I didn’t get much more than a fleeting look as bits of brick, cement dust, and sand flowed around him, as if sliding across an invisible sphere, because I was too busy closing the distance between us. If we stuck to magic it was obvious he was going to bounce me around the rooftops, so I ran at him in the hope of getting close enough to smack him in the face.

I was close too, less than a yard away, but the fucker turned and stuck his palm at me and I ran smack into whatever it was he had used on the chimney. It wasn’t like hitting a Perspex wall. Instead it was slippery, like the wobbly sliding feeling you get when you try to push two magnets together. I went spinning onto my back and he strode toward me. I didn’t wait to find out whether he was planning to gloat or just kill me. Instead I reached out with impello to grab the cheap plastic garden table behind Faceless and slammed it into the back of his legs. He pitched forward and met both of my feet coming the other way.

“Fuck!” he yelled, loud enough to be heard over the helicopter.

I was up now and managed to get in one good punch to the face before something snarling and covered in fur barreled into me from the right. It was Tiger-Boy, who’d evidently kicked his way out through the roof door to reach us. We slammed into the parapet railing and it was only because I got a solid lock on a bar with my right hand that I didn’t go over and fall to my death. I rocked myself back onto the safety of the roof and looked up to see Tiger-Boy drawing back one heavily muscled arm ready to strike. He had claws on the ends of his fingers—what are you supposed to do against somebody with claws?

What with the noise of the helicopter, and my own fear, I didn’t hear the shot. I saw Tiger-Boy’s head jerk backward and behind him a spray of red was caught in the glare of the helicopter searchlight.

The cavalry had arrived, although I couldn’t tell whether it was Caffrey and his ex-paratroopers or a sniper from CO19, the armed wing of the Metropolitan Police. I made a pistol shape with my hand and jabbed it in the direction of Faceless. I hoped that the sniper was one of Caffrey’s mob because a CO19 officer probably wouldn’t shoot an apparently unarmed civilian at my mimed suggestion without proper authorization. Nine times out of ten anyway.