‘Great! Eleven more! Well, what are we waiting for?’ Boris nodded.

‘I take it you’re feeling the buzz, then?’ Jasper asked.

‘Wooohooo!’ Boris replied, jumping in the air.

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ Felix said. ‘We need a plan! A really good one! We don’t even know where the queen is. We can’t just waltz around and start spraying! And anyway, we need to go past the Species Studies room. I’m almost out of drool.’ Felix shook his near-empty flask.

‘Got it!’ Saffy beamed.

‘Is this another plan like the big nest?

Because that one didn’t turn out too well,’ Jasper pointed out.

Saffy glared at him. ‘The assembly hall has heaps of fearful vibes, right?’ she said.

Jasper and Felix nodded. After all, it had been the place where everyone was told about the monsters.

‘But there’s somewhere in the school even more terrifying. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before! Think about it. Somewhere we all dread. A place we all have to confront our fears.’

‘The Trail of Terror!’ Felix and Jasper replied. ‘Of course!’

‘That is where the queen will be, and that is where we’ll have to go,’ Saffy said triumphantly.

‘But what about the Skrinkerscreech?’ Felix whispered. ‘They’ll sense Jasper and Boris in a second.’

‘Exactly,’ Saffy smiled.

Jasper looked at her. ‘Look, I know I can be annoying, but killing me? Don’t you think that’s going a tad too far?’

Saffy looked thoughtful. ‘Hopefully it won’t get to the killing bit. But we do want the monsters to sense you. Felix, how many drones stay with the queen during nesting?’ she asked.

‘Five, I think,’ Felix replied.

‘OK, so here’s the plan. We need to tempt those five drones away from the nest. We can’t get to the nest with them in the room, otherwise they’ll just gas us like the others, yeah?’

Felix and Jasper nodded, and Boris grinned even wider. He was getting the hang of the whole Hunt thing.

‘So what will tempt the drones out?’ Saffy prompted.

‘The threat of another monster,’ said Jasper.

‘Me.’

‘Or us,’ Boris added, thumping Jasper on the back and almost sending him flying across the hallway.

Felix was groaning softly to himself.

‘The Trail of Terror has a corridor leading off it,’ Saffy continued. ‘We’ll wait just around the corner. As long as you can outrun them to the end of the corridor, we’ll have you covered.’

Boris nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yeah, no worries. Right on!’

‘So,’ said Saffy, ‘all we need to do now is get some more drool, and … ’

Suddenly a pair of prefects appeared, completely oblivious to the frozen monsters nearby. ‘ON THE GROUND! NOW!’ yelled one of them, and barrelled Saffy to the floor.

‘Wait! I have a cancel card!’ said Saffy.

‘Him! It’s him we want,’ said the other prefect, pointing his baton at Jasper.

‘Hang on!’ Boris boomed. ‘I have this under control. He’s under prefect arrest.’ He nodded towards Jasper.

‘Under arrest? Why isn’t he restrained then?’ asked first prefect, who still had Saffy pinned.

Boris smiled. ‘Tactics. I was treating them nice until I had backup, just in case they tried something.’ He looked the other prefects up and down. ‘But now that you’re here, I don’t think I need it anyway. These three are a piece of cake. And unless you’d like to take it up with me personally,’ he added with a sneer, ‘you’re not taking any of my prefect points for bringing them in.’

The prefects were both smaller than Boris. The one on top of Saffy stood up slowly. ‘Yeah, whatever,’ he said. ‘Just because your brother got the most prefect points last year …’ But they backed away and slunk off down the corridor.

Jasper, Saffy and Felix turned to Boris, whose sneer had turned into a grin.

‘Prefect points?’ Felix asked.

‘Don’t you know? The more penalty points we give you, the more prefect points we earn. That’s why the prefects are always trying to nab you lot,’ Boris explained.

Jasper was secretly impressed. Boris hadn’t only disobeyed orders, but he’d lied to the other prefects to save them.

Saffy beamed. ‘We just might make a monster-hunter out of you after all.’