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“It gets into people’s minds,” Rose warned, worried by the crimson light filling Merlin’s eyes.

“This evil was worked on the far side of your page, child.” Merlin looked away from his staff and the scarlet flame within. “I sense the hand of a smith behind it. An architect. A planner. A weaver of webs. One who would be the author of your fate. But that hand can’t reach us here. Which is why it dispatches agents. To bite back, you’ll need help in that world.” The magician reached toward her, his dirty palm turned upward, long fingers extended, almost as if asking for payment.

Hesitantly, Rose reached out and took the offered hand. She regretted it immediately as a powerful grip enfolded her, making her bones creak. She tried to pull away and was about to protest when Merlin spoke again.

“I see it now. Where you went. When you went. You thought that you took a leap into the dark. But that place chose you more than you chose it. There are two mages who might help you. Two of the cunning folk. Both with feet in the writing and in what was written. One is much younger than me. She is the safer path. The other is older, deeper, less known.”

“Older than you?” Rose asked.

Merlin released her hand and wrinkled his nose as if at an unpleasant smell. He waved the question away. “Approach the other.”

“How?”

“That’s for you to figure out.” The wizard walked past her, robes flapping.

“Where are you going?” Rose made to follow but wasn’t sure she was supposed to.

“To battle, Rose Penrose. To battle.” He lifted his staff, and all the crystals lit, stretching off into a glowing infinity. “There’s a wyrm at my gates and I have a lesson to teach it!”

Chapter 16

Red

Had Greg been listening in, he would probably have been offended by quite how quickly the two Togetherness Trust day supervisors agreed with me that there was no way Sophie had run off with him. It had been their working theory, but only because they didn’t have any other that tied the two events together. And people, especially people in authority, like things to tie neatly together.

Frank and Stacey-Ray of course disagreed with my decision to go back out to look for my sister. In fact, they forbade it in the strongest terms. They even invoked the dreaded name: Smith. The ultimate power in our little world. Mr. W. Smith, Esq., founder of the Trust, the man who allegedly could reassign us to still darker destinations and whose opinions seemed to hold great sway with social workers, police, and family courts across the land.

When I said that Mr. W. Smith, Esq., could go fuck himself, things got nasty. Some might say the threats Frank leveled overstepped his authority and that balled fists and raised arms have no place in a carer’s arsenal, but that’s all by the by as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t fight him. I didn’t wait for another chance to climb out of the window. I just ran for it.

Frank tried to grab me, which I’m not sure he’s allowed to do either, but I twisted out of that, and he stumbled back into the larder, bringing down a shelf or three of tins. All very noisy. Almost loud enough to drown out what Stacey-Ray shouted at my back. But I was out of the door before I had time to care about any of that, and sprinting down the street with all the speed of a boy who would rather play computer games than do any form of running.

All in all, it was a bad couple of days for the Togetherness Trust, given how increasingly not together we were all becoming.

Once again, I was out in the wide world, looking for Sophie with no clue where she might be. You see on TV these appeals from parents whose kid has gone missing. The ones they keep replaying are the ones where the father, or sometimes even the mother, did it. But the vast majority of the time, we’re just watching the spectacle of genuine, soul-crushing heartbreak. I wasn’t Sophie’s mum or anything, but I was all the family she had, at least that wasn’t locked up in the looney bin, and she was the same for me. So I understood at least some measure of the panic that shines out of the faces on those televised appeals. If they’d had any idea where their child was, they’d be out there, kicking down doors. But the world’s a big place and terrifyingly easy to vanish in. My best, and only, idea was to find some of the kids she hung out with and quiz them about where they last saw her, what she had said, where they thought she might be.

My running had slowed to a gasping, wheezing walk some way before I reached the high street. I hobbled breathlessly along Wright Street, not planning to go into Books, but since the road was on the way and the last place I had seen my sister, it seemed worth retracing my steps.

I saw him with plenty of warning this time. Up by the corner where the road joined the high street. The one-eyed vagrant stood in the doorway of a side entrance to the rear of one of the establishments facing the shoppers. Not hiding exactly, but hardly on display either.

All thought of the bookshop went out of my head, and my heart immediately started hammering behind my breastbone. On any other day, I would have turned around and found a different route. But I was on a mission, so fuck him: I pressed on. Teeth gritted. I meant to go straight past him. Luckily, we weren’t on the same side of the street, because I definitely would have crossed over to avoid him.

He watched me the whole way, moving only his eye. Under that stare I bowed my head, not wanting to make eye contact and spark some reaction. It wasn’t until we were nearly level that my gaze flickered involuntarily toward him. I saw it then. Or at least I saw something and had to look again. A flash of color around his neck, among all the dirt-drab grays and tans, a multicolored band.

Even from across the street I could see the bold Aztec design. Sophie’s. The hairband she got from the charity shop. He was wearing it like a collar. He saw my recognition, and a slow, ugly smile exposed yellow teeth.

For a moment I stood paralyzed. In the next I was charging at him with a wordless shout.

“Where is she?” I didn’t even give him time to reply. I had no plan and no chance. Even so, I leaped on him, shouting and swearing. Beating at him exactly the way you’re not supposed to, telegraphing my blows in long swings.

Given that he was both taller and stronger than me, it should have been over in no time at all. Instead, my blows landed and landed again. The stink of him nearly drove me off. It was eye watering, even in the midst of my rage. What really gave me pause though, as I got him on the ground, was the fact he appeared to be laughing at me. In between the grunts, as my fists landed, were chuckles, snorts, laughter.

Everyone knows not to laugh at anger. It’s fuel on the fire. And sorry for being predictable, but I’m not special, not a saint who can shrug off emotion like water from the back of a particularly holy duck. I doubled my fists and raised both on high, about to pound them into his grinning face. Quite how an unconscious man was going to show me where my sister was, I hadn’t given an instant’s thought to.

The grip that seized my wrists wasn’t quite as iron as the vagrant’s shoulder pincer of the previous night, but it put an end to any chance I had of striking my coup de grâce. I was hauled off my prey unceremoniously by a large policeman, whose instructions, as he put me into handcuffs, were lost under my own shouts of protest.

The man on the ground sat up slowly, mocking grin still in place, my sister’s hair band around his neck. A small trickle of blood oozed from one nostril, and a tear of dark sludge eased itself under his eye patch. Otherwise, he seemed largely untouched by my savage assault.

“What’s this about his sister?” The policeman, holding me in place without much effort, eyed my victim suspiciously, wrinkling his nose.