Mrs Rafaat's face sank. Seemingly each muscle contracted one at a time until only a pair of wide, sorrowful eyes protruded. "I'm very sorry," she mumbled, unable to meet Mr Roding's watery-green gaze flecked with shattered capillaries. "I just didn't know where else to go and when I saw that this group was organising I thought... it seemed so right. I can't explain it, but I know... I don't know what I know I just know... there's something terribly important I've forgotten. But I don't know what it is."

One or two dirty looks were shot at Mr Roding, who had the good manners to stare in shame at his shiny black shoes.

Sharon cleared her throat. "It's okay, Mrs Rafaat. We're completely on board with where you're coming from. In fact, I've personally experienced something similar to what you describe. I uh... I know things. I don't know how, but... there was this moment. A moment when I knew I knew everything about the city, everything that was, and has been, and will be again and then... then I didn't. So I guess I'm saying that's cool, you know?"

Was that a helpful response, she wondered? Did senior citizens appreciate the multi-faceted aspects of that well-worn "That's cool, you know?" "We're all glad to have you in this group, aren't we?" she added, shooting a glare around at any possible dissenters.

A mumble of assent arose from the gathering, and Mrs Rafaat's head lifted in cautious optimism.

"That's very nice of you, but if you really don't-"

"We do," insisted Sharon. "We absolutely all do." She had a very stubborn chin when she needed one. Somewhere in the lineage of the Li family several generations of well-bred Manchurian ladies had each married a well-educated young man, only to discover that while a charming smile went a long way, a sharp heel and well-kept nails might get you further.

"They say," stammered Mrs Rafaat, "they say... something is missing. Places where there should have been noise are... Is this something people are worried about because I find it very worrying? They say that the spirits of things, I mean, not the spirits, not the fairies or anything fluffy, but the... the heart of things, the soul behind the walls the... the things with the ears, if that makes sense to you, they say they're vanishing. One night they're thereyou walk alone but you are not aloneand then the next they're... they're gone."

Someone coughed. The cough belonged to Rhys I'm-a-druid-well-sort-of-well-I-tried-but-you-know-how-it-is (Hello, Rhys). It was followed by a shuffling of feet, a twitching of elbow, a shivering of one shoulder and a slow look round the room just to make sure that no one really, really minded that he was about to speak.

No one seemed to mind.

"Uh, what do you mean 'gone'?"

"I don't know," said Mrs Rafaat. "That's the trouble with just knowing things; it never really comes with all the details."

"When you say 'spirits'," interjected Mr Roding, "are we talking benevolent small essences or the malign unleashed power of a blue electric angel?"

"I'm very sorry," Mrs Rafaat said, "it's terribly vague."

Ms Somchit (It's not about the black, it's about how you wear it) cleared her throat. At five foot two, with curly black hair falling to her shoulders and skin the colour of fresh almonds, she had the cheerful look of someone who had seen the worst that the world could offer and had actually expected it to be much, much worse. Her black clothes had a priest-like aura, and a small white badge in the shape of a shield bearing a red cross through the centre and a red sword in the top left-hand corner added to the ecclesiastical vibe.

"So... you're experiencing hollowness, emptiness, doubt, despair and a great sense of wrongness," she clarified, "but you can't exactly say what it is. Have you tried acupuncture?"

"Oh God, acupuncture is like the most amazing thing ever," agreed Kevin, brightening at the mention of medical intervention. "I had like, this utterly amazing craving for the blood of the innocent babe and then two sessions, acupuncture, me, and I was like, wow totally yuck with that virginal blood."

"Can you get it on the NHS?" asked Mr Roding. "Acupuncture, I mean."

"You'd probably need a referral," offered Ms Somchit.

"How about counselling?" suggested Chris Hi-I'm-an-exorcist-but-you-know-I-don't-think-a-confrontational-approach-is-helping-anyone. "It's great that you've taken this first step, love, but actually talking things through with a professional can be so liberating."

"Are there counsellors who understand the... the um... the magical thing?" asked Mrs Rafaat.

All eyes turned to Sharon. "I'll look it up," she promised.

Chapter 13.

Kindness to Others Nurtures the Soul The meeting melted away.

After, Sharon couldn't remember the details of what happened at the end. It could have been the excitement of the moment. Or it could have been all the glamours and concealment spells clashing in bursts of steel-silver and emergency-blue light as their owners drew too near each other.

Someone had suggested that they all join hands and give thanks for the spirit of companionship. Someone elseprobably Mr Rodingsaid that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. Then someone else suggested that if they were going to link hands in a circle they should sing "Auld Lang Syne"until Mrs Rafaat pointed out that singing in the presence of Sally might be considered crass.

I don't mind, replied Sally. I enjoy the vocal range of humans.

Eventually, they'd just shaken hands and promised to contribute to the Facebook page and come back next week. Sally had detached herself from the ceiling in a single flop that somehow landed her without a sound and nervously offered a three-clawed talon from beneath her robe for Sharon to shake. The skin was arctic cold and, as Sally carefully wound her claws round Sharon's hand, struggling not to break anything as she did, Sharon heard the rustle of wings, heard a crunching just behind her ears and tasted a thing that could only be the feather-coated splat of raw pigeon bursting in her mouth. She turned green and locked her smile into place before Sally could notice. There was a hint of a smile behind Sally's mask and, having succeeded with what was quite possibly the first handshake of her adult life, she spun brightly on the spot and, once she'd stabilised and got her wings back under control, carefully wrote: Thank you for your understanding and support.

Then she was in the alley round the side of the building, there was an impression of blackness against the night and the beating of wings, and she was gone.

One person remained after the meeting filed out, and while this individual was trying to be inconspicuous, there was no denying its bulk and weight as it loomed over the biscuit table.

It had waited for the last one to leave, then said, "My name is Gretel."

Sharon looked up and then, because Gretel was standing so close, she looked up a bit further. Features blurred before her eyes; not so much through a twisting of the light, but from a twisting of the brain, as if it couldn't process what it was trying to see. She smelled old garbage dump and chilli sauce cutting through even the muddling power of Gretel's cloaking spell. Resolutely Sharon thrust out her hand, palm open, and exclaimed, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Gretel. I'm so glad you could come to our meeting."

The thing called Gretel hesitated, then reached out one hand, wide enough to pick Sharon up by the skull, strong enough to crush any living thing it held. Sharon's fingers brushed a palm of grey hairs bordering on soft quills or spikes, sticky with some orange stuff. For a moment she looked and there was...

Troll didn't do it justice.

Troll wasn't the word.

Sure, troll was what this was: undeniably, irrefutably troll, beneath the spell. But the mere word failed to capture the breadth of back, and the thickness of black quills covering face, shoulders, arms, hands, bare feet with yellow nails inclining to claws; elbows wider than Sharon's waist, face rounder than a blown-up beach ball, and teeth stained the colour of the rubbish dump and sharpened on a diet of ground glass. Troll didn't capture the stink of it; the head-spinning stench of it, troll didn't capture...

Her eyes roamed across the creature and, no, the idea of "troll" had never extended to the extra extra extra large nightgown, patterned with garlands and puppy-dogs and doubtless the last in the shop that would stretch over Gretel's prickly form. Sharon heard herself stammer, somewhere between the haze and the smell, "I really... hope to see you next week and that you'll find the meetings... productive and helpful."

Their palms parted and Sharon staggered back against the table, gasping down air.

Gretel the troll shifted uneasily. The floorboards creaked underfoot as she transferred her bulk from one foot to another, like a bus driver testing his suspension before a difficult hill. Then all at once, as if there'd only be one chance to speak and this was it, Gretel said, "I really enjoyed the food that you provided, Ms Li. That was very nice of you. I like human food but no one ever serves me not even the takeaway and I try to get the leftovers but people don't seem to like it if I hang around their restaurants so I was wondering, Ms Li, and obviously I could pay, but I was wondering if you could maybe and you don't even need to keep the receipts but I was wondering if anyone would mind if next time you or not even you or just someone someone in the group and I should have asked but I feel so ashamed but maybe if someone in the group could bring some pizza?"

Chapter 14.

Friendship Comes From Unexpected Places It is forty minutes later.

Sharon walks.

The smell of refuse has diminished now, overwritten by the smell of Thai Panang curry and prawn crackers. She'd got a takeaway from the restaurant down the street, and the two of them, Gretel and Sharon, had sat in busy, munching silence on a bench in Spa Fields, a crafted park of unnatural dips and swells, and eaten. Sharon had used chopsticks, and Gretel had tried but couldn't get them between her fingers, eventually knocking the two sticks together and using them as a very small shovel to push food directly into her mouth. Gretel had offered to share the prawn crackers, but the bag was already stained with the grease from beneath the troll's fingers where they had smeared the plastic, and Sharon had said she was full up.

Getting into the park hadn't been a problem. There was a rusty chain on the gate, held together with a thick padlock. Gretel had snapped the lock between her fingertips and tucked a five-pound note into a link of the chain by way of apology. When they were done, Gretel had smoothed out the dent she'd made in the bench where they'd sat by kicking it from below until once again it formed, more or less, a flat surface. Sharon, not wanting to add to Gretel's modest vandalism, had taken a deep breath and walked straight through the fence. She found fences easier than walls. Less mortar, more air.

"Can you smell the fish oil?" Gretel sighed. "And the tiniest hint of cumin?"

"It's very nice," mumbled Sharon.

"There are so many people who don't appreciate coconut in their cooking, but I think it's just amazing. It balances the chilli, absorbs the ginger, softens the garlic, infuses the meat... but you must know all of this, being human."

"Uh... not really. I kind of live outta the chippy."

"Oh." Gretel struggled to hide her disappointment. "Well, that's very nice too. Do you cook?"

"Me? Not really. Well, my mum taught me a bit, like, Chinese cooking and that, but you have to go miles to get the proper ingredients and actually beansprouts aren't the world's greatest vegetable. I know it disappoints her that I don't really try, because apparently I'm not going to get myself a nice young man like this."

It had all come out rather fast. Gretel absorbed this information before coming up with the obvious question. "A nice young man?"

"Well, you know. The whole turning-invisible, walking-through-walls, not-cooking-beansprouts thing is really bad for relationships."

"Is it? Why?"

"I guess... I think..." Sharon paused. "Actually, I have no idea."

When they were done she collected the wrappings and recycled the cardboard boxes in the cardboard bin and the foil boxes in the foil bin; and with surprising speed and litheness for such a large creature, Gretel was gone.

Sharon walks.

Somehow, unnoticed, the hour had crept over the city when the moderately drunk called it a night, and the seriously drunk settled down because it wouldn't really hurt, for one last pint. The bus stops along Rosebery Avenue were crowded with the two extremes of late-night humanity: those who suspected you were out to get them, and those who knew that you were their best, best friend in all the world. Exmouth Market stood at an unusual crossroads within central London, at a place with Underground stations all around, representing nearly every line to every place, yet where none was quite within convenient reach.

Sharon waited at the bus stop. Sadler's Wells was emptying for the night, an audience of ballet lovers in pearls and expensive clothes thronging onto the street. Several examined the machine selling bus tickets, anxious to master it but careful not to let their ignorance look foolish.

The countdown on the bus shelter said the bus was seven minutes away.

Sharon walked to the next stop.

It took her three minutes.

Here the bus was still seven minutes away.

This stop was less heavily populated, partly due to a drunk woman, her skin blue-grey, eyes wide, trousers torn and a smell radiating off her that was much more than beer. She was harmless now, sat in the white fluorescent light of the shelter with her mouth open and a dried sheen of spit tracked down the side of her chin. But those few others at the bus stop kept their distance in case of worse to come.

Sharon walked on by.

Angel lay ahead, brilliantly lit, yellow and red, brake lights and outdoor cafe tables, pubs and restaurants. No matter what the time of year, crowds of drinkers here spilled onto the street, glass in hand among the ATMs, estate agents and mobile-phone shops, to down a pint or two after their curry, or sushi, or Afghan stew, or Thai platter, or chilli wrap or... almost any cuisine of choice.

The wealth of Islington was almost untouched by its status as a social hub, which pulled in every level of society to mingle opposite the antiques mall or by windows advertising LUXURY TERRACED HOUSE, BARNSBURY, only half a million quid per room. Class wasn't dead; it had just learned to look the other way when queueing at the bar.

As Sharon rounded the corner onto City Road, her bus went by. The next stop was a hundred yards, beyond a set of lights. She considered running, chose not and oddly didn't feel the spike of rage so common when missing a bus that only ran every twenty minutes.

Hugging the bus route nonetheless in the hope of transport, she headed on down City Road. A small rise created an almost-bridge above an old canal basin; canoes were stacked in neat racks on its far side, and converted brick warehouses jostled with new glass-fronted apartments that offered studio living to the sound of wavelets slapping against the bollarded waterfront and the rumble of traffic. A square metal shed bore a sign shyly declaring it an electricity substation and hoped no one minded this vital service being so inelegantly sited amid prime real estate. A garage offered twenty-four-hour conveniences and doughnuts of every kind; a bit of graffiti on its wall reminded onlookers to !!PANIK!!.

Somehow the next bus was still seven minutes away, and would probably remain so until the instant of its arrival. The air smelt of rain to come.

Sharon thought without thinking. Distance passed unnoticed, as if she stood still while the city turned, and all because her mind was full of unstoppable, incomprehensible sounds...

So yeah, I turn into pigeons...

Dental hygiene is like so important when you're a vampire!

There's surprisingly little meat on a pigeon.

The one time I tried tea tree oil my skin actually just fell off!

He howled, and he howled.

Then they were gone.

She flinched, and didn't know why.

There had been a moment...

A searing moment, an instant, in which everything had been, the whole city, the world, everything, had been so... so...

But now it hurt to remember.

And if anyone had been looking, which would itself have been remarkable, they may have observed as Sharon walked a certain... fuzziness about her, a certain... indescribable vagueness, not so much a fading or a vanishing, not exactly an attainment of nothingness, but more a sense that here was a thing...

... which did not merit the observing?

A manner in the walk, a briskness of pace, head down but chin forward, arms swinging but in no sense power-walking off that extra chocolate bar; rather a walk that could only be described as belonging. The walk of her who belonged, and if they'd looked...

Or rather, if they'd not looked...

Since not looking was the inevitable next step...

They might have seen Sharon Li begin to disappear.

But by then something would have made them look away altogether.

She rounded the bend towards Moorfields eye hospital, opposite a pub bearing the golden figure of an eagle and the words of a song: "Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle..."

As a kid, the song had always bothered her. "That's the way the money goespop goes the weasel!" She'd pictured a small twitchy-nosed furry creature exploding in the claws of a bird of prey, and when they'd sung it in nursery school, she'd cried.

All that had been long before the moment, before it had all gone wrong, before everything had changed and the fabric of reality had seemed a little... just a little...

Her pocket was buzzing.

Sharon struggled to free her head of thoughts, or not-thoughts, of this mess of unspoken ideas rattling around inside her brain like a penny in a washing machine. Her mobile phone was a grey brick, given to her when she left home by her dad, even though she already had a phone whose number he could never remember. He'd set himself up as the first number of her speed dial, and added to her contacts list a local doctor, police station, solicitor and sexual health clinic, folding her hand around it and telling her that she didn't need worry about phoning home too much.