I couldn't begin to list the ways in which this was a bad idea. Rufus was ... well, oddly sweet and clearly very sad, deep down, and yeah he had a certain facility with fire and who knew what else. But here, in my world, he was awkward and maladroit. It wasn't his fault but... I sighed. I really hoped he wasn't going to burn his clothes off again. Aunt Mary was one thing. Even Grace was kinda cool about it. But if he lost it in front of the woman Aunt Mary had sent me – and by extension us – to see... I just wasn't that good at lying. I nibbled my lower lip and worried.

The house was an old farm building, easily a couple of miles outside Arncliffe. It looked almost as old as the vicarage, though in better repair. Someone had tried to blend the modern and the antiquated. There were three steps up to the front door and a small figure wearing ragged jeans and a much-too-large sweatshirt was sat on the middle step, apparently in deep conversation with a scruffy, well-loved old toy donkey. She looked up at me, eyes the strangest shade of midnight blue under a mop of brilliant sunset red hair. Someone had tried to drag those curls into a semblance of order in two thick pigtails – tried and failed.
"Hello." The girl didn't look at all surprised to see us.

"Er H-hi..." I started. "Um is your m-mum in?"

The girl looked at me sceptically. "That depends."
""On w-what?" it really shouldn't be that easy for a nine-year-old to wrong-foot me.
"Why you're here." The word 'obviously' was contained in the bony-shouldered shrug she gave me.
"I w-was asked to huh-help?" I said.
The girl stared at me. I couldn't help a sudden mental comparison between the unblinking stares of children who know you're not very sure of yourself and that of wolves or hyenas. I shook my head.
"Allow me," murmured Rufus. He dropped to one knee in front of the girl. "Hello, little one. My name is Rufus. What do they call you? And who is this fine and noble steed?"
The girl looked from Rufus to me and back again. Her small features held the kind of 'are you kidding me' expression that only children, confronted by an adult they find absurd, can manage."I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she told Rufus in a flat voice. "What's wrong with him?" She turned to me.
"There's n-nothing wrong with R-Rufus. He's j-just visiting. N-not from En-England." Rufus just looked bewildered. I wondered how children acted in his world when addressed by an adult.
"Okay." The girl turned back to her stuffed animal. "You haven't told me your name."
"Emlynn. S-so can we-talk to your muh-mother?" I couldn't quite keep the impatience out of my voice.
"Mum's sleeping. She doesn't sleep much at night. Not now." The little girl didn't bother to look up at me. I knew getting cross was not going to help and bit back a retort.
"Does your mother sleep ill because of strange things happening at night?" Rufus tried again. "You must tell us if it so. Emlynn here can help. She is most accomplished with ghosts and spectres."
I could feel heat creeping along my cheekbones. It had never occurred to me that I needed to explain to Rufus that most people just didn't believe in anything supernatural. That you just didn't drop the Dead into casual conversation. And you definitely didn't suggest that there were ghosts about to a small child, no matter how difficult she was. If her mother realised... if the girl started having nightmares... My mother would have scalped anyone who'd frightened her girls. I swallowed hard. "R-Rufus? C-could I have a w-word...?" I began.
The girl abruptly stood up. She was short and skinny, all knees and elbows and huge eyes. "Why didn't you say it was about the ghosts in the first place?" she demanded. She rolled her eyes. I could almost hear her thinking 'was there anything more trying than an adult!' "I'm Maeve." She stuck out a grubby, sticky hand which Rufus shook without a trace of disgust. I smiled and hoped that would be enough. "I can show you where it happened. The bad thing." She trotted off around the side of the house. Rufus and I glanced at each other and followed her.
"She is a most unusual child," Rufus muttered. Privately, I agreed although I was hardly in a position to throw stones.
Maeve stopped at the bottom of the gently sloping garden. There was nothing to block the view of the rolling moor beyond save an old dry stone wall. I exchanged a puzzled glance with Rufus. Exactly what was Maeve trying to tell us.
"I'm not going any further," Maeve said flatly. "It's there. That's where that thing came from." She pointed a grubby finger at a raised, greenish hump. It came up to about knee height on me. Waist height for the little girl.
"A well?" Rufus said. "It does not appear to have been used in some time."
I realised he was right. Moss and lichen had grown over the stones, and the wooden well cover was green with rot. "Er r-remind me to explain about running water at s-some point," I muttered. "M-Maeve, wh-what thing? What do you muh-mean?"
Maeve's small face had closed in, her expression shuttered against me and Rufus.
"D-did something crawl out of the wuh-well?" I tried again.
Maeve worried her lower lip with baby incisors and shook her head but she wasn't saying no. She was trying to deny anything was wrong at all. Her face was so pale that her freckles stood out like spatters of mud. I realised she was shaking.
"Here now, little one, no need to be afraid anymore. We will take care of it." Rufus had crouched down to her level again and held his arms out. Maeve didn't scorn an adult presence now but flung herself at him in a desperate hug, fine tremors racking her small frame. "Can you be very brave and tell us what you saw?"
Maeve looked between us with wide, frightened eyes.
"Y-you can tr-trust us," I said, trying to make my voice as soothing as Rufus'. He seemed to have more of a knack with children than I did.
"Greenteeth."One word, whispered so softly that I wasn't sure I had heard her at all. Then I met Rufus' blazing eyes and knew he had heard her too.
"Gr-greenteeth? Wh-what's that?"/pBut Maeve shook her head. "Can we go back now?" she asked Rufus.
"I juh-just need to ch-check something," I began but Rufus shook his head.
"I will take the child back. Whatever you need to do must wait." When he spoke like that it was hard to argue with him, or to miss the power that slumbered beneath his skin. I tried anyway.
"I just n-need a minute... if anything is there," I waved at the well. I reached out with my gift... Like a trailing fishig line it caught o something. Something very old, that felt like cold, wet darkness and hunger... I hardly heard Maeve as I pulled my mind back with a gasp, heart thrumming. For a second it felt as if something squatting down in chill depths of the well had caught hold of me and was trying to pull me down...
"No!" Maeve yelled. "Don't! She'll come. And she'll send Toby after me again."
Rufus gave me a reproachful look, clearly not realising what had just happened to me. "Who is Toby? Is Toby trying to hurt you?"
"Toby is my brother." Maeve pulled free of Rufus' arms and stood for a moment managing to look both angry and panicked, before tearing away from us back up the garden to the house. I tried to pull air into my constricted lungs.
"I have heard the name Greenteeth before," Rufus said, looking the way Maeve had gone. "If your world and mine are aligned in this also, then we have problem. But why would she run from her brother?"
"B-because T-Toby is dead," I replied. "There is a ch-child's spirit trapped in that well." I swallowed hard. "And something else is down there in the dark with him."