City of Magic: The Complete Series by Helen Harper (book club recommendations TXT) 📕

and not just because of the skeleton trees and the thin layer of dead locusts that crunched underfoot as I gingerly walked down the road. There were lumps of fallen stone and gaping holes in several of the houses. At least two of the cars parked at the far end of the street were burning, dark smoke spiralling upwards from them. And there were bodies, several of them.

Anna and Mulroney were already checking them over. Each time they reached a prone, unmoving person and checked for a pulse, their expressions grew grimmer. My stomach churned. The other stuff I could deal with but corpses were entirely different.

I skedaddled to the side of the road and retched violently. By the time I was done and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, Anna was next to me. ‘They’ve all got green eyes,’ she said, her jaw set and her eyes expressionless. ‘Every single one of them. Just like Madrona Hatter.’

‘So they’re all faeries then.’

Her mouth turned down. ‘Whatever faeries are.’

We gazed at each other for a long moment. ‘What’s happening here?’ I whispered. ‘What on earth is going on?’

She shook her head dully and turned away. I pinched the bridge of my nose and glanced upwards. The sky was clear, but something seemed to have changed. When I looked around, it appeared that everything possessed a faint blue aura.

‘Maybe the world really is ending,’ Anna said, pulling her hair out of its tight bun and giving it a good shake. ‘Maybe this is it.’

‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘It’s different, I’ll give you that. But I don’t think this is the end.’ I didn’t want to say it because it felt like a line from a cheesy film, but I had the distinct sensation that this was actually the beginning.

Mulroney stood up from the last body and wiped his forehead. He looked rather green himself – and entirely out of his depth. We all were. I beckoned him over as we heard a distant rumbling sound a few streets away.

‘Now what?’ he muttered.

A head popped out from the upper window of one of the grander houses and I spotted one of my neighbours. He looked completely terrified and I didn’t blame him. ‘What’s going on?’ he called, an audible tremor in his voice.

‘Stay inside!’ Mulroney shouted back. ‘We’re the police! You’ll be fine! Stay inside until you’re told otherwise!’

Anna’s expression was a perfect picture of disbelieving scepticism. ‘You’ll be fine? We have no idea what’s at the end of that street. Given what else has happened, it could be freaking Godzilla.’

I flexed my fingers. ‘Bring it on. At least then we’ll have something proper to fight.’ And I could test myself again to see if I really did have some strange magic flowing around me.

The noise grew louder and all three of us turned to face it. Lizzy stepped into the street to join us but I waved her back. It wasn’t that I didn’t welcome her company but I didn’t want her to do anything, or be anywhere, that might encourage her to change into a furry bunyip again.

There was neither sight nor sign of Madrona and Monroe. Now they had what they’d come for, we’d probably never see them again. If they were still alive. Whatever, we were most definitely on our own.

The rumbling grew louder. Mulroney reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it hard. I don’t think he realised what he was doing because, when I glanced at him, he reddened and dropped it like a hot stone.

‘One problem at a time,’ I murmured. ‘Whatever this is, we’ll deal with it.’

What appeared was indeed a dull green colour but it certainly wasn’t Godzilla. I blinked at the tank as it trundled towards us, knocking off the few remaining wing mirrors on the cars that had so far been untouched by recent events. For one stupid moment, my brain went into shutdown. How were we going to fight a tank? We’d never pierce the armour. Then I saw the soldiers running in formation beside it and the buses following it.

‘This area is being evacuated!’ boomed a loudspeaker. ‘Do not collect your belongings. Leave your houses and get on the buses if you do not have transportation of your own. We will take you to safety.’

For a moment, nothing happened. The loudspeaker bellowed again, repeating what it had said word for word. Then doors opened up and down the street, and people came running out at speeds that suggested they were afraid the sky was about to fall down on their heads. Frankly, that wouldn’t have surprised me.

Anna, Mulroney and I remained where we were and watched. Most people were carrying something; although they’d been hiding inside, they hadn’t been twiddling their thumbs. There were suitcases and teddy bears and cardboard boxes brimming with belongings. I saw old Mrs Foxstone trot out with a gigantic china vase that was almost taller than she was.

‘Leave your belongings behind!’ the loudspeaker repeated.

Several soldiers peeled away and started directing my neighbours, pointing at the suitcases and boxes and ordering them to be dumped. Most people gave in without a fight, as if the energy to care about anything apart from their own lives had been drained from them. They clambered onto the waiting buses with barely a whimper. Others were less keen to leave their precious items behind and clutched onto them for dear life. I saw one fresh-faced soldier, who could barely have been out of cadet school, wrestle a large bag from someone before throwing in unceremoniously on the pavement. Clearly, the troops didn’t think there was any time to waste.

A woman, dressed head to toe in camouflage gear, trotted up to us. ‘Onto the first bus,’ she ordered.

Mulroney started forward. I glanced at Lizzy, who was continuing to watch the proceedings, then I shook my head. ‘I’m staying.’

‘You can’t stay. Your lives are in danger. We’ve set up an exclusion zone twenty miles out of the city. Emergency