“The boss will sort this out,” he said, wishing he could be sure of it. “He needs us, and he wants her. So you look after her, and we’re all getting out of this, okay? We simply keep safe until he tracks us down.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.” Lucas scowled at the stream, and then rolled up his trousers like a seaside tourist and waded into it. The water was groin-deep in the middle, and Dominic went over entirely and came up soaked head to toe. When the three of them emerged on the other side he half expected them all to freeze solid.

“In,” he managed through chattering teeth. “In. Heater on, Michael.”

They had spare clothes, thankfully, although these were more intended to deal with suspicious spatter marks than a ducking. He and Dominic got white T-shirts and jeans that made them look like ageing members of some bygone boy band, and Pryor eventually consented to change into a skirt of Becca’s that wouldn’t quite button up.

“Right.” He checked his phone again. Still no telecoms network in Narnia, but Rove would surely be able to get through. A good idea to get the car out of the mud though, if they wanted to get going. He ordered Becca behind the wheel while he and Michael put their backs into moving the vehicle upslope. Dominic stood by, shivering, with a heavy hand on Pryor’s shoulder.

Halfway through this, Lucas’s instincts kicked in belatedly, because Pryor wasn’t nearly as spooked as the rest of them. It was as though she’d been expecting it, recognized it. Even as the revelation hit him, Dominic barked out a shout of alarm.

They weren’t alone.

On the far side of the stream, next to Lucas’s abandoned car, was a human figure. A human-like figure, he corrected himself. It was robed and hooded, maybe with a face mask—he saw the dim light catch on glass lenses. Short, very broad, freakishly so. He wouldn’t want to go toe to toe with whoever owned that body, if they knew what to do with it. But that was why he had the gun.

“Hi there,” he called out. All of them had drawn their guns now, and Dominic’s pistol hand was shaking in a worrying way. “We’ve run into some trouble.” He bit off the words Could we use your phone? because that probably wasn’t what you said to a…technodruid, or whatever the fuck this joker was.

“Give us the girl.” It was a woman’s voice, or he thought it was. Very deep, though, and each word accented in a way he was absolutely sure he’d never heard before, not anywhere in the world.

“Not going to happen,” he said, still friendly-like, still not pointing his gun at her.