Even before he’d reached the landing, he was aware of the nature of his dilemma. He couldn’t stay upstairs indefinitely, but going downstairs wasn’t currently a viable option. He was standing there in an uncharacteristic state of dither when he heard footsteps. He took stock of his position, namely that he was a wet, wretched wolf in women’s clothing in a strange house, and that if word of any of this ever made it back to the 77th Precinct, the rest of his career in Wolfpack was going to be very, very wearing.

He saw a bedroom door, slightly ajar. He bundled through it, closed it carefully behind him and turned the key, drew the curtains, dived into the bed and pulled the covers up over his muzzle.

Not a moment too soon; the door flew open and Snow White burst into the room. Somewhere along the way she’d picked up Mr Nikko’s katana and a handful of razor-edged throwing stars. She stood for a moment in the doorway while her eyes adjusted to the dim light; then she made out the figure in the bed and raised her right arm as if about to let fly. Fang braced himself for a race with a speeding missile that he knew he’d lose; then Snow White’s arm seemed to relax a little, and she lowered her hand.

‘Grandma?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

‘Wf,’ Fang mumbled, trying to make it sound like a sneeze.

‘Oh.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘Buggery. Look, you haven’t seen a wolf roaming around the place, have you? Probably wringing wet and covered in soot and soapsuds?’

‘Well, if you do…’ Snow White narrowed her eyes and peered. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘You look awful.’

‘Wf,’ Fang replied, and added a yawn for good, measure. He was halfway through it when he realised how bad a mistake it was.

‘Shit a brick, Grandma, what big teeth you’ve got,’ Snow White observed. Then she did a massive double-take. ‘You!’ she snarled.

As the first throwing star split the wood of the headboard, Fang was already out of the bed and halfway out of the window. The second star shaved off the last few split ends of his tail-hairs. He landed in the flower-bed below with a heavy thump, rolled down a slight slope and found himself up to his neck in a goldfish pond.

Suddenly there was activity everywhere; dwarves, little pigs and samurai coming at him from all directions with a curiously diverse selection of garden implements, builders’ tools and traditional Japanese weapons. As he tried to make a run for it away from the cottage, an arrow from Mr Akira’s bow missed him by the thickness of a hair split by a top-class lawyer, sending him scampering for the back door. But the way was blocked by Rumpelstiltskin, who was wearing a red hood and holding a garden fork, so he turned in his tracks and sprinted for the front of the cottage, where Julian was lying in wait for him with a twelve-pound sledgehammer. He managed to dodge the blow, but the only safe direction open to him was up. He sprang as hard as his hind legs could manage and was just able to get his forepaws into the tangled branches of one of the climbing roses that clustered (inevitably) round the cottage’s door. There were ever so many thorns in the rose entanglement but somehow, in his moment of direst need, the thought of Julian’s sledgehammer inspired him with the will and determination to keep on going. If there was an award for scrambling up climbing roses and he’d won it, no doubt the sledgehammer would have been properly thanked in his acceptance speech.

So far, he said to himself, so good; because all the psychopathic loonies are now outside the house, which makes being inside the house a viable, not to mention preferable option.

With the last scrapings of his adrenaline reserves he hooked a thorn-lacerated paw over the sill of an open window and dragged himself through. Now all he had to do was run downstairs and get the doors bolted and the windows shuttered before the psychos could get back in; then it’d be a simple matter of sending a smoke-signal to Wolfpack HQ for reinforcements. Piece of — A stray fragment of cobweb brushed against his catarrh blocked nose, which started to tickle. A bluebottle, which had been trapped in it, managed to struggle free.

Oh hell, Fang thought.

The first spasm he was able to smother, so that all that came out was a muffled noise, something like hf. The second one nearly got away from him, but he pulled it back at the last moment and managed to hold on, while puffing out briskly through his nose. The third and most convulsive tickle, however, was more than lupine flesh and blood could stand. He sneezed.

To start with, the building merely stirred, like a heavy sleeper gently shaken by the shoulder. Then plaster dust started coming down from the ceilings, which Fang took as a fairly heavy hint. The first football-sized gobbet of falling masonry missed him by a few inches as he jumped through the scullery window without bothering to open it first; in consequence, he was well and truly clear by the time the roof caved in.

On the other paw, he found that he’d landed directly between Desmond and Mr Hiroshige.

Not surprisingly Mr Hiroshige was the first to react, and he’d have cut Fang into two equal halves if his slicing sword-blade hadn’t collided with Desmond’s flailing pickaxe. As it was, the two instruments met in a shower of sparks a few inches above Fang’s shoulders, giving him plenty of time to dart between them and head for the trees, which were at most some forty yards away. Desmond was momentarily distracted by a direct hit on the head from a falling rafter, leaving Mr Hiroshige to take up the pursuit alone.

Easy, Fang muttered to himself as he ran. A race between a wolf and a middle-aged man in heavy armour; no problem. He put his head down, accelerated, and ran full tilt into a tree.

When he came round, he found himself sitting in a huge cauldron full of water, on the surface of which floated a few thinly sliced carrots, some parsnips, a few leeks and other sundry vegetables. The cauldron was tied with thick hairy rope to a couple of stout posts that had been driven firmly into the ground, and below it lay a large and tangled pile of junk timber, mostly salvaged from the ruins of Own Goal Cottage. Around him in a ring stood the pigs, the dwarves, the bears, the samurai, even the three blind mice. Snow White was just inside the circle, and she was holding a burning torch. All in all, he got the impression that he wasn’t here to receive an honorary degree from the University of Fairyland.

‘Woof?’ he murmured, in a very small voice.

Snow White was grinning at him. She was bending forwards. She was touching the torch to the wood— ‘That’ll do,’ said the wicked queen.

She walked out of the trees, passed through the cordon of spectators and up to Snow White. ‘Now then,’ she went on, grabbing the torch in Snow White’s hand, ‘I thought I told you to play nicely.’

‘Get lost,’ Snow White replied. ‘This is none of your business.’

The queen smiled. ‘Oh yes it is,’ she said. ‘I’m the queen, remember? Which means everyone’s got to do as I say. Including you.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Snow White replied furiously. ‘Miroku, Nikko, Hiroshywashy-whatever-your-name-is, get up here this instant.’ She waited. Nobody moved.

‘Hey,’ she shrieked, ‘that’s a direct order.’

Mr Hiroshige, whose attention appeared to have been elsewhere, looked round in mild surprise. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘Were you talking to me?’

‘Yes. Now get your mystic arse up here and—’

‘Although,’ interrupted Mr Miroku, in a calm, soothing voice, ‘looked at from the point of view of the true adept of the Way, how can anybody hope to be that specific? A call to one is surely a call to all. Are we not all blossoms from the same jasmine bush, after all?’

Snow White ground her small, pearly teeth. ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘All of you. Come on, move.’