Later that night after they’d unloaded the truck, they sat in Pollie’s apartment having a late tea. Mack and Mabel were a bit huffy that their routine had been altered, and Pollie wasn’t sure how the cats were going to cope when they started pulling walls down. She reached for Mack, who was nearest, and gave him ear scritches. His loud purr was reward for her, before he yowled and dug his claws in her hand before darting away and hiding under the sideboard.

“What!” Pollie exclaimed, sucking on the long scratch on her hand to stop the bleeding.

“Here,” Cris said. “Let me have a look at that.”

Pollie held her hand out to him. She’d learned over the last few weeks that Cris was a caretaker; he was always ready to help.

“That…” she began, just before the hall’s wards began screaming at her, telling her there was an intruder.

“What the fuck!” Nate shouted, as he put his hands to his head. “What’s going on?”

“We’re under magical attack,” Pollie replied as she dashed out of the apartment door, the others following quickly behind her. “It’s coming from the Great Hall!”

As she sprinted down the corridors and the nearest staircase, the wards were still screaming in her head. She tried to ignore them and work out what was going on. This was far worse than when Cris and Nate had teleported in several weeks ago; this felt malevolent.

Pollie came to a screeching halt as she entered the Great Hall. The devastation in the middle of the large room drew her eye, but it was then that she saw the creature. Whirling around, lights sparking off it, green and blue colours dancing around it, it was horrific. It was encased in some kind of ward trap that it couldn’t escape. That didn’t stop it from trying though.

She stood and watched in horror with the other two as the creature – the chimera, Lady Emma had called it – whirled around, rebounding off furniture and walls like a spinning top gone mad.

“What the fuck!” Nate was holding onto her and pointing to something, or rather, someone.

“What!” She could see now that grabbing onto the chimera’s ankle was a human man. He was held fast by what looked like a piece of material, being flung this way and that as the chimera gyrated. It was obvious he was unconscious.

“We have to get him away from it!” Cris yelled.

“How?” Pollie asked as she tried to get closer.

“Can you make it so we can enter the ward trap without getting trapped ourselves?” Nate asked as they dove out of the way of broken furniture being flung this way and that.

“I can try,” Pollie responded, already beginning to manipulate the energies around the creature.

“Here!” Nate exclaimed and dove towards the chimera, grabbing on to the unknown man’s waist, trying to keep him steady and unwind the cloth from his wrist. All the while the chimera was doing its spinning top impression, leaving marks and burns on the walls and furniture.

“Got him!” Nate shouted. As soon as he released the mystery man, the chimera disappeared with a howl and the wards stopped screaming.

Pollie collapsed onto the floor as Cris and Nate crawled over to her and they all held each other up.

“What the…” Cris began again, as the strange man on the floor groaned and opened his eyes.

“Edward, where’s Edward?!” he screamed before collapsing into unconsciousness once more.