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He told me I should pray to God. Ask to be led to one of his saints. St Hubert. Because he said that way I might find a cure, a key I
could use to banish evil.’ He shrugged and blew out a long, slow breath. ‘That’s it. That’s all there is.’
    ‘Don’t you believe in God?’
    Webster sighed. He dropped his head back and looked up.
    ‘Do you?’
    They sat there not speaking for what seemed like an age, with the dark pressing all around them, and the car engine rumbling. And James began wondering if Webster was scared too, but
couldn’t say it out loud because the world of men was not built that way. When he saw the moon reappearing from out of the cloud, he cleared his throat and spoke.
    ‘How long until the next full moon?’
    ‘A week, I think.’
    ‘Then I’ll help you try and find a cure before then.’
    Webster sat up purposefully in his seat. His fingers gripped the steering wheel tight. And then he sat perfectly still for a moment.
    ‘So you believe what the travellers told me too?’
    James nodded. ‘Because we can’t not, can we? At least not until the next full moon.’
    And Webster looked at him for a moment and then shook his head.
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘we can’t.’ He sighed and looked down at his knees. ‘Are you sure you want to leave? With me?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Because of your stepfather?’
    ‘Because of everything.’
    Webster said nothing else for a while and James gripped the seat, steeling himself for what he was going to say next if the man said
no.
    ‘What if we don’t?’ asked Webster finally.
    ‘Don’t what?’
    ‘Don’t find a cure in time.’
    ‘Then it’s not meant to be. None of it.’
    ‘And if we do?’
    ‘Then it is. And we’ll decide what to do after that.’
    Webster sat listening to the car engine.
    ‘OK,’ he said. ‘A week. A week and we’ll see if anything good comes of it. Because no one knows the future, do they?’
    ‘No,’ said James. ‘No one knows how the world works at all.’
    And Webster nodded and let off the handbrake, and put the car into gear and turned the steering wheel, and Timpston slid slowly out of sight.
    The rear lights of the car glowed like the ends of cigarettes and eventually vanished into the dark.
    Up on the hill, a figure emerged from the house. It was Swanney. The shotgun was crooked over his arm and the smell of gunpowder was still ripe in the air. He was speaking quickly on a mobile
phone.



12
    James clicked the link to print. Somewhere near the front of the Internet café a printer warmed and whirred, and he followed the
click-clack
sound of the pages
until he was standing over them.
    The warm paper smelt of bleach.
    He paid for ten sheets of A4 and folded them over to fit more easily into his hand. Two pounds for the printing and a pound for an hour on the Internet didn’t seem too much at all for
finding out what they wanted to know.
    And it was easier than asking God.
    During the night, James had secretly tried praying to find out more about St Hubert. And Webster had admitted to doing the same. But neither of them knew if their questions had even been heard.
And then James had thought of using the Internet.
    He sat on a bench outside the café and made notes in the margins of the pages, periodically looking up to see if Webster had returned to the car parked across the road. By the time he
looked up to see the man standing waving at him, James had read everything through. He narrowed his eyes until Webster was just a man trying to attract his attention.
    A man who could be anyone he wanted.
    ‘There’s a few cures mentioned,’ said James as he sat beside Webster in the car, looking through the pages. ‘Wolfsbane. Exorcism. There’s even one
about addressing somebody three times by their Christian name.’ Looking up, he smiled. But Webster didn’t seem to notice as he sipped from the old plastic bottle of water he’d
taken from his greatcoat pocket.
    ‘What about the one we’re after? St