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They were making their way along Paris Street now, back towards the Lincoln house. Roz found herself grinning inanely at the few people she passed, in a kind of gunshot-I-don’t-know-nothing-about-no-gunshot way. The Doctor was still talking.

‘The amaranth also has an emergency function,’ he said. ‘If it finds itself in a place that it can’t make any sense of at all, it’s programmed to whisk its user off to a more stable part of the continuum. Which is how you arrived here from... that other place.’

‘Which was?’

‘Yes, it was.’

Roz gritted her teeth. ‘I mean, where was it?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were being zen.’

‘Answer the damn question.’

‘I can’t. I don’t know the answer.’

‘Fine. Then tell me why the amaranth brought me here.

Why not the TARDIS? Or anywhere, except this place.’

‘A good question. I’d guess that somebody here has been creating anomalies, which could well be why the gynoids are manifesting themselves. It might also explain why parts of the rational universe seem to be cracking open, hence your sudden departure from Arizona. The amaranth must have homed in the disruption. When it decided to leave you, it was probably just locating the heart of the disturbance. Find it now, and you find who’s been causing all the trouble. And vice versa.’

He paused for a moment. ‘And we have to find the guilty party quickly,’ he added. ‘We can’t let them keep the amaranth.’

‘Of course we can’t. It’s ours.’

‘That aside. They know how to destabilize space–time. The amaranth can reconstruct destabilized space–time. Ergo, with the amaranth they can remodel the universe at will. It should take them a while to work out how to use it properly, and they’ll only be able to change a small part of the continuum at a time, but even so...

‘Don’t do that.’

‘Don’t do what?’

‘Trail off in mid-sentence. It’s not sinister, it’s just irritating.’ Roz was still glancing at every corner they passed, looking for the omnipresent gynoid, though by now she couldn’t tell when she was seeing something and when she was just imagining things. ‘One more question. Goddess, I hate it when I have to say that.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s happened to the TARDIS?’

‘It’s been derationalized. Now, there’s one Doctor Johnson left out of his dictionary.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, well, you know, Doctor Johnson was a lot more parochial than most people seem to think...’

‘Why-has-the-TARDIS-been-de-rationalized?’ Roz hissed, through gritted teeth. This was the kind of conversation she’d often heard Bernice have with the Doctor, and Roz didn’t want to be the one that filled her shoes. Facetiousness didn’t come easily to her.

‘Ah.’ The Doctor nodded seriously. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather ask me about Doctor Johnson? I’d probably find it much easier to answer the questions.’

The witch-woman?

The witch-woman, she’d know. If the Devil himself had come to Woodwicke, the witches and the fortune-tellers had to be part of it. Hah, but he didn’t believe in the Devil, did he?

Why would anyone need to believe in devils when there were Englishmen in the world?

Follow the witch-woman, follow her and the white magician she walked with, find out how to make the damned town leave him alone and let him sneak back into the cracks.

Find out what bastard ghost was whispering at him, pulling him back into Woodwicke every time he tried to walk away from it.

No one saw Daniel Tremayne when he crept along Paris Street. No one saw Daniel Tremayne when he crept anywhere.

He was at one with the room. He was in every corner, stretched along every surface. Its angles were his angles, its purity was his purity. And he was content. Just for that one moment.

Then one of the corners blistered again, ripples shaking their way across the wall. Liquid Cacophony crawling across his marble skin. He shivered, the cellar shivered, everything was falling apart –

He was in the garden, surrounded by the seeds of chaos, shrubs and weeds enveloping his family’s estate. How old?

Six? Seven? Tearing at the