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the candlelight. Her mother’s handsome face became hard, stubborn. ‘Mama, tell me you’re not meddling with Sebastian. It would be suicide to do this to an Ealdwitan. If he found out . . .’
    ‘There is nothing to find out.’
    ‘Then why—’
    ‘Hold your tongue!’ her mother hissed furiously, and she pointed at Rosa. Magic crackled from her fingertip and Rosa’s mouth snapped shut like a trap, so hard she bit her tongue and tasted blood. She breathed through her nose for a long moment, tempted almost beyond endurance to defy Mama, lift the spell, scream back at her.
    I am a stronger witch than you , she thought. And you know it. I could lift this spell and there would be nothing you could do to prevent me.
    But she could not do it. She could not bring herself to defy her mother in cold blood.
    She only shook her head, telling her mother with her eyes what she must surely already know – that it would be madness to do this, madness to risk the fury of the Knyvets by ensnaring their son with a charm any hedgewitch could discover and undo. Then she turned and left, feeling the darkness swirling at her heels, as her mother snuffed the study lamp and stalked the opposite way down the corridor to her own bedroom.
    It was only later, in her own room, as Rosa pinched the candle wick and undid the spell in order to rinse her mouth with cold water, swilling away the taste of the blood, that the realization came to her.
    It was not Sebastian her mother had been trying to bind.
    The spell had been for her.

L uke woke, sweating, and with his shout of fear echoing around the bare little room. His shoulder burnt with the pain of the brand, throbbing beneath the dressing, and for a minute he lay, his chest heaving, his skin wet with sweat. Then he turned with a shiver, the bedstead squawking in protest, and drew the rough blankets up to his chin.
    But before he could close his eyes he heard the creak of the floorboards in the corridor and the wavering flicker of a candle flame illuminated the doorway.
    ‘Luke?’ said a gruff voice.
    ‘It’s nothing,’ Luke said shortly. ‘Only the old dream.’
    His uncle nodded.
    ‘Well, you’d have to be made of iron not to have thought of them tonight. I know they were in my thoughts – and it wasn’t I . . .’ He trailed off. Luke turned his face away from the candlelight, knowing what his uncle had been about to say. It wasn’t William who’d hid beneath the settle as his mother and father were butchered before his eyes. It wasn’t William who’d stuffed his father’s neckerchief into his mouth to stifle his sobs, and watched as the blood ran down the walls and pooled on the rough boards, and the wavering shadow waxed high and black against the wall.
    And you never saw his face? they’d questioned him afterwards. Luke had shook his head again and again, wishing there was a different answer, wishing he’d had the courage – not to save his parents, for he was wise enough, even as a child, to know that was not in his power and never had been. But the courage just to turn his head, to peep out and see the face of the man who’d sucked his father’s life from his mouth and vomited it, red and clotted, against the walls of their little house. But he had not. He had just lain, stifling his whimpers, mesmerized by the rise and shiver of the Black Witch’s shadow in the firelight, and the only clue he’d been able to give them was the cane that had rolled across the floor to lie against his leg, the cane with the ebony shaft and the silver head in the shape of a coiled snake. He’d lain there, trembling, as the hand in its black glove had groped closer and closer to his leg, like a monstrous black five-legged spider, creeping across the floor towards him.
    And then – like a miracle – it’d found the cane and gripped it. The shadow against the wall straightened from its hunch and stood. Turned on its heel. Left.
    The Black Witch had left Luke an orphan. It had