I was going to kill Fang. That was totally on my list, right after “save the world.”

Jerk. Cretin. Oh, God. He was part of me; he was in my blood. My blood was in him, literally. How could he have done this?

I glanced over at where Ari was drawing the last of his french fries through a mound of ketchup, his too-large hand making it look like a toothpick. I’d been watching him carefully, and so far he seemed loyal, sincere, not acting suspiciously. But what if I really had made my worst mistake?

I know what you’re thinking: Of course you didn’t, Max! It was Fang! He made the mistake!

And yes, we all know that my making a mistake is very, very rare. Exceedingly rare.

Still.

I was going to keep an eye on Ari.

“Max?” Nudge was looking at me. “Earth to Max.”

“Huh? What?”

“We’re going to fly there, right?” Nudge asked, pointing to Threadgill-on-Thames on the map. “Like, fly fly, not plane fly, right?”

“Right.” I glanced out the window. “We’ll go as soon as the sun sets. In the meantime, anyone want more tea?”

“Yeah, I’ll have some,” said Total. Of course.

72

“Oh, lovely,” I breathed, peering through a tall bank of hedges. “Geez, they’re not even pretending to gussy this place up, are they?”

“It looks so depressing,” said Nudge softly. “I would hate to work there.”

“You think?” I said. “I would hate to undergo cruel and unusual scientific experimentation there. It looks like the kind of forbidding, twisted place where evil scientists would do totally unthinkable, gruesome experiments. Like graft other species’ DNA into innocent infants.”

“For example,” said Nudge.

“What are we gonna do here?” Ari asked. The rest of us were so slender and lithe, thanks to our birdlike bones, that Ari seemed especially hulking and clunky in comparison. Now he loomed over us in the dark as we took our first look at the Itex British headquarters.

Fittingly, the building used to be a prison. And boy, had the Brits cornered the market on dank and gloomy. Itex headquarters had an unmistakable eau de prison about it—looming, blocklike rectangular buildings made of dirty brown brick.

If the leader of Itex is reading this right now, I have two words for you: seasonal plantings.

The entire thing was surrounded by an electrified chain-link fence at least twelve feet high, topped with razor wire, in case getting repeatedly shocked with five thousand volts wasn’t enough of a deterrent. And okay, if you’re totally nuts, maybe it wouldn’t be.

Of course, we were just going to fly over it anyway.

I heard Angel swallow in the quiet night and looked down at her. Her face was unusually pale, her eyes wide.

“What’s up?” I asked her, going on alert.

She swallowed again and reached for my hand. I squeezed hers and knelt down to her level.