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smaller and taking a look around the inside of a few of the houses, but her instinct told her it was beginning to get late. She remembered the phoenix with longing, and became aware of the time she was wasting by trotting up and down the empty street. There would be other nights for investigating; all she needed to do was to find out where she was and she could come back any time. So she trotted along until she found the sign on the wall which told her the name of the street. To her dog mind it meant nothing, just a white square with bits of black stuck on it, like the bits of cars which were at her eye level and which had to be avoided if they were moving.
    Tess looked along the street. There was no sign of anyone around but she still felt too exposed to Switch. The nearby houses had tiny front gardens with low walls; no cover at all. The best place she could find was the pavement between a transit van and the windowless corner wall of the end house. She slipped in there and sat down close to the kerb. Then, with a last glance around her, she Switched. She waited for a minute or two, then got up and strolled back to look at the street-name. There was still no sign of anyone awake. She had been lucky.
    Back in bed once again, Jeff Maloney found that he couldn’t sleep. He lay on his back first, then each side in turn, and finally on his stomach, but he just couldn’t get comfortable. He thought about his last girlfriend and about his next one, whom he hadn’t yet met but who would be perfect in every way when he did. He thought about what he would do on his day off, and what he would do in his summer holidays, but nothing worked. Every time he got comfortably absorbed in his thoughts, the slightly slurred voice returned to his mind: ‘It’ll be your loss if it’s gone by then.’
    Eventually, with a sigh of exasperation, he threw back the covers and sat up on the edge of the bed. ‘I should have been an accountant,’ he said to himself.
    It was as well that Tess, in the shape of a pigeon, was able to cross the city faster than Jeff Maloney could cross the park. At the time he was visiting the barracks and getting the exact location of the alleged sighting, Tess was joining the three-toed phoenix on the branch of the tree outside her window. But the distant glimpse that the zoo-keeper got of two flecks of gold rising into the night sky was enough to rouse his curiosity.

CHAPTER FIVE
    T HE FOLLOWING MORNING, WHEN Tess’s father went into her room to wake her, he found her bed empty. As he looked round, his heart filled with anxiety, he noticed that Algernon’s cage was empty too.
    â€˜Tess?’ he called, checking the bathroom and going on down the stairs. ‘Tess, where are you?’
    â€˜What’s wrong?’ called her mother from the bedroom.
    â€˜Can’t find Tess. Don’t worry, she can’t be far away.’
    She wasn’t. He saw her as soon as he drew the curtains in the kitchen, out in the back garden on her hands and knees.
    He opened the window. ‘What on earth are you doing out there, Tess? You gave me the fright of my life.’
    Tess looked up, revealing a nasty-looking graze on her cheek and another above her nose. ‘I was looking for Algernon,’ she said. ‘I brought him out for some exercise this morning and he’s disappeared.’
    It was the only excuse she could think of. She had arrived back from the second spell of being a phoenix just a few minutes ago, and realised that she had no way of getting into the house. Her window was closed, and it would take too long to find her way into the right system of underground passages if she tried to get in as a rat. There hadn’t been much time to think.
    â€˜But it’s hardly even light yet,’ said her father. ‘Why on earth did you get up so early? And what’s happened to your face?’
    Tess’s mother, always put on edge by the slightest sign of