‘I didn’t turn without a fight,’ Tom muttered. ‘Now, I think maybe you should tell us what’s been happening around here.’

‘I need to get this ankle seen to,’ Ramone muttered. ‘C’mon.’ He hobbled into the graffiti room.

Tom and Kate followed him. The view brightened for Tom as Jasmine came back into sight. She was swigging from a carton of milk, leaning against a refrigerator that was so big it half-obscured the doorway next to it. Whatever lay beyond the door was obscured by a long green curtain.

On the worktop beside the refrigerator was a battered police car radio unit, electronic entrails spilling out of its casing. A black power lead had been lashed up to its side, snaking into a socket, and it squawked voices and static quietly to itself like some deranged electronic parrot.

Seeing Kate, Jasmine slunk off to the opposite corner of the room, her snub nose wrinkling like she’d smelled something bad.

Kate pretended not to notice, but Tom noticed a faint blush of colour in her cheeks.

Ramone pulled off his Nikes and rested one bare foot on the table. His ankle was puffy and dark. ‘Get me some ice, girl, and make it better, huh?’

Jasmine snorted. ‘I look like your mamma?’ All the same, she opened the freezer door and started rummaging around inside.

Ramone grinned at Tom and mouthed silently, ‘She loves me.’

Kate shot Tom a despairing glance. ‘So, Ramone, you were going to tell us—’

‘I told you the ’wolves were recruiting,’ he announced abruptly. ‘Takapa. His people are taking the street-kids, the gangs, the hobos – all the pissed-off poor people in this city – and turning them ’wolf.’

‘Turning them against each other,’ Jasmine added quietly, slipping a handful of ice cubes into a bowl. ‘Breaking old ties, old loyalties.’

Kate looked at her. ‘And these people agree to being … recruited?’

‘A lot of them do. Ain’t no one else offering them nothing.’ Jasmine smiled sarcastically, showing the gap in her front teeth. ‘Guess a pretty white girl like you don’t know what it’s like to be invisible. To spend whole days begging for quarters while people step over you on the sidewalk like you’re just trash.’

‘You don’t know anything about me and my life,’ Kate said icily, her green eyes flashing.

‘Reckon I know enough just by looking.’ Jasmine turned and disappeared through the green curtain. She came back holding a battered square tin, and took out some band-aids, cotton wool and bandages. ‘What’re you two even doing here, slumming it with us?’

‘Lay off,’ Ramone told her. ‘They running from the howlers like we are.’

‘Takapa had captured us both, but we got away,’ Tom explained. ‘He wants us. Bad.’

Jasmine fell quiet. Her wide brown eyes seemed just a touch wider.

Tom found himself grimly satisfied at a point scored.

‘What’d you do to piss off Takapa?’ she demanded.