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it. “They’re not that friendly,” he admitted. “At least, Fiona is, but her brothers are a bit strange. They keep their distance.”
    “Try to be patient with them,” Isabel advised, sitting back on her heels for a moment, poker in hand. “I don’t think they’re all that happy somehow.”
    “What d’you mean?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. I can just tell. They lost their father, remember.”
    “That was ages ago,” Samuel said.
    “Yes, but it’s obviously had a profound effect on them.”
    Then she bent down, and began attacking the heart of the stove with the poker.
    Samuel thought about the empty library full of shadows and old books, seemingly unchanged since Fiona’s father had died. There was a mystery to this place, an undefined feeling of unfinished business.
     
    Charles stood at his window, and stared blankly at the frozen world outside. His room was high up in the tower. Far below he could see the gardens and grounds mapped out beneath him, blanketed in swirling snow. He’d heard Samuel downstairs with Fiona earlier, and had thoughtabout coming down, but had then decided not to. Why had his mother rented the cottage to the Cunninghams, when they had been perfectly all right on their own? Charles didn’t like strangers. They made him nervous. He was used to having the whole of Sheriffmuir to himself, its empty hills and sparkling forests and breathtaking views. He didn’t like having to share it, or admit someone else into his territory.
    “Charles? Seb?” He could hear Fiona calling him from downstairs.
    After a few minutes he heard her footsteps on the twisting stone staircase in the tower. She appeared in the doorway and pushed it open.
    “Power’s back on,” she said.
    “I noticed.”
    He was sitting at his computer now, which had hummed back into life when the electricity was restored.
    “Why didn’t you come down when Samuel was here?”
    Charles shrugged. He didn’t really know the answer himself.
    “He’s lonely, I think,” Fiona said. “He just wants some company. He must be missing all his friends in Edinburgh.”
    “Not my problem,” Charles said shortly.
    “Charles!” she scolded. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be friendly.”
    “It just makes me nervous, that’s all. A stranger snooping about the place.”
    “Snooping?”
    “I heard you go in the library,” Charles said.
    “I was only showing him round. There’s nothing wrong with that. And you and Sebastian went in there last night.”
    “Yes, but Mum knew we were doing it.”
    “And that makes it all right, does it?”
    “Well, at least I didn’t take a stranger in there.”
    “Samuel’s not a stranger. He’s a friend.”
    She made as if to leave, and then paused. “He’s here to stay, so you may as well get used to him.”
    Charles listened to her footsteps descending the narrow stone staircase. Then he turned back to the computer screen, and stared at it angrily.
    “We’ll see about that,” he muttered to himself.
     
    It was the dead of night. The whole house was sleeping, filled with a familiar eerie silence, punctuated only by the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall below.
    Up in the tower, where the boys had their rooms, Charles lay on his bed, his face twitching with the thoughts and dreams that raced across his inner-eye. Pale moonlight found its way in through the narrow window and pierced the gloom.
    Suddenly Charles sat up in bed and let out a cry.
    He’d woken from a terrible dream; a nightmare. A woman had appeared in the room before him – not as a vague outline, but as if she were really standing there on the rug beside his bed – and had fixed him with her heavy dark eyes. “I – will – get – you,” she whispered.
    He blinked wildly and looked about him, wide awake now, his ashen face beaded with sweat. He shook his head, wondering if he’d only imagined it.

Mysterious Neighbours
    Day after day blizzards roared across the country, bringing towns