The snow glowed blue beneath the moon, and as their journey led them off the plains into a sanctum of dark pines, snow on the ground lit the whole forest from within, transforming night into eerie day. In the summer months, when the evenings were so dark you couldn’t even see the bottom of a tin cup unless you tilted it towards the fire, it was impossible to imagine that the rest of the world wasn’t fast asleep too. But there was a whole other night world out there only winter could show you. The hairs on Peter’s forearms bristled, alerting him to the sudden presence of life. And as they slipped deeper in among the trees, the snow gave up the whereabouts of those who lived there.

Elks’ antlers cast midnight shadows across the snow. There were deer out walking the woods. Bobcats on the boughs. Snowball passed beneath a bulbous branch and a feathered face as flat as a tree stump swivelled round on hunkered claws to see them on their way. And when, some time later, Peter wrapped his arms around Cooper’s waist and they left the forest behind them, the Dead wandered out from beneath the pines, spindly and black against the glow of the plains, and stood scattered, watching as they rode on by. But they didn’t approach. They never did. When he survived their bite, the Dead had marked Cooper as one of their own, making him invisible to them. In turn, that sweet tang of log smoke and sweat upon Peter’s skin, born of long nights wrapped up in each other’s kisses, marked him as belonging to Cooper, and worked to keep him safe. Peter leaned in, kissing the back of Cooper’s neck, and the night and all its creatures slowly slipped away behind them.