Miss Dora Wright, who had once been Wolf’s teacher, and had lived below Effie’s grandfather, had returned to the apartment below, at exactly the same time. So Wolf had moved permanently into the bookshop. He was never going back to his cruel uncle, so he had no choice. He certainly couldn’t risk adults or teachers finding out he was living on his own or they’d probably put him in foster care. And now here was this annoying French neighbor asking him questions for the second time that week.

“What is this?” Monsieur Valentin asked Wolf.

He’d discovered Wolf’s notebook open on his bed, and had picked it up. Wolf rushed over and took it from him. He closed it.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Hah. I see you are also hinterested in the self-himprovement.” He winked, and as he did so his beard seemed to crawl halfway up his face like a creature desperate to escape.

How much of the notebook had Monsieur Valentin seen? Adults could be so nosey. Wolf kept all his lists in the notebook, and he made a lot of lists. They were all very private.

In the notebook, Wolf had a five-year plan, a list of goals for this year, a list of targets for each week, and a to-do list and training plan for every single day since he’d moved in here (which was when he’d found the notebook, unused and dusty, on the desk). Every morning and every evening Wolf did fifty push-ups, fifty sit-ups, fifteen pull-ups (there was a convenient old beam for this) and three one-minute planks. He did sets of biceps curls and triceps dips and one-arm rows, using big books—the Bible and the Koran worked well—as weights. Every morning he ran two miles around the quiet streets of the Old Town.

Wolf’s list of MAJOR LIFE GOALS, which was written out neatly on the first page of the notebook, went as follows:

Find Natasha

Defeat the Diberi

Be a good friend to Effie, Lexy, Raven and Max, and protect them from danger

Get to the Otherworld

Become a professional rugby player and/or a magical soldier of some sort.

Natasha was Wolf’s younger sister. He had no idea where she was, or what she even looked like. All he knew was that she was around nine years old, probably even ten by now. His mother had taken her when she’d left Wolf’s father many years before, and Wolf hadn’t seen her since then. But now Wolf was going to find her, and give her a good life. In order to do that, he needed to be strong, and he needed to be prepared.

And he needed to keep what he was doing a secret.