We were both hungry, so we ate it all. I wasn't on spook's business, so there was no need to fast. We could live off the land.It was as if Alice had read my thoughts. "I'll catch us a couple of juicy rabbits at dusk," she promised with a smile."That would be nice. You know, Alice," I said, "you've told me a lot about witches in general, but very little about Pendle and the witches -who live there. Why's that? Reckon I'll need to know as much as possible if we're heading there."Alice frowned. "I've lots of painful memories of that place. Don't like to talk about my family. Don't like to talk about Pendle much-the thought of going back there scares me."It's funny," I said, "but Mr. Gregory's never talked much about Pendle either. You'd think we'd have been discussing and planning what it's like and what we're going to do when we get there."Always likes to play things close to his chest, he does. He must have some sort of plan. I'm sure he'll share it with us when the time's right. Imagine Old Gregory having a friend!" said Alice, changing the subject. "A friend who's a priest as well!"What I can't understand is why someone would give up being a spook to become a priest."Alice laughed at that. "No stranger than Old Gregory being a priest and giving it up to become a spook!"

She was right-the Spook had been trained as a priest-and I laughed with her. But my opinion hadn't changed. As far as I could see, priests prayed and that was it. They didn't do anything directly to deal with the dark. They lacked the practical knowledge of our craft. It seemed to me that Father Stocks had taken a step in the wrong direction.A little before dusk we stopped again and settled ourselves down in a hollow between two hills, close to the edge of a wood. The sky -was clear, with the waning moon visible to the southeast. I busied myself making a fire while Alice went hunting for rabbits. Within an hour she was cooking them over the fire, the juice dribbling and hissing into the flames while my mouth watered.I was still curious about Pendle, and despite Alice's reluctance to talk about her life there, I decided to try again."Come on, Alice," I said. "I know it's painful for you to talk about, but I do need to know more about Pendle…"I suppose so," Alice said, peering at me over the flames. "Best that you're prepared for the worst. Ain't a nice place to be. And everybody's scared. Whichever village you visit, you can see it in their faces. Can't blame em, because the witches know almost everything that's going on. After dark, most ordinary folk turn the mirrors in their houses to the wall."

"Why?" I asked."So they can't be spied on. Nobody trusts a mirror at night. Witches, specially the Mouldheels, use them to spy on folks. They love to use em for scrying and spying. In Pendle you never know who or what might suddenly peer out at you from a mirror. Remember old Mother Malkin? That should give you some idea of the sort of witch we'll be facing."The name Malkin sent a chill through my bones. Mother Malkin had been the most evil witch in the County, and a year earlier, with Alice's help, I'd managed to destroy her. But not before she'd threatened the lives of Jack and his family.

"Even though she's gone now, in Pendle there's always someone else ready to step into the shoes of a dead witch," Alice said grimly. "And there are plenty of Malkins capable of that. Some of em live in Malkin Tower, which ain't a place to go anywhere near after dark. People who go missing in Pendle -that's where they mostly end up. There are tunnels, pits, and dungeons under the tower, full of the bones of those they've murdered."Why isn't something done?" I asked. "What about the high sheriff at Caster? Can't he do anything?"Sent justices and constables to Pendle before, he has. Lots of times. Not that it did much good. Mostly they hanged the wrong people. Old Hannah Fairborne was one. She was nearly eighty when they dragged her off to Caster in chains. Said she was a witch, but that wasn't true. Still, she deserved to hang because she poisoned three of her nephews. Lots of that goes on in Pendle. It ain't a good place to be. And it ain't easy to sort things out there. That's why Old Gregory's left it so long."I nodded in agreement."I know more than most what it's like to live there," Alice continued. "There've been lots of unions between Malkins and Deanes, even though they're rivals. Truth is, the Malkins and Deanes hate the Mouldheels a lot more than they do each other. Life in Pendle is complicated. Lived there most of my life but still don't understand em."Were you happy?" I asked. "I mean, before you were looked after by Bony Lizzie?"

Alice grew silent and avoided my gaze, and I realized that I shouldn't have asked. She'd never talked much about life with her parents or with Lizzie after they'd died."Don't remember life much before Lizzie," she said at last. "I mostly remember the rows. Me lying there in the darkness crying while my mam and dad fought like cat and dog. But sometimes they talked and laughed as well, so it wasn't all bad. That was the big difference afterward. The silence. Lizzie didn't say much. More likely to give me a clout round the head than a kind word. Brooded a lot, she did. Gazed into the fire and muttered her spells. And if she weren't gawping into the flames, she'd be staring into a mirror. Sometimes I caught sight of things over her shoulder. Things that don't belong on this earth. Scared me, it did. Preferred Mam and Dad's fights to that.''"Did you live in Malkin Tower?"Alice shook her head. "No. Only the Malkin coven and a few chosen helpers live in the tower itself. But I went there sometimes with my mam. Some of it's underground, but I never went down there. They all live together in one big room, and there was lots of arguing and screaming and smoke stinging your eyes.

Being a Deane, my dad didn't visit the tower. He'd never have got out alive. We lived in a cottage near Roughlee, the village where most of the Deanes live. The Mouldheels live in Bareleigh and the rest of the Malkins in Goldshaw Booth. Mostly keep to their own territory, they do."After that Alice grew silent, so I didn't press her further. I could see that Pendle held a lot of painful memories for her-unspoken horrors that I could only guess at.Jack's nearest neighbor, Mr. Wilkinson, had a horse and cart, and I knew he'd be only too happy to hire them out. No doubt he'd have one of his sons drive us so I wouldn't have to make a return journey later. I decided to call in at my brother's first to let him know -what I intended to do with the trunks. We made good time and came within sight of Jack's farm late in the afternoon of the following day. My first glance told me that something was badly wrong.We'd approached from the northeast, skirting the edge of Hangman's Hill, and as we began our descent, I could see right away that there were no animals in the fields. Then, as I caught sight of the farmhouse, it got worse.

The barn was a blackened ruin: It had been burned to the ground.It never even crossed my mind to ask Alice to wait at the farm boundary. Something bad had happened, and all I could think of was checking that Jack, Ellie, and their daughter, Mary, were all right. By now the farm dogs should have been barking, but everything was silent.As we hastened through the gate and across the yard, I saw that the back door of the farmhouse had been smashed in and was hanging from one hinge. I ran across, with Alice at my heels, a lump in my throat, afraid that something terrible had happened.Once inside, I called Jack's and Elbe's names over and over again but received no answer. The house was unrecognizable as the home I'd been brought up in. All the kitchen drawers had been pulled out and there was cutlery and smashed crockery on the flags. The pots of herbs had been taken from the windowsill and thrown against the walls; there was soil in the sink. The brass candlestick had gone from the table and in its place were five empty bottles of elderberry wine from Mam's store in the cellar. But for me, the worst thing of all was Mam's rocking chair, which -was in big, jagged pieces, as if someone had taken an ax to it. It pained me to see that. It almost felt like they'd hurt Mam.Upstairs, the bedrooms had been ransacked -clothes scattered across the beds and floors and every mirror smashed. But the scariest moment of all came when we reached Mam's special room. The door was closed, but there was blood splattered across the -wall next to it, and there were bloodstains on the floorboards, too. Had Jack and his family been here -when this happened?