“Well,” his grandfather said, turning away abruptly. He cleared his throat. “Not quite my style.”

Alex packed his belongings away, gathering up the toy robot last and slipping it into the coat’s deep pocket. Meanwhile, the old man worked at his discarded top with his cigarette lighter and a small can of fluid. He soon had it burning, a small strange fire, bright in the dull morning. Alex stuck his hands in his new pockets and watched it burn.

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

The words just popped into his head. The witches’ spell from Macbeth. He tried to recall the rest. All he could get was, By the pricking of my thumbs.

He frowned, seeing the blood shining on his thumb by lamplight in his bedroom on that very first night, when he’d accidentally cut himself on the old toy robot’s ragged tin edge, his blood leaking inside, toward the ancient tablet.

His grandfather used his stick to poke away the last embers in the smoldering heap. With the tip of the cane he drew an obscure pattern through the ashes, then scrubbed it away.

“Onward.”

•  •  •

“HOTEL UP AHEAD,” Alex’s grandfather said.

They had shot through a series of small towns that were barely more than bright little buildings scattered along the roadside. Now they were in empty country under swollen clouds. The terrain was changing, hills growing on the horizon, dark with trees. The hotel nestled alone in a dip by the road, a cheerful white building bearing wooden balconies brightly planted with meadow flowers.

“That’s the way to the Kandel,” Alex’s grandfather said, as if wrestling with a decision. He gestured to the road snaking into the solemn hills ahead. “I had hoped we could grab some rest at the hotel before we try for Harry. Can’t risk it now. We need to keep going. Are you up to it?”

Alex nodded.

“Good man. Don’t know if I am, mind you. Suppose we’ll find out. Still—” At the last moment, rather than bypassing the building, Alex’s grandfather spun them in a sudden screaming turn into the hotel’s sandy carpark. “We can always book rooms for afterward. Give us something to look forward to, eh? Excellent food in this place, I seem to recall. Ah, keep watching the road for unwanted company, Alex, shan’t be a moment.”

As the old man headed into the building, Alex stepped out of the car to stretch. Fine rain hung in the air. The hotel looked old-fashioned and friendly, yet, standing bright and small as the last outpost against the forest towering darkly beyond, it made him think of the flickering taverns in the creaky old black-and-white horror movies his mum and Carl loved to watch late at night on TV: the little inns where locals warned strangers to stay away from the woods after nightfall. The memory didn’t seem so funny now.