“You see,” Molly said to Subway Sue, beaming widely. “Your luck has changed.”

“No,” said Subway Sue. She looked away from us and seemed to shrink in on herself. “Look at me. I’m no use to you like this.”

“Things will be better at the Hall,” I said. “We can fix you up, no matter what’s been done to you. We’ll make a new person out of you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Subway Sue. “I’ve heard stories of what happens to people who get taken to the Drood family home.”

“Only some of them are true,” I said.

“Trust me,” said Molly. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“But what can I offer to the high and mighty Droods?” said Subway Sue. “What can I teach them that they don’t already know?”

“The strategies of survival,” I said. “How you survive, when you’ve lost everything you ever depended on.”

Subway Sue looked at me, and then at Molly. I did my best to smile reassuringly.

“Eddie’s running things at the Hall these days,” said Molly. “Things are different there now.”

“I need to open my family’s eyes to the kind of lives they don’t even know exist,” I said. “Come and be a tutor. Share your experience. Help shape how the Droods see the world.”

Subway Sue smiled briefly, but didn’t look convinced. “You and your family have been hunting me and my kind for centuries. Hunting us down like vermin, for the sin of being what we are. You have the blood of my family and my friends on your armoured hands, Drood. And you want me to work for you? I’m not that bad off.”

“Yes, you are, dear,” Molly said kindly. “You must believe me when I tell you I’ll see you safe, at the Hall. I don’t know if you can trust the whole family, but you can trust Eddie. He’s taken his family by the scruff of the neck, and seriously shaken up the way they do things. He wants to change the way they think, and see the world, and that’s why I suggested you as one of his outside tutors. You won’t be alone there. We’re going after Mr. Stab next.”

“Oh wonderful,” said Subway Sue. “That’s supposed to make me feel safe? But . . . anywhere has to be better than here. You have no idea how much you miss plumbing till you don’t have it anymore. And I do owe you, Edwin, for helping free me from Truman. You do know he’s reorganised, at a new location?”

“Nothing specific,” I said. “Do you know where we can find him?”

“I hear rumours, that’s all . . . He’s supposed to have a new secret underground base, outside London, in a place of ancient power. You should have killed him when you had the chance, Drood.”

“I’ll try harder next time,” I said. “You ready to go?”