'That'll be a dollar for the drinks,' he said, 'and fivepence because the raven that wasn't here messed in the pickles.'

It was the night before Hogswatch.

In the Archchancellor's new bathroom Modo wiped his hands on a piece of rag and looked proudly at his handiwork. Shining porcelain gleamed back at him. Copper and brass shone in the lamplight.

He was a little worried that he hadn't been able to test everything, but Mr Ridcully had said, 'I'll test it when I use it,' and Modo never argued with the Gentlemen, as he thought of them. He knew that they all knew a lot more than he knew, and was quite happy knowing this. He didn't meddle with the fabric of time and space, and they kept out of his greenhouses. The way he saw it, it was a partnership.

He'd been particularly careful to scrub the floors. Mr Ridcully had been very specific about that.

'Verruca Gnome,' he said to himself, giving tap a last polish. 'What an imagination the Gentlemen do have.'

Far off, unheard by anyone, was a faint little noise, like the ringing of tiny silver bells.

Glingleglingleglingle...

And someone landed abruptly in a snowdrift and said, 'Bugger!', which is a terrible thing to say as your first word ever.

Overhead, heedless of the new and somewhat angry life that was even now dusting itself off, the sledge soared onwards through time and space.

I'M FINDING THE BEARD A BIT OF A TRIAL, said Death.

'Why've you got to have the beard?' said the voice from among the sacks. 'I thought you said people see what they expect to see.'

CHILDREN DON'T. TOO OFTEN THEY SEE WHAT'S THERE.

'Well, at least it's keeping you in the right frame of mind, master. In character, sort of thing.'

BUT GOING DOWN THE CHIMNEY? WHERE'S THE SENSE IN THAT? I CAN JUST WALK THROUGH THE WALLS.

'Walking through the walls is not right, neither,' said the voice from the sacks.

IT WORKS FOR ME.

'It's got to be chimneys. Same as the beard, really.'

A head thrust itself out from the pile. It appeared to belong to the oldest, most unpleasant pixie in the universe. The fact that it was underneath a jolly little green hat with a bell on it did not do anything to improve matters.

It waved a crabbed hand containing a thick wad of letters, many of them on pastel-coloured paper, often with bunnies and teddy bears on them, and written mostly in crayon.

'You reckon these little buggers'd be writing to someone who walked through walls?' it said. 'And the "Ho, ho, ho" could use some more work, if you don't mind my saying so.'

HO. HO. HO.

'No, no, no!' said Albert. 'You got to put a bit of life in it, sir, no offence intended. It's got to be a big fat laugh. You got to ... you got to sound like you're pissing brandy and crapping plum pudding, sir, excuse my Klatchian.'

REALLY? HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL THIS?

'I was young once, sir. Hung up my stocking like a good boy every year. For to get it filled with toys, just like you're doing. Mind you, in those days basically it was sausages and black puddings if you were lucky. But you always got a pink sugar piglet in the toe. It wasn't a good Hogswatch unless you'd eaten so much you were sick as a pig, master.'

Death looked at the sacks.

It was a strange but demonstrable fact that the sacks of toys carried by the Hogfather, no matter what they really contained, always appeared to have sticking out of the top a teddy bear, a toy soldier in the kind of colourful uniform that would stand out in a disco, a drum and a red-and-white candy cane. The actual contents always turned out to be something a bit garish and costing $5.99.

Death had investigated one or two. There had been a Real Agatean Ninja, for example, with Fearsome Death Grip, and a Captain Carrot One-Man Night Watch with a complete wardrobe of toy weapons, each of which cost as much as the original wooden doll in the first place.

Mind you, the stuff for the girls was just as depressing. It seemed to be nearly all horses. Most of them were grinning. Horses, Death felt, shouldn't grin— Any horse that was grinning was planning something.

He sighed again.

Then there was this business of deciding who'd been naughty or nice. He'd never had to think about that sort of thing before. Naughty or nice, it was ultimately all the same.

Still, it had to be done right. Otherwise it wouldn't work.

The pigs pulled up alongside another chimney.

'Here we are, here we are,' said Albert. 'James Riddle, aged eight.'

HAH, YES. HE ACTUALLY SAYS IN HIS LETTER, 'I BET YOU DON'T EXIST 'COS EVERYONE KNOWS ITS YORE PARENTS.' OH YES, said Death, with what almost sounded like sarcasm, I'M SURE HIS PARENTS ARE JUST IMPATIENT TO BANG THEIR ELBOWS IN TWELVE FEET OF NARROW UNSWEPT CHIMNEY, I DON'T THINK. I SHALL TREAD EXTRA SOOT INTO HIS CARPET.

'Right, sir. Good thinking. Speaking of which — down you go, sir.'

HOW ABOUT IF I DON'T GIVE HIM ANYTHING AS A PUNISHMENT FOR NOT BELIEVING?

'Yeah, but what's that going to prove?'

Death sighed. I SUPPOSE YOU'RE RIGHT.

'Did you check the list?'

YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH?

'Definitely.'

COULDN'T REALLY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. HOW CAN I TELL IF HE'S BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE, FOR EXAMPLE?

'Oh, well ... I don't know ... Has he hung his clothes up, that sort of thing. '

AND IF HE HAS BEEN GOOD I MAY GIVE HIM THIS KLATCHIAN WAR CHARIOT WITH REAL SPINNING SWORD BLADES?

'That's right.'

AND IF HE'S BEEN BAD?

Albert scratched his head. 'When I was a lad, you got a bag of bones. 's'mazing how kids got better behaved towards the end of the year.'

OH DEAR. AND NOW?

Albert held a package up to his ear and rustled it. 'Sounds like socks.'

SOCKS.

'Could be a woolly vest.'

SERVE HIM RIGHT, IF I MAY VENTURE TO EXPRESS AN OPINION...

Albert: looked across the snowy rooftops and sighed. This wasn't right. He was helping because, well, Death was his master and that's all there was to it, and if the master had a heart it would be in the right place. But...

'Are you sure we ought to be doing this, master?'

Death stopped, halfway out of the chimney.

CAN YOU THINK OF A BETTER ALTERNATIVE, ALBERT?

And that was it. Albert couldn't.

Someone had to do it.

There were bears on the street again.

Susan ignored them and didn't even make a point of not treading on the cracks.

They just stood around, looking a bit puzzled and slightly transparent, visible only to children and Susan. News like Susan gets around. The bears had heard about the poker. Nuts and berries, their expressions seemed to say. That's what we're here for. Big sharp teeth? What big shar— Oh, these big sharp teeth? They're just for, er, cracking nuts. And some of these berries can be really vicious.

The city's clocks were striking six when she got back to the house. She was allowed her own key. It wasn't as if she was a servant, exactly.

You couldn't be a duchess and a servant. But it was all right to be a governess. It was understood that it wasn't exactly what you were, it was merely a way of passing the time until you did what every girl, or gel, was supposed to do in life, i.e., marry some man. It was understood that you were playing.

The parents were in awe of her. She was the daughter of a duke whereas Mr Gaiter was a man to be reckoned with in the wholesale boots and shoes business. Mrs Gaiter was bucking for a transfer into the Upper Classes, which she currently hoped to achieve by reading books on etiquette. She treated Susan with the kind of worried deference she thought was due to anyone who'd known the difference between a serviette and a napkin from birth.

Susan had never before come across the idea that you could rise in Society by, as it were, gaining marks, especially since such noblemen as she'd met in her father's house had used neither serviette nor napkin but a state of mind, which was 'Drop it on the floor, the dogs'll eat it.'

When Mrs Gaiter had tremulously asked her how one addressed the second cousin of a queen,

Susan had replied without thinking, 'We called him Jamie, usually,' and Mrs Gaiter had had to go and have a headache in her room.

Mr Gaiter just nodded when he met her in a passage and never said very much to her. He was pretty sure he knew where he stood in boots and shoes and that was that.

Gawain and Twyla, who'd been named by people who apparently loved them, had been put to bed by the time Susan got in, at their own insistence. It's a widely held belief at a certain age that going to bed early makes tomorrow come faster.

She went to tidy up the schoolroom and get things ready for the morning, and began to pick up the things the children had left lying around. Then something tapped at a window pane.

She peered out at the darkness, and then opened the window. A drift of snow fell down outside.

In the summer the window opened into the branches of a cherry tree. In the winter dark, they were little grey fines where the snow had settled on them.

'Who's that?' said Susan.

Something hopped through the frozen branches.

'Tweet tweet tweet, would you believe?' said the raven.

'Not you again?'

'You wanted maybe some dear little robin? Listen, your grand-'

'Go away! '

Susan slammed the window and pulled the curtains across. She put her back to them, to make sure, and tried to concentrate on the room. It helped to think about ... normal things.

There was the Hogswatch tree, a rather smaller version of the grand one in the hall. She'd helped the children to make paper decorations for it. Yes. Think about that.

There were the paperchains. There were the bits of holly, thrown out from the main rooms for not having enough berries on them, and now given fake modelling clay berries and stuck in anyhow on shelves and behind pictures.

There were two stockings hanging from the mantelpiece of the small schoolroom grate. There were Twyla's paintings, all blobby blue skies and violently green grass and red houses with four square windows. There were

...

Normal things ...

She straightened up and stared at them, her fingernails beating a thoughtful tattoo on a wooden pencil case.

The door was pushed open. It revealed the tousled shape of Twyla, hanging onto the doorknob with one hand.

'Susan, there's a monster under my bed again...'

The click of Susan's fingernails stopped.

'...I can hear it moving about...'

Susan sighed and turned towards the child.

'All right, Twyla. I'll be along directly.'

The girl nodded and went back to her room, leaping into bed from a distance as a precaution against claws.

There was a metallic tzing as Susan withdrew the poker from the little brass stand it shared with the tongs and the coal shovel.

She sighed. Normality was what you made it.

She went into the children's bedroom and leaned over as if to tuck Twyla up. Then her hand darted down and under the bed. She grabbed a handful of hair. She pulled.

The bogeyman came out like a cork but before it could get its balance it found itself spreadeagled against the wall with one arm behind its back. But it did manage to turn its head, to see Susan's face glaring at it from a few inches away.

Gawain bounced up and down on his bed.

'Do the Voice on it! Do the Voice on it!' he shouted.

'Don't do the Voice, don't do the Voice!' pleaded the bogeyman urgently.

'Hit it on the head with the poker!'

'Not the poker! Not the poker!'

'It's you, isn't it,' said Susan. 'From this afternoon . . .'

'Aren't you going to poke it with the poker?' said Gawain.

'Not the poker!' whined the bogeyman.

'New in town?' whispered Susan.

'Yes!' The bogeyman's forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. 'Here, how come you can see me?'

'Then this is a friendly warning, understand? Because it's Hogswatch.'

The bogeyman tried to move. 'You call this friendly?'

'Ah, you want to try for unfriendly?' said Susan, adjusting her grip.

'No, no, no, I like friendly!'

'This house is out of bounds, right?'

'You a witch or something?' moaned the bogeyman.

' I'm just ... something. Now ... you won't be around here again, will you? Otherwise it'll be the blanket next time.'

'No!'

'I mean it. We'll put your head under the blanket.'

'No!'

'It's got fluffy bunnies on it. '

'No!'

'Off you go, then.'

The bogeyman half fell, half ran towards the door.

'It's not right,' it mumbled. 'You're not s'posed to see us if you ain't dead or magic. 's not fair. . .'

'Try number nineteen,' said Susan, relenting a little. 'The governess there doesn't believe in bogeymen.'

'Right?' said the monster hopefully.

'She believes in algebra, though.'

'Ah. Nice.' The bogeyman grinned hugely. It was amazing the sort of mischief that could becaused in a house where no one in authority thought you existed.

'I'll be off, then,' it said. 'Er. Happy Hogswatch.'

'Possibly,' said Susan, as it slunk away.

'That wasn't as much fun as the one last month,' said Gawain, getting between the sheets again. 'You know, when you kicked him in the trousers...'

'Just you two get to sleep now,' said Susan.

'Verity said the sooner we got to sleep the sooner the Hogfather would come,' said Twyla conversationally.

'Yes,' said Susan. 'Unfortunately, that might be the case.'

The remark passed right over their heads. She wasn't sure why it had gone through hers, but she knew enough to trust her senses.

She hated that kind of sense. It ruined your life. But it was the sense she had been born with.

The children were tucked in, and she closed the door quietly and went back to the schoolroom.

Something had changed.

She glared at the stockings, but they were unfulfilled. A paperchain rustled.

She stared at the tree. Tinsel had been twined around it, badly pasted-together decorations had been hung on it. And on top was the fairy made of

She crossed her arms, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed theatrically.

'It's you, isn't it?' she said.

SQUEAK?

'Yes, it is. You're sticking out your arms like a scarecrow and you've stuck a little star on your scythe, haven't you...?'

The Death of Rats hung his head guiltily.

SQUEAK.

'You're not fooling anyone.'

SQUEAK.

'Get down from there this minute!'

SQUEAK.

'And what did you do with the fairy?'

'It's shoved under a cushion on the chair,' said a voice from the shelves on the other side of the room. There was a clicking noise and the raven's voice added, 'These damn eyeballs are hard, aren't they?'

Susan raced across the room and snatched the bowl away so fast that the raven somersaulted and landed on its back.

'They're walnuts!' she shouted, as they bounced around her. 'Not eyeballs! This is a schoolroom! And the difference between a school and a-a-a raven delicatessen is that they hardly ever have eyeballs lying around in bowls in case a raven drops in for a quick snack! Understand? No eyeballs! The world is full of small round things that aren't eyeballs! OK?'

The raven's own eyes revolved.

' ' n' I suppose a bit of warm liver's out of the question...'

'Shut up! I want both of you out of here right now! I don't know how you got in here-'

'There's a law against coming down the chimney on Hogswatchnight?'

'...but I don't want you back in my life, understand?'

'The rat said you ought to be warned even if you were crazy,' said the raven sulkily. 'I didn't want to come, there's a donkey dropped dead just outside the city gates, I'll be lucky now if I get a hoof—'

'Warned?' said Susan.

There it was again. The change in the weather of the mind, a sensation of tangible time ...

The Death of Rats nodded.

There was a scrabbling sound far overhead. A few flakes of soot dropped down the chimney.

SQUEAK, said the rat, but very quietly.

Susan was aware of a new sensation, as a fish might be aware of a new tide, a spring of fresh water flowing into the sea. Time was pouring into the world.

She glanced up at the clock. It was just on half past six.

The raven scratched its beak.

'The rat says ... The rat says: you'd better watch out ...'

There were others at work on this shining Hogswatch Eve. The Sandman was out and about, dragging his sack from bed to bed. Jack Frost wandered from window pane to window pane, making icy patterns.

And one tiny hunched shape slid and slithered along the gutter, squelching its feet in slush and swearing under its breath.

It wore a stained black suit and, on its head, the type of hat known in various parts of the multiverse as 'bowler', 'derby' or 'the one that makes you look a bit of a tit'. The hat had been pressed down very firmly and, since the creature had long pointy ears, these had been forced out sideways and gave it the look of a small malignant wing-nut.

The thing was a gnome by shape but a fairy by profession. Fairies aren't necessarily little twinkly creatures. It's purely a job description, and the commonest ones aren't even visible.[9] A fairy is simply any creature currently employed under supernatural laws to take things away or, as in the case of the small creature presently climbing up the inside of a drainpipe and swearing, to bring things.

Oh, yes. He does. Someone has to do it, and he looks the right gnome for the job.

Oh, yes.

Sideney was worried. He didn't like violence, and there had been a lot of it in the last few days, if days passed in this place. The men ... well, they only seemed to find life interesting when they were doing something sharp to someone else and, while they didn't bother him much in the same way that lions don't trouble themselves with ants, they certainly worried him.

But not as much as Teatime did. Even the brute called Chickenwire treated Teatime with caution, if not respect, and the monster called Banjo just followed him around like a puppy.

The enormous man was watching him now.

He reminded Sideney too much of Ronnie Jenks, the bully who'd made his life miserable at Cammer Wimblestone's dame school. Ronnie hadn't been a pupil. He was the old woman's grandson or nephew or something, which gave him a licence to hang around the place and beat up any kid smaller or weaker or brighter than he was, which more or less meant he had the whole world to choose from. In those circumstances, it was particularly unfair that he always chose Sideney.

Sideney hadn't hated Ronnie. He'd been too frightened. He'd wanted to be his friend. Oh, so much. Because that way, just possibly, he wouldn't have his head trodden on such a lot and would actually get to eat his lunch instead of having it thrown in the privy. And it had been a good day when it had been his lunch.

And then, despite all Ronnie's best efforts, Sideney had grown up and gone to university. Occasionally his mother told him how Ronnie was getting on (she assumed, in the way of mothers, that because they had been small boys at school together they had been friends). Apparently he ran a fruit stall and was married to a girl called Angie.[10] This was not enough punishment, Sideney considered.

Banjo even breathed like Ronnie, who had to concentrate on such an intellectual exercise and always had one blocked nostril. And his mouth open all the time. He looked as though he was living on invisible plankton.

He tried to keep his mind on what he was doing and ignore the laboured gurgling behind him. A change in its tone made him look up.

'Fascinating,' said Teatime. 'You make it look so easy.'

Sideney sat back, nervously.

'Urn ... it should be fine now, sir,' he said. 'It just got a bit scuffed when we were piling up the

He couldn't bring himself to say it, he even had to avert his eyes from the heap, it was the sound they'd made. '...the things,' he finished.

'We don't need to repeat the spell?' said Teatime.

'Oh, it'll keep going for ever,' said Sideney.

'The simple ones do. It's just a state change, powered by the ... the ... it just keeps going

He swallowed.

'So,' he said, 'I was thinking ... since you don't actually need me, sir, perhaps ...'

'Mr Brown seems to be having some trouble with the locks on the top floor,' said Teatime. 'That door we couldn't open, remember? I'm sure you'll want to help.'

Sideney's face fell.

'Urn, I'm not a locksmith. '

'They appear to be magical.'

Sideney opened his mouth to say, 'But I'm very bad at magical locks,' and then thought much better of it. He had already fathomed that if Teatime wanted you to do something, and you weren't very good at it, then your best plan, in fact quite possibly your only plan, was to learn to be good at it very quickly. Sideney was not a fool. He'd seen the way the others reacted around Teatime, and they were men who did things he'd only dreamed of.[11]

At which point he was relieved to see Medium Dave walk down the stairs, and it said a lot for the effect of Teatime's stare that anyone could be relieved to have it punctuated by someone like Medium Dave.

'We've found another guard, sir. Up on the sixth floor. He's been hiding.'

Teatime stood up. 'Oh dear,' he said. 'Not trying to be heroic, was he?'

'He's just scared. Shall we let him go?'

'Let him go?' said Teatime. 'Far too messy. I'll go up there. Come along, Mr Wizard.'

Sideney followed him reluctantly up the stairs.

The tower — if that's what it was, he thought; he was used to the odd architecture at Unseen University and this made UU look normal was a hollow tube. No fewer than four spiral staircases climbed the inside, criss-crossing on landings and occasionally passing through one another in defiance of generally accepted physics. But that was practically normal for an alumnus of Unseen University, although technically Sideney had not alumed. What threw the eye was the absence of shadows. You didn't notice shadows, how they delineated things, how they gave texture to the world, until they weren't there. The white marble, if that's what it was seemed to glow from the inside. Even when the impossible sun shone through a window it barely caused faint grey smudges where honest shadows should be. The tower seemed to avoid darkness.

That was even more frightening than the times when, after a complicated landing, you found yourself walking up by stepping down the underside of a stair and the distant floor now hung overhead like a ceiling. He'd noticed that even the other men shut their eyes when that happened. Teatime, though, took those stairs three at a time, laughing like a kid with a new toy.

They reached an upper landing and followed a corridor. The others were gathered by a closed door.

'He's barricaded himself in,' said Chickenwire.

Teatime tapped on it. 'You in there,' he said. 'Come on out. You have my word you won't be harmed.'

'No!'

Teatime stood back. 'Banjo, knock it down,' he said.

Banjo lumbered forward. The door withstood a couple of massive kicks and then burst open.

The guard was cowering behind an overturned cabinet. He cringed back as Teatime stepped over it. 'What're you doing here?' he shouted. 'Who are you?'

'Ah, I'm glad you asked. I'm your worst nightmare!' said Teatime cheerfully.

The man shuddered.

'You mean ... the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?'

'Sorry?' Teatime looked momentarily nonplussed.

'Then you're the one about where I'm falling, only instead of ground underneath it's all...'

'No, in fact I'm...'

The guard sagged. 'Awww, not the one where there's all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue...'

'No, I'm...'

'Oh, shit, then you're the one where there's this door only there's no floor beyond it and then there's these claws...'

'No,' said Teatime. 'Not that one.' He withdrew a dagger from his sleeve. 'I'm the one where this man comes out of nowhere and kills you stone dead.'

The guard grinned with relief. 'Oh, that one,' he said. 'But that one's not very...'

He crumpled around Teatime's suddenly outthrust fist. And then, just like the others had done, he faded.

'Rather a charitable act there, I feel,' Teatime said as the man vanished. 'But it is nearly Hogswatch, after all.'

Death, pillow slipping gently under his red robe, stood in the middle of the nursery carpet ...

It was an old one. Things ended up in the nursery when they had seen a complete tour of duty in the rest of the house. Long ago, someone had made it by carefully knotting long bits of brightly coloured rag into a sacking base, giving it the look of a deflated Rastafarian hedgehog. Things lived among the rags. There were old rusks, bits of toy, buckets of dust. It had seen life. It may even have evolved some.

Now the occasional lump of grubby melting snow dropped onto it.

Susan was crimson with anger.

'I mean, why?' she demanded, walking around the figure. 'This is Hogswatch! It's supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly, and — and other things ending in olly! It's a time when people want to feel good about things and eat until they explode! It's a time when they want to see all their relatives...'

She stopped that sentence.

'I mean it's a time when humans are really human,' she said. 'And they don't want a ... a skeleton at the feast! Especially one, I might add, who's wearing a false beard and has got a damn cushion shoved up his robe! I mean, why?'

Death looked nervous.

ALBERT SAID IT WOULD HELP ME GET INTO THE SPIRIT OF THE THING. ER AGAIN

There was a small squelchy noise.

Susan spun around, grateful right now for any distraction.

'Don't think I can't hear you! They're grapes, understand? And the other things are satsumas! Get out of the fruit bowl!'

'Can't blame a bird for trying,' said the raven sulkily, from the table.

'And you, you leave those nuts alone! They're for tomorrow!'

SKQUEAF, said the Death of Rats, swallowing hurriedly.

Susan turned back to Death. The Hogfather's artificial stomach was now at groin level.

'This is a nice house,' she said. 'And this is a ...

.. IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU

... good job. And it's real, with normal people. And I was looking forward to a real life, where normal things happen! And suddenly the old circus comes to town. Look at yourselves. Three Stooges, No Waiting! Well, I don't know what's going on, but you can all leave again, right? This is my life. It doesn't belong to any of you. It's not going to ...'

There was a muffled curse, a rush of soot, and a skinny old man landed in the grate.

'Bum!' he said.

'Good grief! ' raged Susan. 'And here is Pixie Albert! Well, well, well! Come along in, do! If the real Hogfather doesn't come soon there's not going to be room.'

HE WON'T BE JOINING US, said Death. The pillow slid softly on to the rug.

'Oh, and why not? Both of the children did letters to him,' said Susan. 'There's rules, you know.'

YES. THERE ARE RULES. AND THEY'RE ON THE LIST. I CHECKED IT.

Albert pulled the pointy hat off his head and spat out some soot.

'Right. He did. Twice,' he said. 'Anything to drink around here?'

'So what have you turned up for?' Susan demanded. 'And if it's for business reasons, I will add, then that outfit is in extremely poor taste ...'

THE HOGFATHER IS ... UNAVAILABLE.

'Unavailable? At Hogswatch?'

YES.

'Why?'

HE IS ... LET ME SEE ... THERE ISN'T AN ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE HUMAN WORD, SO ... LET'S SETTLE FOR ... DEAD. YES. HE IS DEAD.

Susan had never hung up a stocking. She'd never looked for eggs laid by the Soul Cake Duck. She'd never put a tooth under her pillow in the serious expectation that a dentally inclined fairy would turn up.

It wasn't that her parents didn't believe in such things. They didn't need to believe in them. They knew they existed. They just wished they didn't.

Oh, there had been presents, at the right time, with a careful label saying who they were from. And a superb egg on Soul Cake Morning, filled with sweets. Juvenile teeth earned no less than a dollar each from her father, without argument.[12] But it was all straightforward.

She knew now that they'd been trying to protect her. She hadn't known then that her father had been Death's apprentice for a while, and that her mother was Death's adopted daughter. She'd had very dim recollections of being taken a few times to see someone who'd been quite, well, jolly, in a strange, thin way. And the visits had suddenly stopped. And she'd met him later and, yes, he had his good side, and for a while she'd wondered why her parents had been so unfeeling and

She knew now why they'd tried to keep her away. There was far more to genetics than little squirmy spirals.

She could walk through walls when she really had to. She could use a tone of voice that was more like actions than words, that somehow reached inside people and operated all the right switches. And her hair ...

That had only happened recently, though. It used to be unmanageable, but at around the age of seventeen she had found it more or less managed itself.