If someone had told me a month ago, Windle thought, that a few days after I died I’d be walking along the road followed by a bashful bogeyman hiding behind a door and accompanied by a kind of negative version of a werewolf…why, I probably would have laughed at them. After they’d repeated themselves a few times, of course. In a loud voice.
The Death of Rats rounded up the last of his clients, many of whom had been in the thatch, and led the way through the flames toward wherever it was that good rats went.
He was surprised to pass a burning figure forcing its way through the incandescent mess of collapsed beams and crumbling floorboards. As it mounted the blazing stairs it removed something from the disintegrating remains of its clothing and held it carefully in its teeth.
The Death of Rats did not wait to see what happened next. While it was, in some respects, as ancient as the first proto-rat, it was also less than a day old and still feeling its way as a Death, and it was possibly aware that a deep, thumping noise that was making the building shake was the sound of brandy starting to boil in its barrels.
The thing about boiling brandy is that it doesn’t boil for long.
The fireball dropped bits of the inn half a mile away. White-hot flames erupted from the holes where the doors and windows had been. The walls exploded. Burning rafters whirred overhead. Some buried themselves in neighboring roofs, starting more fires.
What was left was just an eye-watering glow.
And then little pools of shadow, within the glow.
They moved and ran together and formed the shape of a tall figure striding forward, carrying something in front of it.
It passed through the blistered crowd and trudged up the cool dark road toward t
he farm. The people picked themselves up and followed it, moving through the dusk like the tail of a dark comet.
Bill Door climbed the stairs to Miss Flitworth’s bedroom and laid the child on the bed.
SHE SAID THERE WAS AN APOTHECARY SOMEWHERE NEAR HERE.
Miss Flitworth pushed her way through the crowd at the top of the stairs.
“There’s one in Chambly,” she said. “But there’s a witch over Lancre way.”
NO WITCHES. NO MAGIC. SEND FOR HIM. AND EVERYONE ELSE, GO AWAY.
It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t even a command. It was simply an irrefutable statement.
Miss Flitworth waved her skinny arms at the people.
“Come on, it’s all over! Shoo! You’re all in my bedroom! Go on, get out!”
“How’d he do it?” said someone at the back of the crowd. “No one could have got out of there alive! We saw it all blow up!”
Bill Door turned around slowly.
WE HID, he said, IN THE CELLAR.
“There! See?” said Miss Flitworth. “In the cellar. Makes sense.”
“But the inn hasn’t got—” the doubter began, and stopped. Bill Door was glaring at him.
“In the cellar,” he corrected himself. “Yeah. Right. Clever.”
“Very clever,” said Miss Flintworth. “Now get along with the lot of you.”
He heard her shoo them down the stairs and back into the night. The door slammed. He didn’t hear her come back up the stairs with a bowl of cold water and a flannel. Miss Flitworth could walk lightly, too, when she had a mind to.
She came in and shut the door behind her.
“Her parents’ll want to see her,” she said. “Her mum’s in a faint and Big Henry from the mill knocked her dad out when he tried to run into the flames, but they’ll be here directly.”
She bent down and ran the flannel over the girl’s forehead.