The room he shared with Percy was back to the way they liked it, everything for school kept in painstaking order, while their shared collection of books flowed over every surface. Laid dog-eared on Percy’s bed was the copy of Frankenstein Jamie had lent him next to a notebook filled with annotations. It was a relief of sorts to be back at Rosewood, to hear Percy’s gentle breathing at night like a lullaby. He sat on his bed, muscles slowly untensing after what had happened in the breakfast hall. Absent-mindedly rubbing Vampy’s tummy while the cat continued to purr aggressively, he closed his eyes, pretending for just a moment that everything was normal, that there was no Leviathan, no Claude, no Marcys or reporters, nothing in the world for Ellie or Lottie to be afraid of.

When he finally got up, the cat let out an outraged hiss.

‘Don’t you judge me,’ Jamie growled back, before opening his wardrobe. Double-checking he couldn’t hear anything from the corridor outside, Jamie pushed at the back, the wooden panelling coming loose with a click. Curving his fingers round carefully, Jamie pulled the false panel away to reveal a hidden back. All along the dark oak was a spiderweb of information linked with a net of string to connect the pieces. Over the past week Jamie had been weaving together every clue and item they had, from the symbol Leviathan used to their obsession with his princess’s family. Now he was going to add everything he had learned the night before. He wrote the words out carefully on bits of paper.

Why did Ingrid bring up Alexis Wolfson?

What do they want with the king and queen?

He was going to leave it at that when he remembered Lottie’s face, the small pout she’d made when they’d interrogated him about how he was feeling in the car, and he added one more bit of paper.

Why am I Ellie’s Partizan?

He began sticking these new clues to the spiderweb, and in the very centre was what he hoped it all might lead him to. Carved into the wood with a penknife were four simple words that made his blood pump with the promise of vengeance, for Lottie, for Ellie, and for everyone close to him that Leviathan had tormented.

Where is my enemy?

6

Getting through the first half of the day was a living nightmare. Lottie watched the bright purple clock on the wall ticking away, edging closer to the end of English, and she begged it to slow down, knowing that she’d soon have to face Haru. Usually she loved Ms Kuma’s classes. The English department was airy and decorated with wondrous murals featuring images and quotes from famous novels, but right now it felt claustrophobic; all the colours and words were closing in around her like she was trapped in a book.