And then the huge man was past them, shifting from stillness into swift motion without warning. Mal hurried after him, one pale glance back at Lee, who was stood frozen on the pavement. She didn’t want to go after the man, now she’d seen his face, seen him move as though the buildings around him were a ghostly mist he was kindly consenting not to disrupt by just barging through. But Mal was going too, and she couldn’t just…

She ran, calling Mal’s name—“Wait! Take me, too! Take me with you!”—without caring where that path might lead. “Mal, I can help you! I’ll do anything!” she shouted, to the great amusement of other less sober night owls, some of whom had obscene suggestions about just what she might do. Mal and the broad man were getting further away, even though they were barely hustling along and Lee was running flat out. They were receding in a direction that had no name, but she’d seen this before, she had, it wasn’t just some fantastical misremembering! It was Bodmin Moor all over again, except in the heart of Camden.

And

Gone.

There was no sudden magicianly gesture or occlusion, but they had been here and now they had gone there. Lee was left standing, panting and shuddering, knowing that there was indeed a crack, a door, a portal. She was on the very brink of it, but it would not open for her.

II

Lucas May had been in the army, though not, as he tended to tell people, in the SAS. Instead, he’d done his time in the logistics corps, organizing the movement of people and things from place to place, which probably gave him a more useful skillset.

After twelve years’ service he’d already had his escape trajectory plotted. He’d run into a few opportunities abroad, rubbing shoulders with private security types—who always seemed to be better paid and less heavily supervised. Specifically, he’d found himself in a position to do some favours for useful people, and he’d been headhunted practically before his boots hit civvy street.