“I guess that’s Captain America,” I said to myself. “What about a life-drinker? Same age as Will, South American looks?”

“Oh yes,” Caldera said. “Jaime Cordeiro, otherwise known as Ja-Ja. We’re very interested in Mr. Cordeiro. The Brazilian police were investigating him for murder, but he got out of the country before any charges were laid. Met William in the U.S. and followed him here. Suspected of life-draining, though nothing’s been proven. I’d keep your distance from him if I were you.”

“What about the fire girl?” Luna said.

Caldera shook her head. “That’s all I got. We know there are at least three others in the group, but we haven’t got details. Our guess is they’re new recruits that William picked up since arriving in the U.K. and they haven’t been around long enough to pick up a reputation. Sorry.”

I took my pencil off the page and studied what I’d written. It read, Will: Time/acceleration. Dhruv: Magnetism/monopole. Gold-hair: Fire/ground fire. Life-drinker: Life/drain. Cap. America: Space/? Chinese kid: ?/?. “It’s a start,” I said. I pushed the notebook over to Luna for her to read. “What’s your take on these guys?”

“Short version?” Caldera said. “They’re out of their league. They’ve been lucky so far but sooner or later they’re going to piss off the wrong guy.” She looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows as if implying that I might know something about that.

“Call me if anything else comes up?”

“I’ll tell you face to face,” Caldera said. “Tomorrow morning, remember? Don’t be late.” She gave the others a nod and left.

* * *

Both Variam and Luna wanted to come with me to the meeting with Deleo, but in the end I took only Luna. It was dark by the time we left, and we took the Tube to our destination, the trains busy with people heading out for a night on the town.

The Old Truman Brewery is a complex of buildings near Brick Lane, spread over two blocks and surrounded by a strange mixture of trendy shops and decaying buildings. The brewery closed in the 1980s and was promptly converted into an arts and events centre, and nowadays it’s a dense, confusing sprawl of brick and concrete, wide indoor spaces mixing with art galleries, bars, and fashion stalls. On Sundays it turns into a hipster magnet, thousands of twenty– and thirtysomethings in odd outfits swarming the place in search of food, clothes, posters, jewellery, and just about everything else. How busy it is on other days varies, depending on whether there’s an event running or not. Tonight there wasn’t one and the building was dark.