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Joan’s throat was so tight, it was hard to get the words out. ‘That is not the police! They’re not going to help us! Nick, I’ll explain things later, but right now, we have to go! We have to—’

‘Hey.’ Nick’s voice gentled. He was searching her face, forehead creasing. Joan wondered just how scared she looked. He scanned the front garden. Joan wasn’t sure if he’d believed her, but her urgency seemed to have cut through. ‘There,’ he said. He nodded at the wooden fence by the house. A thick boxwood stood in front of it, tall and unkempt. Joan could see that it had once been a high hedge, but the outline was blurred now by overgrown tendrils. ‘If you push behind the hedge, a space opens up,’ Nick said. ‘My little brother and sister use it as a cubbyhole.’

Even standing by the door—at a perfect viewing angle—there was no hint of a hollow in the hedge. It would be a perfect hiding spot. But … Joan shook her head reluctantly. ‘If they find us there, we’ll be trapped.’ There was only one good choice from here. ‘We have to get to the school.’ It was just across the road. There’d be more places to hide and more ways out. And they both knew the grounds. They had to go now.

‘There’s a hole in the fence,’ Nick said steadily, as Joan turned.

‘What?’ Joan said.

‘There’s a hole in the fence behind that bush,’ he said. ‘It leads to the garden behind the house. And behind that, there’s a back street. We’ll hear anything they say, and we’ll have a way out unseen.’

That was a good plan—a better plan than her own. Joan found herself looking at him for an extra beat. He’d pulled himself out of fear and confusion faster than she would have in the same circumstances. Faster than she’d have expected anyone to.

The sirens blared. Too close. Joan nodded quickly.

They jogged to the fence. Joan craned her neck, looking for Nick’s neighbour. She couldn’t see him from here; she hoped that meant he couldn’t see them either.

‘Here.’ Nick pushed aside the spiky branches so that Joan could slide between the boxwood and the fence. Joan squeezed herself in and dropped to her hands and knees. The fence palings were broken at the base, leaving a jagged gap.

Joan shimmied through and emerged into a small back garden with weed-filled flowerbeds. She turned to help Nick out. It was a much tighter fit for him. He grunted, trying to flatten enough to army crawl. Joan grabbed for his hands and pulled. And then Nick must have found purchase with his sneakers because to Joan’s relief his big body abruptly surged out.

They only just made it. The boxwood was still rustling back into place as the cars drew up. Two engines cut out, and doors opened and slammed, slightly asynchronous. And then footsteps padded across the grass.

After a long moment, a voice cut through the silence, unnervingly clear—as if the speaker was standing just in front of the hedge. ‘What do we have?’

Joan’s heart thumped, and Nick shot her a wide-eyed look of recognition. It was Corvin Argent—the man they’d left unconscious in the courtyard. Joan had been right. The attackers had been in those police cars.

A second voice rose, curt and military. ‘Noise complaint at the boy’s house. Neighbours saw two teenagers running here from the bakery. The girl was wearing an apron, possibly the bakery uniform.’

Joan glanced down at her apron, bright white and conspicuous. Damn. She’d need to dump it—but not here. If she left it here, it would practically be a calling card.

Corvin spoke again, sounding less formal and more frustrated: ‘A noise complaint?’

The military voice was bland. ‘If you’d just pinpointed where you landed—’

‘I did !’ Corvin said—with even more frustration. Joan had the impression that it wasn’t the first time they’d had the exchange. ‘So just the noise complaint and local reports?’ An audible breath. ‘Don’t tell me. The cameras failed again. And none of our own observers have managed to spot them. Again.’

‘If you’re not happy with the intelligence—’

‘What intelligence?’ Corvin said. ‘Broken equipment? Mis-attributed sightings?’ He paused. ‘Don’t you think there’s something very strange going on here?’

‘Strange?’

‘Why have they been so difficult to find?’ Corvin said. His voice lowered. ‘I think the rumours of unusual fluctuations are true.’

The military man was silent for long enough that Joan wondered if he’d answer at all. When he finally spoke, his voice was lower, matching Corvin’s. ‘Listen. You lost the girl. That’s bad enough. You’ll only make things worse by reaching for farfetched excuses.’

‘Is it far-fetched? It would explain why she was so difficult to find the first time. Why I missed the rendezvous. Why we haven’t been able to find them since.’

Joan crouched to peer through the hole in the fence. She couldn’t make out much from this angle. The leaves were thicker at the base of the bush. What had the military man meant by ‘pinpointed where you landed’? They’d landed in this place with Corvin, barely fifteen minutes ago. And what about ‘unusual fluctuations’? What did that mean?

A click, and Joan recoiled as bright white light illuminated Nick’s front garden. Someone had turned car headlights on. Joan hadn’t realised it was getting so dark. She squinted into the glare and made out two pairs of shoes: big military boots.

Were they guards of the Court? They’d put that winged-lion sigil onto Joan’s arm, but none of them had been wearing the sigil themselves. Joan had never seen a guard without one.

As she watched, a third pair of shoes appeared as their wearer stepped out of thin air. These weren’t military boots but black dress shoes, so shiny that they might never have touched grass before tonight.

Joan hesitated. She was tempted to stay and hear more, but she and Nick needed to keep moving. She didn’t know how the Argent power worked. Could Corvin instruct Nick from where he was standing? What if he suspected Nick was nearby and raised his voice?