It was a bottle. Just a bottle made of bevelled glass: small, and coated with a silver lacquer that had flaked off in places, not enough to reveal its contents. The cork stopper was crumbling, but tightly wedged in. There was something looped around its neck with string; a stained label, coiled with damp.

Kitty reached past me and hooked it out. A mouldering smell reached my nose as she unfurled the label. '"They say there be a witch inside it,'" she read. '"And if you let her out, there'll be a peck of trouble."' She let the paper spring back and grinned the grin that I loved. The grin that usually meant she was about to do something reckless. 'Let's smash it.'