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the axe seized from within and wrenched from their hands. They stayed away, called it haunted, claimed beasts and fey creatures lurked within.
    They were right.
    “Jenny Greenteeth and Nellie Longarms!” chanted the lasses, daring each other near.
    “Old Rawhead and Hairy Jack!”
    “All the bogeymen together, sitting down to tea!”
    Batch Hangnail, the imp, shifted impatiently in the hedge, brambles poking at his meaty backside. Ordinarily the sight of new mannies from whom to scavenge would have excited him, but today he was a pawn in a bigger game.
    Once the lasses had raced away in pursuit of a butterfly, he made a crude gesture to the vultures and shoved his bulk through the hedge. He dashed across the rutted path toward the school’s formal garden, following his whim to the strange unkempt place at its edge. Though the rest of the gardens were blooming and bonny, pruned and tidy, this spot was dreary, a tree-shaded circle of weedy bricks with a well at its center.
    He climbed the mossy stones and peered down into the darkness, feeling a little flutter in his belly. He wasn’t afraid of the dark, certainly. The dark was his favorite. And wells, he’d been down many. He’d found his best diamond ring in a well, and a number of gold-capped teeth still clinging to their jaw, and the monogrammed handkerchief he wore tied satchel style over his shoulder. He clutched it against him now to ease his aching heart.
    His treasures—ah, his treasures! His wheelbarrow full of treasures was so far away now in Rome, and unless he did just as he was told, he might never see it again! He still had his rings, for he wore them on his bristly tail. But all the eyelashes he’d gathered from the cheeks of sleeping children, the hanks of their unwashed hair, the belly button lint, the baby teeth—ah, the baby teeth!—as good as lost, and why? Because an ill-timed feast of rancid kidneys had made him sleepy, and while others fled the catacombs he snored, to awaken to the terrible voice . . .
    An ancient reek wafted up from inside the well and Batch breathed deeply, excited in spite of himself. Perhaps this task would have its own rewards, he thought. Then, with scuttling grace, he climbed in and began his long descent. Down he went, and down and down. And down some more! “Munch,” he muttered. “ ’Tis devious deep.” No ordinary well was this deep, but Batch already suspected this was no ordinary well.
    Some time passed and his little arms and legs grew tired, and the stones became slimier and slipperier. He began to fret. He was already down so deep now he didn’t know if he could climb back out. He imagined his wheelbarrow lying unclaimed forever in the dusty pelvis of that human skeleton back in the catacombs. The thought was so wretched it made him twitch just as he reached for a slimy handhold . . . and he missed! His arms windmilled as down, down, down he fell, until with a squelching thud he met mud and was buried up to his nose in it, with just those grand pink nostrils poking up. He snuffled deep breaths of rank, sulfurous air through them, letting the good bad smell clear his head. Then he began to fumble about for a toehold in the muck.
    By the time he had floundered his way out of it, Batch was a dirtier and richer imp than he had been moments before. Filth-crusted from the top of his head to the tip of his tail, he admired his new silver coins—tossed here, he knew, by silly mannies trying to buy wishes—and one old rusty key. He shoved the key into his satchel along with the coins, trusting his gift enough to know that when he found a thing, there was likely a use for it around the bend.
    He padded around the pit of the well until he found a deep-set door. A door that had not been opened for centuries. At his push it creaked inward and the air from the well shaft flowed in and over a lake of smoke, finding and feeding a low smoldering ember in the depths of the cavern.
    The ember glowed brighter.
    Batch took