Perfect Tracking

I came to a halt, filled with uncertainty. Then, very suddenly, there was a flash of light behind my eyes and a pressure on my forehead—and I knew precisely where they had gone. It was something very similar to the feeling I’d had back in my bedroom in Chipenden, the conviction that something was terribly wrong. Now I felt that certainty again. I knew where the witches were, the direction they had taken with the Fiend’s head. This was surely the gift that Mam was talking about in the dream—the gift that a hunter needs: the ability to track a prey without signs, to pinpoint its location.

They hadn’t gone west to the sea. They were continuing south and were passing east of Liverpool. Where could they be bound? In my mind’s eye I tried to conjure up the maps I’d studied in the Spook’s library, all of which had perished in the fire. Beyond Liverpool lay the County border, and beyond that, county after county—more than two hundred miles to the south coast.

B13 C10