I wasn’t a coward. My being here was proof of that – and perhaps proof positive of my lack of intelligence. Everyone – aristocrat, half-blood and human – was afraid of goblins. You’d be mental not to be. They were fast and ferocious and didn’t seem to have any sense of morality holding them back. If aristos were fully plagued, then goblins were overly so, though such a thing wasn’t really possible. Technically they were aristocrats, but no one would ever dare call them such. To do so was as much an insult to them as to aristos. They were mutations, and terribly proud of it.

Images flashed in my head, memories that played out like disjointed snippets from a film: fur, gnashing fangs, yellow eyes – and blood. That was all I remembered of the day I was attacked by a gob right here in this very station. My history class from the Academy had come here on a field trip. The gobs stayed away from us because of the treaty. At least they were supposed to stay away, but one didn’t listen, and it picked me.

If it hadn’t been for Church, I would have died that day. That was when I realised goblins weren’t stories told to children to make us behave. It was also the day I realised that if I didn’t do everything in my ability to prove them wrong, people would think I was defective somehow – weak – because a goblin tried to take me.

I hadn’t set foot in Down Street station since then. If it weren’t for my sister Dede’s disappearance I wouldn’t have gone down there at all.

Avery and Val thought I was overreacting. Dede had taken off on us before, so it was hardly shocking that she wasn’t answering her rotary or that the message box on said gadget was full. But in the past she had called me to let me know she was safe. She always called me.

I had exhausted every other avenue. It was as though Dede had fallen off the face of the earth. I was desperate, and there was only one option left – goblins. Gobs knew everything that happened in London, despite rarely venturing above ground. Somehow they had found a way to spy on the entire city, and no one seemed to know just what that was. I reckon anyone who had the bollocks to ask didn’t live long enough to share it with the rest of us.

It was dark, not because the city didn’t run electric lines down here any more – they did – but because the lights had been smashed. The beam from my small hand-held torch caught the grimy glitter of the remains of at least half a dozen bulbs on the ground amongst the refuse.

The bones of a human hand lay surrounded by the shards, cupping the jagged edges in a dull, dry palm.