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stairs and wouldn’t budge.
    Much as Tom would have savored seeing Pitt maneuver past, he took a breath and said, “The man can’t speak. Benjamin is with him. Do your job and check the road and come back later.”
    “You know damn well the Maimers will be gone.” Pitt said it with a strain of genuine frustration, like a hunter with a quarry that he can’t begin to track. “I won’t keep riding out blind. I need the eyes and ears of people who have met them. You have to let me up.”
    “I won’t.”
    “This is a public tavern,” Pitt said.
    “This is my private house.”
    Before Pitt could answer, Scratch attacked his leg, bloodying his stocking and raking his hands whenever he tried to wrest the creature off. The sheriff drew his gun and swung it like a hammer. Scratch jumped away; Pitt struck his own shin. He groaned and cocked the pistol, aiming at the cat, who retreated to the step where he’d originally been.
    “Put it down,” Tom said, “before you terrify a man who’s already lost his tongue. Go and catch a Maimer, if it’s truly your concern.”
    Pitt lowered the gun. He was too dignified to spit at the cat but openly considered it, sucking in his cheeks and staring at Tom as if he, and not Scratch, had torn his favorite stocking. “I’m coming back,” he said. “And I will shoot this cat and anyone else who comes between me and the fellow upstairs.”
    Then he drew himself tall, like a pillar of the town, and strode out of the tavern to organize another futile sortie into the forest.
    “Good cat,” Tom said.
    Scratch slashed the air and made Tom flinch before scrambling downstairs and darting out of sight.
    “Tom,” Benjamin said, suddenly behind him. “I need a quill and paper. Our man would like to tell us who he is and how it happened.”
    *   *   *
    His name was John Pale, he was a lawyer out of Grayport, and he had written his story down before exhaustion overcame him. The ink was smudged and the sheet was dotted with blood, but his handwriting was beautifully refined and his account, however hasty, exhibited candor and clarity. Now the paper lay on a table near the front window of the Orange’s taproom, where Benjamin sat looking thoughtfully into the night, while Tom prepared them each a hot cup of smoak.
    Fire rippled in the great stone hearth, providing the room’s only light aside from a candle at Benjamin’s table. Nabby had retired to her bedroom off the kitchen, Ichabod was in his room upstairs overlooking the river, and Bess had forgone her own bed to sleep in a chair beside John Pale. Benjamin had used the raspberry leaves as an astringent and largely stopped the bleeding. They had poured the hideous draft directly into the patient’s stomach with the funnel, and once the added medicine had dulled the worst of the pain, he had finally fallen asleep. The day had passed with few additional travelers, but many townspeople had come to the tavern for news of the latest attack. Sheriff Pitt and a band of armed companions had ridden into the forest and returned empty-handed, Tom had gone about his usual work, and Benjamin, having done all he could for John Pale, had seen to other patients and returned to the Orange after dark to sit with his friend and talk, at last, of Molly and the Maimers.
    Tom stirred the boiling water into the freshly ground smoaknuts and set a pair of cups upon the table. He snipped tobacco from a twist, stuffed two pipes, and handed one to Benjamin. They lit them from the candle and puffed until a cloud swirled above their heads, where it mingled with the rosemary hanging from the rafters. Instead of speaking right away, they settled back and savored the quiet of the taproom with its dark wooden walls, its deeply scarred tables, and its permanent smell of woodsmoke, cinnamon, and bacon.
    Tom picked the paper up and read it once more. John Pale had left Grayport on horseback the previous morning. The road remained in poor condition—passable, but