“You selfish bitch,” she managed, jaw still gripped in rigor mortis.

Natalie stood, shocked, silent and shaking, as she regarded the mud-covered figure in her dining room. Charlize had returned to her.

She took two quick steps forward, tears in her eyes and joy in her heart; Charlize backed away.

“Why did you do this to me?” Charlize choked. “Why did you bring me back?”

“I wasn’t ready, Charlie,” Natalie whimpered. “I couldn’t—”

“But I was!” Charlie reached for the steak knife laid out beside Natalie’s dinner. She tightened her death-stiff fingers around the handle. “I was done! At peace. Resting.”

“Charlie, please.” Natalie’s tears soured, no longer revelling in a miracle but drowning in shame. “I couldn’t live with you gone.”

“That’s why you’ve always been the selfish one.”

Charlie took the blade to her throat and slashed.

Loretta Lynch spends her mornings grinding bones and it’s not to make her bread. She’s not a giant, or a witch, or any other of those silly creatures you might have read about in your fairy tales.

Loretta Lynch is an alchemist, and she knows how to live forever.

It hadn’t been easy, finding the recipe. A life time of work, quite literally. She’d poisoned herself once or twice and quit much more often. But just days before her fifty-third birthday, Loretta tried one last formula. She clutched the phial to her chest and said a prayer to the nameless gods.

Down her throat it went.

That was many years ago now. I was but a boy then, you see. And you were likely not even born.

Yes, you can buy her panacea, if she happens to like your face. But visit her store with care, good child: she charges more than coin.

Selina had a habit of drawing pentagrams on the soles of her shoes. A habit that started as an edgy facade and soon became an obsession.

‘Aces high,’ Deb exclaimed, turning out her hand to reveal a three-of-a-kind windfall.

Jack threw his kings at the couch.

‘Sssh,’ Selina barked; she was getting nervous. The tip of the Sharpie bore deep grooves in the soles of her turquoise Connies where she traced the five-pointed star over and over again. Now her teeth bored grooves in her lower lip, too.

‘Chill out, Sel,’ Deb shrugged. She reached for a bag of marshmallows buried amongst the pile of junk food they’d assembled for the sleep over. ‘Nothing’s going to happen at midnight.’

‘Why midnight anyways?’ Jack crunched a mouthful of Pringles.

‘Because that’s what he told me,’ Selina muttered through clenched teeth. Told being spelt-out on the crude, hand-drawn Ouija board last weekend. ’12. 12. 12 — 12 o’clock on December 12.’

‘How d’you know it wasn’t noon?’ Jack asked.

‘Because it’s dinner time and I’m still alive.’