As if their situation wasn’t bad enough, it had now become incalculably worse.

Or so she thought.

But as the tarrie-cats advanced upon them, she felt Kaspar’s hold on her weaken a little, and a few muttered words escaped his lips.

“You stay away from me…” he warned them.

The tarrie-cats ignored him. They simply continued their approach, their scrutiny frighteningly intense.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Wolfswinkel said to them.

Look at me? Candy thought. What did he mean by look at me? He was invisible, surely. How could they possibly be seeing him? Suddenly it was clear to Candy.

“They can see you,” she said to Kaspar.

The magician made no reply. But he didn’t need to. His body was answering for him. He’d begun to shake, and his grip on Candy had weakened so much that she was able to slip free of him. She went immediately to tend to Malingo, who was still curled up on the ground.

“It’s all right,” she reassured him. “The tarrie-cats are here.”

“That’s good?” he said, turning over to look at her. There was blood and fear on his face.

“Oh, yes, it’s good,” she said.

“How so?”

“Because the tarries can see him, Malingo.”

“They can?”

They both looked up.

The animals’ eyes were all focused on the same spot, just a few feet from Candy and Malingo. And from that exact place came Wolfswinkel’s voice.

“You keep your distance, you spit rags!” he wailed at the tarries. “Stay away, I’m warning you, or I’ll set fire to your tails. I mean it. You don’t know the things I can do to the likes of you!”

A few of the tarries exchanged anxious glances at Wolfswinkel’s outburst, but none of them were intimidated enough to retreat.

“He’s bluffing,” Candy said to them. “Do you understand me? He’s afraid of you.”

“You be quiet, bug-rot!” Wolfswinkel yelled, his voice shrill now. “I’ll deal with you later.”

Malingo, meanwhile, had got to his feet. The blood was running down the side of his face from the wound on his brow, but he seemed indifferent to his own hurt. There was a strange new confidence about him.

“You know all you ever do is threaten people,” he said, striding toward the place where the many stares of the tarrie-cats converged; in other words, the spot where the wizard stood. Wolfswinkel said nothing more—presumably hoping to keep his ex-slave’s hands from touching him. Then he beat a rapid retreat. Candy and Malingo could hear the dirt his heels kicked up, and they could see the collective gaze of the tarries moving up the slope, following the magician as he fled for the sanctuary of his house.

Malingo wasn’t about to let him get there. He chased Wolfswinkel up the slope, glancing back at the animals now and again to confirm that he was indeed running in the right direction.

He was twenty yards shy of the front door when he pounced.

There was a loud, profoundly outraged yell from the murk.

“Unhand me, slave!” Wolfswinkel yelled.

“I am not your slave!” Malingo yelled back.

Clearly Wolfswinkel fought to be free of Malingo’s hold. It looked as though Malingo was wrestling with two armfuls of invisible eels, all slathered in fat. Threats and curses poured from Wolfswinkel.

Tired of the wizard’s endless mouthing, Malingo shook his prisoner back and forth.

“Show yourself,” he demanded.

He had grabbed Wolfswinkel’s neck, as far as Candy could guess, and was threatening to choke him.

“Take the hats off and show yourself.” he demanded.

A moment later a flickering form began to appear in Malingo’s arms, and an irate Kaspar Wolfswinkel came into view. He had taken off his hats, and he was clutching three in each hand. By the expression on his face, he would gladly have murdered every living thing on Ninnyhammer at that instant—starting with Candy and Malingo, then going on to the tarries.

“So now, Kaspar,” said a voice behind Candy, “you should perhaps go back to your house and stay there. You know you’re not supposed to be running around.”

Candy turned, wondering who the speaker was, and found herself face-to-face with a two-legged creature who had clearly some familial relationship with the tarries. Its wide face was covered with a subtle down of red-dish-brown fur. Its luminous eyes were decidedly feline, as were the whiskers that sprouted from its cheeks. It had apparently wandered up the hill to see what was going on.

“She started all this, Jimothi!” Kaspar said, pointing at Candy. “That damnable girl. Blame her, not me.”

“Oh, for A’zo’s sake, be quiet, Wolfswinkel,” the creature said.

Much to Candy’s surprise, Wolfswinkel did exactly that.

The creature returned to its gaze to Candy. “My name is Jimothi Tarrie.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you.”

“And you, of course are the famous—or is it infamous?—Candy Quackenbush.”

“You know of me?”

“There have been very few visitors to these islands whose presence has been so widely discussed,” Jimothi said.

“Really?”

“Oh, certainly.” He smiled, showing his pointed teeth. “I’ve been out among the islands these last two days, and it seems every second soul I met knows of you. Your celebrity grows by the Hour. People who can’t possibly have met you claim they have.”

“Really?” said Candy.

“Believe me. Did you buy a slice of Furini from the cheese maker in Autland?”

“No.”

“Well, he says you did. What about the shoes you ordered from a cobbler in Tazmagor?”

“I’ve never even been to Tazmagor.”

“You see how famous you are?” Jimothi said.

“I don’t understand why,” Candy said.

“Well, there are several good reasons,” Jimothi said. “One, of course, is your origins. You’re the first soul to have come through from the Hereafter in quite a while. Then there’s the fact that you seem to have left consternation wherever you traveled. Admittedly, none of this was of your doing. Others were causing trouble by pursuing you with such vehemence. But trouble is trouble.”

Candy sighed, still confused.

“And then,” said Jimothi, “there’s the matter of when you arrived.”

“Why’s that so important?”

“Well, because a lot of people, from street-corner elegiacs to the most respected bone-casters in the Abarat, have been saying for a long time that some transforming force was imminent. A force that would somehow upset the sad order of our lives.”

“Why sad?” said Candy. “What’s so sad about things?”

“Where do I begin?” Jimothi said softly. “Put it this way. We do not sleep well these days.”

“We?”

“Those of us who care to wonder where our lives are going. And what our dreams are worth. We wake with the taste of Midnight in our throats.”

“You mean Christopher Carrion?”

“He’s part of it. But he’s not the worst part of it,” Jimothi said. “After all, the House of Carrion has had its place in the balance of power since there were historians to write these things down. Darkness has always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes—if necessary—brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must. In the end, following the Dark Road is no less honorable than following the Light, as long as it is done with a clear purpose.”

Candy was not sure she entirely understood what she was being told, but she was sure when she thought it all over that Jimothi’s observations would come to make sense. Anyway, she had no chance to ask the tarrie-cat questions. Jimothi was continuing to talk about the state of the Abarat, and Candy drank it all down.

“The real trouble is Commexo,” he said. “Rojo Pixler and his Kid. He buys holy sites and builds restaurants on them. And nobody seems to care. They’re too busy drinking his Panacea. It makes me sick. Hour by Hour, Day by Day, we’re letting him take the magic out of our lives. And what do we get in exchange? Soda and Panacea.” He shook his head in despair. “Do you begin to understand?” he said.