She stared into my eyes. “I don’t tell lies—and certainly not about spook’s business, where innocent victims are involved.
“Everybody knows,” she continued. “They’re talking about it in every village for miles. They’re scared for their families. Some think that John Gregory would have sorted the problem out by now.”
Her words were like a slap in the face. I felt hurt and angry, but I took a deep breath and controlled my feelings. I knew that she was telling the truth, and I had to face it.
It made me realize how isolated I was. That was the problem with being a spook—you never heard the local gossip or knew what people were thinking. It was even worse now that I was working alone. I had nobody with whom to share the burden and talk through concerns and problems.
“So you know what’s been doing the killing? Enlighten me!” I replied sarcastically.
“I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s hairy and lives inside a tree. At night it wanders about and finds its way into people’s houses. It can change its size. I know that in one of those houses, a girl died. I heard about the other deaths—I’m thinking they might be the same.”
“So you’ve been spying on this hairy beastie as well as me. But we have a problem here. How come when you followed the supposed creature, it didn’t see you?”
“For the same reason you weren’t aware of me when I followed you. I was there close by, but you didn’t see me.”
“You can make yourself invisible?” I said skeptically. Then I scowled. “What are you, a witch? Perhaps you belong in a pit,” I suggested. In truth, I knew she wasn’t a witch. I was just trying to scare her, really—though I knew it was beneath me. I regretted the words the moment they had left my mouth.
“No. I’m a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,” she replied, “just as I told you. It’s one of the gifts I was born with. I can’t make myself truly invisible—I can’t just disappear before your very eyes. But if you didn’t know where to look and I stood very still, you wouldn’t be able to see me.”
When the girl had confronted me previously, I’d dismissed the idea of a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. It was something I’d not considered before. The Spook had never referred to such a thing—there was certainly no record of one in his Bestiary—nor, for that matter, in any of the books I’d read before his library burned down.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!” I exclaimed.
“So what?” the girl cried angrily. “Just because you’ve never heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Why shouldn’t it apply to girls as well? Why can’t a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter be born with powers to fight the dark?”
She seemed very determined and confident, and it suddenly struck me that my mind had been closed to the possibility. Traditionally, spooks had always been male. This was no doubt because it was men who usually held positions of power and decided how things should be done.
I took a deep breath and bit back my annoyance. If this girl knew the location of the beast, I had to use her knowledge. Other lives could be at stake. The beast would kill again if I didn’t deal with it first.
“Could you show me the tree where this creature lives?” I forced myself to ask the question in a civil tone of voice.
“If I do that, will you take me on as your apprentice?” she asked immediately.
I certainly had no intention of doing any such thing, but if she really did have information on the mysterious deaths, it was my duty to take advantage of it.
“I’m making no promises,” I told her, “but I’ll think about it. We can’t let this go on. Do you want another death on your conscience when you could have prevented it?”
For the first time her confidence seemed to falter, and she lowered her gaze. “The tree is to the east. I’ll take you there now, if you like. It’s less than an hour’s walk. We could get there before dark if we move quickly.”
I nodded. “I have to collect a few things. Wait here. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
I went back to the house and collected my silver chain. I also filled my left pocket with salt and my right with iron. Then I took a small portion of cheese for the journey.
When I returned to the crossroads, to my fury, the girl was no longer there.
I paced up and down for a while, but there was no sign of her. After five minutes I lost patience.
Had she been telling me lies, playing some sort of joke? I wondered.
I glanced around, gave a snort of disgust, annoyed with myself for trusting her, and prepared to leave. I would go back to the house, grab some sleep, and search for the creature in the morning. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement. I looked around, and suddenly the girl was there. She seemed to step right out of a tree trunk. So the ability to be “invisible” was one thing she hadn’t been lying about. . . .
No doubt she hoped I’d comment on her sudden reappearance, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, so I simply gave her a curt nod.
“What do they call you?” I asked.
“My mam calls me Jennifer, but I prefer Jenny.”
I was stunned; my heart pounded. I tried to keep the astonishment from my face as I remembered where I had heard that name before. I must have failed, because she gave me a curious glance.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look like somebody just walked over your grave!”
I ignored her and looked straight ahead. “Lead on!” I said. “But warn me before we come in sight of the tree.”
As we walked, I remembered how a dark mage had once conjured up in my mind a vision of a possible future—one where the house at Chipenden stood abandoned and derelict, with no spook working from it. I’d walked up to my bedroom, and there on the wall, where all the apprentices, including me, had scrawled their names, was a new addition:
JENNY.
It suggested that a girl apprentice had once been based there. It seemed very odd—as far as I knew, there had never been any female spook’s apprentices. Since then I’d thrust the image from my mind, assuming that it was just one of the mage’s tricks. But now a girl of the same name was asking to become my apprentice.
Was this simply coincidence?
Jenny had used that old County saying, too—I looked as if someone had walked over my grave. It seemed sinister in view of what I knew. I would never have abandoned the Chipenden house like that . . . not unless I was dead.