. Why I turned against them. Well then. It was because I found out the truth. I found out about the deaths.”

“Deaths?” It came out as a dry whisper. The scraping sounds from the kitchen were now joined by a mighty banging. The barricade at the door across the room shuddered as something slammed against it from the other side.

His grandfather nodded. “I told you, my father uses an extract from the flower, the flower we took from the Black Forest that awful night. Ghastly stories surrounded the thing, Alex. It grew out at an abandoned crossroads, under a tree that had once been used as the local gallows. Legend was, it had grown there by absorbing the lives of all the killers and thieves that perished over it. It was said its roots ran . . . very deep. But there were other legends about it.”

The buzzing beneath their feet had become a high, horrific whine, shuddering angrily as it bored into wood.

“After we brought it home, I became aware my father was going out some nights, going out late. Going out with his spring-heels. My suspicions grew. I started following him, or trying to. Long story short, one night I finally saw it happen. It was all part of the hideous bargain of keeping that demonic flower alive, and the flower keeping him—us—alive.”

They watched the floorboards. There was a puff of sawdust. Wood began coiling away in strips