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26.2: WOLVES, WERE AND OTHERWISE (part 2)

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That was the seventh tree Elizabeth had flown into during the course of this dratted forest flight. She fluttered back, momentarily stunned, and tried to get her bearings. This involved yelling into space, then waiting as the echoes bounced back to her furry ears. The trouble was that, when they did, Elizabeth still had no idea how to interpret them. Bats, Elizabeth decided, had the most complicated sensory system in existence. She knew this was an exaggeration (after all, ghouls tasted their food by engulfing it in a gloopy miasma which transmitted pulses to their tongues, a process that was not only overly complicated but sticky too) but Elizabeth was in a bad mood and didn't much care about biological accuracy.

The truth was that being a bat was difficult. Vampires tended to regard turning into a bat as the most useless of their abilities. As such, the art had fallen into general disuse and most vampires did not bother to practise. Elizabeth had begun to regret this after she'd collided with her third tree. Now, after hitting her seventh, that regret had matured into outright anger. They had been so close. Following Juggalug and the Winkton girl into the forest, they'd been just in time to hear her mount that wolf and go racing off. They had followed the pack, but then Elizabeth had hit her first tree. And then her second. And then Pim had hit one. Then Elizabeth hit another, then Pim another, and so on. The only one of them who had any skill in bathood was Edmund, who flitted about avoiding obstacles with ease.

If only I had listened, Elizabeth thought. If only I'd agreed to fly as a bat with him sometimes, we'd still be on the Winkton girl's trail. She couldn't even hear the wolf pack any more, nor smell them. They had well and truly lost—

Bump!

Eight trees.

Day— "burn it all!" Elizabeth gasped, swirling back into her vampire form mid-thought. "I have had enough of being a flying hairball." She put a hand to her temple and felt the cumulative effect of bumping headfirst into eight trees rising as an impressive lump. "Who put all these trees in the way, anyway?"

A swish of transmogrification and Pim joined her, rumpled and rueful. "It is a forest, Aunt Lizzie. Forests are usually made up of trees."

"A ridiculous notion." Unable to find another outlet, Elizabeth turned her anger upon the forest. "Trees!" she snarled, glaring at an ash that had the misfortune to be close by. "What an idea!" The ash did not look particularly offended at this existential attack. Its lack of reaction—though understandable—enraged Elizabeth still more. She fired off another burst of imprecations, which ricocheted off some more nearby trunks.

"Aunt Lizzie," said Pim. "I think you'd better calm down."

Elizabeth paused. There was something wrong if Philomena was the one telling Elizabeth to calm down. This was a sobering thought. She was not conducting herself well. She was in a position of responsibility, Elizabeth reminded herself. Since Fang was mixed up in something with those Middlers, it was up to Elizabeth to take the reins and solve this confusion.

After some effort, Elizabeth schooled her expression and turned to face Pim. "Of course, Pim dear," she said. "I do apologise. I find being a bat quite a... disorientating experience."

"I hate it," said Pim, more bluntly. "It's loud and blurry and smelly and I don't like having hair on my—"

"Wife!" Pim and Elizabeth looked up. Edmund was hanging upside-down, his legs wrapped around a branch. "Enjoying ourselves, are we?"

"No," said Pim and Elizabeth.

Edmund's face fell, a confusing sight when viewed upside-down. "Oh dear," he said. "But no burning and stakes and pitchforks, eh?"