Her eyes were bright as stars, not just with the headlamp beams but with rejoicing. She’d triumphed over everyone she’d used, I thought, and those she’d treated far worse. This filled me with a rage so fierce it was equal to my fears. “He’s never seen you look like that before,” I said.

Bella sent me a smile I could have taken for conspiratorial, which inflamed my anger. “But I think my parents did,” I said.

“Don’t spoil the moment, Patrick.”

If I’d had any doubts about my course of action, this destroyed them. Though it fell short of quelling my fears, it made me reckless. “And now you don’t care if your master does,” I said and forced myself to say the name that was nagging at my brain. “Lumen Scientiae.”

Bella’s smile flickered, only to recover as she strode towards the car. “Patrick, I asked you—”

“No, you ordered me not to call him.” I glimpsed activity at the limit of the headlamp beams, a pair of hectic masses surging down the walls to meet in the mud. Partly to protect myself as best I could, I lurched across the seat beside me to slam the passenger door. “Will that be him?” I said, staring along the beams. “Will that be Lumen Scientiae?”

There was movement in the mud, where a shape or at any rate the start of one looked eager to rise up. Bella glanced towards it, and her smile grew fixed. Perhaps this represented an attempt to appeal to me, but it struck me as frightful, the expression of a mask imperfectly concealing fear. “Let me in the car,” she said.

“You have to be invited, do you? Not by me any more.” I made sure by locking all the doors with a decisive united click. “Stay out there with your master,” I said, feeling horribly victorious. “With Lumen Scientiae.”