Raven shivered. She hoped the yeti was all right. She wrote Lexy a quick message on her pager and then got back on her broomstick. The snowstorm was intensifying, and darkness was coming too. She’d need to get to the cats’ home as quickly as she could. Presumably the Diberi had most of the other ingredients for their terrible spell. But if she could just manage to warn the cats . . .

Raven landed smoothly in the grounds of the cats’ home, just behind an extraordinary piece of topiary—a yew hedge in the shape of a cat’s head. It was a good thing Raven had a broomstick, because whoever was in charge had locked the gates and electrified the fence. As soon as Raven landed she cast the Shadows. It was chaos. There were cats everywhere, and several humans dressed in butler or maid outfits running around with butterfly nets, trying to catch them. There were miniature top hats and tiaras lying discarded on the ground. Raven was having trouble making sense of what was going on.

The cat nearest to her was black with white socks.

“What’s happening?” Raven asked him, taking the spell off herself so he could see her.

“Total revolution,” he said back.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because we’ve awoken. Because of the Free Cats League.”

“The Free Cats League?”

“Yep. That’s right. They’ve told us all about how this luxury is just a different sort of captivity, and how a human group is planning to use us in a big spell. Many of us were due to die tonight. Not anymore. We want freedom for all!”

“So you already know about the spell,” said Raven. “Who’s in charge of this Free Cats League? Can you take me to them?”

“I can try. My name’s Socks. And yours?”

“Raven. Let’s hurry.”

Raven cast the Shadows on Socks as well as herself and then followed him in through the main door and down some servants’ stairs into a basement.

“I don’t know how a human gets beyond here,” said Socks. We go through there.” He indicated a hole in the baseboard.

A man and a woman in formal clothes walked past, but didn’t notice Raven and Socks because of the Shadows.

“Bloody cats,” the man was saying to the woman. “If we can’t deliver a hundred of them to the university by seven thirty this evening, then the whole deal’s off. The funding’s being withdrawn and no one’s getting paid. That’s basically just under a billion quid down the drain.”

“You underestimate me,” said the woman.

“What do you mean?”

“The so-called Free Cats League was ordering in their own seaweed kibble. We drugged it. Now we’ve got just a hundred of the most revolutionary ones in the back of the van. Job done.”

“You genius.”

Raven looked at Socks.

“Oh no,” he said.