The craziness of the question draws a furious response. “What sort of a nut are you? I’m falling to my death and you’re discussing the temperature!”

“Answer me,” he says calmly. “Are you cold?”

“No. But what the—”

“At this height, don’t you think you should be? It was in the region of minus forty Celsius on the wing of the aeroplane. Any normal person would have felt the icy bite immediately. You didn’t because magic kept you warm. It can also keep you aloft—if you direct it.”

“What must I do?” I moan, the landscape filling my vision, surely no more than half a minute away from a bone-crunching collision.

“Visualise a bird,” the tramp says. “Think of the way it flies, how it soars out of a dive with the slightest tilt of its wings. Don’t picture your arms as wings or anything like that. Just imagine a bird and fix it in your thoughts.”

I do as he says. Close my eyes and think of a swallow swooping and soaring. I’ve seen them fly many times, when walking home from school or looking out of my bedroom window, glimpsed through the uppermost branches of the forest. They make it look simple—nudge out a wing, duck or pull up their head, catch the wind currents, sail them as if it was the most natural thing in the world. My head rises. The roar of the wind lessens. A new sensation. Not one of falling, but of… I open my eyes. I’m moving away from the earth, arms by my side, legs straight, head facing the clouds, the tramp by my side. Flying.

“There,” the tramp says with a wicked little grin. “Simple, aye?”

Flying high. A creature of the sky. Laughing and hollering with delight. Flying on my front, back, sides—however I please. Somersaulting mid-air, a far greater rush than any roller coaster.

“This is amazing!” I yell at the tramp, who flies nearby. “How am I doing it?”

“Magic,” he says.

“But I’m not trying. I’m not casting spells.”

“True magicians don’t need spells most of the time.”

I stare at him, stunned. “But I’m not a magician.”

“No?” He nods at the earth far below. “Then how do you explain this?”

“But Dervish said… I’ve never… Bartholomew Garadex!” I throw the name out desperately.

“You’re different to Bartholomew,” the tramp says. “Different to every magician I’ve ever known or heard about. But you’re a magician none the less. You draw your power directly from the universe, like the Demonata.”

Mention of the demons reminds me of the plane and its doomed passengers. “We have to go back!” I shout, cursing myself for flying around happy and carefree while Lord Loss and his familiars wreak havoc. “We have to save the people on the plane.”

The tramp sighs. “Dead, all of them.”

“No! They can’t be! We have to—”

“They’re dead,” the tramp says stiffly. “And even if they aren’t, what could we do?”

“Fight!” I roar.

“Against Lord Loss?” He shakes his head. “I’m powerful, boy, and so are you, but Lord Loss is a demon master. We wouldn’t last long in a battle with him.”

“We have to try,” I whisper, thinking of all those men, women and children. Picturing the Demonata and Juni Swan at savage work. “If we abandon them…”

“We’ve already abandoned them,” the tramp grunts. “The choice was taken when I pulled you out. Everyone on that aeroplane is dead and it has crashed—or will shortly—destroying the evidence.”

“You let them die,” I gasp.

The tramp shrugs. “I would have saved them if I could. I’ve devoted my life to protecting humanity from the Demonata. But some battles you can’t win. Some you can’t even fight.”

Flying in silence. Thinking about what happened and what the tramp said. Cold inside and scared. Unable to get the faces of the people—the dead—out of my mind. Yet a big part of me is secretly glad we didn’t go back, that the tramp spared me another run-in with the demons.

“This is insane,” I mutter, looking at the world beneath. “Who are you? What were you doing on the plane? Why have you been following me? I thought you were one of the Lambs. I know nothing about you. I need—”

“Soon,” the tramp hushes me. “I’ll answer all your questions once we’re safe on the ground. For now, just fly.”

And since there’s no point arguing, I tuck my arms in tighter, pick up speed, trail the tramp through the air and try—unsuccessfully—to push the faces of the dead from my thoughts.

We fly for hours, mostly above the clouds where people on the ground can’t see us. I spot the occasional plane, but the tramp always steers us clear. A shame—I love the thought of gliding up to one and tapping on the windows, scaring the living daylights out of the passengers and crew.

I’ve no idea where we are. I didn’t ask Juni where we were going when we set off and I don’t know how long I was asleep, so I can’t judge how far from home we might have been when the demons attacked.

Juni…

Rage seethes up inside me every time I think about her. I trusted her. I thought she was on my side, that she loved me like a mother. And all the time she was playing me for a fool, setting me up for Lord Loss, cutting me off from Dervish.

I want to quiz the tramp about her. Find out where she comes from, how she operates, where I can find her—so I can track her down and burn her for the evil witch she is. But this isn’t the right time. I have loads of questions for the tramp. So much I want to know, that I need to find out. Hell, I haven’t even asked his name yet!

Finally, five or six hours after I bailed out of the plane, the tramp guides me down. The land is barren desert, more rocky than sandy. No signs of human life—it’s been the better part of an hour since I saw any kind of house.

“This is the complicated part,” the tramp says as we come in to land. “The easiest way is to hover a bit above the ground, then stop thinking about birds. After a few seconds you’ll fall.”

“Can’t we touch down?” I ask.

“I can, but I’ve had a lot of practice. If you try it, you’ll probably hit hard and break a leg or arm.”

He spreads his arms and drifts down, landing lightly on his feet. I’m tempted to copy him, to prove I’m nimbler than he gives me credit for. But it’s been a long day and the last thing I want is to break any bones. So I float to within a metre of the rocky floor, then empty my head of images of birds. For a couple of seconds nothing happens. Then I drop suddenly, stomach lurching.

I hit the ground awkwardly, landing face first in the dust. Sitting up, I splutter and wipe dirt and grit from my cheeks, then get to my feet and look around. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Some rocky outcrops and hills, a few rustling cacti, nothing else. “Where are we?”

“Home,” the tramp says and starts walking towards one of the hills.

“Whose home?” I ask, hurrying after him.

“Mine.”

“And you are…?”

He stops and looks back, surprised. “You don’t know?”

“Should I?”

“Surely Dervish told…” He trails off into silence, then laughs. “All that time in the air, you didn’t know who you were with?”

“I was going to ask, but it didn’t seem like the right moment,” I huff.

The tramp shakes his head. “I’m Beranabus.” The name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.

“Beranabus what?” I ask.

“Just Beranabus,” he says, then starts walking again. “Come. We have much to discuss, but it will hold. I never feel safe in the open.”

With a nervous glance around, I hasten after the shabbily dressed man. Several minutes later we come to the mouth of a cave. Not having had the best experience of caves recently, I pause and peer suspiciously into the shadows.

“It’s fine,” Beranabus assures me. “This is a safe place, protected by its natural position and the strongest spells I could muster. You have nothing to fear.”

“That’s easily said,” I grunt, unconvinced.

Beranabus smiles. He has crooked, stained teeth. This close I can see that his small eyes are grey and his skin is pale beneath a covering of grime and dirt. He’s wearing an old, dusty suit. The only fresh thing about him is a small posy of flowers jutting out of one of his buttonholes.