Hayley hurried out from the shadow of the tower block, heading for Barron’s corner shop. She didn’t like leaving her gran alone in the apartment too long when she was having one of her bad days. And yet she couldn’t help pausing to glance up at the sky, half hoping to catch sight of a white knight zooming past on a ghostly horse. The world felt very different now that she knew there was something beyond school—beyond chores and potatoes for dinner. She was desperate to cling on to that feeling, for a while longer at least.

As Hayley scooted past, lost in her thoughts, cold eyes watched her from the car still parked across the street.

“Finally,” muttered Turpin, reaching into the glove box to remove a small pistol. “I thought she’d never go out.”

Fulcher woke up and wiped a line of drool from her chin. She eyed her partner’s gun with disdain. “Scared of old women?” she chuckled.

“You do what you want. I’m not taking any chances,” snapped Turpin as he pocketed the pistol and opened the car door.

In the corner shop, Hayley tossed a box of tea bags onto the counter. Behind the till, Dean Barron was busy looking at his hair in the mirror and tapping his foot (out of time) to hip-hop blaring from his phone’s tiny speaker. He had a very high forehead and his wispy hair was already receding. Dean’s dad, who owned the shop, was completely bald, and Dean was obviously worried he was destined to go the same way. He was as obsessed with his looks as he was with his customized Peugeot hatchback, which was parked outside as usual. It was a hideous lime green with bucket seats and an oversized spoiler. Hayley thought it looked like a Quality Street chocolate on wheels. And the horrible thing was loud too; she could hear its thundering engine all the way from the fourteenth floor when Dean and his mates drove it around the estate at night.

Coins clattered onto the counter as Hayley poured pennies out of a small plastic bag. She had a large change jar at home, which she’d filled up just by keeping her eyes locked on the ground when she was walking to and from school. It never ceased to amaze her that people were practically throwing money away. She had counted out exactly the amount she needed for the tea bags and not a penny more—that way she wouldn’t be tempted to buy anything they didn’t really need.

“What’s this?” exclaimed Dean, throwing up his hands.

Hayley smiled. “Money. It’s all there. I counted. Hope you can too.”

Dean grimaced back at her. “Seen any big lizard monsters today, Hayley?”

Dean and his so-called gang (they called themselves the “Watford Massive”) must have been having a good laugh about what Hayley’s gran had said to the neighbors. Hayley stopped herself from blurting out some of the rude words that flashed through her mind (she didn’t want to get banned from the shop—the nearest supermarket was three miles away). Instead, while Dean made a point of counting every single penny, Hayley decided to check the rack of newspapers. Maybe there would be a story about the Defender’s battle at the Tower by now—that would shut up stupid Dean Ba—

Her thought was interrupted as she caught sight of the front pages. They were strangely solemn and uniform—even the tabloids had black banners instead of their usual garish red. Every one bore a picture of the king. The headlines were plain and bold: KING DEAD; BRITAIN MOURNS; REST IN PEACE, YOUR MAJESTY. The only paper not leading with the story had gone instead with some bizarre report about Stonehenge collapsing in a freak earthquake.

Hayley grabbed the nearest paper and skimmed the first few lines—King Henry suffered a heart attack late last night … Princes Alfred and Richard and Princess Eleanor rushed back to the palace … Prince Alfred is now King Alfred II … Coronation to take place in a few weeks’ time …

“This ain’t a library,” Dean sneered.

But all Hayley cared about was getting back to the apartment as quickly as she could. If Gran had turned on the radio she might have heard the news already, and Hayley couldn’t bear the idea of not being there to comfort her if she was upset.

“Like you’d know what the inside of a library looks like,” she said as she snatched the tea bags and bolted from the shop, leaving Dean red-faced.

“Oi, I’m not finished counting yet … It better all be here!”

Hayley was back home in less than a minute. As she let herself in, she could hear a man’s voice coming from the living room—Gran must be watching TV, which meant she was too late. But as she hurried into the room she realized it wasn’t the news she could hear. It was a strange little man perched on the edge of the sofa.

“It’s all quite routine of course, madam,” said Turpin, smiling.

Fulcher filled the other two-thirds of the sofa next to him. Hayley instinctively took a step back when she saw her. She felt like she had just come face to face with a wild animal and any sudden movement might spark a vicious attack.

“Here she is. Here’s my Hayley,” said Gran, beckoning her over. “I’ve been telling these nice detectives all about what a good girl you are, looking after your silly old grandmother.”

As Hayley sat next to her gran, she eased her hands into her pockets, doing her best to conceal any sign of the alarm bells that were shrieking inside her head. Whoever this odd pair was, Hayley knew one thing for sure: They weren’t police.

“I was just telling your grandmother here how sorry we are that we didn’t come sooner,” continued Turpin, grinning at her with his unnaturally white teeth, “but there was a great deal of tidying up to do at the Tower after the, um, incident.”

“The Tower?” asked Hayley.

“I told them we were right there, dear,” her gran said. “Saw the whole thing, clear as a bell.”

Fulcher had not averted her heavy gaze from Hayley since the moment she’d walked in. Hayley got the distinct impression that the huge woman would happily crush her neck with one of her gargantuan hands if she made the wrong move.

“Our concern, Miss Hicks,” Turpin went on, “is that you may have been exposed to materials—hazardous biological materials—which could do you serious harm if you were to have, say, accidentally brought them home with you … ” His little black eyes scanned the room before returning to Hayley.

“We wouldn’t want to get ill, would we, Hales?” said Gran.

“Don’t worry, Gran. I’m sure we didn’t accidentally bring anything back with us. Thank you for checking on us, though, detectives.”

Turpin’s smile faded. He gave an almost imperceptible nod of the head to Fulcher, who rose from her seat like a whale breaching the surface of a calm sea and began to clomp around the room, nosing into shelves and sweeping her hands behind the furniture.

“You can’t do that!” shouted Hayley.

“Please, Miss Hicks, this is for your own safety.”

A framed photo crashed to the floor as Fulcher’s thick arms rooted around the back of the sideboard.

“What’s happening, Hayley?” Her gran was becoming upset.

“All right! I’ll give you what you want. Just don’t break anything else.”

Hayley led Fulcher out of the room while Turpin stayed sitting with her confused gran.

“Unseasonably cold for the time of year … ” Hayley heard Turpin making small talk once more as she walked down the hall, shadowed by the hulking agent.

In her bedroom, Hayley opened the wardrobe and stood to one side. “It’s in there.”

“Get it, then,” growled Fulcher.

But Hayley shook her head. “You said it was dangerous—I don’t want to touch it.”

The giant woman grumbled and pushed past Hayley, leaning down and reaching an arm into the wardrobe. “Where is it? You better not be mucking about.”

“In a bag, right at the back.”

Fulcher groaned as she got down on all fours and poked her head between the clothes, feeling around with her hands in the darkness.

Behind her, Hayley dashed forward, planting one foot on a chair and launching herself at the wardrobe. She grabbed on to the top and used her weight to pull the whole thing over onto the kneeling woman.

A roar erupted from beneath the downed wardrobe, but Hayley was already sprinting back into the living room. Turpin had just enough time to get to his feet after hearing the crash, but Hayley was too quick for him—she rammed her gran’s walking stick into his chest and sent him toppling back over the sofa.

Hayley grabbed her gran and eased her as fast as she dared onto her feet and into the hall.

“Where are we going, Hales? We’ve got guests!”

“Bit of fresh air, Gran?!”

They reached the door, but suddenly Gran turned back. “I’ll need my coat.”

“NO, GRAN!”

Hayley lost her grip as Gran disappeared into the kitchen. A shower of broken wood exploded from Hayley’s bedroom and Fulcher was there, charging at her like an angry rhino. The brute grabbed Hayley in a bear hug and lifted her off the ground. Hayley screamed and kicked out as hard as she could, turning over a side table and smashing a mirror, but there was no escape.

“You little moron!” yelled Fulcher, veins bulging in her tree-trunk neck.

Turpin slid out of the living room, rubbing his chest. “No need for that, Fulcher.” He pointed his pistol at Hayley.

Fulcher put Hayley down as Gran returned to the hall, buttoning up her coat. “Ready! Oh, are you two coming as well?”

Sirens sounded from outside. Turpin frowned and hurried to the window. Two police cars had pulled up in front of the flats below, blue lights flashing. Policemen were rushing into the building. He turned back to Hayley, his face darkening. “What did you do?”

Hayley smiled. “What’s wrong? I thought you said you were police too?”

Turpin reached into Hayley’s pocket and pulled out a cell phone. It was connected; the number on the screen: 9-9-9. He screamed and turned to smash the phone against the wall, but Hayley snatched it back, holding it out of his reach.

Fulcher tried to grab Hayley again, but Turpin held her back. He fixed Hayley with a cold stare. “We’ll be seeing you again,” he hissed. “Soon.”

And with that, the pair of them left.

Hayley just had time to steer her gran away from the wreckage of the hallway and back into the living room before the police arrived. The real police.

Hours later, after Gran had been checked out at the hospital—and once Hayley had talked to a steady stream of doctors and nurses and social workers, tidied up the flat, and settled Gran down for a nap—she finally returned to her room. Unscrewing the back of an old hollow desktop computer she’d salvaged, she fished out the lizard’s scale and smiled to herself. She had decided the night before that it needed a better hiding place than inside her backpack. Good thing too, she thought. She tossed the scale into her backpack and, checking that there was no sign of the two intruders from earlier—whoever the hell they really were—she made her way outside to the tower block roof.

There, amid the rusting water tanks and pipes, Hayley found a forgotten rooftop garden and an old plant bed full of foul-smelling soil mixed with pigeon droppings. She dug a hole as deep as she could, then pulled out the black scale from her backpack. The dark lines on its surface seemed to pulse in the moonlight. Why hadn’t she just handed it over to them? It wasn’t really hers, after all. Why risk getting herself—or worse, her gran—hurt over something she couldn’t even begin to understand? And yet … she couldn’t just forget what she had seen that night at the Tower. She’d had a glimpse of something from another world—something magical. She had to know more. Somehow she knew that if she gave up the scale, her only solid link to that strange world, then she would never get any answers.

Hayley pushed the black scale deep into the rank earth and covered it over.