First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2017

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Text copyright © Justin Fisher 2017

Cover illustration © Marcus Šumberac

Justin Fisher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008124557

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008124564

Version: 2017-03-06

For M and D

Forever

x

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

1. Christmas

2. Training

3. “TheeRe yoU arRe.”

4. Holiday

5. Blinking Mice

6. Home

7. Barking Dogs

8. One-way Ticket

9. Hide Park

10. New Recruit

11. Farewell

12. A World of Trouble

13. Madame O

14. Project Mercury

15. Under the Same Sky

16. The Guardian

17. Darklings

18. A Trip to the Museum

19. The Shadow

20. Breaking and Entering

21. Vault X

22. The Mirror in the Museum

23. City of Iron

24. The Central Intelligence

25. Barbarossa

26. All is Forgiven

27. He’s Back!

28. The Circus Travels

29. The Lady Beaumont

30. The Voice

31. A Search for Answers

32. City of Paper

33. The Secret in the Stone

34. The Darkening King

35. The Book of Aatol

36. Sleep Tight

37. Little Devils

38. At-lan

39. Find the Way

40. Eyes and Ears

41. “Tele-pot”

42. Control

43. Anger in the Big Top

44. Whispers from the Iron City

45. Cat Fight

46. Ding! Ding! Round Two

47. Happy Christmas

48. Tick, Tick, Tick …

49. … Tick, Tick, Tick

50. Drip, Drip, Drip

51. Healing

52. A Night of Terrors

53. The Viceroy of St Albertsburg

54. City of Glass

55. Friendly Talks?

56. Cups and Saucers

57. Allies and Enemies

58. Most Wanted

59. Escape

60. Out of the Frying Pan

61. Concentrate

62. An Unlikely Pair

63. And Into the Fire

64. Suits

65. Carrion

66. George the Mighty

67. True Potential

68. All Wrong

69. Old Friends, New Nightmares

70. Help

71. Mum and Dad

72. Into the Breach

73. Charge!

74. The Engine

75. After

76. Turning the Dial to 10

77. The Voice

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Books by Justin Fisher

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

United States Bullion Depository, Fort Knox, Kentucky

3.32am

eavy boots pound the tarmac, as officers bark their orders and sniffer dogs whine, blinded by the rows of steaming halogen floodlights. More and more arrive by the second. A never-ending procession of armoured cars and trucks loaded with soldiers. Above them, a dozen gunships, with their ground-shaking propellers, scan for signs. But there is nothing, only the appalling certainty that this is not a drill.

Beyond their fences and walls and barricades, a president is being woken, and powerful men in charge of a nation’s currency, its digits and its dollar bills are meeting and shouting and blaming.

Far below the chaos and the panic of the search, Shwartz and Greer sit in a bare grey cement room. It has no windows and no discernible features of any kind, except for the small surveillance camera in the far corner and its pulsating amber light.

Private Marvin L. Shwartz, slumped in one of the room’s two plastic bucket-chairs, is in considerable trouble and the man he reports to, Staff Sergeant Greer, on the other side of the bare metal table, is losing his patience.

“No, sir, I don’t remember. I have no idea how the vault was opened. I was walkin’ and then I wasn’t and the next thang I knew I was here, sir, with you, sir.”

“Shwartz, you are in an inordinate amount of doo-doo and there ain’t a damn thing I can do to help you, till you start explaining how half of this nation’s gold reserve just up and vanishes in less than an hour!”

The Bullion Depository at Fort Knox was protected not only by the United States Mint Police, but also by the 16th Cavalry Regiment, the 19th Engineer Battalion and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry, along with their tanks, attack helicopters and artillery. A force totalling well over thirty thousand men. The actual gold, all four and a half thousand metric tonnes, lay behind a one-of-a-kind, twenty-one-inch thick door, proofed against drills, lasers and explosions, designed by the Mosler Safe Company. It was monitored by twenty-four-hour orbital satellite and ground-sweeping radar. Automated machine guns covered every possible entry point, and it was rumoured that the entire surrounding grasslands were carpeted with land mines, a rumour Greer had been careful to encourage.

It was, to all intents and purposes, completely impregnable. That was, of course, until today – and on Private Shwartz’s watch.

Greer’s earpiece crackled.

He listened for a moment.

“They’re here! Already? Are you serious?”

It was at this point that Private Shwartz started to perspire.

“Son, I’ve known you a long time and I think I know the answer but I gotta ask anyway: do you love your country?”

“Sir, yessir!” puffed Shwartz, as eagerly as he knew how and all the more heartbreakingly because of it.

Staff Sergeant Greer was quite certain that if the Private had had a tail, he would have wagged it.

“I believe you do, son. The men you are about to meet …” His eyes dropped. “Just tell ’em the truth, Shwartz, like you told me.”

The door behind Greer slid open quietly and two men dressed in light grey suits entered the room. One had dark red-blond hair and introduced himself as Mr Fox. His greying accomplice, a Mr Badger, was built like a house and stood by the door without uttering a word. Handcuffed to his wrist was a small metallic briefcase.

The Staff Sergeant was excused, leaving Shwartz alone with the two men in grey.

The first thing Shwartz noticed was that Mr Fox did not sound remotely American. He was a young man, with kind eyes and a soft, vaguely British accent.

“Marvin, I represent the BBB. I hope you don’t mind me using your first name, Marvin, I find it helps enormously in these situations.”

“No, sir.” Shwartz paused. “Sir – the BBB, I’m sorry, is that a part of Homeland Security? Am I going to prison?”

“No. And … maybe. ‘Bagshot Bingley and Burke’, colloquially known as the BBB, are not connected to the US or any other government body. We are insurance underwriters, and the United States gold reserve is one of our contracts. As I’m sure you can appreciate, a claim of this magnitude presents logistical problems, even for an outfit with as much reach as ours. When something of this value goes missing, it is my job to get it back – and rest assured, Marvin, I will get it back.”

Fox raised his hand casually and Badger produced a document from the briefcase, which was when Shwartz noticed something else about Mr Fox. It wasn’t arrogance, or even a particular aura of confidence. Fox was, in fact, a rather unassuming sort of a man, but he had something, an air of … certainty. Slow, measured certainty. When he raised his hand, he knew Badger would have the items he needed, and when he slid them across the table towards Shwartz and handed him a pen, he knew that Shwartz would sign them for him. He was simply certain.

“Sir, what did I just sign, sir?”

“There’s no need to call me ‘sir’, Marvin. Fox will do. The paper is a non-disclosure agreement. In the interest of the world’s financial security and ‘what-not’, if you ever speak of this to anyone, you and your entire family will be placed under lock and key, for the rest of your lives. I know it sounds heavy-handed, Marvin. According to our files, Debbie is not the kind of mother-in-law anyone would want to be locked up with. But please try to understand: when all of America’s gold vanishes in less than seventy-two hours, the implications for the world’s markets … their very viability is placed in jeopardy.”

“All the gold, sir?” said an increasingly sweaty and ashen-faced Shwartz. “But we only had half here, the rest is …”

“I’m afraid the other half was taken earlier this week. Now please, Marvin, if you wouldn’t mind, let’s start with the issue of ‘access’. Not one of the guards within these walls can tell me anything, only that they ‘fell asleep’ for no apparent reason. You were the last guard, Marvin, between the intruder and the vault. Is there anything you can tell me?”

“No, sir, I mean Mr Fox. Like I told Staff Sergeant Greer, one minute I’m walkin’ my route, and I hear these footsteps. Well the next thang I know, I’m on my back, and the vault doors are wide open.”

“Marvin, there are over a dozen retinal eye-scanners between the entrance to this facility and the vault doors. Over twelve hundred security cameras, and countless laser tripwires. If your statement is true, then the intruder, or intruders, managed to waltz through the entire compound undetected. Which is almost as unlikely as the removal of thousands of tons of gold … in less than an hour. Do you have any idea who could have done that?”

“No, no, I don’t, Mr Fox.”

“Neither do we.”

Badger opened his briefcase and pulled out a small glass vial.

“Marvin,” said Mr Fox, indicating the vial. “We found this substance, rather a lot of it, by one of the vault walls. It looks like liquid mercury, but I’ve been told that it isn’t. Do you know what it is, Marvin?”

“No, Mr Fox, I do not.”

“Is there anything you do know, Marvin?”

“There is … one thang, kinda weird. Just after I heard the footsteps, there was this music playin’, only it wasn’t playin’ no notes. And then I just wound up real peaceful, or asleep, or both, till I was found by Staff Sergeant Greer.”

Fox leant in a little closer and smiled.

“Music with no notes. That sounds … familiar.”

Before he had even raised his hand, Badger produced a phone from his briefcase – only it wasn’t a model that Private Shwartz had ever seen. Fox put it to his ear.

“Owl? Yes, it’s Fox. I’m afraid there’s been a development. It’s happened again. No, I don’t think it would be wise to inform Bear at this stage, he may … overreact. Yes, I think that would be prudent.”

Fox handed the phone back to Badger and started to hum a tune of sorts. What made Shwartz nervous was the unsettling look of sympathy on his face.

“Marvin, you’re going to have to come with me. Your family are already en route. Don’t worry. We’ll protect you.”

Badger looked over to the camera in the corner of the room and a moment later the door slid open. To Private Marvin L. Shwartz’s amazement, the long subterranean corridor running beneath Fort Knox was lined with well over a hundred insurance men. Each of them was wearing a light grey suit.

Christmas

t was dark up on the rooftops, dark and cold. He could see his breath in the December air but little else. The streetlights below were unable to reach his perch, high up on the chimney stack. Bitter as it was, at least the cold was keeping his wits sharp.

Ned had to think quickly; what time he had was running out. Which would be the safer route? To continue along the rooftops, or to risk the gardens below with their noisy dogs and fences? His assailant was experienced, extremely so, but uncomfortable off the ground.

“Concealment,” he whispered bitterly, repeating the first of his training’s many golden rules.

He’d stick to the rooftops for now. Ned needed every advantage against the man following him if he was going to make it. He’d learnt to make little noise on the lead-lined tiles beneath him, and now he scampered quietly to the edge. He closed his eyes and the ring on his finger hummed. A beat later and the tiles from number 37 started to move. A year ago it would have taken all of his concentration. But Ned was more powerful now, the Amplifications his dad had taught him came as easily as breathing, and “Seeing” had been the very first form of Engineering that he’d learnt to master.

He focused on the squares of slate in front of him. Atom by atom they bent to his will, as though the roof itself had come alive. Light, strong aluminium started to form up from the grey stone in layers of interlocking pieces, each one forming over the other in precise ordered segments. To anyone else watching it would have been a moving marvel, but to Ned it was the beginnings of a walkway between two roofs.

Something stirred in the shadows below. Even when focused he’d learnt to listen, to hear the difference between background noise and the rustling of a hidden assailant. The man below was waiting. If he knew Ned’s location, he was no doubt making ready to strike. Ned blinked and the aluminium clattered back to a row of lifeless tiles. He’d cross the old-fashioned way. His lungs filled, one pace, two – and Ned let his muscles throw him across the gap. The timing was perfect.

The corners of his mouth turned towards a smile as his foot made contact with the next rooftop. And then it happened – the temperature around him plummeted, the tiles beneath his feet suddenly turning to ice.

“Urgh!”

His feet skidded along the now-frozen rooftop and his belly hit the tiles hard; he was starting to slide. “Breathe,” he whispered, and a year and a half of physical and mental training took over. Ned’s eyes closed and his hands shot out beside him. As his body flew over the edge of the roof he grabbed at the gutter, his hand like a steel vice. But there was give, too much give.

“Plastic,” he groaned.

The gutter tore from the wall and a second later he was two floors below with the wind knocked out of him and frost-covered garden grass beneath his back.

“Oww,” he managed.

Using the ice had been clever, but the man in the shadows had not finished. There was a loud voom, and from somewhere in the darkness a ball of fire raced towards Ned. He rolled and the flames changed, sputtering into raindrops before they could singe the grass below. The family at number 42 were too engrossed with the news on their television to notice the scene beyond their sliding patio doors. Ned caught a glimpse of the rolling headline.

ANOTHER KIDNAPPING REPORTED. POLICE SAY—

But he needed to focus.

Ned could think of a dozen ways to escape. An impenetrable shield of rock or iron could be yanked up from the lawn. He could disassemble the atoms of every wooden fence and brick wall between where he now stood and the safety of his home. But Ned wasn’t allowed to think for himself – rules were rules and he would have to find a quieter way. A way of escaping without his neighbours knowing he’d been there, and more importantly without them learning what Ned could do.

A smoke screen – straight out of the Engineer’s manual and, as such, allowed. Begrudgingly he thought about wood, he thought about it in every detail, the grain, the texture, the smell, till he could see the atoms in his mind’s eye. And then he speeded them up, faster and faster, heating them all the time, till the ring on his finger crackled with life and the air in the garden folded in on itself. But the Engine on his finger responded violently this time, Amplifying his frustration to make a cloud of burning black smoke, too much for his needs, and in seconds he could barely see in front of his nose, let alone breathe.

Ned’s eyes stung and he ran to where he hoped the garden fence was, before stumbling headfirst into a rosebush.

“Ow!”

The mistake had cost him, as two feet padded across the lawn, closing the gap between Ned and his assailant. He fumbled frantically on, his hands and feet found a wall, and he was over and gaining ground in a moment, the cloud of noxious smoke now blissfully behind him.

Another wall, this time lined with high fencing, another family glued to their screens. Ned wished he could be more like them, seeing the world through the safety of a telly. But the man behind him would never let go, never let him forget who he was, who he had been behind the Veil. One more wall and he was home, one more and the chase would come to an end. He made ready to leap when he saw it forming in front of him: a complex array of iron spikes, sharp and cruel, growing out of the bricks and mortar.

The work was unmistakable: only a true master could have crafted them with such precise and intricate detail.

A voice in the darkness called out to him. A voice that had watched his every move.

“What is the family motto?”

“Look before you leap,” said Ned wearily.

“And I’m glad you did, son, the guard-spikes would have been sore as hell, and your mum’s fed up with having to mend your clothes.”

“It’s not great for me, either, Dad,” said Ned. “She’s rubbish with a sewing machine.”

“Good session, though,” said Ned’s dad. “You’re improving all the time. You really slowed me down with that smoke.”

“Not enough.”

“No,” said his dad. “But you’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time.”

Ned thought of the nights stretching ahead of him, nights of training, of climbing and jumping and falling, when everyone else was watching TV.

“Great,” he mumbled.

Training

raining might have been over but there was still the matter of a small wager. “Dad?” said Ned to the darkness.

“Yes, son?”

“Our bet; last one home has to eat seconds, right?”

“Right – so?”

“You’re still on this side of the wall, aren’t you?”

If his dad had spoken, Ned would have sensed the alarm in his voice. Actually eating Olivia Armstrong’s cooking was a fate that neither of them relished, but “seconds” were out of the question. The guard-spikes at the top of their garden wall turned to mist and were carried harmlessly away by the wind.

Ned’s dad nearly always won their bouts of training. But then his dad set the rules. Even so, there were some things Terrence Armstrong couldn’t control – Ned was younger and faster, and over the wall whilst his dad was still scrambling to find a foothold.

He landed on the other side as quietly as a cat. But even as he righted himself, he sensed that something was wrong, just before the shadow beside him moved. “How?” he mouthed, as a foot connected with his chest and he flew, arms flailing, into the family’s plastic wheelie bins.

“What is the family motto?” asked a grinning Olivia Armstrong.

“How about, ‘Social Services are going to take your son away for his own protection’,” said Ned grumpily.

“I love you too, dear,” replied his mother, before kissing him on the cheek. “And I heard every word about the sewing and the wager.”

Ned and his dad entered their home like two naughty schoolboys. It was their family’s inner sanctum and a picture postcard of pre-Christmas excitement. Presents sat lovingly wrapped under the tree, home-made decorations covered the walls and if there was hanging space, there was mistletoe. His mum even had a constant supply of Christmas carols murmuring from the radio in the kitchen. It was a cosy contrast to the bachelor lives the two Armstrong men had lived before Ned’s mum had been returned to them. Olivia Armstrong had worked tirelessly to make up for lost time and lost Christmases. Twelve years’ worth.

Ned had always wanted a “normal” life, and though they were all trying, there was one rather unavoidable issue. The Armstrongs, despite outward appearances, were not even remotely normal.

And therein lay the problem. Ned had exactly what he’d always wanted right in front of him, but, as wonderful as it was, deep down inside he knew it was a lie. Ned had seen the magic of another world and, once seen, it could never be forgotten. The more they pushed him to blend in with his old world, to go unseen, to go unnoticed – the more he realised that he couldn’t.

“You know he made me fall off a roof?” said Ned, who’d taken his throbbing back to the comfort of their sofa.

“I was going to cushion the fall, son, would have done too if you hadn’t fallen quite so well. The gutter was inspired by the way – got your mum’s training to thank for that.”

“You’ve got to be prepared for anything, dear,” cooed Olivia from the kitchen.

As always in regard to training, his mum and dad were a united front.

“And you need to work on your smoke screens,” warned Terrence as he set the table for dinner. “Very effective, but too much power—”

“—brings attention, I know, I know, but what’s the point in learning how to evade danger if all we do is hide away from it?”

Olivia pretended not to hear and busied herself with preparing their supper, whilst humming to an awful version of “White Christmas” on the radio.

“Don’t you miss it, Dad, the Hidden, the Circus – our friends?”

“Course I do, Ned, but not nearly as much as I missed or worried about your mum. Or you, whilst we’re on the subject, after you crossed the Veil. I will never let us be apart again, Ned, not now, not ever.”

“But Barbarossa’s dead, Dad, all that’s behind us.”

His dad shook his head. “Do you know what they call you behind the Veil? ‘The hero of Annapurna.’ Everyone knows what you did, what you’re capable of, but you’re still just a boy, my boy – and there are plenty of creatures on the other side as bad as he was and with as much to gain by getting their hands on you.” His dad paused. “Nowhere is as safe as you think, Ned, not for people like us.”

“Oh, Dad, really? We used to live in the dullest suburb in England, and now we live next door to it. Nothing happens here.”

“Which is precisely why our powers need to stay a secret. If jossers found out about us, we’d have to move, and quickly. Besides which, ‘nothing’ much was happening before Mo and his cronies came looking for me in Grittlesby. Trouble could just as easily come looking for us here.”

“Then teach me how to fight, really fight, not hide.”

His dad’s face darkened. The truth was that Ned could do any number of the training exercises asked of him, with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back. Ned knew it and so did his dad. What he was really asking was for permission to work outside the limitations of the Engineer’s Manual.

“You know I can’t do that, son.”

“I’d be careful, Dad.”

“It’s not about that. What you did at St Clotilde’s, that level of power, it’s simply never been done. Not by a single Engineer before you. We have no idea of the dangers.”

“What if it has, though? The missing pages from the Manual, maybe that’s what they’re about? You could help me, we could work it out together.”

His dad’s expression looked somewhere between anger and concern, before finally settling on kind.

“The pages are gone and there’s no way of knowing what was on them. Ned, any Engineer could have made a smoke screen without choking themselves half to death and you’re better than all of the ones that came before you, better than me. Remember last week, when you got angry? The power grid for half the suburb went out and not for the first time. We’ve gone through three blown microwaves in less than a month and every time you do homework, car alarms start sounding off all over Clucton. I can’t do that, son, none of it.”

“Then help me control it, Dad, please?”

And this was where the conversation always wound up.

“Your powers have changed since Annapurna, since you connected to the Source, that much we know. But there’s something else, something troubling you that you’re not telling us. I can’t help you if you don’t let me know what it is.”

For a glimmer of a moment, Ned looked into his father’s kindly eyes and prepared himself to say something. About what happened at night, when he let himself fall asleep.

About the voice.

But this time – like all the others – he found that he couldn’t do it. Because if he talked about it now … it would live outside his dreams and nightmares. It would become … real.

“Tomorrow, Dad, I’ll tell you both. I promise.” And a part of him believed that he actually might.

Suddenly there was a shriek from the kitchen, followed by an unusually panicked Olivia Armstrong, flapping her arms.

“Oh dear Lord, it’s ruined!” she gasped. “And the Johnstons will be here any minute! Will you two stop dribbling on about ‘Amplification’ and set the table. Terry, I need a spatula, and fast!”

Sometimes, Ned found it hard to believe this was the same woman who, mere months ago, had fought off countless gor-balin assassins, to protect her “wards” at the battle of St Clotilde’s. Ned’s mum could happily face off against a mountain troll if the mood took her, but the mystery of weighed ingredients and a timed oven were not a warrior’s domain.

As the aroma of burnt “something” hit their noses, the kitchen radio blared.

“The third kidnapping from the capital in less than a week—”

Terrence’s face whitened and his eyes flitted to Olivia for a moment, before he started rifling through a kitchen drawer for implements. But Ned had seen it.

All his dad’s talk of dark forces that might be interested in Ned. All the training he was making him do. There was something he was worried about – something specific – and it had to do with the kidnappings on the news.

“TheeRe yoU arRe.”

ater that night, when the Johnstons had gone and the last of his mum’s burnt offerings had been cleared away, Ned went to bed. It was his least favourite part to any day. Not because he wanted to stay up, but because of what happened when he didn’t.

Sleep.

For weeks now he had been plagued by the same horrifying nightmare. The hot metal walls. The sense of being trapped, and then the walls blowing open and …

Just thinking about it made him shudder.

But it was not the nightmare itself or the part Ned’s ring always played in it that he could not tell his parents about. It was the voice that lay waiting whenever it began. A voice both familiar and ancient – like a call of trumpets over the grinding of rock.

“TheeRe yoU arRe,” said the voice, when Ned finally succumbed to his exhaustion.

Deeply asleep and trapped in his dream, Ned shuddered.

Downstairs, the TV blew its fuse. A light bulb in the kitchen popped. And all down the street, car alarms began to wail.

Holiday

hen Ned woke up, the awful dream and the voice that lurked in its shadow hung over him like a great dark blanket. He was used to the feeling by now and had worked out a series of tricks to get away from its greedy clutches. But today was different: by the time he’d brushed his teeth and made his way downstairs, help was already on offer in the guise of two lovebirds and a Christmassy jingle on the radio. Terry and Olivia Armstrong were dancing very slowly together under a sprig of mistletoe in their kitchen.

“Err, guys, do you have to do that? It’s going to put me off my toast.”

Terry Armstrong continued without flinching. It was his mum who answered.

“Ned, your father and I have waited twelve years to celebrate Christmas together and this is only our second. No amount of teenage grumpiness is going to stop us dancing, cooing, hugging or anything else for the rest of our days.”

And as Ned smiled in blissful defeat, his dad finally spoke without taking his chin from the top of his mum’s shoulder.

“You know what they say, son? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

“Don’t be daft!” wailed Ned.

But his dad’s ring finger crackled wildly and Ned found himself being pushed by its invisible power to the arms of his mum and dad.

Ned’s hair was ruffled, his cheeks pinched and what followed was the most clumsy six-legged waltz the small suburb of Clucton had ever seen, except of course that they couldn’t actually see it. In that moment Ned forgot that he was fourteen years old, and a teenager who from time to time tried to let the rest of the world think he might be cool – because he wasn’t, but mostly because, just like his parents, he’d waited and hoped and dreamed for twelve long years that he could celebrate Christmas with his mum and dad. Now that he actually could, a six-legged waltz in the family kitchen felt like just the right thing to do.

***

Hours later, Carrion Slight sat in his Silver Shadow Rolls-Royce and tended to his bag of tricks, a bag containing two special items. This job had been awkward even for a thief with his unique set of skills. His targets had covered their tracks well and their scent had eluded him for an unusually long time.

“I really don’t get the point of children. They always smell rather off to me, especially the boys. Still, a contract is a contract and my nose never lies, does it, Mange?” said Carrion.

There was no answer.

“It reminds me of that job in Prague, her perfume was so sickly sweet – yet another aroma I wish I could forget. I don’t expect you’ve ever been to Prague, have you?” continued Carrion.

From the outside of the car it looked very much as though he was talking to himself.

“Nothing smells worse than bad perfume – nothing, that is, except for boys. Her necklace, on the other hand: so shiny, and such perfectly cut diamonds.” For a moment Carrion shut his eyes, lost now in the shimmer of “jobs” gone by. “It broke my greedy heart to sell it.” Still no answer. Carrion started to fume. “You’re never actually going to talk, are you, Mange? What I wouldn’t do for some intelligent conversation. Instead I have a bargeist; a demon-hearted, Darkling mutt with only one impulse.”

Carrion unwrapped a full leg of lamb and threw it into the back of his car. The invisible creature behind him snarled loudly, before opening its gullet wide. The car shook just once and the lamb was gone.

“Ungrateful hound.”

Yesterday Carrion had pretended to be a health inspector from the school board; today he’d be a door-to-door salesman. One way or another he always found a way in. His little box took care of the rest and if that didn’t work, he always had Mange.

“Come, we’ve work to do. Do not make yourself known unless they resist. You’re not allowed to kill these ones; though, to be fair, they said nothing about the causing of pain.”

Sliding from the car, Carrion opened its rear door and the invisible creature stepped on to the pavement, with its heavy padded feet. A grinning Carrion approached the house and rang the doorbell. He did so love his job.

Olivia Armstrong opened the door, her expression one of mild irritation at being disturbed by a cold-caller.

“Good morning, madam,” said Carrion. “Is the family at home; I do hope so? I’m selling trinkets, music boxes to be precise, and this one is almost free.”

Blinking Mice

ed sat in a half-broken deck chair in Mr Johnston’s shed. It was the perfect place to hang out and, as George’s dad never did any actual gardening, it was always free of grown-up ears. Term had ended and his two pals, George Johnston and Archie Hinks, were in high spirits. Ever since his time at the circus Ned had developed a problem with calling his friend “George” – it just reminded him too much of the lovable ape he’d left behind – and had forced him to go by “Gummy” on account of his large teeth, though he’d never, obviously, told him the real reason for the nickname. Either way, both his friends loved teasing Ned about his parents and “Gummy Johnston” was busy describing his evening at Ned’s house and the frightening mess that was Olivia’s cooking.

“You should have seen it, Arch! Unrecognisable!” exclaimed Gummy, clutching at his throat. “Oh and the smell, like rotting pigeon in old vinegar.”

“A Waddlesworth special?” asked Archie.

“A Waddlesworth super-special, if you ask me,” grinned back his friend.

“She is bad, isn’t she?” Ned said in agreement.

At this point, the walls of Mr Johnston’s garden shed rattled with their combined laughter.

Yet another layer of lies that had become Ned’s life. No one on this side of the Veil knew about Ned’s powers, let alone what his real name was, not even his two best friends. But that was what he really loved about Gummy and Arch. He could be the “Waddlesworth” Ned with them, the old one he had been before the Hidden had come knocking. There were moments, when the three of them were together, when the laughter flowed freely enough, that he let himself forget about Amplification and training. And sometimes, if he really tried, Ned even forgot about the voice.

Whiskers, Ned’s pet mouse, remained perfectly still on his favourite seed bag, knowing full well that Gummy and Arch wouldn’t be nearly as chirpy if they’d seen what Ned’s mum could really do with a carving knife, or sword for that matter.

“All right, Whiskers?” asked Gummy.

But Ned’s mouse remained completely motionless, because unbeknown to Gummy, Whiskers was not really a mouse. At least not a real one.

“Ned?” asked George.

“Yep?”

“You do know Whiskers is a bit weird, right?”

“Yes. Actually, he’s about as weird a mouse as it gets, but he’s my weird mouse and I wouldn’t have him any other way,” replied Ned rather proudly, at which point Whiskers deigned to give him an acknowledging twitch of the nose.

“Talking of weird, did George tell you about the bloke who turned up at our school?” asked Arch.

“No.”

“Well,” started Arch. “So this is even weirder than your mouse and your mum’s cooking. This inspector from the school board comes into class, says he’s there to do a spot inspection, looking for nits. And he has this nose, all long and pointy.”

“Nits?”

“Nits,” agreed Gummy, with a knowing nod.

“Yeah,” said Arch. “Nits on the last day of school, and he said he only needed two candidates, me and Gummy.”

Ned’s ears pricked up, closely followed by the ears of his pet rodent. There were several things that his two pals had in common. They were Ned’s only close friends outside the Circus of Marvels, and they had both lived on the same street as Ned, until the Waddlesworths (or Armstrongs – depending on which side of the Veil you lived) had decided to move to the neighbouring suburb.

“Only you two, out of the whole class?”

“Yup. He kept asking questions about how long we’d lived on our street; he had a really oily voice, sort of creepy. He said there was a very rare type of nit he was trying to track down and that he thought it had come from Oak Tree Lane.”

“That is weird,” said Ned, who did not like where the story was going at all.

“It gets weirder. So Gummy’s waiting outside and I’m sat on a chair in the school’s old meeting room. The inspector guy takes these plugs out of his nose and then shoves said nose right into my hair. Finally he pulls away, staggers backwards and looks like he’s going to be sick.”

“Well, who wouldn’t?” grinned Gummy.

“Then he looks at me and starts blathering on about the awful smell of children and how he finally has a lead. A second later he’s flying out the door past me, then Gummy, and clutching his nose like it’s been stabbed.”

Behind the Veil, there were many creatures, with many “gifts”. Ned had read about Folk with a sense of smell so acute they could follow a target, any target, for miles and once they had a scent, they never forgot it. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“So after that, you went home and you and your mum and dad came over to mine, right?”

“Yeah. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You’ve led him straight to us, Gummy!”

At that moment, something inside Ned changed. The mistletoe and wrapping paper, the thin veneer of an ordinary life with its ordinary joys and its run-up to Christmas, all, suddenly, faded away.

Behind Ned’s friend, the two bulbs in his extraordinary mouse’s eyes started to flash a brilliant white. Cold fear ran up and down Ned’s back. His mouse, a Debussy Mark Twelve, had been top-of-the-range spy gear in its time, a mechanical marvel of spinning cogs and winding gears. It would never blink like that on this side of the Veil, not in front of “jossers” who did not know about the Hidden. Not, of course, unless it was a serious emergency.

The mouse had been adjusted by the Circus of Marvels’ resident boffin and could now communicate with Ned, albeit in simple Morse code. Longer flashes of the eyes were a dash, shorter blinks a dot.

Ned wondered who was sending him a message. Only a few people knew the correct frequency to contact Whiskers: Ned’s parents, the Circus of Marvels and the Olswangs at number 24. His dad had insisted that if they were to return to a “normal” life, they would have to have friendly agents to watch over their son. “Fair-folk” used glamours outside the Hidden’s territory to remain human in appearance, but Mr Olswang clearly had dwarven blood in his veins and “Mrs” had to have been elven to be anywhere near as tall as she was. Either way, neither Ned’s parents nor the Olswangs had ever had cause to use the system until today, in Mr Johnston’s shed.

Ned’s friends looked at Whiskers in complete and utter horror.

“What in the name of everything is your mouse doing?” marvelled Archie.

“Shh, it’s blinking,” said Ned.

“DON’T GO, H, O, M,” he translated.

A single dot.

“E.”

There are few things less likely to make a boy stay where he is, than telling him not to go home. Especially when it means that his parents might be in danger.

“Y-y-you need to do some explaining,” stammered Gummy. “I mean, that’s just not right, not a bit! Your … your blinking mouse, Ned, what on earth is it?”

Archie leapt to his feet.

“It’s magic, innit?” said Archie. “You’ve got some weird magical rodent, you’re like blooming Gandalf or something. O,M,G, that is AWESOME!”

But when Ned spoke it was in a whisper. A whisper so cold that it stilled his friends to their cores.

“Say nothing, not to anyone. Promise?”

Whether because of Whiskers’ flashing eyes, or the look on Ned’s face, both of his friends remained silent.

“PROMISE!” forced Ned with a shout.

“Promise,” they murmured back sheepishly.

And with that, Ned was on his bicycle and pedalling away from the Johnstons’ as fast as its wheels would carry him.

“Ned, wait! You forgot your bag,” called Gummy, but Ned was already gone.

Home

he bike’s metal frame rattled noisily as it careered through the streets of Grittlesby and on to neighbouring Clucton. Three thirty and it was already getting dark. Pedestrians yelled at the blur of speeding metal, cars honked their horns and Ned’s mind became a whirlwind of all-encompassing panic.

Where his dad had trained Ned with the ring at his finger, his mum had taught him circus skills. High-wire, tumbling, fencing, juggling (either knives or flames) and all-round acrobatics. Everyone who worked the borders of the Veil had to know them, to be able to fight, or get out of danger, and there was no better teacher than Olivia Armstrong.

She had not taught him how to ride a bike – that much he had already known – but she had honed his reflexes and kept him fit. Even so, he thought his lungs were going to explode by the time he finally made it to his house, though not as surely as his heart. Training only works, no matter how thorough, when you remember it. Ned could barely remember how to breathe.

He didn’t notice the blaring car alarms, or that the lawnmower from number 39 was floating several feet off the ground. His powers were spiking again. He approached the front door and let out a sigh of relief. The lights were on and everything looked quite normal from the outside. He even heard “White Christmas” playing on their kitchen radio again.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas …”

It was only when he pulled out his keys that he noticed the front door hanging very slightly ajar. That, in and of itself, would have been more than enough to make Ned worry, but it was the movement in his own shadow that made his hair stand on end. It spilt out across the ground, oozing with a will of its own. The shadow became a shape and then the shape rose up to greet him. Within it were two minuscule eyes, like a pair of stars on flowing black velvet.

Ned’s undulating familiar, the shadow-dwelling Gorrn, was a difficult creature, prone to taking offence over the smallest issue and also uncommonly lazy. Gorrn usually only came to Ned if he was summoned. The only time he showed himself without being asked was if there was very clear and very present danger nearby.

“Gorrn, is something wrong?”

“Arr,” groaned back the shadow.

Gorrn was a familiar of few words. “Roo” was either a question or a “don’t know”, “Unt” a flat refusal to help, but “Arr”?

“Arr” nearly always meant yes.

Barking Dogs

rmed with nothing more than his mouse and his shadow, Ned stepped through the door of his house.

The inside looked normal enough, at least to begin with. There was no sign of trouble, and Ned could see that one of the gas rings in the kitchen had been lit, though the pan next to it was still waiting to go on. As if someone had been interrupted. Or taken by surprise.

“Mum! Dad?”

There was no answer.

Where were they, and why would they leave the front door open and the gas on?

“Kidnap,” blared the radio suddenly. “Tonight’s story focuses on how people are being taken from their homes, but also asks the big question – why?”

“Taken?” murmured a horrified Ned. “Whiskers – that Morse message, was it from the Olswangs?”

The Debussy Mark Twelve gave an affirmative bob of its head.

Ned peered through the living-room window, out across the street and on to the Olswangs’. Even as the day drew darker, he could see that there was something very wrong with their door. It appeared to have been broken off its hinges. Panic, clear and bright, made its unwelcome return. Surely this couldn’t be happening? The Veil, Barbarossa, it was all behind them but Terrence and Olivia Armstrong were gone – apparently – and the decorated home they’d left in their wake was lifeless and bleak, like a once-busy shop after a sale, when the lights were out and all the people had gone home.

“Protocol,” he breathed. His parents had lain out concise plans should this very situation arise. Search the premises for clues, carefully and methodically. Anything he found would prove vital if he was to get them back. If intruders were still present, he was to leave immediately.

“Boys, look around, will you? Gorrn, would you kindly search the bedrooms? Whiskers, look for anything out of the ordinary.”

“Arr,” said Gorrn, and the ominous creature was in the shadows and oozing up the stairs.

“Move, Gorrn!” hissed Ned.

His slovenly familiar gave an undulating shrug of what might have been shoulders, and began moving at two miles per hour instead of one.

The second third of his mostly mute search party promptly gave a squeak from behind the sitting-room’s sofa. His keen clockwork eyes had indeed found something “out of the ordinary” on the carpet. It had collected by the far wall and looked almost exactly like liquid mercury. Ned got down on his knees and took a closer look. The sudden absence of his parents must have something to do with the odd-looking liquid, but what?

“Blimey, Whiskers, what is this stuff and what’s it doing on our carpet?”

His trusty mouse, as wonderful as it was, had no answer.

“Take a sample, our friends on the other side will want to have a look at this.”

Whiskers did as he was told, using his tiny metal tongue as a syringe. The mercurial liquid was now Ned’s only clue and whatever it might mean, he was quite sure it had originated from the other side of the Veil – the side he would have to go to for answers.

To his left was the family Christmas tree. It sagged under the weight of lights and baubles and the promise of happier days. He looked at the pile of presents beneath it and his chest tightened. In a few days he would have been opening them with his mum and dad. But today and now, everything had changed. He would have to leave shortly and had no way of knowing when he’d come back. There were two presents that he’d been particularly excited about. As daft as it was, he couldn’t bear to leave without them, and scooped them up into his arms.

“Yes, Chief Inspector, but why, why are they being taken?” blared the radio.

Ned thought of his parents’ smiling faces and willed the interview to stop. As he did so, there was an angry bang! from the kitchen and his mum’s radio exploded. His powers had spiked again, loudly enough for something upstairs to take notice.

From the ceiling directly above Ned’s head came a low growl and it was one that he didn’t recognise. It was followed by a wailing sound from Gorrn, who Ned guessed had found an intruder!

“Gorrn? Gorrn, what’s going on up there?”

Silence.

If Ned’s training had taught him anything, it was that Terry and Olivia Armstrong were the best of the best. They wouldn’t have gone down without a fight and yet there were no signs of a scuffle, at least downstairs. He prayed that whatever Gorrn had come across had made them flee, and that if they’d done so, they’d escaped without getting hurt.

“Please be OK,” he whispered.

CRASH!

There was a loud tinkling of broken glass and another of Gorrn’s wails, at which point Whiskers responded with a highly agitated flashing of his eyes.

Two dots and a dash; “U”, followed by an “S”, then an “E”.

“USE, O, N, E,” translated Ned, “W, A, Y.”

“One way?” he mouthed.

“H, E, L, P – I, S – I, N – T, H, E – P, A, R, K.”

Ned froze. The One-Way! The Glimmerman had given it to him before he’d left the circus. His dad never let him leave the house without it, never. In an emergency it could be used to travel by mirror, any mirror, to a Hidden-run safe house. There were several problems with Whiskers’ frantic blinking message. Parks in general did not contain safe houses, at least not as far as Ned knew, and any clue to finding out what had happened to his parents was not going to be found in a bush, but upstairs, where Gorrn was fighting with … something.

As Ned cursed himself for not thinking ahead, the largest and most immovable problem presented itself.

He had left his bag containing the One-Way Key in Mr Johnston’s shed.

That decided it.

There had been moments in Ned’s life where one might think he’d acted bravely. In truth he had acted out of necessity. Today, here and now, was one such moment. No matter what the protocol was, if he was going to find his parents, he had to see what was upstairs. He placed the two Christmas presents by the front door and turned to his mouse.

“Right, Whiskers, you lead the way upstairs – I’ll be right behind you. On my count; three, two, one – GO!” he spat.

And Whiskers did go, right up his trouser leg.

“Coward.”

The Debussy Mark Twelve answered with a nip at his ankle. Heart now racing, Ned crept forward. On the landing outside his bedroom he saw Gorrn, rushing towards him at a decidedly faster pace than the last time he’d seen him. Whatever was behind the now-fleeing creature had clearly spooked him, and Gorrn did not spook easily. There was no sign of an intruder of any kind – which was how Ned guessed it was a bargeist.

He had come across one before. Completely invisible, unless you were scared, and the perfect hunter. Gorrn had dispatched one for him at the Circus of Marvels. If Gorrn was having trouble with this creature, it must be old – maybe even an alpha?

“Gru,” mumbled an out-of-breath Gorrn, which in this instance meant sorry.

“Gorrn? Gorrn, you’re supposed to protect me, you big lump!”

His familiar gave him an oozy, deflated shrug, before shrinking into Ned’s shadow.

“You two are useless!” grimaced Ned, before trying to focus on the problem at hand. All of his training told him to remain calm, yet the only way he was going to actually see the creature was if he let it frighten him, which as it turned out would be no problem at all.

High-level bargeists were not only particularly violent but had also developed the ability to grow in size. Ned swallowed as a shiver of genuine fear trickled down his spine. As he did so, the first part of the blood-hound started to show. Two smouldering eyes, under heavy furred lids, stared at him down the corridor. Two eyes that were growing bigger.

That was the thing about a bargeist, the more frightened you became, the more you saw of it and, in turn … the more you got frightened.

This was not going to be like sparring with his dad. Somewhere in the partly visible creature was a wolfish dog, with the bulk of a crocodile. Add jet-black fur as hard as nails and teeth as sharp as razors, sprinkle in a demon’s evil heart, and what you had was a bargeist.

Wasn’t this what Ned had wanted? A fight without rules? No manual to hand, no overprotective parents.

Yes and no.

His freedom had lost its lustre, along with his mum and dad.

From somewhere within him something flared, a spark of anger, a snap of rage. Ned didn’t care how frightening a creature the bargeist was. It had done something to his parents and it would pay. He only had to think it, and his ring crackled like electric fire – carpet and plasterboard came tearing from the walls and floor. A great angry mess of swirling debris formed beside him, and quickly he turned their atoms to hardened stone, using nothing more than raw willpower and a good dose of malice.

“What have you done with them?” he yelled, his hand raised in a threat and his weapons ready to let fly.

But even as he blustered, more of the creature showed itself. No matter how loudly you beat your chest, you can never lie to a bargeist. Ned saw it lowering its head and its great jaws widening to something of a … grin.

“Hra, hra, hra,” came a sound like wet gravel.

“Tell me that isn’t a laugh?”

It paced forward suddenly and Ned “told” his barrage to fly, but he’d been too eager, pushed them with too much force and the projectiles missed their mark, splintering the far wall with a violent crash. Even now, with the creature pushing towards him, he could hear his dad telling him to focus.

Ned backed down the stairs, the bargeist following but its pace slowing. Why wasn’t it attacking?

“Think!” breathed Ned.

There was a horrible scraping of iron-hard hair along the wall as the bargeist turned down the stairwell.

“Nice doggy,” whimpered Ned.

And the “doggy” gave him another canine grin, though there was nothing nice about it. Without even trying, Ned’s mind flicked to the memorised pages of the Engineer’s Manual. The very same pages he’d asked to abandon only the night before.

“Page one hundred and thirty-seven, ‘C-containment’,” he stammered.

But before he could focus, two things happened and in no particular order.

First, a now completely visible bargeist sat down at the top of the stairs.

And second, Ned’s friends burst in through the front door and slammed it shut behind them.

One-way Ticket

rchie and Gummy’s faces were bright red and covered in sweat.

“N-N-Ned,” started Archie. Ned’s position was now officially unmanageable. Gummy looked as though he was about to go into cardiac arrest, and though they couldn’t see it, there was a slack-jawed killing machine at the top of Ned’s stairs – which for some reason had decided to take a break.

“What are you two doing here?!” Ned squealed.

“Cycled over as quick as we could. Y-you were being so weird – we were worried about you, and your mouse, Ned! Its eyes lit up like bulbs!” managed Archie between gulps of air.

His two friends may well have had his best interests at heart, but they’d now seriously endangered themselves – and no doubt Ned too.

“What? GET OUT OF HERE!”

But Archie had not finished.

“There’s something else, Ned – the nit inspector, he’s coming down the street.”

“Hra, hra, hra,” came the gravelly laugh of the bargeist.

“So that’s your game!” Ned sneered back. The hound wasn’t there to hurt him – he was just delaying things till his master returned.

Gummy had finally come to his senses and was beginning to breathe normally again. “What was that sound, and why are you talking to the stairs?”

“It’s nothing and you two have to go.”

But before Gummy could answer, they were cut off by a knock on the door.

“Hello? Hello – Ned? Do open up, will you, I would so like to meet you,” came an oily voice through the letterbox. “I know you’re in there – I can smell you.”

“Barking dogs – that’s him!” cried Archie. “First you go all Gandalf on us and now this!”

Barking dogs indeed, thought Ned, as the bargeist started pacing down the stairs. And with every step the creature continued to grow. Ned had to make a break for it, but how? If he ran, on his own, the nit inspector might hurt his friends. Or he could allow himself to be captured … No, that wasn’t an option. If his parents had been taken, he needed to be free, so he could try to get them back.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he whispered to his friends, eyes flitting between door and stairs.

“We had to. You left your bag and you never go anywhere without it. Besides, if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have seen the inspector. Is he what all this is about? Are you OK, Ned? Where are your mum and dad?”

But Ned wasn’t listening.

“My bag? Please tell me you’ve got it!”

“There’s hardly anything in it,” said Archie, pulling Ned’s small messenger bag from his shoulder and handing it to his friend.

“Archie Hinks – I could kiss you!”

“Just you try it! See, Gummy – he’s not himself, it’s the magic talking.”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! went the door.

“Ne-eeeed,” cooed the inspector. “Come on, we both know I’ll find a way in, Ned, I always find a way in. Besides – in a minute or two you and your little friends will most certainly want a way out.”

To push home his point, the bargeist bared its teeth.

“Er … Ned?” said Archie. “What’s going on?”

“What have you done with them?!” shouted Ned, ignoring his friend.

“Mummy and Daddy? Oh, don’t worry, they’re back in my little hidey-hole. They’re a tricky pair, aren’t they, put up quite a fight once they came round. But I knew my little pet would keep you busy till I returned.”

And there it was: they’d put up a fight but they were alive. If the nit inspector had wanted them dead, there’d be no point in kidnap. Ned was brought back to the moment by some rattling in the lock of the door. The inspector was trying to break in and his bargeist was now dangerously close, creeping down the stairs one slow paw at a time.

Ned grabbed the presents from the floor and stuffed them into his bag, before dragging his two friends into the kitchen and its waiting full-length mirror. Both Gummy and Archie were now visibly shaken, though thankfully unaware of the enormous set of teeth approaching from the bottom of the stairs.

“Ned, what’s going on? How did you make your mouse’s eyes do that in the shed? And why is a nit inspector trying to break into your house?” clamoured Archie.

Ned cleared his throat as the bargeist prowled into the kitchen, its powerful body readying to pounce.

“I’m going to ask you to do something that you’re going to find a little bit odd,” he said. “Actually, you’re going to be freaked out as hell. I’m really sorry, but you see there’s a monster standing behind you, a really big nasty monster that you can’t see, and if we don’t walk through this mirror, I think it’s going to hurt you, or maybe just me.” As he spoke, he kept his eyes glued to the bargeist’s teeth.

“Have you lost your marbles?” spat Archie, now looking beyond freaked out.

“I promise you, Arch, I haven’t cracked, but you might well think you have in a minute. I don’t want you to worry – there are some nice people waiting for us on the other side and they’re going to take really good care of you.”

Ned could only hope that he was right. Gummy and Arch had nothing to do with the man outside or the creature in his kitchen. They were simply in the wrong place and at the wrong time and only because they’d wanted to help. If they could just get to the Circus, Benissimo and the others would be able to get Gummy and Archie back home again. Whether Ned would be so lucky was another thing entirely.

“Don’t be scared,” he said, before placing the One-Way Key in Archie’s hand and then quite forcibly pushing his two friends through the Armstrongs’ kitchen mirror … and, just like that, they were gone.

Ned had no idea where his parents were or what lay ahead, and yet somewhere deep down inside he felt a small pang of excitement – he was going back to the world of the Hidden.

He took a deep breath and stepped through his own reflection, till there was nothing left of him at all.

Hide Park

ed had not known what to expect. The mirror was as cold as ice, though thankfully not as hard. His reflection started to bend around him, or was it the glass? In the blur of streaking light that followed he could see an altogether different room from the one he was leaving. Movement was slow at first, as though he were pushing through a spider’s web of jelly, till something in the jelly pulled.

Shluup.

What had initially resisted now yanked him from his kitchen and through the mirror. In that brief instant between places, every fibre, every speck of dust had been removed from his body, his skin left as smooth as glass. A hand as large and strong as a metal spade now held him by the shoulder.

“Nied – Nied! De boy, da! De boy is comink!”

Ned stumbled through, on to grass, by a canvas wall. He didn’t understand. This couldn’t be a safe house. This … this was the Circus of Marvels.

Towering over his two friends and staring at him closely was a large ruddy-red face. Rocky, the Russian mountain troll, in his human form, was waiting to greet him. But Ned was not the last to step through the mirror.

There was a bone-shaking ROARR! behind him.

He felt a gust of wind as the two slobbering jaws of the bargeist snapped at his back. One of its front teeth grazed his shoulder just enough to draw blood with a fiery sharp sting of pain.

“Agh!” Ned yelled, and rolled to the floor.

The creature tried to follow through the portal, but its shoulders were now too bulky to edge their way along. The great Russian tank that was Rocky might not have been able to see the bargeist, but the size of his fists left little room for error.

“Niet, little monster!” bellowed Rocky, before dispatching the bargeist with a heavy crunch of his fist and sending the yelping creature back to the Armstrongs’ kitchen. A second later he whipped off his coat and threw it over the mirror, preventing anything else from coming through.

Ned exhaled with relief. An enlarged alpha male bargeist was one thing. Clearly, Rocky the Russian mountain troll was quite another.

Ned tried to get his bearings. He was in the Glimmerman’s hall of mirrors, he realised. Beside Rocky were the two shaking figures of Gummy Johnston and Archie Hinks – they had gone through the mirror first, and it looked very much to the wounded Ned as though their brains had somehow remained in his kitchen. It was Archie who spoke first.

“See, Gummy? I knew he was a blooming wizard.”

Which was when his two friends fainted into a pile of overwhelmed limbs.

With the creature dispatched and the Glimmerman’s mirror safely covered, Ned was hoisted on to the excitable troll’s shoulders. The graze that he’d been given would have felt like little more than a scratch from a normal dog, but the bargeist’s spit burned like a hot coal.

“Rocky?! Wait – Gummy and Arch, I need to look after them!”

“Niet, niet! Jossers stay sleep for moment, de troupe look after.”

“My mum and dad, Rocky, they’re gone!”

“Da, we know. But don’t worry – de boss, he always have plan and your parents are tough cookies.”

Ned could only hope he was right. The nit inspector – whoever he really was – had somehow managed to take them from their home, away from Christmas, away from their safe suburban hideaway; but more importantly than any of that – he’d taken them away from Ned.

A moment later both troll and wounded cargo were out of the Glimmerman’s tent and parading around the Circus of Marvels encampment.

“Come see, come see!” bellowed Rocky. “We have de boy and he brought little jossers with him!”

Ned didn’t understand how he’d wound up at the circus instead of the expected safe house, but he couldn’t have been more grateful. A blur of fairy lights and campfires, sawdust and bunting filled his eyes. The pain of his throbbing shoulder gave way to relief and no small amount of hope. He had been forced to leave one home and been transported to quite another. His parents might well be missing, but the circus would have answers and if Rocky was right, the ever-commanding Benissimo would have a plan.

At first sight the troupe were just how he remembered them. Some were wearing bowler hats with ruffled shirts, others resembled gypsies of old – no two were dressed the same or even in clothes from matching eras. But that wasn’t the wonder that was the Circus of Marvels. What set it apart, what made it a spectacle to behold, was that very few of them were actually human.

The dancing girls in their fur and feathers were cartwheeling towards him, and there was general whooping and hollering as the Tortellini brothers, with their satyr-horned heads and enthusiastic backslapping, spread the word. Several bearded gnomes from the kitchen ran to take care of Gummy and Arch, laden with oversized tubs of popcorn and hotdogs the size of ostriches. Everyone dropped everything, wet clothes were left unhung, a half-constructed tent left to topple, and through all the clamouring and colour Ned saw the unmistakable figure of Alice, the circus’s white winged elephant, in a full charge.

“Alice!” pleaded Norman, her ineffectual trainer, who was as ever chasing behind.

“AROO!” she trumpeted happily, before coming to a sudden halt right by Ned and licking him clear across the face.

The passing of many months had done little to change her feelings for him, it seemed, nor had it done anything to improve her breath.

“Hello, girl!” grinned Ned, doing his best to push away her trunk without hurting her feelings.

“She’s right happy to have you back, Master Ned, haven’t seen her this sprightly in months,” wheezed Norman.

“Oh, stop pesterin’ ’im, you lumps – he’s been through enough for one day!” chimed in the sing-song voice of Rocky’s wife.

Abi “the Beard” looked as cheery and plump as ever, as she waddled over to greet Ned.

“Come on, you big cossack, put ’im down so I can have a proper look at him.”

Ned was unceremoniously placed on the grass before Abigail, and she gave him a rib-cracking hug; it put pressure on his graze but that was a small price to pay for one of Abigail’s best.

Even though Ned had missed them all, for a brief moment he was quite overcome. The Circus of Marvels and its band of oddities had been, till just now, a memory. Up close in the flesh they were brighter, shinier and more strange and noisy than a hundred memories jumbled together.

“You poor love, don’t you worry, you’re with us now and we’ll have your ma and pa back in no time. Now what’s all this about jossers comin’ with you?” Abigail grinned.

“I couldn’t leave them at home! I had a bargeist in my kitchen, I think it was an alpha.”

“Bargeist, is it? Nasty blighters. You send ’em my way next time and I’ll give ’em a wallop they’ll remember,” Abigail winked back, before she noticed the way he was holding his shoulder. “Oh, Ned love, you’re hurt! Lucy’ll want to take a look at that, she’ll have you fixed up in a blink.”

“Could have been a lot worse, if it hadn’t been for Rocky.”

“He has his uses,” grinned Abigail. “Though to be fair, they’re mostly about givin’ folk a thump.”

“It’s good to see you again, Abigail. But … where are we?” Ned could see small lights in the distance, but closer by there were only trees, and grass, and darkness.

“Hyde Park, dear, central London.”

“Hyde Park?”

“Yep. If you’re in the capital and need to hide, Hyde Park’s your best bet. Been a fair-folk stronghold for donkey’s, and as good a place as any to lay low. It’s off the radar, see? But large enough to conceal a small army and with good access to the rest of the city. The woods here are full o’ sprites, kindly little things and always ready to help when it’s needed. It’s lucky we were in the area when the Olswangs messaged us. Soon as we got here, Bene sent Couteau and his best blades to find you.”

“I must have stepped through the mirror before they got there.”

“Yes, dear. Still, you’re with us now and this Park will keep you hidden till we figure out what’s what.”

Ned peered through the darkness. Sure enough, in the canopies of the trees he now recognised the tell-tale glow of sprite light, dancing in the branches. Behind Abigail, the Guffstavson brothers, Sven and Eric, were letting off a celebratory bolt of electricity, for once without needing to be angry, when they were unceremoniously barged out of the way by the most welcome sight Ned had seen all day. A giant mound of furred gorilla in the shape of dear George the Mighty, his friend and protector, who in turn was jostling for position with Lucy Beaumont. She was more than a friend or even family, and the bond between them as unbreakable as the rings they both wore at their fingers.

A swift crack of the elbow saw Lucy get to Ned first.

“I say, that’s dashed rude,” grumped George, who in truth had barely felt the jab she’d given him. “Hello, old bean, I—”

“Shut it, monkey – Ned!” shrieked Lucy. “I’ve been worried sick!” She closed her eyes briefly and paused for a moment. “And with good reason: the bargeist managed to get a tooth on you, didn’t it?”

“How did you know that?”

“It’s kind of my job, I’m the troupe’s new medic,” smiled his friend, before putting her hand gently on his shoulder and blinking. Abigail was right, it literally took a blink and Ned felt Lucy’s healing powers flooding through the wound like warm honey. A second later and the small cut had completely healed itself, as though it had never been there at all. Ned had seen Lucy work her gifts, but never so quickly or effortlessly.

“Wow, thanks, Lucy. You’ve got better at that.”

“You’re welcome. It’s all in the way you do the blinking,” and she followed it up with a wink.

Of everyone in the circus, from the satyr-horned acrobats to the feather and leopard-skinned dancing girls, it was George and Lucy that Ned had really needed to see. He had forgotten how vast and intimidating the oversized gorilla actually was, but no two sets of eyes or smiles could have done more to ease the pain of a missing mum and dad. And if Ned was happy to see them, his semi-loyal wind-up mouse was not far behind. Whiskers unfurled himself from Ned’s trouser leg for the first time since they’d heard the bargeist and made a bee-line straight for Lucy. In a second he’d scampered up her jeans and found a comfortable spot on her shoulder.

“Hello, Whiskers, I’ve missed you too,” she said.

“Don’t be nice to him, he’s behaved shamefully,” teased Ned, at his cowardly and now turncoat mouse.

The Debussy Mark Twelve promptly responded by sticking its tongue out at its master before nuzzling into Lucy’s neck.

“So what happened?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know, really. A bargeist and a man turned up at my house and they’ve got Mum and Dad.”

She looked stricken. “I knew about the man, but I hoped they’d got away.” In that moment, all the goodwill, the excitement at their reunion, drained from Lucy’s face.

“But we’ll get them back, right?” said Ned.

Lucy smiled weakly. “I hope so. I mean … your mum … she’s kind of my …” Her voice broke.

Ned closed his eyes for a moment, feeling like a fool. “Oh, Lucy, I’m so sorry. I – I know she raised you at the convent, you must be as upset as I am. I didn’t even think, I—”

“Shh,” said Lucy, giving his arm an awkward punch. “You’ve had a pretty bad day as days go.”

She smiled, and Ned hugged her, as a shadow fell over them both.

George was at least twice the size of a normal gorilla and loomed over them like a great weathered oak, his face knotted with concern.

“We’ll find them soon enough,” he rumbled. “And when I find out which rotter is responsible, I’ll make them pay, pound for pound, for what they’ve done.”

As Ned watched the great ape’s fur bristle, he had no doubt that George would, just as surely as he felt his heart plummet. This was the Circus of Marvels, the greatest troupe on earth. If they didn’t know who was behind his parents’ kidnap – who actually would? And that was when he noticed. Even under lamp and fairy light, Ned saw beyond their gathered grins and realised there was something different about them. They were worn and battered, one or two of them had arms in slings and Enrico, the youngest of the Tortellini brothers, was walking with a noticeable limp.

“What’s … what’s been going on here?” said Ned.

George shrugged. “Ned,” he said, “you have a lot to catch up on.”

New Recruit

ut before Ned could ask anything else, they were joined by the man who would likely have most of the answers. His gaze was as fierce as ever and his moustache had lost none of its twitch. He wore a crooked top hat, a beaten military jacket with gold braiding, and red and white striped trousers. At his hip, as always, was a coiled whip that slithered ever so slightly and with a will of its own.

“All right, all right, I think the boy’s had enough hair-ruffling for one day.” It was Benissimo, the circus’s Ringmaster and leader. Behind him, hanging back, was a man Ned had not seen before. He seemed at odds with the rest of the troupe. He wasn’t wearing any of the more flamboyant circus garb. He had short cropped dreadlocks, wore a black evening jacket, worn Adidas trainers and a faded green and yellow “I LOVE JAMAICA” T-shirt. He smiled at Ned but said nothing.

“So this is him and here he is,” said Benissimo, squaring up to Ned. “Let’s get a proper look at you. Still not particularly tall, face not outwardly bright – hello, pup.”

“Hello, goat-face.”

Benissimo gave him something between a smirk and a scowl.

“As good as it is to see you, I shouldn’t wonder it spells trouble for my troupe and their tents.”

Ned looked around him, at the gathering of weathered faces. “You seem to have found enough of that without me.”

“You know me and my Marvels, Ned, we like to keep ‘busy’. Tell me, is what I’m hearing right, about the intruder in your house?”

“Yes, and he would have got me if it wasn’t for the mirror.”

“Whoever he was, he must have been skilled. From what we heard from the Olswangs before they went off-radar, he subdued your parents in moments.”

“I think he got the Olswangs too,” said Ned. “Their door was broken.”

“We suspected as much.”

“And the man? Do you know who he is?”

“No,” said Benissimo, before seeing the look on Ned’s face – and on Lucy’s too. “But fear not, I’ll have every friendly eyeball on both sides of the Veil looking for him before the day’s out. We will find them.”

Somehow, hearing that from Benissimo eased Ned’s mind. When Benissimo put his mind and troupe to a problem, the problem, no matter the odds, was always solved.

The circus’s newest addition gave a fake cough and looked at the Ringmaster expectantly. If anything, the man in the “I LOVE JAMAICA” T-shirt looked rather lived-in, but had the sort of broad smile that put you instantly at ease.

“Ned, I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine, Jonny Magik. Jonny, this is the ‘Hero of Annapurna’ … well, the other one,” he added, with a nod to Lucy.

Ned cringed at hearing his nickname.

“Hi,” he said. “It’s just Ned, actually.”

“You’ll get used to it,” chuckled Jonny. “You know, some people call me a conjuror, others a shaman, but in the end they just settle on ‘Magik’.”

“Names aside, Jonny,” Benissimo declared, “the boy’s parents are missing and we need to find them. There’s not one of us here today that don’t owe the Armstrongs a debt.”

There were agreeable rumblings from the troupe, but at the mention of Ned’s parents, Jonny Magik’s easy manner slid from his face. If Ned didn’t know any better, he’d think the man was visibly sweating, and as Ned drew nearer, peering at him, the shaman recoiled. It was a slight enough movement to go unnoticed by most, but it was there nonetheless and Benissimo had spotted it too.

“That indigestion still bothering you, Jonny?” asked the Ringmaster.

“Oh, you know, Bene, it comes and goes,” he winced, now seemingly quite unable to meet Ned’s eyes.

“Why don’t you go and have one of your rests, eh? The two of you can catch up later,” said a concerned Benissimo, before ushering the man away.

As soon as he was gone, the Ringmaster turned his attention to the troupe.

“Right, you lot, back to work – there’s tents need pitching and Darklings that need feeding.”

“But, Ned, boss, we just got him back,” they murmured.

“Well, he’s not going anywhere, is he? Now go on – hop to it!”

Reluctantly the gathered troupe disbanded. Even Alice finally did as she was told, leaving Ned with Benissimo, George and Lucy.

“Ned, we need to talk, alone,” said Benissimo.

Lucy frowned, then pursed her lips into an expression that clearly said, “I don’t think so.” George, on the other hand, let his face fall into a wrinkly plea, albeit a silent one.

The Ringmaster’s moustache twitched. It was a thinking twitch and only a little irritated. He looked to Lucy, then George, then back to Lucy again before settling on Ned.

“Oh, very well. The three of you – my quarters in ten minutes.”

Whatever had just happened with the new guy, Ned was quite sure that it had little to do with indigestion. It had felt and looked much more to him like Jonny Magik was uneasy with the mention of his parents. But why?

Before he could ask anyone about it, they were interrupted by the pattering of two very small feet. Ned turned to see an out-of-breath gnome who had come running over from the Glimmerman’s tent.

“Your friends, sir, the jossers,” he breathed. “They’re awake and I think they would appreciate your company.”

Farewell

iant apes are generally considered to be quite alarming, especially when they talk. So George waited outside whilst Ned and Lucy went in to see Gummy and Arch. Laid out on two makeshift stretchers and surrounded by all manner of fried and sugared treats were his two pals. Gummy’s eyes were as wide as saucers and his mouth was opening and closing like a mute goldfish. Archie, on the other hand, seemed to have recovered from his fainting spell and was talking to Abigail excitedly.

The rest of the Glimmerman’s mirrors had now been covered up with intricately decorated tapestries, giving the whole dimly lit scene the feeling of being inside a giant Persian rug. Had either of the two jossers the eyes to notice, they would have seen that the patterns in the tapestries were moving, in hypnotic calm-inducing rhythms of colours and shapes.

“Trig-ono-metry, is it, dear?” nodded Abi patiently.

“Yeah, there’s probably loads of stuff you lot don’t know about, like pistachio ice-cream, do you have pistachio ice-cream?!”

“Oh, I think so, dear, yes, I think we’ve got plenty of pistachio ice-cream.” Which was when Abigail turned to Ned and Lucy. “Poor lad, his mind is completely frazzled, haven’t seen a josser this bad since, well, you, Master Ned.”

Her words seemed to have no effect on Archie at all and as soon as he spotted Ned he broke into a manic, over-enthusiastic smile.

“Hello, Ned! I knew you were a wizard. You’re all wizards here, aren’t you? You know, we always knew you were a bit different, brilliant but different. Imagine that, our friend Ned, a wizard.”

“You all right, Arch?”

“All right? Couldn’t be better! Everyone’s been so nice and, and the food’s amazing. Is it magic too?”

“Arch, this is Lucy, she’s a good friend of mine.”

At this point Archie was smiling so much that it looked as though it might actually hurt.

“Hello, Lucy! Are you a wizard?”

Lucy was about to laugh when Ned kicked her ankle. Despite his amusing condition, he was still Ned’s friend.

“Err, no, Arch. I’d probably be more of a witch than anything else, or at least something like that.”

Whilst the two of them spoke, an increasingly concerned Ned turned to Abigail. “Are they going to be all right?” he asked.

“Course they are, dear. Seen this lots of times. The Tinker’s sent over a de-rememberer. I think you should do the honours, Ned, they’re your pals after all.”

She handed him a long thin silver device that looked a lot like a flute, which of course it wasn’t.

“Me?! Can’t Tinks do it?”

“He’s in a bit of a state, love, what with all the trouble we’ve been having. Besides, it’s you they need to forget.”

Ned swallowed. Of course it was. The less they remembered of Ned, the safer they would be back amongst the jossers. By now there was probably a squad of pinstripes doing the exact same thing to Gummy’s parents. He looked at the Tinker’s device. He’d never actually used one before; on its side was a series of numbers from one to ten.

“How does it work?”

“Well, dear, you blow through it, and they fall asleep for just a little while, and when they wake up they’ve forgotten you, and anything that happened with you. Like, say, encountering a bargeist and the Circus of Marvels. A ten’s a total wipe. They’d never even recognise you, not never. After that it gets a bit muddy. If you set it to seven, say, they’d probably only forget you for a year, maybe longer. Just till everything quietens down.”

“But they’re … they’re my friends.”

Abigail put her arm round his shoulders.

“Yes, dear, I know they are, and you need to love them right now, enough to keep ’em safe.”

Archie was still prattling on manically and Gummy was looking more and more like a goldfish by the minute. They were the two best things about his life as a josser. And now, like his mum and dad, he was going to lose them, if only for a year or so. What if they found a new Ned? New Ned or not, though, there were more important things at stake.

“A real friend would want them safe forever,” he said. “Maybe I should just set it to ten and be done with it?”

Ned clicked the dial. He did love them enough to keep them safe, but far too much, he realised, to let them go forever.

“Seven will have to do.” He gently pulled Lucy to one side and got down on his knees in front of Archie. “Arch?”

“Yes, my wizard friend?” answered Archie proudly.

“Arch, I’m going to say goodbye now. This machine is going to make you forget me, but I’m never going to forget you. When all this is over, I’ll come and find you and we’ll start over, OK?”

“Whatever you say, wizard. I think you’re magic!” saluted his excitable friend.

“I think you’re magic too,” said Ned sadly, and blew very softly through the de-rememberer.

Archie closed his eyes and began to snore.

Heart heavy, Ned turned to his other friend and made ready to say goodbye.

A World of Trouble

utside the tent again, Ned felt his knees turn to jelly. Being separated from the ones you love was not new to him – if anything, it had been the one constant he’d had in his life. But being forgotten? Being forgotten felt empty and cruel, even if he knew that his friends wouldn’t mind. The truth was that they wouldn’t even know. At least he’d get them back, he hoped, eventually. What upset him, what made his blood boil, was that he still didn’t know why. Why had his home been assaulted and why hadn’t he been warned?

“You two need to tell me what’s going on, right now.”

Lucy and George gave each other a look, as though they weren’t entirely sure what to say.

“Mum and Dad are missing, I’ve just said goodbye to my two best friends, quite possibly forever, and everyone here looks like they’ve either been beaten senseless or scared out of their wits. So you two had better start talking. For starters, what was all that about with Jonny Magik? I thought he was going to be sick when he met me.”

George cleared his throat.

“Our new arrival often takes to his bed with ‘ailments’. Unfortunate considering he’s our new head of security. He’s a funny chap, keeps to himself mostly, and the troupe are still a bit wary of him, as am I.”

“You just haven’t got to know him yet, George. He’s a sin-eater, Ned,” cut in Lucy. “Benissimo brought him in from Jamaica to help us deal with the Darklings. He gets rid of the bad ones for us – sin-eating’s heavy magic.”

“The bad ones? I thought they were all bad.”

“Well, the boss’ll explain things properly,” said George. “But we’re in a bind, old bean. Something’s going on, only we’re not exactly sure who’s behind it. The Tinker hasn’t had a word from any of his relatives in weeks, and no one knows why. It’s as if Gearnish, the entire city and all its inhabitants, has simply fallen off the grid. But that’s not the worst of it. There has been an uncommonly large number of Darklings getting out and we’ve been stretched to capacity trying to contain them all. Things got really out of hand a few weeks ago, which is when Bene sent for Jonny Magik. So far he’s been very ‘effective’ at getting rid of them.”

“How does he do it?”

“We don’t know, he just takes whatever needs removing and the next day it’s gone,” explained Lucy.

“Probably feeds them to Finn’s lions,” grinned the ape.

“Oh, George, that’s disgusting! Jonny’s far too nice for that, and Left and Right have been vegetarian for ages,” scolded Lucy. “Besides, you heard Bene, they’re old friends. I’m sure whatever Jonny does and how he does it is above board.”

“You always look to the good in Folk, Lucy, and I commend you for it. If I’m honest, I think you spend too much time with him.”

“George, you know why, he’s been helping me with …” and for a moment Lucy’s voice trailed off.

“Lucy? Helping you with what?” asked Ned.

“Her gifts, old bean.” And at that George went a little misty-eyed. “She’ll never replace old Kitty – forgive me, dear. But she’s now not only running our infirmary and serving as just about everyone’s favourite agony aunt, she’s also becoming quite the promising Farseer. It’s Lucy who had the mirror moved from the safe house to the Glimmerman’s tent – she sensed you might be in trouble, long before we heard from the Olswangs.”

Ned looked at Lucy. The two of them were bonded through their rings in ways that neither of them truly understood. They both wore Amplification Engines – he was an Engineer and she a Medic – but to hear that she’d taken on the gift of “sight” was a genuine shock. And that’s when he noticed it, just as it had been the last time he’d seen her. She was wearing one of Kitty’s pink and white Hello Kitty hair-clips.

“But how, how’s that even possible?”

Lucy shrugged. “Nobody knows. Whether Kitty somehow passed on her powers to me when she died, or if the change started when we connected to the Source. All I know is I’m starting to sense things, lots of things that haven’t happened yet.”

“And she’ll be our greatest asset once she gets past a few teething problems.”

“Teething problems?” asked Ned, who was still reeling from the revelation about his friend.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” said Lucy.

All of a sudden the night sky looked as if it were being swallowed by darkness. The moon and every star above them disappeared, blocked out by a fast-approaching silhouette, and the roar of powerful engines.

Ned, Lucy and George looked up, George tensed and ready to fight.

A gust of wind, a blast of horns, and Ned saw two blue and cream striped zeppelin balloons coming in to land. They were tethered together and carrying a large gold-plated gondola. An intricate crest with the letter “O” had been carved in its side.

George lowered his hands and his shoulders dropped. But he was still frowning, his forehead deeply furrowed.

“Who is that?” yelled Ned over the airship’s engines.

George turned to him. “The Mirabelle’s the only ship that carries the ‘O’ of Oublier. And if the Prime of the Twelve is making an unscheduled visit – I shouldn’t wonder that trouble is close behind.”

“I know who she is,” said Ned. “She runs the Twelve, right?”

“And every circus and pinstripe in its ranks.”

“But why turn up without warning?”

“I expect she’s just found out about you, dear boy,” said George. “Either you’re in a world of trouble, or the world’s in a world of trouble.”

Madame O

ed’s head was reeling when he walked into the meeting room. His quiet word with Benissimo was now to be a larger affair and Madame Oublier’s arrival had stirred the troupe into wild panic. Rugs and wall hangings, fresh sawdust and the circus’s best bunting had been hurriedly arranged in a tent where they could talk, away from prying eyes and ears. When Ned walked in, Scraggs the cook was barking orders at a team of kitchen gnomes who were helping him to set everything up.

“What’s got into him?” whispered Ned to Lucy.

As well as having one of the filthiest cooking aprons Ned had ever seen, the clearly agitated cook also had a large set of tusks, the nose of a pig, and the hearing of a bat.

“Madame Oublier – met her, have you?” Scraggs snarled back.

“No,” smirked Ned.

“For starters she’s French. Imagine Monsieur Couteau, the finest blade in Europe; now make him more serious and a witch that has issues with dust.”

Behind him, Julius, Nero and Caligula, the circus’s resident pixies, were attempting to lay out a collection of biscuits for their important visitor. To the rest of the world they looked like performing monkeys in matching bellboy outfits and caps, but – without their glamours – to Ned and the troupe they were mischievous blue-skinned terrors. For every carefully laid out biscuit, they swallowed at least three others.

“Scraggs, old bean, calm down. She is perfectly amiable as long as everything’s clean,” chuckled George, who seemed to be enjoying the chaos enormously – and despite his troubled heart, so was Ned.

Scraggs looked down at his apron and started to sweat profusely, at which point Ned saw Caligula – or was it Nero? – dropping a full tray of chocolate eclairs on the sawdust by their feet. Scraggs responded by pulling a rolling-pin from his belt, and the three emperors bolted for the exit.

“All right, all right, that’s quite enough. Get back to the kitchen before you have a heart attack, and take your gnomes with you,” ordered Benissimo, who had finally stopped pacing the floor of the tent, though his moustache was still in full twitch.

A very relieved cook and his diminutive accomplices did as they were told. No sooner had they left the tent than Ned heard a loud gong being struck outside. Madame Oublier had arrived.

Ned leant across to Whiskers, who was still perching happily on Lucy’s shoulder.

“Not a squeak out of you. Madame O is a VIP. And if you’re there, Gorrn, that means you too.”

Something on the floor undulated and Whiskers gave Ned a short but courteous blink.

Madame Oublier entered the tent with little fuss. She was without doubt the most heavily tattooed person Ned had ever seen, in either the known world or the Hidden. She was elderly and silver-haired, much like Kitty, the troupe’s old Farseer, though with none of her pink and white garb or eccentric charm. The Twelve’s Prime was dressed from head to toe in unapologetic black. For a moment Ned felt a pang – how he wished dear Kitty was still with them and especially now.

The elderly Farseer was also slight, calm and quiet, because she did not need to be anything else. To the travelling kind, Madame Oublier’s word was law.

Behind her were two dwarven berserkers. From the plaits of their beards to the blue woad markings on their faces, Ned could tell they were high-ranking. Though small in stature, berserkers were almost unstoppable in a fight, as Ned had found out at the battle of St Clotilde’s.

Ned also knew that Oublier did not usually employ bodyguards; she was a formidable force in her own right. If she was travelling with specialist muscle, then things were indeed dire behind the Veil.

She took a seat and studied her surroundings without addressing anyone. George held his breath as she peered at a cup and saucer, probing them for any evidence of dust. There was a slight pout of the lips, her eyes flicked to Benissimo, and finally she spoke.

“Bon. Coffee, black.”

“Madame O,” said Benissimo, as he poured her a cup.

A face that had as many wrinkles as tattoos broke into a much-needed smile.

“It is good to see you, old friend, zo I wish ze times were brighter.” She looked to Ned, and her eyes softened. It was a look that ran straight through him, as if she could see right into his troubled heart.

“You are always welcome, Madame, under my or any other tent.”

Madame Oublier sipped from her cup of coffee, or at least that was how she started. What began as a sip soon turned into a violent and guttural slurp. Her eyes clamped shut, her cheeks turned pink and Madame Oublier, quite possibly the most formidable woman Ned had ever seen (besides his mum), downed the entire cup in a noisy and violent gulp. No one said a word; as much in awe as he was, Ned had to hold back the laugh that was now lodged in his throat.

It was clearly a blend that she didn’t like and, ignoring her own greedy glugging, Madame Oublier glanced at Scraggs’ assortment of nibbles with nose-curling disdain before scanning the faces at the table. One by one she looked at each of them gathered there, then lingered for a while on Lucy, who for some reason could not meet her gaze.

“How are you, child?” she asked.

“Fine, Madame Oublier, thank you,” said Lucy quietly, who at that precise moment looked anything but.

The Farseer’s lips pursed. It seemed very much to Ned like the two of them had met before.

“We shall see. And tell me, where is ze conjuror?”

“Resting. The return of our young Engineer proved to be too much excitement,” explained Benissimo.

“Keep a close eye on him.”

“Always, Madame,” said the Ringmaster solemnly.

Ned glanced at him. Why did Jonny Magik need a close eye? Surely he was Benissimo’s friend? But before he could dwell on that or Lucy’s obvious discomfort, he was met by the Farseer’s eyes again.

“Now, it is ze boy that I have come to see. Dear Ned, after everything your family have already endured, I am so sorry. If you will permit, I wish to take a peek inside your mind.”

Ned froze. The only other person to “take a peek” had been the dearly departed Kitty, and she had done so by slapping his face.

“Be still, Monsieur Ned. I will not hurt you.”

She leant across the table and rested her hand on his before closing her eyes. For a brief moment something in him lifted and he felt the beginnings of a glimmer of hope. Madame Oublier was an intimidating woman and he sensed within her a powerful force matched only by well-hidden kindness.

“Allow yourself some light, child, not all is lost. I fear ze taking of your parents is one piece of a much larger puzzle, and to return them safely to you, we will need to do much digging. Tell me, Ned, at your home did you come across any liquid? Anything zat looked like mercury?”

With everything that had happened, Ned had forgotten all about it.

“Yes! Whiskers took a sample, but … how do you know?”

Ned’s Debussy Mark Twelve was preparing to “excrete” the liquid from Lucy’s shoulder, when Madame Oublier stopped him with a raised palm.

“No need, little clock, I know already what it is. We have seen it before.”

Project Mercury

ed’s heart was racing. Finally an answer, some clue as to where his parents had been taken, or at least why.

“What’s happened to my parents?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

In reply, the Farseer only clapped her hands, and two men in pinstripe suits entered the tent.

“These are …” began Madame Oublier.

“Mr Cook and Mr Smalls,” said Ned. “We’ve met before.”

“Indeed,” said Mr Smalls, with a nod.

The pinstripes acted as spies on Ned’s side of the Veil. They infiltrated every level of the josser world, from its newsrooms and government right through to its police. It was their job to alert the Twelve of any issues ahead of time.

Mr Cook cleared his throat.

“Ladies, gentlemen, George. You all know how bad things have been of late. It would appear that someone is helping Darklings to cross over to the josser side of the Veil. There have also been several sightings of Demons, though their aversion to daylight has at least kept the sightings brief, and their impact minimal. Like you, the other circuses under the Twelve’s command are struggling to keep up and we are at the point of needing outside assistance.”

Ned shifted uncomfortably. On the countless occasions back at the house that he’d argued to see his old friends at the circus, not once had his mum and dad told him about the trouble they were clearly having.

“It points to a much larger conspiracy,” said Mr Smalls. “And one that has both the Twelve and their allies extremely concerned. Master Armstrong, the liquid you found has been seen elsewhere and it is because of this that we have come to see you. I’m afraid the incident at your home today was but one of many.”

Ned felt the hairs on his skin stand on end. His mum and dad had been kidnapped, that much the nit inspector had made quite clear. What Ned didn’t know yet was what the creature intended to do with them. He saw Lucy grabbing on to George’s fur so hard that the ape gave a genuine flinch, and even Benissimo was on the edge of his seat, whilst also clearly annoyed that there was intel he had not been told about.

“Well, go on, man, spit it out!” said the Ringmaster.

“Well, the link, sir, is in the liquid itself, or rather its presence at the scene of the crimes. Several months ago, we caught wind of some abnormal robberies. Abnormal because of the techniques employed, and the target: always gold, never cash or other valuables. At first we thought little of it, till the larger banks started to report similar incidents. Things came to a head when entire national gold reserves went missing. We are talking about thousands of metric tonnes of gold here, disappearing in mere minutes. The last robbery took place in Fort Knox, America. Gentlemen, ladies, erm, George, all of the world’s gold reserves – and I do mean all of them – have been … stolen.”

As shocking as the news was, Ned still didn’t understand how it had anything to do with the disappearance of his parents.

“Naturally the media have kept very quiet,” said Mr Cook, taking over. “If this news were to become public, the effect on the world’s stock markets would be disastrous. It is the motive that concerns us more.”

There was a long pause.

“Which is …?” asked Benissimo.

A pause, as Mr Cook blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You misunderstand. We have no idea what the motive could possibly be. That is what bothers us.”

“And now the same liquid we found at Fort Knox, and all the other gold robberies, has been found at Master Ned’s house,” said Mr Smalls. “Presumably, the culprit is the same. Just as with the other kidnappings.”

“The other kidnappings,” said Ned. “You mean the ones on the news?”

“Oui,” said Madame Oublier. “It is not only gold zat is missing but people, very particular kinds of people, who have been taken from their homes and always in their wake a trail of zis liquid metal. Ned, your father is ze last in a long line of scientists, engineers and construction workers who have been taken from their homes. As soon as we saw ze connection in disappearances we sent word for your parents to come into our care. Zey would not budge.”

Ned thought back to all the reports on the telly. Even as he faced the bargeist at home, the radio had been doing a piece on kidnapping. And all the while his parents had known.

“They knew they were in danger?!”

“Oui.”

Ned’s rising concern over his parents’ safety started to shift into something else. Why make him train night after night and then, when they knew trouble was near their door, say nothing?

He felt the ring at his finger crackle and to his left a cup rose from its saucer without him trying to lift it. Madame Oublier’s eyes sharpened.

She turned to Mr Cook and Mr Smalls.

“Sank you, gentlemen, you may leave.” She motioned for her bodyguards to follow and waited till the tent’s opening was properly closed before turning back to Ned with a kindly expression.

“Monsieur Ned! Remain calm. Have you asked yourself why your parents did not seek shelter with the Hidden?”

The cup clattered back down to its saucer.

“No, no, I haven’t.”

“For you, Ned. Zey wanted more zan anything to give you a normal life, despite knowing ze grave danger zey were in. Ze heart makes a fool of us all, Ned, do not judge zem unkindly.”

The tingling at his finger and arm subsided, and his anger gave way to guilt. Yet despite his change of heart, his spike in powers had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the gathering, particularly Lucy.

“Do we know anything about what the villains want?” said Benissimo.

“Nothing,” said Madame Oublier. “But zere is great cause for concern. You are aware we have lost contact with Gearnish?”

“Yes.”

“What you may not know is zat this happened at ze same time zat the major gold reserves went missing. Gearnish is of great tactical importance. Its factories are ze very heart of the Hidden’s industry, capable of building anything and in any number. Ze minutians have always sided with us, always. I fear ze city has come under ze control of darker forces, as do our allies. As we speak, ze Hidden are talking of war. You of all people, Bene, know the seriousness of zis – you fought with my grandmother against ze demons, did you not?”

For a brief moment Ned was reminded of the enigma that was Benissimo’s age.

“Were it not for St Albertsburg’s lancers and the machines of Gearnish we would surely have lost, Madame.”

“Precisely why the Iron City’s lack of communication has us all so worried.”

“So … a load of gold has gone missing. Lots of people have been kidnapped, including my parents. And you’ve lost the city where most of your weapons are made. Did I miss anything?” said Ned.

“Non.”

“But … what does it all mean?”

“Nothing good,” said Madame Oublier. “Luckily, we are not alone in our search for answers. London’s own Scotland Yard have been tracking ze thief’s movements and are also aware of ze liquid, and how it links both robberies and abductions. ‘Project Mercury’ is a surveillance operation zey are running tomorrow night at ze British Museum, where zey apparently believe ze next break-in will take place. How zey have this information before it has come to us I don’t know, and it is frankly embarrassing, but it is our one and only lead.”

Benissimo, Ned noticed, had visibly stiffened. “Did you say the British Museum?” he asked.

“Oui.”

“Vault X, Madame?”

“I fear so. George, I hear it told zat you are something of an encyclopaedia on ze Hidden and its treasures. Why don’t you tell ze children what you know about Vault X?”

“Yes, Madame, and thank you,” began the ape, who clearly enjoyed being referred to as an encyclopaedia on anything. “Society at large believes that there are seven wonders of the ancient world. Were they to travel beyond the Veil, they would know that there are in fact eleven, and that the remaining four are still intact. The British Museum concerns itself with wonders of every kind, a staggering construction of some nine hundred and ninety thousand square feet, its marbled corridors—”

“Ze Vault, monkey.”

“Ahem, indeed. Of its staggering thirteen million objects, there are some that originate from the Hidden side of the Veil. This is not known even by the people who procured them, though they do know that these objects are peculiar, and they treat them as such. They abstain from any categorisation, or even rudimentary analysis by the museum’s learned custodians. Instead, they lock them away. On a secret floor of the building’s never-ending underground storage, in vault ‘X’. It was decided that the items in question would pose less of an academic problem if nobody knew they existed.”

“But ze Twelve are not ‘nobody’,” cut in Oublier again. “We have always monitored ze museum. Some of its artefacts are extremely powerful and I have no doubt zat zis mercurial thief is after one or more of its treasures.”

“Let us deal with it, the museum is not far from here,” offered Benissimo.

“I am not here to ask or to allow, Bene, I am here to order. The sum of gold taken could build a hundred armies with which to wage war, yet combined with such ‘particular’ kidnappings I fear a more obscure purpose.”

“Indeed,” said Bene.

“So,” said Madame Oublier. “Your mission is simple. Find zis thief, find out who he is working for and report only to me. Until I know what is happening, I do not know who is on our side, or who has been compromised.”

“Well,” began Bene. “You can trust us to—”

“Yes, yes,” Madame Oublier said with a dismissive wave. “I know. But I trust nothing to chance. I shall have my men unload an item for you before we leave. To watch over Ned. For … protection.”

“What is it?”

“Oh,” she said. “A little extra insurance.”

With that, she stood and swept out of the tent.

Under the Same Sky

ater, when Madame Oublier had left on her airship, Ned sat on the edge of his makeshift bunk in George’s trailer. The rest of the troupe had turned in hours ago and George was sound asleep.

Though the great ape had lost much of his beloved library to a fire, the comforting wall-shake of his snore was at least familiar. Less so were the howls of anguish and what sounded like sobbing, coming from a trailer nearby. George’s trailer was always placed next to the Darklings and their cages. More as a deterrent for any would-be escapees than anything else. Jonny Magik’s trailer was right beside it, in a similarly distant plot to the rest of the troupe, and Ned was starting to see – or at least hear – why. Whatever the man was suffering from, it didn’t sound like indigestion, and his howling formed a constant and unpleasant serenade.

What with that, the snoring, the loss of his parents, and his fear of the voice that awaited him in his nightmares, Ned wasn’t hopeful of getting much sleep at all.

At least he was back at the circus. George had endearingly and exhaustingly kept him company after their meeting with Madame Oublier. He’d brought him food, offered to bend bars for his entertainment and even tried to impress him with banana-induced flatulence.

Ned opened up his backpack, lifted out the carefully wrapped Christmas presents he’d taken from his home and placed them under his bunk.

To Ned they were more than presents, they were a doorway to his mum and dad, a promise – a false one perhaps – of a normal life. A life where the ones you loved weren’t taken from you, where Christmas was still Christmas no matter who you were.

Now, in a single day, he’d lost his parents and said goodbye to two of his closest friends. It was as if his entire life on the josser side of the Veil had been erased and all because of the thief at his letterbox.

Ned sighed, and lay down on the bunk. He closed his eyes for a moment.

His mum had told him that in their long years of separation, the one thing that had consoled her was the sky at night. Hidden away at the convent of St Clotilde’s, she had watched it every evening, knowing that Ned and his dad were under the very same sky and that, even unwittingly, they would from time to time look at the stars with her.

Ned smiled. He wondered if the stars were out tonight. He could go and see but it was warm and comfortable on the bunk. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow, he thought.

It was a nice thought, a lulling thought, and Ned felt his mind begin to drift …

… and then his dream took him into its arms, the very same dream that always turned to a nightmare.

Ned’s hand was trailing along hot metal walls, as it had a hundred times before. He was lost, frightened and completely alone but for the urgency of his mission. Then, as always, the walls buckled and ripped as he found himself looking at the blackness of space. The world before him was broken and burnt and his ears rang with the sound of trumpets and grinding rock.

“YesSs,” said the voice.

And as always, he whimpered back, “No.”

But it was no good. The dream had him. The voice had him. And once it had him, it never let go.

The Guardian

hen Ned woke, it was to the excitable blinking of Whiskers, who was sitting on his chest. The same Whiskers who had slept in Lucy’s bunk and not his own. Sunlight flooded the trailer – he’d slept a long time, it seemed, though it had felt like only a moment.

“Oh, so you’re back, are you?” he said, feigning a sulk, though in truth more than happy to see the mouse and especially now. The little rodent was uncommonly twitchy, though, Ned now noticed, his fur standing on end and his lit-up eyes blinking furiously.

“What’s got into you?” managed Ned, who was still reeling from the echo of the voice in his nightmare. Somehow it always managed to linger even when it made no sound.

Whiskers nodded his head towards the door of the trailer and Ned heard raised voices from outside. The Tinker and George. It sounded like they were right outside the door to George’s trailer and they were angry about something. Ned dragged himself out of bed, quickly pulled on his clothes and pocketed Whiskers, before stepping outside into the biting December air.

It seemed like half the troupe were out there, and none of them were happy.

“You cannot let this damnable toaster stay with us! They were banned with dashed good reason!” shouted George, who never let his animal side do the talking, unless gearing up for a fight.

What was even more alarming was who he was shouting at. No one ever raised their voice to Benissimo, not if they wanted to keep it.

Next to George, waist height in his lab coat and multi-lensed spectacles, stood the circus’s resident boffin and head of R & D. Minutians are extremely small, gnome-small, but take great offence at being compared to their diminutive cousins, who though similar in stature have none of their aptitude for the sciences. Whatever the Tinker was, though, he was not himself and looked as though he hadn’t eaten in days.

“George is right, boss,” the Tinker said. “The last malfunction ended in a bloody massacre and that was over a hundred years ago. It really has no place here and if you’re expecting me to keep it going, well!”

Which was when Ned turned his head to see the root of the problem. Standing there was a vast and aged ticker, the size of a full-grown man. Ned’s own mouse was a ticker and he’d seen countless others in the hidden city of Shalazaar. Mechanical wonders in the form of eagles, monkeys, dogs, they could be incredibly useful machines … and dangerous ones. A ticker in the form of a tiger had nearly bested George on the snow-swept mountain of Annapurna.

George, it seemed, had not forgotten. He was regarding the man-shaped ticker with an expression of fury, suspicion and disgust. Nor was he alone. A chameleon-skinned girl from the dancing section was rippling her colours uncontrollably, Alice the elephant’s feathers were all over the place and Finn’s lions, Left and Right, were whimpering behind the wax-coated tracker like a pair of wet dogs. Of everyone, no one was more terrified than Ned’s wind-up mouse. The Debussy Mark Twelve sat on his shoulder, looking as though someone had plugged his tail into an electrical socket. His minuscule mouth was now locked in an open stance, as if the mere act of seeing the ticker had somehow overloaded his tiny pistons.

“What … what is it?” said Ned.

George turned to him, and blinked. “Oh, good morning, dear boy,” he said. “It is a gift from Madame Oublier, if you can call it that. Her men delivered it in the night. And it is not staying. These things are dangerous.”

Ned could well believe it. The ticker was hewn from dark iron. Its body was a mass of jagged edges and rusting weaponry. A web of pipes, gears and pistons filled its chest and it looked to Ned like some haunted junkyard come to life.

All, that was, except for its face. It wore a mask of polished white marble. Its features were elegant, like the face of some fallen angel, and all the more disturbing because of it. Beauty and the beast, black and white, heaven and hell.

It was terrifying and also – Ned had to admit to himself – fascinating. As an Engineer, part of him wanted to take it apart and see how it worked. It was the sort of thing he could have spent hours on with his dad.

His dad. He blinked as the pain of his parents’ loss came rushing back in.

“I agree with George,” said the Tinker. “The Guardian goes, or we go.”

The Ringmaster tapped his foot impatiently, before finally erupting with a crack of his whip.

“QUIET! Before I box the ears of the lot of you and stick you all in irons!”

The campsite was suddenly devoid of any noise, apart from the low tick, tick, tick of the Guardian’s metallic heart.

“Have you forgotten what the boy and his family have done for us?” continued Bene. “Are your memories really that short? Need I remind you of their plight?”

The troupe collectively blanched.

“Now, if Madame O says she’ll sleep better for leaving it here, then so will I. It’s been programmed to watch the boy’s back and I suggest you do the same yourselves. None of us would be here were it not for Ned and Lucy, none of us.”

Benissimo glared at them all, his great bushy eyes like the beam of a lighthouse, his troupe the cowering night. George’s mighty shoulders dropped and his fur flattened. The argument was over.

Ned felt himself blush and looked to Lucy, who smiled at him and nodded.

“Now, get your heads straight – we move tonight,” ordered Benissimo, before tipping his hat to Ned and retiring to his trailer.

The Tinker turned to Ned. He had the same unkempt bristles as ever and his lab coat and pockets were even more a forest of screwdrivers than the last time they’d met. He was also rather embarrassed.

“Master Armstrong, sir, I am most sorry that you had to see that. You know I’d do anything to keep you safe, but Guardians are no laughing matter. No matter what Madame what’s-her-name says.”

“Guardian?”

“Soldier-class and supposedly banned; how she got her hands on one I’ll never know. As if there wasn’t enough going on already, with Gearnish going dark, and …”

The little minutian suddenly looked close to tears.

“I heard about your city,” said Ned. “I’m so sorry, Tinks.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry about, Master Ned. What little family I have left is still there and, well, if anyone knows how I feel, it must be you, sir.”

For maybe the first time since he’d stepped through the mirror Ned realised that he wasn’t alone. That his old friends needed him just as much as he needed them.

“Then we’ll just have to get them back, Tinks,” he said. “Your family and mine.”

“That’s the spirit, sir,” offered the Tinker with a smile.

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