Before he left, Serif turned and pointed at Laylock. ‘If you have betrayed us⁠ —’

‘Of course I haven’t, son. Off you go.’ Scowling, Serif leapt into the vortex. A moment later, they were all gone. Laylock patted the cabinet in satisfaction, and threw the cloth back over it. Just the hoppers to hide, and then he could get back to his regular routine.

He just couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that he was being watched.

In the long, dark room, all that could be heard was the ticking of a clock and the occasional snore.

Two lines of beds ran along the walls. In them slept boys in their late teens.

But one didn’t sleep.

He was sitting up in bed, his hands to his mouth, his eyes staring into the distance.

His name was Tim. His mother was dead, and his father, abroad on business, had transferred him to this place.

He’d just had such a dream. A nightmare, full of people and places he’d never seen before. They seemed to address him so directly that it was terrifying.

‘I’ve seen the future,’ he whispered. ‘And everybody dies.’

She appeared at the end of his bed then, and showed him her skeletal hands. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Everybody dies.’

Tim screamed.

Lamps were lit, there were cries of alarm and annoyance, and of course she was gone when the light flooded along the dormitory.

From the window came a great beat of wings. Tim spun and stared.

An owl was flapping off into the night.

Chapter One

Don’t Forget to Catch Me

Nine weeks later.

The bicycle sped down the little cobbled hill, the juddering motion making the items in its basket leap about, in imminent danger of falling on to the road.

Bernice didn’t care. The sun was up, and, for the first time in weeks, so were her spirits. The little town of Farringham was basking in the glow of a balmy summer day, and the sweet smell of roses was wafting across it on the breeze. ‘Good morning, Jill! Good morning, Jenny!’ she called as she whizzed past a row of little cottages.

‘Morning, Bernice!’ the two housewives chorused. Then they resumed their argument across the fence. This time it was about an overhanging tree, tomorrow it would be about barking dogs. They liked to argue, it seemed, and whenever one of them met Bernice, the other would wander up, get involved in the conversation and end up disagreeing with the first.

The bike took the corner at the bottom of the hill far too fast, and she narrowly missed her landlord, Alexander Shuttleworth. He was a jolly, bearded fellow in a white colonial suit and a loud tie, the curator of the local museum. ‘Sorry!’ she called over her shoulder.

‘Charmed, dear girl, charmed!’ he boomed back. ‘I’ll take my medical bills out of your rent!’