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bitterly. Or a statue that’s stepped off its stand.
    He stared for a moment longer, before looking down at the crocodile ring on his finger. It was now entirely gold. Not even a glimmer of silver remained to show that some last vestige of humanity remained in his blood and bones. His body was one hundred per cent Denizen. Or perhaps even something more, as the gold shimmered with its own soft light and its colour varied from a rose gold to the butter yellow of the pure metal.
    Arthur shut his eyes for a moment and shook his head, trying to cast away the feelings of self-pity that were rising inside him.
    “I don’t…I don’t care,” he said softly to his reflection. “I have a job to do. It doesn’t matter what I have become. It doesn’t matter what I look like.”
    He pushed open the door and softly trod downstairs.
    I hope no one is home, he couldn’t help thinking. I hope they’re safe somewhere else. And that they don’t have to see me this way.
    The house was very quiet. Arthur slipped quietly down the stairs, pausing to listen every four or five steps. He had learned to be cautious. He was also wondering what he should do. He couldn’t stay – that was for sure. He had to get back to the House as soon as he could. But before he did that, he might need to stop time again. Or perhaps try to clean up whatever had happened…
    At the landing just before the living room, Arthur stopped and took a deep, unfettered breath. He still found it amazing that he could take such a breath, one that went to the very bottom of his lungs, and that he could breathe out again without wheezing or difficulty. His asthma, like his old body and even his old face, was apparently gone forever.
    After taking that breath, Arthur walked into the living room – and stopped as if he’d hit a wall. There was his mother , who was sitting on the sofa and reading a medical journal, as if she had never disappeared, as if the world outside was normal, as if all the things that had happened to Arthur, his family and the city had never occurred.
    Arthur took a step forward, ready to hurl himself upon her and hug her as tightly as he could, torecapture that sense of safety that he had always felt in her embrace.
    But after that first step, Arthur hesitated. He had changed so much, he was so different to look at. Emily might not even recognise him. Or she might be afraid of what he had become.
    Either situation was too awful to contemplate. Arthur’s hesitation turned into a terrible fear and he began to back away. As he did so, Emily put the journal down and turned her head, so that she was looking directly at him. Arthur’s eyes met Emily’s, but he saw neither recognition nor fear in her gaze. In fact she looked right through him.
    “Mum,” Arthur said, his voice weak and uncertain.
    Emily didn’t respond. She yawned, looked away from Arthur and picked up the journal again, touching the screen to bring up a different article.
    “Mum?” Arthur walked right up to her and stood behind her chair. “Mum!”
    Emily didn’t respond. Arthur reached out to touch her shoulder, but stopped an inch away. He could feel a strange electric tingle in his fingers, and his knuckles pulsed with the ache of sorcery. Slowlyhe pulled his hand back. He didn’t want to accidentally set off a spell that might hurt – or even kill – her. Instead he held his hand out to cover the screen of her journal. But she kept reading, as if his hand was simply not there.
    The article was about the Sleepy Plague, Arthur saw. It was entitled “First Analysis and Exploration of Somnovirus F/201/Z, ‘Sleepy Plague’” and was written by Dr Emily Penhaligon. The Sleepy Plague had been the first of the viruses that had been spawned by the presence of the First Key and other intrusions from the House. Though swept away by the Nightsweeper that Arthur had brought back from the Lower House, other viruses had been created by powers of the House that should not have been