“You may as well be a cut-up poet yourself,” said Lady Tchainsaw. “You’ve certainly messed around with your original at least as much as I have with mine. You call yourself a translator!”

“Oh, really?” said JP. He picked up the Special Collections edition of The Flow by Thomas Lumas that was on Lady Tchainsaw’s coffee table. Bits of paper fluttered out. He opened the volume and shook his head. Inside, the book had been completely destroyed by Lady Tchainsaw. She had erased words, cut some out with a scalpel, rearranged others and drawn over whole pages in fluorescent green highlighter. Selected parts of the book—the parts, presumably, that Lady Tchainsaw approved of—had been badly pasted on an A5 sheet of paper and given the title No Flow. It looked like something you might do on a rainy Wednesday afternoon at primary school.

“Is that a library book?” said Gotthard Forestfloor. “For pity’s sake.”

“Oh, don’t be so precious,” said Lady Tchainsaw. “You’re planning to wipe out much of the known universe and you’re worried about a library book? You ridiculous man.”

Gotthard Forestfloor fixed Lady Tchainsaw with an evil stare.

“Anyway,” said JP, “on with our plans for tonight. It seems rather a shame that Terrence Deer-Hart never wrote the book we commissioned from him. Is he going to be able to pull off the kidnap at least?”

Terrence Deer-Hart hadn’t added anything to this conversation so far. He had been looking at Lady Tchainsaw and imagining what it would be like to kiss her.

“I think so,” said Lady Tchainsaw. “I’ll go through it all again with him.” She sighed. “It’s not easy, though.”

“And when you get Effie Truelove back here, Terrence is going to do pedesis on her and find out how she goes to the Great Library. Then he’s going to tell you, and then you are going to tell us.”

“Pah!” said Gotthard Forestfloor. “Why can we not find a mage to join us?”

“I’m a mage,” said Terrence.

“Oh, shut up,” said Forestfloor, witheringly. He looked at Lady Tchainsaw. “Tell me why you are not doing the pedesis yourself?

“Because everyone who does pedesis dies,” she replied. “There is a disclaimer at the front of Thomas Lumas’s book.”

“I see, yes. No one will mind if we sacrifice him.”

“Quite. I’m not sure he’ll even notice himself.”

Terrence had drifted off again.

“And then we keep the Truelove girl and use her as a portal during the ceremony?” said Forestfloor.

“Exactly,” said JP. “I’ve had intelligence that confirms that the portal is actually inside her. But killing her should release it momentarily, and then we can use it.”