Carpe Jugulum

go, then. All the good beer’s gone and I’m not stoppin’ anyway if there’s nothin’ to laugh at.”
    The wind was whistling across the sky when they walked back to Agnes’s cottage. In fact there seemed more whistle than wind. The leafless trees creaked as they passed, the weak moonlight filling the eaves of the woods with dangerous shadows. Clouds were piling in, and there was more rain on the way.
    Agnes noticed Nanny pick up something as they left the town behind them.
    It was a stick. She’d never known a witch to carry a stick at night before.
    “Why have you got that, Nanny?”
    “What? Oh? Dunno, really. It’s a rattly old night, ain’t it…?”
    “But you’re never frightened of anything in Lan—”
    Several things pushed through the bushes and clattered onto the road ahead. For a moment Agnes thought they were horses, until the moonlight caught them. Then they were gone, into the shadows on the other side of the road. She heard galloping among the trees.
    “Haven’t seen any of those for a long time,” said Nanny.
    “I’ve never seen centaurs at all except in pictures,” said Agnes.
    “Must’ve come down out of Uberwald,” said Nanny. “Nice to see them about again.”
    Agnes hurriedly lit the candles when she got into the cottage, and wished there were bolts on the door.
    “Just sit down,” said Nanny, “I’ll get a cup of water, I know my way around here.”
    “It’s all right, I—”
    Agnes’s left arm twitched. To her horror it swung at the elbow and waved its hand up and down in front of her face, as if guided by a mind of its own.
    “Feeling a bit warm, are you?” said Nanny.
    “I’ll get the water!” panted Agnes.
    She rushed into the kitchen, gripping her left wrist with her right hand. It shook itself free, grabbed a knife from the draining board, and stabbed it into the wall, dragging it so that it formed crude letters in the crumbling plaster:
    VMPIR
    It dropped the knife, grabbed at the hair on the back of Agnes’s head, and thrust her face within inches of the letters.
    “You all right in there?” Nanny called from the next room.
    “Er, yes, but I think I’m trying to tell me something—”
    A movement made her turn. A small blue man wearing a blue cap was staring at her from the shelves over the washcopper. He stuck out his tongue, made a very small obscene gesture, and disappeared behind a bag of washing crystals.
    “Nanny?”
    “Yes, luv?”
    “Are there such things as blue mice?”
    “Not while you’re sober, dear.”
    “I think…I’m owed a drink, then. Is there any brandy left?”
    Nanny came in, uncorking the flask.
    “I topped it up at the party. Of course, it’s only shop-bought stuff, you couldn’t—”
    Agnes’s left hand snatched it and poured it down her throat. Then she coughed so hard that some of it went up her nose.
    “Hang on, hang on, it’s not that weak,” said Nanny.
    Agnes plonked the flask down on the kitchen table.
    “Right,” she said, and her voice sounded quite different to Nanny, “My name is Perdita and I’m taking over this body right now .”

Hodgesaargh noticed the smell of burnt wood as he ambled back to the mews but put it down to the bonfire in the courtyard. He’d left the party early. No one had wanted to talk about hawks.
    The smell was very strong when he looked in on the birds and saw the little flame in the middle of the floor. He stared at it for a second, then picked up a water bucket and threw it.
    The flame continued to flicker gently on a bare stone that was awash with water.
    Hodgesaargh looked at the birds. They were watching it with interest; normally they’d be frantic in the presence of fire.
    Hodgesaargh was never one to panic. He watched it for a while, and then took a piece of wood and gently touched it to the flame. The fire leapt on to the wood and went on burning.
    The wood didn’t even char.
    He found another twig and brushed it against the flame, which slid easily from one to the other. There was one flame. It was clear there wasn’t going to be two.
    Half the bars in the window had been burned away, and there was some scorched wood at the end of the mews, where the old nestboxes had been. Above it, a few stars shone through rags of mist over a charred hole in the roof.
    Something had burned here, Hodgesaargh saw. Fiercely, by the look of it. But also in a curiously local way, as if all the heat had been somehow contained…
    He reached toward the flame dancing on