‘The one you took and put in a cell. That one. Turns out that’s the worst thing you could possibly have done. He’s got bad memories of some war he fought in, and now it’s all spilling out of him like a sewer. So you’re going to tell us how we deal with this, one way or another, before he comes for you, and then decides that the rest of us are part of the meal deal as well.’

Bell touched the scab on the end of her nose. ‘You can just fly away. So can I.’

‘I think I know how this works,’ said Mary. ‘You get to become what it is you want to be, deep down, but you also don’t get much of a choice over it. So the fact that you change into a dragon tells me everything I need to know about you. You’re like that whether or not you’ve wings and a tail. Stop shitting me, because you’re not getting away from here.’ She leaned closer. ‘If it comes down to it, I will throw you to him. And if you’re lucky, he’ll kill you first.’

‘She doesn’t mean that,’ said Mama quickly.

‘I do. I really mean it. Cross my heart. So tell us, what the hell do we do?’

Bell shrugged and looked away. ‘I don’t know everything. I’ve been here for twenty years, as far as I can tell, and I know half of what I need to.’

‘And we’ve been here for a week.’ It was longer than that, but she wasn’t going to split hairs. ‘Why don’t we start with what’s happened to him.’

‘You tell me. Some people – the ones most susceptible to change – get the idea that they can turn into a creature. Then they do. That’s all there is to it. Some survive. Most don’t. At least, this is what I’ve been told. Down is riddled with beasts that used to be someone, and can’t change back. What form is he?’

‘Formless,’ said Dalip. ‘A thing with teeth and claws and arms and eyes.’

‘I remember,’ said Bell, ‘back in the beginning, I found myself in a dream, staring at the void. It tried to suck me in, but I refused to go.’

‘I had the same dream,’ Mary said. ‘If Stanislav did, too, then night after night, locked in a cell, no one to talk him out of it …’

‘Almost as if that’s what Down is, its raw essence. It changes everything it comes into contact with.’ Bell drifted off with a thoughtful expression, and that wasn’t what Mary wanted.