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‘Well, I don’t know anything about that – but she wants a dozen doughnuts to be delivered daily.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll arrange that with the bakery. Small price to pay.’

I thought for a moment. ‘She seemed okay … content, you know? Of course, I’m not familiar with any other hags so I could be completely misreading her.’

‘I wouldn’t assume anything about her. She isn’t human – she doesn’t think like we do,’ Thomas cautioned.

I shrugged. ‘If we’re being picky, I’m not human either.’

‘No, but youwere. And you’re humanoid. She’s not.’

‘I suppose. But did you know she has furniture in her cosy little cave?’

He looked genuinely taken aback. ‘She does? Where did she get it?’

‘I’m assuming she’s raided local cast-offs. You know, someone puts out a chair with a “free to a good home” sign.’

There was one other thing that I was pretty sure I should mention. ‘As well as the furniture, her cave is lined with skulls. She said they were from graves. Is there a graveyard around here?’ I hadn’t seen one but I hadn’t explored this area yet; for all I knew, there was a graveyard just over the hill.

Thomas shook his head, not in denial, but in consternation. ‘Now I think I know why the dwarves fear the hag.’

‘Why?’ I pried.

His expression was grim. ‘She’s keeping their dead hostage.’

Chapter 11

As we returned to the lift, I couldn’t stop thinking about that last statement. ‘Thomas,’ I said, ‘treat me like an ignorant supernatural. How does anyone – apart from Liv – hold the dead hostage?’

‘The dwarves have very specific rules to allow them to pass into their afterlife,’ he explained as the lift clanked, whirred and jerked along. Talking helped me stop worrying about its obvious fragility, so I encouraged him to continue with a ‘go on’ gesture.

‘According to dwarven lore, the bodies of the dead have to be kept whole for them to be released to the afterlife. If the hag is taking their heads, she’s keeping them from moving on and trapping their spirits forever on the mortal plane.’

I shivered. Having just dealt with a poltergeist and the trapped banshee spirits in the barrier gems, I could go a long time without dealing with any more spirits – Aoife excluded. ‘I don’t know,’ I said finally. ‘The skulls looked human.’

Thomas shrugged. ‘There’s no visible difference between human skulls and dwarven ones. You wouldn’t be able to tell.’

That was all well and good but one question remained. ‘So how did she get them?’ As soon as it left my mouth, I realised it was a dumb question: Matilda passed through earth like it was air; no doubt she simply took them directly from the dwarves’ graves.

To my surprise Thomas said, ‘That’s a good question. The dwarves burn their dead within twenty-four hours of death if they can, then they scatter the ashes. If the headsaredwarven, she must have taken them shortly after death.’

That was a macabre picture that I didn’t want to dwell on. As the lift finally lurched to a stop I asked, ‘What do they do with the bodies if they can’t be burnt whole?’

He shrugged and pushed the button to open the doors. ‘I don’t know, but I wonder if they’re keeping them somewhere in the mine until they can be reunited with their heads. How many skulls did you see?’

I hadn’t counted them but there were a lot. ‘I’m not sure. Hundreds, maybe?’

‘Hundreds?’ Thomas sounded surprised. He shook his head slowly. ‘Not possible. Dwarves live a long time and they’ve only been in Portlock since the early 1800s. I wouldn’t have thought a hundred dwarves have lived here in that time so they can’t all be dwarf skulls.’

‘Then who do the others belong to?’

Thomas stared at me. ‘I don’t know, Bunny. Are you sure they were all humanoid?’

I thought back. Wereallof the skulls human looking? That had been my initial view, for sure, and they certainly hadn’t been animal skulls, but I’d only glanced at them. ‘I’m no expert and the lighting was dim. They were either human – or they looked human to me.’

Gunnar’s expression was grim. ‘Short of digging up graves all over the peninsula, we might never know where she got them.’

That itched under my skin: Ihadto know. A mystery was afoot – several in this case – and I needed to get to the bottom of all of them.