“It’s not called anything,” said Melior. “It’s easier to hide something when it doesn’t have a name, I guess. The anti-Sanctuary, that’s as good a name as any. They’ve been working away behind the scenes for hundreds of years. Assassinations. Disappearances. They’ve orchestrated wars to get their agenda just a little bit further along the line. I know what you’re thinking. I thought it, too. How could it even exist? How could an organisation like this be responsible for centuries of murder and upheaval and yet no one knows anything about them? But that’s why they mostly recruit Neoterics. They’re looking for outsiders, sorcerers with no links to the Sanctuaries. They’re careful. They’re unbelievably, impossibly careful to not leave any fingerprints that’d lead people like you back to them. Or they were, at least. Their endgame is in sight. They’re coming out of the shadows.”

“What do they want?”

“War,” said Melior. “A proper, full-scale war, at the end of which the mortals will be our slaves. They want sorcerers to rule the world.”

“Who’s in charge?” she asked. “Smoke? Lethe?”

“Smoke’s a lackey. He doesn’t have one original thought in his head. Lethe’s different. He’s smarter. Very talented, very dangerous, very cunning. I’ve never seen him lose a fight. He plays with them at first, lets them think they’ve got the upper hand … I think he does it because he’s bored.”

“Why does he wear the suit?” Valkyrie asked.

“I don’t know, but I’ve never seen him without it.”

“What about the Teleporter?”

“Nero,” said Melior. “An arrogant little creep. In love with himself. Don’t know much about him. Don’t know much about most of them, to be honest.”

“The guy who slowed time …”

“Ah,” said Melior, “Destrier. He’s not really part of the team, as far as I can tell. He helps out, but he’s got his own thing going on. I get the feeling an arrangement has been reached there. They call what he does temporal manipulation.”

“Last person I saw doing that was a serial killer.”

“He’s a weird one, I can tell you that. I’ve seen him talking to himself – practically the only person he does talk to. I’ve certainly never spoken to him.

“Then there’s Memphis. He’s got this thing about Elvis. Apparently, he met him once, when he was a kid. But he’s dangerous. His power manifested as some form of hyper-agility. I’ve seen him flip around like a trapeze artist without the trapeze. He used to have a sister, but Lethe killed her. As far as I know, Memphis doesn’t hold a grudge.”

“Who’s the Australian?” Valkyrie asked.