And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.
(“He’s here, lad,” said Nehemiah Trot. “About twenty paces behind you.”)
The Jack called Ketch saw the boy in front of him. He pulled his black silk cord tight between his hands. It had been stretched around many necks, over the years, and had been the end of every one of the people it had embraced. It was very soft and very strong and invisible to X-rays.
Ketch’s mustache moved, but nothing else. He had his prey in his sight, and did not want to startle it. He began to advance, silent as a shadow.
The boy straightened up.
Jack Ketch darted forward, his polished black shoes almost soundless on the leaf-mold.
(“He comes, lad!” called Nehemiah Trot.)
The boy turned around, and Jack Ketch made a leap towards him—
And Mr. Ketch felt the world tumbling away beneath him. He grabbed at the world with one gloved hand, but tumbled down and down into the old grave, all of twenty feet, before crash-landing on Mr. Carstairs’s coffin, splintering the coffin-lid and his ankle at the same time.
“That’s one,” said Bod, calmly, although he felt anything but calm.
“Elegantly accomplished,” said Nehemiah Trot. “I shall compose an Ode. Would you like to stay and listen?”
“No time,” said Bod. “Where are the other men?”
Euphemia Horsfall said, “Three of them are on the southwestern path, heading up the hill.”
Tom Sands said, “And there’s another. Right now he’s just walking around the chapel. He’s the one who’s been all around the graveyard for the last month. But there’s something different about him.”
Bod said, “Keep an eye on the man in with Mr. Carstairs—and please apologize to Mr. Carstairs for me…”
He ducked under a pine-branch and loped around the hill, on the paths when it suited him, off the paths, jumping from monument to stone, when that was quicker.
He passed the old apple tree. “There’s four of them, still,” said a tart female voice. “Four of them, and all killers. And the rest of them won’t all of them fall into open graves to oblige you.”
“Hullo, Liza. I thought you were angry at me.”
“I might be and I mightn’t,” she said, nothing more than a voice. “But I’m not going to let them cut you up, nohow.”
“Then trip them for me, trip them and confuse them and slow them down. Can you do that?”
“While you runs away again? Nobody Owens, why don’t you just Fade, and hide in your mam’s nice tomb, where they’ll never find you, and soon enough Silas will be back to take care of them—”
“Maybe he will and maybe he won’t,” said Bod. “I’ll meet you by the lightning tree.”
“I am still not talking to you,” said Liza Hempstock’s voice, proud as a peacock and pert as a sparrow.
“Actually, you are. I mean, we’re talking right now.”
“Only during this emergency. After that, not a word.”
Bod made for the lightning tree, an oak that had been burned by lightning twenty years ago and now was nothing more than a blackened limb clutching at the sky.
He had an idea. It was not fully formed. It depended on whether he could remember Miss Lupescu’s lessons, remember everything he had seen and heard as a child.
It was harder to find the grave than he had expected, even looking for it, but he found it—an ugly grave tipped at an odd angle, its stone topped by a headless, waterstained angel that had the appearance of a gargantuan fungus. It was only when he touched it, and felt the chill, that he knew it for certain.
He sat down on the grave, forced himself to become entirely visible.
“You’ve not Faded,” said Liza’s voice. “Anyone could find you.”