The water around me boomed and rumbled and suddenly I was flying upwards. I burst out into the air and took a breath before I could stop myself and choked on a face full of water. Somebody grabbed my arm and held me up while I coughed desperately and took a second, proper, breath.

I blinked and saw brown eyes framed by black cloth, blinked again and saw that it was Guleed with the bottom of her hijab pulled up to cover her nose and mouth. I figured out why she’d done that when I took another breath and started coughing again. The air was so brown with brick dust that I couldn’t see the street lights.

I was at the edge of a surprisingly smooth-sided hole in the garden about a metre and a half across. Dirty water was welling up over the edge in rippling pulses. Obviously my spell had weakened it before something had raised the water level with enough force to punch it out.

I’d have liked to ask what that something had been, but just then I was too busy breathing.

But not too busy to yell when something grabbed my leg and tried to drag me down. I kicked frantically as Guleed tightened her grip on my arm and shoulder and attempted to heave me up over the lip of the hole.

A head broke surface next to me and did the whole emergency air sucking thing. It was one of Crew Cut’s boys. A second head bobbed up, retching and gasping – that was two.

‘I need some help here,’ shouted Guleed, bending over our impromptu garden pond as she tried to keep all of us afloat at once.

A pair of uniforms appeared out of the dust and helped pull me out.

‘That way,’ said one and pushed me gently towards the street.

A slim, unexpectedly elegant, paramedic pounced on me as I cleared the dust and threw a space blanket over my shoulders. He wanted to know if I was in pain and I told him I was just happy to be breathing.

He wanted to drag me away to his ambulance and do medical things, but I waited until Guleed emerged from the dust cloud trailed by the two uniforms and, suitably searched and handcuffed, the two Americans.

I asked Guleed if she’d seen ‘Teddy’ or Crew Cut himself.

‘I jumped Teddy as soon as Phoebe cleared the front gate,’ she said, pulling her hijab off her lower face.

‘We’d better get back in there and find their leader,’ I said.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said.