Flavia nodded, more than a little frantically--though Anathema's constant, steady reassurances were doing wonders to calm her racing pulse. "I heard myself screaming," she replied, her voice trembling to recall it. "I was calling for--for someone I thought would help me."

Dogger was only a man, she knew, but the way he always seemed to appear right when she needed him, for advice, for rescue, even for a cucumber sandwich, had always made him seem more like a wizard. She didn't want to think about what his failure to appear on the roof of Buckshaw--somewhere so accessible, so close to the beating heart of all of their lives--might portend.