Kit. Zita. He’d asked Jack for their freedom.

He sat up straight and focused ahead of him. Jack was sitting behind his desk, with his arms behind his head, regarding Tom with questioning, hungry eyes.

‘Free them. Free them now.’ It was all he could get out.

‘Look behind you, Thomas Swinton.’

Tom did so, slowly. There was the glass box.

There was Zita, still imprisoned.

And there, beside her, was Kit.

‘I have no need of them now,’ said Jack.

‘I asked you to free them!’

‘They are free from my influence now. They can do as they wish. You did not specify what you wished for them. Now you will do what they did. You would always have performed the tasks better than they.’

It was impossible. He was trapped inside the house. Jack would kill Zita and Kit if he defied him.

He stood in a patch of sunlight between shadows.

There was nothing he could do.

Chapter 16

Time has no end and no beginning.

— From the Sayings of the Samdhya, transcribed by Margaret Ravenswood

Outside the sun was high, the air humid, the sky cloudless. In other circumstances it would have been a beautiful day. After he’d seen his parents on the boat, Tom had run to his room and had managed to sleep. Now it was morning, and Jack had taken Tom out to do the wards. And Tom was compelled to follow.

The shadows of the trees fell like spears on the lawn, and rank weeds tumbled in the unkempt fields. Tom tried to imagine being at school on such a day: the noise of balls hitting cricket bats in the background, the shouts from the tennis courts, the chatter on the stairs, the boys loafing about in the quads, dawdling on their way to lessons.

But he could not hold on to the thoughts, and they slipped away as if made of smoke.

It was as if Jack and the farm and his parents had become so huge in his mind now that these were the only things it could contain. Tom walked, treading slowly, watching his feet, looking up only when Jack needed him.

Jack was a silent companion.

They tramped around the boundaries of the farm, making sure that the wards were as strong as possible. They saw nothing, not a single squirrel on the trees, nor a kite above, yet still Tom felt that all the time eyes were fixated on him.

Whenever they stopped to shore up the farm’s protections, Tom sensed Jack’s dark energy oozing out and mixing with his own. It made him feel ill. He was exhausted, but his mind was still whirring, always nagging at the same question. How could he stop this? He needed to prevent the Samdhya from attacking; free Kit and Zita, and put an end to Jack’s reign of terror once and for all.

And yet now, here he was, Jack’s henchman, and probable successor.