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here among us all the time. I know because I’ve seen them. My eyes travelled to the bottom margin of the page, to those words scrawled in brown ink.
    They will kill you—
    Even though it was hot in the car at nine in the evening, I felt cold when I read that.
    When I drove back onto the motorway, I saw the grey Alfa Romeo again. Two cars back. Waiting, like a buzzard hanging in the air, waiting to fall through the sky, claws open and ready to drop.

9
Lissy
    The boy smiled at me, waiting by the rain-swept bus stop. I could see the moon in his eyes, reflected.
    “I – I’m sorry—” I started to tell him he’d got the wrong person, made a mistake, but it was as if my head had been sucked clean as a cracked egg. All I could do was look at his face, not asking myself any of the questions I should have done. He’d mistaken me. He must have done. He was acting like we knew each other: that he really had been waiting for me.
    “When you got off the train, I knew you must be coming too.” What was he talking about now? Coming where? The boy reached out and I found myself taking his hand. His skin felt oddly cool yet so familiar.
It’s cold out here
, I told myself.
Cold and wet
. Now we were walking together, side by side. He was taller than me. Much. Well, I knew how that felt. I tower above all the girls in my year. His face looked so young.
    What are you doing, you idiot?
I thought.
You don’t know who he is
.
    “I’ve got to get back,” I said; “they’ll be wondering where I am.” That was an understatement.
    The boy didn’t seem to hear. He stopped a moment, staring at the hedge, then pulled me towards it. “Through here,” he said. “There’s a gap.”
    It’s not as if he’s some creepy old man. He’s just a boy. He can’t be much older than me. Maybe sixteen at most
. The thought blew through my head faster than a leaf in a gale, and disappeared. He stepped lightly over a nettle-filled ditch, still holding my hand, and he didn’t even have to ask me to follow. Hoping like mad I wasn’t going to make an idiot of myself and fall into the nettles, I leapt after him, thinking,
Why not? Just why not?
He took my other arm, steadying me, smiling into my face as I landed, crouching against the hedge.
    “That was well done. You’re getting wet. Wear this.” The boy shrugged out of his cloak and hung it around my shoulders with a flash of gold as he fastened the leaf-brooch. The cloak was heavy. The smell of it caught at the back of my throat and for a minute I couldn’t think about anything else. It was disgusting and delicious at the same time, just like a fairground – a mixture of hot salty sweat, wet dog and something deep and sweet, like burnt candyfloss. It was an animal smell, burning and alive. I’d thought the soaked wool would be wet on the inside too, damp and cold, but it wasn’t. Instead I felt a lot warmer.
    “But—” I looked at the boy, unable to hide my shock. His hair was now free from the cloak’s hood, a great sweep of bright red hair, snaking down past his shoulders, redder than mine, redder than the sun as it sinks away behind the hills. “Won’t you get wet?” I finished, stupidly.
    He smiled. “It doesn’t matter. We’re late. We must hurry. The dark time is already here.” He was walking on now; I scurried along, trying to keep up. The cloak flapped around my ankles, dragging in the long grass. I’d changed out of my school uniform on the train and had my biker boots on, luckily. The ground really was getting muddy, though; it was much harder to move.
    I tried one last time to make the boy understand. “I’m not who you think I am.” But he didn’t seem to hear. He’d let go of my hand now; I was half running to keep up. He seemed to be heading for a clump of trees at the far end of the field. It sounds ridiculous but I knew all the time that this was crazy. Mum would be going mad, calling the police, probably.
I
was mad for just going off with this boy.