I had to smile at her. There was a time the Droods were your enemies. Not that long ago, you would have been overjoyed by all this. You d have danced on these ruins.

Danced, hell, said Molly. I d have hiked up my skirts and pissed on them, singing hallelujah. But that was then; this is now. Everything changed when I met you. Now an attack on your family is an attack on you. And no one messes with my man and gets away with it.

She struck a witch s pose, and her hands moved through a sinuous series of magical gestures. A slow presence gathered on the air around us and all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. A sudden cold wind came gusting down the hallway, disturbing the ashes. Molly spoke a single Word, almost too much for human vocal cords to bear, and the echoes of it trembled and shuddered all through the enclosed space.

There, said Molly, relaxing just a little.

I ve put some temporary shields in place: a No See zone over the Hall and serious avoidance spells around the perimeter. Low-level stuff, easily broken by anyone who knows what they re looking for, but enough to buy us some time, so we can make a proper investigation. Where do you want to start, Eddie?

I didn t thank her. It would only have embarrassed her.

I looked up and down the gloomy hallway. It was all so still, so quiet. The only sounds had been our careful footsteps and the quiet shifting noises of broken stone and brickwork. The ceiling made constant ominous noises as the collapsed upper floors settled and pressed down. There was still a little smoke, farther in, curling unhurriedly on the still air, and the odd cloud of soot and ashes drifting this way and that. Molly sneezed explosively, and I jumped despite myself. I looked at her reproachfully, and she stared haughtily down her nose at me, as though she d meant to do it. She raised one hand and snapped her fingers imperiously. A sharp breeze blew in from the open doors and rushed down the hallway, dispersing the smoke and blowing away the soot and ashes. The breeze died away quickly, before it could disturb anything precarious.