A New Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

creature I was pursuing.
    Disappointed, I turned and headed for home.
    I arrived back at Chipenden about an hour before sunset. I was hungry and exhausted. To my annoyance, I found the girl there again; this time she was waiting on the edge of the garden.
    “You look texhausted!” she exclaimed. “Have you had a difficult day?”
    I walked straight past her, not bothering to reply. I’d almost reached the edge of the trees when she shouted something at my back.
    “I know what’s been killing those girls! I know where the beastie lives!”
    “How do you know about the dead girls? You’re lying!” I shouted angrily, turning back to confront her.
    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