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into the arts – the tabloid paper Patch was holding up showed Charlie’s tough, fleshy face staring out beside the Prime Minister’s wife. The setting was a VIP-studded gala for the Royal Opera House. Charlie was name-checked as an ‘entrepreneur and investor’.
    Shouts of laughter followed the paper around the room. When it was passed to Glory, her arm got jogged so that she slopped her drink down her top. ‘Hexing hell! Can’t you slobs watch what you’re doing?’
    ‘That PMT’s getting the better of you again,’ Nate drawled.
    It wasn’t, but the mood-swings felt like a more extreme version. All this week, Glory was either flying high or soaked through with gloom. Like today – irrepressibly cheerful at the sight of weeds blowing in the breeze, and now black as thunder because of a stupid splash of Coke. It was about time she got a grip.
    ‘Post Moron Tension sounds about right,’ she said to Nate, chucking her empty can in his direction. ‘I’m outta here.’
     
    Glory’s quickest route home was through a sliding door on the first floor landing of Number Seven. It led to a makeshift kitchen containing a microwave, hotplate and mini-fridge. Her dad was there, heating a mug of soup. He looked startled to see her.
    ‘No, er, school this afternoon?’
    ‘Teacher Training.’
    ‘Ah . . . again?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Hmm.’
    Her father rubbed his thinning brown hair in an anxious sort of way. He knew as well as Glory did that nobody could make her go to school if she didn’t feel like it. Sharp as a knife, that one, Auntie Angel said. She don’t need any certification to prove it.
    As a matter of fact, Glory was bunking off less than she used to. Her second cousins, Candice and Skye Morgan, liked to put on airs about their fancy schooling and educated ways, and though lessons might bore her stiff, she didn’t plan on being lumped together with the bimbo dropouts who hung around making eyes at Nate and Jacko and the rest.
    Either way, her dad was in no position to lecture. He kept out of coven business, except for doing the accounts, and spent most of his time in his room, playing computer games in which kick-boxing inquisitors armed with fabulous gadgets had to thwart an array of witch-criminals and their evil schemes. He collected the illegal, black-market versions too, in which the witches were the good guys, but the quality of the graphics and game-play was always poor.
    ‘How’s it going with Deathstar Enigma ?’ Glory asked. ‘Cracked level five yet?’
    Patrick’s hands cradled the mug, thin wrists poking out of his fraying jumper. He smiled his vague, sweet smile. ‘Not yet. Tricky. But onwards and upwards, y’know.’
    ‘A shadow of his former self,’ that’s what people said about her dad. Never been the same since his wife walked out one Sunday morning twelve years ago. It had been a long time since Glory had thought of him as her protector, the night-time comforter who, in the end, hadn’t been able to keep the bad dreams away.
    She ran a dishcloth round the soup-speckled microwave. Nobody in this place cleaned up after themselves. ‘Speaking of moving up in the world . . . You hear about Uncle Charlie?’
    ‘He’s not your uncle.’
    ‘OK, cousin.’
    ‘First cousin once removed.’
    ‘Whatever.’ Glory was not interested in the finer points of genealogy. ‘Well, he’s only in the paper schmoozing the PM’s wife. One of these days he’ll be taking over Downing Street himself, I shouldn’t wonder.’
    Patrick’s brow creased doubtfully. ‘I hope I’m not around to see it.’
    ‘C’mon, Dad. I’m no fan of the Morgans’ methods – you know that. But it’s still funny , right? A coven boss hobnobbing with heads of state! Proves how far the likes of us can go, if we put our minds to it.’
    ‘“The likes of us” . . . and what does that mean? Mm?’ Her dad shuffled slowly away towards his room. ‘Careful what you wish for, Glory.’

Chapter 5
     
    Lucas