'But it could be dangerous!' said Agnes. 'Don't you think so, Nanny?'
Nanny Ogg turned her chair and looked at the baby.
'Cootchie-cootchie?' she said.
The small head looked around and Esme opened her blue eyes.
Nanny Ogg stared thoughtfully.
'Take her with us,' she said at last. 'I used to take our Jason everywhere when he was tiny. They like being with their mum.'
She gave the baby another long hard look.
'Yes,' she went on, 'I think that'd be a damn good idea.'
'Er... I feel perhaps there is little that I'd be able to do,' Oats said.
'Oh, it'd be too dangerous to take you,' said Nanny dismissively.
'But of course my prayers will go with you.'
'That's nice.' Nanny sniffed.
Drizzling rain soaked Hodgesaargh as he trudged back to the castle. The damp had got into the lure, and the noise it made now could only attract some strange, lost creature, skulking in ancient estuaries. Or possibly a sheep with a very sore throat.
And then he heard the chattering of magpies.
He tied the donkey to a sapling and stepped out into a clearing. The birds were screaming in the trees around him, but erupted away at the sight of King Henry on her perch on the donkey.
Crouched against a mossy rock was...
... a small magpie. It was bedraggled and wrong, as if put together by someone who had seen one but didn't know how it was supposed to work. It struggled when it saw him, there was a fluffing of feathers and, now, a smaller version of King Henry was trying to unfold its tattered wings.
He backed away. On her perch, the hooded eagle had its head turned to the strange bird...
... which was now a pigeon. A thrush. A wren...
A sudden intimation of doom made Hodgesaargh cover his eyes, but he saw the flash through the skin of his fingers, felt the thump of the flame, and smelled the scorched hairs on the back of his hand.
A few tufts of grass smouldered on the edge of a circle of scorched earth. Inside it a few pathetic bones glowed red hot and then crumbled into fine ash.
Away in the forest, the magpies screamed.
Count Magpyr stirred in the darkness of his room and opened his eyes. The pupils widened to take in more light.
'I think she has gone to ground,' he said.
'That was remarkably quick,' said the Countess. 'I thought you said she was quite powerful.'
'Oh, indeed. But human. And she's getting older. With age comes doubt. It's so simple. All alone in that barren cottage, no company but the candlelight... it's so simple to open up all the little cracks and let her mind turn in on itself. It's like watching a forest fire when the wind changes and suddenly it's roaring down on all the houses you thought were built so strongly.'
'So graphically put.'
'Thank you.'
'You were so successful in Escrow, I know...'
'A model for the future. Vampires and humans in harmony at last. There is no need for this animosity, just as I have always said.'