The place smelt like a working farm; there was a drifting stench of fertiliser coming off the fields, and I could hear the low mooing of cows somewhere out in the distance, hidden by thick layers of mist. I hoped they weren’t vampire cows. I didn’t want to get eaten by a steak. There was a large two-storey farmhouse with an old-fashioned wrap-around porch on it, complete with white-painted rocking chairs and little ceramic statues of ducks on the steps leading up to it. Adorkable, as Eve would have said if she was in a better mood. In the mist I could see the dim outlines of a barn of some kind. Could have been red, it was hard to tell.

‘Inside,’ the driver ordered me, and I hustled Eve up the steps and into the house.

It was like time had stopped in the eighties, with all the pastel fabrics and ruffles and white wood. If this was Douche Bag Davis’s house, his wife had definitely decorated it. Then she’d probably divorced him, and he hadn’t bothered to change it up; the layers of dust on those balloony curtain tops and on the decorations scattered around proved me right.

We didn’t have much time to admire the decor. There was a kitchen off to the right, with the divine possibility of all kinds of sharp objects and explodable chemicals, but the driver was right behind us with his gun. Pete was behind him, but he had Liz over his shoulder, and it looked to me like all the fight was out of him. Behind him came another, unburdened guy, and two more dragged Michael, who was still convulsed into a shuddering ball.

Beyond the front room with its dusty ceramic ducks and floral wallpaper, though, things changed. The next room had been renovated with a steel door, a vinyl floor, white walls, and embedded fluorescent fixtures above. A lab. I knew what they looked like, though I wasn’t one to spend a lot of time in chem classes. This one had a variety of cages up against the wall, from ones small enough to hold rats up to big ones that could have safely contained a tiger.

They put Michael in that one.

‘No, relax, it’s okay,’ I said, as Eve tried to pull free of me. I kept my voice low and gentle, because I could feel the desperation in her now, and knew she was on the verge of breaking. ‘He’s safe. Nothing’s going to happen to him. I’m more worried about us.’

‘Us?’ She frowned at me, still distracted; I got that. If it had been Claire in the cage, I couldn’t have concentrated, either. ‘What do they need us for?’

‘They don’t,’ I said. ‘Which is why I’m worried.’