My hand closes around my elbow as I squint up at him, blinded by pain, only to double back over as he kicks me square in the stomach. And instead of crunching into the wall I find myself flying backward into the dim light of the holding room, the wall or door or whatever it really was, having been opened somehow, somewhere, by someone. By him? I hawk on to the floor, blood tang-thick on my teeth.

‘Let’s use Medusa, next time, shall we?’ he says silkily, peering down at me, hands behind his back. ‘Far more appropriate, don’t you think? I rather think Pegasus gave you the wrong idea. There’s no flying away from this. Not then, not now, and not ever. You have others to thank for that, of course. But for now, always remember that we’re the ones who can turn you to stone.’ He clicks his fingers, one-two-three. ‘Just. Like. That.’

I hawk again, hitting the door as it slides closed, plunging me back into the half-light. Yet even through the shadows, I can make out the faint gleam of a slug’s trail inching down the door towards the floor, the unmistakable mark of a creature evolved only to chew through everything in its path.

But they always leave slime behind, I think, as memories collide in my mind. The slime sticks long after the slug has moved on.

And they’ve forgotten how hard that is to cover up.

176

Carly ~ London ~ 2001

Yet another jangle and clang as a tide more people sweep into Starbucks, puffs of stuffy city air wafting behind them like hot breath. Carly’s never spent an English summer anywhere other than the flat, empty east before. Sure, it gets warm, but even the slightest bit of wind tears off the North Sea and barrels across the Fens without so much as a blade of grass in its way. But Marie, well, she’s just finishing her second summer struggling to keep a toehold in a city where at least a hundred other feet are fighting over every leg-up. Here, choked between overcrowded buildings, overflowing buses and the swarms of people who live, work and party in London, even the slightest rise in temperature turns the air into fleece. And yet still they come in their hordes, to queue by these machines belching boiling steam, to slug hot milk as if it’s ice water, to chatter and squawk over their latest fancy coffee like this is something the English have been doing for hundreds of years.