It wasn’t until a few years after she’d found him that he realised she was crazy, but by then he was as close to her as if she was blood. She kept him fed, tucked him in at night; other times he did the same for her. When she’d grown really sick, somehow they’d ended up at the house on Sutton Place.

That was where he’d met Huck – the same week the Witch died. He couldn’t remember it exactly, because Forest hadn’t slept for days after her death, courtesy of one of her gifts. She’d left him two presents in parting: a dog named Zeus and a bag of bliss salt. Everyone on the street called it ice, but the Witch was more romantic with her names.

He couldn’t say what it was about him, but seeing Huck in the corner of the yard that night, smoking his cigarette, scowling at all the other kids drinking and joking – he just seemed different. Almost free.

Kids were commonplace in that house because they made the best drug runners – police rarely searched them, and even if they did, they didn’t get the same harsh penalties as adults. All the kids in and around Sutton Place were trapped in that world, doing whatever the adults said – Forest learned that the hard way – but Huck ignored the grown-ups and yet never seemed to get belted.

That’s why Forest had first approached him. Started a friendship. Without the Witch to protect him, he needed someone else in his corner. Zeus was great, but Zeus couldn’t talk.

It took a long time before Huck had opened up about who he was . . . and about everything he had lost. That’s how Forest came to know that Huck had a home, somewhere, and that it had been ripped away from him.

Forest had decided he was going to do whatever it took to clear Huck’s name. He’d seen enough bad stuff in the world, and once he was old enough, he resolved to do something to fix at least some of it. He would steal back the home and fortune that had belonged to Forest Dempsey. Because, according to Huck, the real Forest Dempsey was dead in a cave. He didn’t need it anymore.

But now here he was, furious at Huck. How could he not have known that Dempsey Abalone was a front for a drug business? After all his work to get away from that world, he was deeper in it than ever.

And, even worse, Huck wasn’t even Huck!

But there was just one more hurdle and he’d be in the clear. Blackbeard. And the adults were dealing with that.

He turned from the windowsill towards Davey.

The head of Dempsey Abalone. The head of the Business.