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rest of the afternoon doing her nails in front of the telly. However, as soon as she let herself in she knew there was no hope of having the place to herself. The hallway was blocked by a stack of microwaves, still wrapped in polythene, and a spill of shiny white trainers. Hip hop pounded through the walls.
    She found Nate and two of his sidekicks, Chunk and Jacko, sprawled on the battered leather sofas around the TV. On screen, a group of semi-naked girls were writhing against the rapper in their midst. He was making gun signs with his hands, spitting out a monologue about blood and bullets, pimps and hos, as the spectators in the lounge nodded along appreciatively. Glory thought this pretty funny. The younger coven crew liked to play at being proper villains, but it was all front, as fake as the bumping and grinding of the girls in the music video.
    Nate greeted Glory’s arrival with a belch. He was only a couple of years older than her and they’d grown up together, but there wasn’t much love lost between them. Nate liked to throw his weight around as the boss’s son, and resented Glory’s rival position as Auntie Angel’s pet.
    ‘You seen the gear we got?’ Jacko asked.
    ‘Could hardly miss it. Nearly broke my ankle clambering past.’
    ‘Nice little job, that,’ said Chunk complacently.
    The way he and Jacko told it, their staged break-in at the depot (whose security guard was in coven pay) might as well have been a gold-bullion bank heist, Hollywood-style. Glory had been hearing such stories her whole life.
    There’d been a time too when she would have lapped it all up, wide-eyed. But she had known for a long while that Cooper Street’s criminal activities didn’t involve much skill or daring, and hardly any witchwork. In spite of Auntie Angel’s local reputation, her fae had always been small-scale, good for scrying and elusions and minor banes, but not much else, and her involvement in coven business was in decline. She was seventy-eight, after all. And a coven’s reputation rested on its head-witch.
    Thinking of this, Glory’s mood sank another notch. It sank further when she went to get a Coke from the fridge, only to find a partially-eaten kebab crusted to the top shelf, and chow-mein noodles splattered down the sides. The surrounding floor was littered with cigarette butts. Glory knew that if she didn’t clean it up, nobody else would. She slammed the fridge shut.
    ‘This place . It’s a pit,’ she said. ‘It stinks.’
    ‘Then go somewhere else, girlie,’ Nate advised, scratching under his T-shirt to reveal a slab of toned stomach. He worked out obsessively – the basement of Number Eight bristled with gym equipment – and was capable of a slouching, sulky sort of charm. This wasn’t something he bothered using on Glory.
    Glory gave him the finger. She decided to stay for a bit, even if it was only to piss off Nate. But she couldn’t relax. Her senses were oddly heightened, too strong to be comfortable. The air was thick with beery male breath and the warm, green-brown pungency of hash. Fleetingly, she seemed to taste the pulses of music – metallic; like blades, like blood – and hear the flavour of Coke zing through her mouth. But she shook her head, and the muddle cleared.
    Thuds and curses from the hall announced the arrival of Patch and Earl, two older coven members who, from the sounds of it, had come to grief among the microwaves. Patch came through the door rubbing his shin.
    ‘Now then,’ he said, his pock-marked face splitting into a grin, ‘you lot heard about the Wednesday’s latest? Charlie Morgan’s only been and met the PM’s missus!’
    Charlie Morgan was boss of the Wednesday Coven. His brothers Frank and Vince were the financier and enforcer respectively, and his wife Kezia was head-witch. Their coven wasn’t just big and brutal, it owned legitimate businesses too, including a fashionable restaurant and several nightclubs. And now, apparently, they’d moved