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“Shit,” Levi says. He presses his foot down hard on the accelerator, but we just slow down even more. “What the hell?” he mutters.

“This is a different road,” I say, looking out of the window as the car slows to a crawl. We’re at a crossroads. Levi manages to steer the car onto the side of the road and we come to a complete stop.

“Fuck,” he says almost conversationally. “Could this day get any worse?”

“Yes,” I reply honestly. “I’m fairly sure it could.”

I look around. The side of the crossroads next to me is edged by a thick, fenced wood. The trees are huge and hover over us. Through my open window I can hear the wind rustling through the branches. The sound is eerie and grates on my nerves like nails down a blackboard. Four narrow lanes run off the central area of the crossroads, and old wooden signs might indicate their destinations, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re weathered, and the letters have long since faded.

Unease makes my spine tingle and chill. Something is working at the back of my brain—a thought, a memory. Maybe from something Tom told me once. What was it? Something to do with crossroads.

Levi distracts me by grabbing his phone out of his pocket. “What are you doing?” I ask.

He smiles at me. “Ringing the RAC. I guess Tarquin’s warlock in Penrith did a bad job of blessing the car.”

I roll my eyes. “He probably inadvertently blessed a nearby Tesco’s instead. Tarquin hangs around with some very incompetent odd people.”

He looks down at his phone. “Fuck. No signal. What about you?”

I don’t even bother to look down at my phone. “No.”

“How do you know?”

His smile drops when he reads my face. “I don’t need to check,” I admit. “I know I won’t have any signal.”

He hesitates and then nods. “Okay.” He slides his phone into his pocket and unbuckles his seat belt. The click is loud in the car. “No worries. I’ll walk down the lane a bit and see if I can pick up a signal. You wait here. I won’t be a minute.” He opens his door, one long leg poised to step out.

I grab his arm and pull him back. “You’re not going anywhere,” I snap in panic. “Get back in the car.”

“What is it?” he asks, sliding back into his seat. “What’s going on?”

“Shut the door. I think we’ve been led here.”

“Led? By who? How?”

I make an abortive gesture to keep his voice down, but it’s too late. The words drift out of the open windows, and I have the immediate sense of something waking up. Shit.

I put one hand on his chest and my other over my lips in a hushing gesture. His face whitens and he nods.

Glancing at the window, I send out my senses. Whatever is out there is aware of us now. I know it the same way I know my own name and the exact constellation of freckles on Levi’s shoulders. It’s aware and waiting as if for a signal.

“It’s just a quiet crossroads,” I say softly, not sure whether I’m trying to convince him or myself. The full moon casts the grass in grey, but everything else is drained of colour. Perfectly normal. So, what’s the matter?

I shake my head, that elusive missing thought tugging at my brain again. It’s like having a tooth loose and pushing at it with my tongue.

“Just a crossroads,” I say again and something flares bright in my brain—the memory of Tom sitting in the bookshop instructing me on the lore of crossroads. My body chills instantly, a wave of goosebumps sliding over my skin.

“Crossroads,” I breathe.

“You keep saying that. What does it mean?”

I twist to face him. “Crossroads are liminal spaces, places that exist between the world of the living and the dead.”

“Really?” he says. “I’ve read that they were often burial places for people who the church wouldn’t allow in their graveyards.” He stares out the window, grimacing, as if expecting to see those very graves.

“Suicides, murderers, people who’d been executed for their crimes. Some were even executed at the crossroads.” I remember Tom’s solemn voice. “In the old days, they believed that when their spirits rose at night, they’d be confused because they had a choice of four roads to take. People hoped the confusion would keep them occupied until the dawn broke and they were consigned to the darkness again.”

Even as I talk my eyes are frantically moving, looking for something—anything. The hairs are standing up on my neck, and I know something is coming.