London Belongs to the Alchemist (Class Heroes Book 4) Read online

  Bill had a reassuring smile, Lolly decided. He was a tall man with a big stomach. He was black, in his fifties and bald. He helped her to sit on the step of his cab.

  Ravi returned within five minutes carrying two bulging brown paper bags. Thirty seconds later, Lolly was munching her way through a sausage and bacon bap. A Cornish pasty and a plastic tray of chips lay comfortingly in reserve, perched on the lorry’s passenger seat.

  Bill and Ravi fussed over her and kept asking if she was warm enough. Bill gave Lolly a thick lumberjack shirt to put on. Lolly decided it would make a good replacement for the dress, so they gave her some privacy while she took off the ruined garment, put on the shirt and tied it at the waist with one of Bill’s belts. It was huge and came down to her knees. It was the cheapest thing she had ever worn, but she knew her spirits were returning when she decided that actually she managed to rock the look pretty well. Her cuts and bruises were already fading, and some feeling was returning in her left arm. She could actually flex her fingers.

  Barbara, the lady who ran the cafe at the lorry park, brought over two burgers and a coffee.

  “You really haven’t eaten in days, have you?” said Bill. “My missus would have a fit if I had what you’ve just put away.”

  Lolly noted how Bill tried to pay Barbara for the food, but the woman refused to take it. Instead, she mothered Lolly, trying to apply first aid to her remaining scratches.

  Lolly was struggling to come to terms with how kind everyone was being. In her experience, the world was a jungle. A jungle that needed to be mastered, according to her father. But if it hadn’t been for the kindness of these people, she had no idea what would have become of her.

  “You must have someone who you can go to,” said Barbara. “We can find you a bed for tonight, but you can’t stay here forever.”

  “I’m going into central London tomorrow morning,” said Bill. “I can drop you off somewhere.”

  “Well,” said Lolly, an idea forming. “I do have a grandmother. I haven’t seen her since I was six. My stepdad wouldn’t let me.”

  “I’m taking you to her, then,” decided Bill. “And if I ever meet your stepdad he’d better know a good doctor, for his own sake!”

  “Where’s your grandma’s house, dear?” asked Barbara.

  “St John’s Wood,” said Lolly, finishing off the last chip.

  Chapter 46

  My life is ruined, reflected Sam, as she got ready for bed.

  “If Mum and Dad won’t allow me and James to protect Al,” she muttered to herself as she put her pyjamas on, “if we’re stuck in Brighton all day, how are we going to help him?”

  She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth.

  “It’s stupid,” she grumbled, rinsing out her mouth.

  She padded back to her room and slumped on the bed.

  “I can stop Al from getting hurt. I might be able to stop other people getting hurt. I have a responsibility. I can do this. I have my power. Yet Mum and Dad want me to spend the day eating candyfloss and pretending that it isn’t my problem.”

  She got into bed, yanked the duvet up to her chin, and punched the pillow.

  Somehow, some way, she wasn’t going to Brighton tomorrow. She had no idea how she’d manage that, but it just wasn’t going to happen.

  She’d eaten all her dinner and followed it up with a big supper. James, who always ate loads anyway, had troughed like a pig. One thing was for sure, whatever happened tomorrow, they would be fully fuelled to face it.

  She wondered where Lolly had got to. No doubt James was fretting over whether she would return. Sam wasn’t unduly concerned. She couldn’t imagine anybody, not even Nicky Cairo, getting the better of Lolly.

  Her phone pinged. She’d had a text from Al. Her stomach did a somersault.

  ‘Love u baby x I made this for u’

  There was a link to a video. Sam clicked the link. In the video, Al was behind his DJ decks and he performed a rap, all about her! It was the most amazing song Sam had ever heard. So sweet.

  She watched it again, and then again. It made her want to help Al all the more. She simply had to get to that party.

  Her head spinning, Sam turned out her bedside light.

  Chapter 47

  Saturday 21 April

  Sam kept plunging into a deep sleep, before — as if her consciousness was connected to a bungee cord — she was yanked back up into the waking world. She had images of Al on repeat in her brain.

  At two o’clock she turned over, buried her head in the pillow for the millionth time and willed herself to stop thinking about everything and — just Go. To. Sleep. Pleeeease.

  Dad had said they had to be up at seven to leave early and beat the traffic. So if she managed to fall asleep now, she’d get five hours of sleep.

  ***

  She had finally drifted off when an irritating clicking sound woke her up again.

  “Oh, it’s some kind of conspiracy,” she cursed, getting out of bed. She might as well go downstairs and sit in the lounge. It was cold, so she put her dressing gown on over her pyjamas. She disconnected her phone from the charger and put it in her pocket. Might as well play Angry Birds. She opened her bedroom door as quietly as possible — and screamed.

  Something filled the doorway. She saw it only in silhouette. The size of a man but bigger, with an oddly shaped head. A light flashed into her face and she staggered back into her room, falling onto her bed.

  She heard voices that she didn’t recognize. She had an impression of the shape coming closer, but the light blinded her. Then Dad’s voice, shouting out to her, asking if she was all right.

  “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaad!” she screamed.

  Something heavy was on top of her. A thick hand grabbed hold of her arm and placed another over her mouth.

  “The girl,” said a clipped tone. A man.

  “Neutralize target quickly,” said a female voice.

  Sam had no idea what that meant, but she kicked out with her foot. The man lost his grip on her and crashed into the wardrobe. Stunned, Sam lay on her bed for a few seconds, trying to work out what was going on.

  She reached across and flicked on her bedside lamp.

  The man she had kicked was dressed head to foot in body armour. Sam recognized the uniform. Some kind of special forces police thing. And the man was armed, too, with a big, frightening gun. She had kicked him through the doors of the wardrobe, and he was struggling to right himself as her tops and dresses dropped onto his face.

  Sam headed for the door. She glimpsed Dad and Mum being dragged across the landing at gunpoint by two armed police officers.

  “What the hell is going on?” demanded Dad. When he caught sight of Sam, he yelled, “Get James and get out of here.” Then he and Mum were bundled down the stairs and out of sight.

  At that point, she saw James being pulled out of his room with a gun jammed against his head. He was in shock, probably too bewildered to use his powers. The police officer holding him was shouting, “Do as I say! Do as I say! Lay on the floor.”

  A second officer approached James with a hypodermic needle. They were going to drug her brother. They knew! They were prepared. They somehow knew about their powers.

  And then she felt it. The policeman from her bedroom had grabbed her arm and a needle was now sticking out of her neck.

  Sam pushed the man back into her room. He disappeared over the other side of the bed.

  She hastily pulled the needle out of her skin and dropped it on the floor, but Sam had a nasty feeling it was already too late.

  She looked back at James. One of the policemen was pulling at her brother’s arm. Instinctively, Sam charged at the man and sent him crashing back into Lolly’s empty room.

  “Don’t move,” shouted the remaining officer, raising his gun at her. Sam felt woozy. The drug, whatever it was, was taking effect.

  But then the gun pointed up at the ceiling, and then both gun and policeman were lifted into the air by an invisible force an
d hurled down the hall into Mum and Dad’s room.

  James picked himself up, just as Sam lost control of her legs. Her vision swam. And then there was nothing…

  Chapter 48

  Sam woke up with a disgusting taste in her mouth and a familiar smell under her nose. A clinical, antiseptic smell. She opened her eyes and saw a high, white-panelled ceiling. She sat up. She was in the school gym. What was she doing here? A wave of nausea overcame her and she wanted to heave.

  “You ok?” asked a concerned voice, which she gratefully recognized as her brother’s. She managed to focus. She was sitting on a rubber exercise mat.

  Why was she here?

  And then she remembered. The police storming the house, Mum and Dad being dragged down the stairs, the needle, and then she must have passed out.

  “I got you some breakfast,” said James, handing her a chocolate bar and a can of Fanta. “I had to raid the vending machine. I’ll repay it on Monday, but I ain’t got any money on me.” He indicated his outfit. Sam took in his appearance. He was wearing his ridiculous Queens Park Rangers onesie.

  “Were you wearing that in bed?” she asked. If she hadn’t felt so awful, she would have laughed.

  “I was cold,” he said, defensively. “Look, do you want breakfast or not?” He was still proffering the can and the chocolate bar.

  “Thank you,” she said, and took a long, thirsty slurp of the fizzy drink.

  “Was that really the police who broke into our house?” he asked.

  “I think so,” replied Sam, munching thoughtfully on the chocolate bar. “What happened to Mum and Dad?”

  “I think they got taken away in a van,” said James, mournfully. “I should have rescued them. I tried but there were people all over the house. I’m so sorry,” he said, putting his hands over his eyes.

  “It’s not your fault,” said Sam, soothingly. “I couldn’t stop them, either. It all happened so fast.”

  “You kind of pitched over and hit your head,” explained James. “I thought they must’ve stuck a needle in you to drug you. They’d already got Mum and Dad out, and I just grabbed you and teleported us here. It was the first place I thought of.”

  “How long have we been here?” she asked.

  James shrugged.

  “Don’t know. It’s daylight now. Few hours. I didn’t know what to do except wait for you to wake up. I teleported to Nan and Grandad’s house to see if we could get them to help, but there were police there, too. Nobody saw me. Grandad was furious. Going proper mental at the coppers. I think they’re ok. Nobody was arresting them, so I just came back here to wait with you. What we gonna do?”

  Like she had all the answers! Sam needed to clear her head. She remembered putting her phone in her dressing-gown pocket. She checked and to her relief it was still there.

  The time was 07:03.

  She tried ringing Mrs Stannard. Surely she could help sort this mess out. It went straight to voicemail.

  “What do you think has happened?” Sam asked.

  “Obvious, innit,” replied James. “Mrs Stannard has shopped us. After that bust up with Dad the other day, she blames us for Lolly killing their agent. We are right-royally screwed.”

  “Then what are we going to do? Where can we go?” Sam started to panic. Despite all the horrible things that had happened to them in the past, they’d always had their home and family to rely on.

  Alone, she and her brother were in danger. They were easy targets. They would be homeless, on the run, like Lolly had been.

  Sam hugged herself tightly. She had a flash of self-awareness. She had been so horrible to Lolly when the girl had turned up at their door, all lost, frightened and alone. Sam had been totally dismissive of her plight. Now she was getting a taste of what homelessness felt like and all of a sudden she understood Lolly’s desperation.

  It was hard to admit that Sir Michael and Lolly had been right all along. Being different was crushingly isolating.

  “James, I’m scared,” she said.

  “I am, too,” he said, staring at the wall.

  ***

  Sam and her brother sat on the exercise mat, lost and oblivious to the passing of time. Sam wondered if MI5 could track her phone. Would they know she was here? They hadn’t shown up yet, so maybe not.

  At exactly nine o’clock, she nearly jumped so high she could have hit the ceiling. Her phone pinged and the Party Jacker icon appeared at the top right of her screen.

  Sam and James looked at each other in puzzlement.

  “I thought Dad cleaned your phone?” said James.

  “He did,” Sam replied — and then she realized. “But Al sent me a video. It must have put the app back on my phone.”

  The map loaded moments later and a small, blue triangle centred on the school gym. It then panned out and displayed the rest of Ealing, with a small, orange push pin centred on the site of the demolished Ealing cinema.

  James crawled closer so he could take a look.

  “I’d forgotten about the treasure hunt,” he said. “Hardly seems important now, does it?”

  “Maybe we should go and see Al. He might be able to help us.” Sam just really needed to be with him right now, although she didn’t want to put it like that, exactly, to her brother.

  “Good idea,” said James. “I can teleport us close to where he lives. Maybe he’ll take us in.”

  “Let’s pick up the treasure on the way. We need to find out what it is. If we go now, we should get there before anybody else.”

  “Dressed like this?” asked James, pointing at his onesie and Sam’s pink dressing gown. “We look ridiculous.”

  “We’ll need to be quick, then. Come on. Take us there.”

  “We could look in lost property for some clothes?”

  “Are you mad? That’s gross. I’m not wearing some other girl’s stuff. We’ll borrow some clothes at Al’s. Come on. Cinema first.”

  She reached out and held her brother’s arm.

  “We’re never going to live this down,” he said, gloomily, and suddenly Sam’s stomach lurched and she instinctively closed her eyes.

  ***

  When she opened them, she was standing in the alleyway between the Lebanese restaurant and the remains of the cinema. The majority of the building had been pulled down, but the frontage of the cinema was listed and as such had been preserved. It was propped up by scaffolding and surrounded by portable office cabins.

  The whole site was surrounded by construction boards. Sam hadn’t seen anybody working here for months and there didn’t seem to be anything going on now. She felt sad. She’d seen her first Harry Potter film at this cinema.

  She also felt extremely self-conscious. The pink dressing gown practically glowed in the early morning sunshine. She had nothing on her feet and the cold pavement — and the thought of what disgusting things might be layered on it — made her shiver.

  “Where’s the cache?” asked James, looking around him nervously. There was nobody in the alleyway, but Ealing Broadway was already bustling with people and traffic.

  Sam checked her phone. According to the marker, they were standing right on it.

  “We need to look around,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to see,” said James.

  He had a point. The alleyway was empty. It was just brick wall on one side, white construction boards on the other and paving stones underneath. Not even a bin.

  “I reckon it’s in the building site,” declared James. “Your boyfriend seems to have some kind of weird fetish for building sites.”

  Sam snorted.

  “Come on, then,” she said. She leapt up and grabbed hold of the top of the construction board. She pulled herself over the top, ensuring her dressing gown and pyjamas didn’t snag on the wood. She dropped down into a cold puddle on the other side, splashing her legs. Ugh, that was just gross.

  She looked up to see James standing beside her. She hadn’t heard him clamber over. He was grinning from ear to ear.
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  “Did you just teleport through?” she asked, fuming.

  “Yep. I looked through a little hole in the board to see through to this side, then just—”. He snapped his fingers to demonstrate the act of teleporting. “Much easier, less mucky,” he said, smugly.

  “And you just watched me struggle and get dirty?”

  “Well, you only needed to ask,” he said, infuriatingly. “Come on, before everyone else from school gets here.”

  He started picking his way through the rubble. Sam did the same. The problem was the size of the site. It covered a large area and it was littered with chunks of masonry. They had no idea what they were looking for, or even if it was here. Where would I hide a box of stuff? she asked herself. This was impossible. There was simply no way to second guess where Al had concealed it.

  “Found it,” called James. He was about ten metres away, beckoning her over, and struggling to wrest a metal box from underneath something that might have been an old sink.

  Sam didn’t want to give James the satisfaction of knowing she was impressed, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “How come you found it so quickly?”

  “The toilets,” he said, lifting up a broken urinal and throwing it aside.

  “What?” asked Sam, baffled.

  “Well, if I’d hidden it, I’d have put it where the toilets were,” he said, as though no other explanation was needed.

  Sam couldn’t even begin to fathom the logic of that statement. She pulled a face.

  “It’s funny,” he added. “Treasure hunt. ’Course you’re going to put the treasure where the toilets were.” He laughed. “It was right underneath that one there,” he added, pointing at a discarded urinal. He carried on his struggle of trying to pull the metal box into the clear.

  “Can you give me a hand instead of standing there looking pink,” he grumbled.

  “I’m not touching that. It’s a boy’s toilet,” Sam recoiled.

  “The rain has probably cleaned it,” pointed out James.

  “I don’t care, I’m not going near it. It’s yuck. Now shut up about toilets and open the box.”