Carmitha eyed the ring in surprise. “Right. Next time I need a mansion I’ll remember.”

They both grinned sheepishly.

“Take care, Carmitha. I want to see you when I come back, when all this is over.” Louise twisted around, preparing to climb down.

“Louise.”

There was such disquiet in the voice that Louise froze.

“There’s something wrong about Titreano,” Carmitha said quietly. “I don’t know if I’m just being paranoid, but you ought to know before you go any further with him.”

A minute later Louise clambered gingerly down the side of the caravan, keeping hold of the pump-action shotgun, the cartridge belt an uncomfortable weight around her hips. When she was on the dirt track she waved up at Carmitha. The Romany waved back and flicked the cob’s reins.

Louise, Genevieve, and Titreano watched the caravan turn around and head back up the rucked road.

“Are you all right, Lady Louise?” Titreano asked courteously.

Her fingers tightened around the shotgun. Then she took a breath and smiled at him. “I think so.”

They struck out for the aerodrome, scrambling through ditches and over hedges. The fields were mostly ploughed, ready for the second cereal crop, difficult to walk on. Dust puffed up from each footfall.

Louise glanced over at Genevieve, who was wearing Carmitha’s pendant outside her torn and dusty blouse, one hand grasping the silver bulb tightly. “Not long now,” she said.

“I know,” Genevieve replied pertly. “Louise, will they have something to eat on the aeroambulance?”

“I expect so.”

“Good! I’m starving.” She trudged on for another few paces, then cocked her head to one side. “Titreano, you’re not dirty at all,” she exclaimed in a vexed tone.

Louise looked over. It was true; not a scrap of dirt or dust had adhered to his blue jacket.

He glanced down at himself, rubbing his hands along the seams of his trousers in a nervous gesture. “I’m sorry, little one, it must be the fabric. Although I do confess, I don’t remember being immune to such depredations before. Perhaps I should bow to the inevitable.”

Louise watched in some consternation as mud stains crept up from his ankles, discolouring his trousers below the knee. “You mean you can change your appearance whenever you want?” she asked.

“It would seem so, Lady Louise.”

“Oh.”

Genevieve giggled. “You mean you want to look all silly like that?”

“I find it . . . comfortable, little one. Yes.”

“If you can change that easily, I think you ought to adopt something which will blend in a bit better,” Louise said. “I mean, Gen and I look like a pair of tramps. And then there’s you in all your strange finery. What would you think of us if you were one of the aeroambulance crew?”

“Finely argued, lady.”

For the next five minutes as they crossed the fields Titreano went through a series of alterations. Genevieve and Louise kept up a stream of suggestions, arguing hotly, and explaining textures and styles to their mildly befuddled companion. When they finished he was dressed in the fashion of a young estate manager, with fawn cord trousers, calf-length boots, a tweed jacket, check shirt, and grey cap.

“Just right,” Louise declared.

“I thank you, lady.” He doffed his cap and bowed low.

Genevieve clapped delightedly.

Louise stopped at another of the interminable walls and found a gap in the stone to shove her boot toe in. Straddling the top of the wall she could see the aerodrome’s perimeter fence two hundred yards away. “Almost there,” she told the others cheerfully.

The Bytham aerodrome appeared to be deserted. Both hangars were closed up; nobody was in the control tower. Away on the other side of the mown field the row of seven cottages used by station personnel were silent and dark.

The only sound was the persistent clang of the church bell in the village. It hadn’t stopped ringing the whole time they had walked across the fields.

Louise peered around the side of the first hangar, clutching at the shotgun. Nothing moved. A couple of tractors and a farm ranger were parked outside a small access door. “Are there any possessed here?” she whispered to Titreano.

“No,” he whispered back.

“What about normal people?”

His brown face creased in concentration. “Several. I hear them over in yon houses. Five or six are malingering inside this second barn.”

“Hangar,” Louise corrected. “We call them hangars nowadays.”

“Yes, lady.”

“Sorry.”

They swapped a nervous grin.

“I suppose we’d better go and see them, then,” she said. “Come here, Gen.” She pointed the shotgun at the ground and took her sister’s hand as they walked towards the second hangar.

She really wished Carmitha hadn’t given her the weapon. Yet at the same time it imbued her with an uncommon sense of confidence. Even though she doubted she could ever actually fire it at anyone.

“They have seen us,” Titreano said quietly.

Louise scanned the corrugated panel wall of the hangar. A narrow line of windows ran the entire length. She thought she saw a shiver of motion behind one. “Hello?” she called loudly.

There was no reply.

She walked right up to the door and knocked firmly. “Hello, can you hear me?” She tried the handle, only to discover it was locked.

“Now what?” she asked Titreano.

“Hey!” Genevieve shouted at the door. “I’m hungry.”

The handle turned, and the door opened a crack. “Who the hell are you people?” a man asked.

Louise drew herself up as best she could manage, knowing full well what she must look like to anyone inside. “I am Louise Kavanagh, the heir of Cricklade, this is my sister Genevieve, and William Elphinstone, one of our estate managers.”

Genevieve opened her mouth to protest, but Louise nudged her with a toe.

“Oh, really?” came the answer from behind the door.

“Yes!”

“It is her,” said another, deeper voice. The door opened wide to show two men gazing out at them. “I recognize her. I used to work at Cricklade.”

“Thank you,” Louise said.

“Until your father fired me.”

Louise didn’t know whether to burst into tears or just shoot him on the spot.

“Let them in, Duggen,” a woman called. “The little girl looks exhausted. And this is no day to settle old grudges.”

Duggen shrugged and moved aside.

A line of dusty windows was the sole source of illumination inside. The aeroambulance was a hulking dark presence in the middle of the concrete floor. Three people were standing below the plane’s narrow, pointed nose; the woman who had spoken, and a pair of five-year-old twin girls. She introduced herself as Felicia Cantrell, her daughters were Ellen and Tammy; her husband Ivan was an aeroambulance pilot, the man who had opened the door. “And Duggen you already know, or at least he knows you.”

Ivan Cantrell took a vigilant look out of the hangar door before closing it. “So would you like to tell us what you’re doing here, Louise? And what happened to you?”

It took her over fifteen minutes to produce a patched-up explanation which satisfied them. All the time guarding her tongue from uttering the word possession, and mentioning who Titreano really was. As she realized, those two items would have got her ejected from the hangar in no time at all. Yet at the same time she was pleased with her white lies; the Louise who had woken to a normal world yesterday would have just blurted the truth and imperiously demanded they do something about it. This must be growing up, after a fashion.

“The Land Union with modern energy weapons?” Duggen mused sceptically when she was finished.

“I think so,” Louise said. “That’s what everyone said.”

He looked as if he was about to object when Genevieve said: “Listen.”

Louise couldn’t hear a thing. “What?” she asked.

“The church bells, they’ve stopped.”