Harry and the Armourer crouched down and scurried hurriedly out of range, while I armoured up. Hail hammered down, thick shards of ice with razor-sharp edges. I stood between Harry and the Armourer and the worst of it, protecting them as best I could. Roger wasn’t harmed at all. Gale winds blew, lightning struck, hail slammed down, and Roger Morningstar stood his ground, untouched and unmoved, smiling his maddening smile.

Molly quickly exhausted herself, and was soon reduced to throwing sputtering fireballs at Roger, none of which came close to hitting him. The dark clouds drifted away, and the elements settled themselves. I moved quickly over to Molly before she could move on to more dangerous methods, armoured down, and murmured calming, soothing words into her ear from a safe distance until she stopped glaring at Roger and turned sharply away, hugging herself tightly. I knew better than to bother her while she was in such a mood.

Harry and the Armourer came back to join us. “Would anyone care to explain to me what that was all about?” said the Armourer, just a bit testily.

“We used to date,” said Roger, in a surprisingly pleasant voice.

“It was a long time ago!” said Molly, still deliberately not looking at him.

“You never thought to mention this before?” I said.

She glared at me. “Do I quiz you about your old girlfriends?”

“Yes.”

She sniffed. “It’s different for a girl.”

“But he’s a hellspawn!” I said. “A half-breed demon!”

She shrugged. “It’s always the bad boy who makes a girl’s heart beat that little bit faster.”

Some conversations you just know aren’t going to go anywhere good, so I turned my attention back to Roger. “The last time I saw you, Truman had you trapped inside one of his holding pens. With your tongue cut out.”

“And you left me there to die,” Roger said easily. “How very Drood of you. But I escaped amid the general chaos. No one tried to stop me. No one dared. And I grew back my tongue. We hellspawn are very hard to kill.”

“Then how was Truman able to capture and mutilate you in the first place?” I said, perhaps a little pointedly.

Roger showed his teeth again in the smile that wasn’t a smile. “Oh please, like I’d be foolish enough to tell you.”

“All right,” I said. “Why are you here?”

“Revenge,” said Roger, and for just a moment bright crimson flames flared in his dark eyes. “Truman must pay for what he did to me . . . but even I can’t hope to take down an organisation the size of Manifest Destiny on my own. Which means I need allies, and your family seems the best bet. You want them destroyed almost as much as I do, and the enemy of my enemy can be my ally, if not my friend.”

“You expect us to trust you?” said the Armourer.