Outside Vampire Security's gloomy building, Julie found me a plastic bag to sit on to protect the front seat of her rust bucket car that refused to start, the engine spluttering into life and then cutting out three times before she persuaded it to stay on.

Gareth and his colleagues bundled the still trussed up Dorian, Kirsty and Gregor into a car. Like me, we were still all under arrest.

Kirsty waited until we were five minutes away before speaking. "There's plenty I can do. I'll ensure the way you were treated is made public and I'll demand an inquiry into why Vampire Security and Sunshine Health employed a sacked security chief and a man who was charged with corruption and suspected of trying to kill your baby."

It's always easy to hear a 'but' before the word is said.

"But I can't do anything about the charge of you handling stolen goods. I'm sorry, and I'm going to have to drive you straight to a police station or they'll arrest me too. Rightly or wrongly, it's such a serious crime because of the value of what was stolen you're probably looking at substantial jail time. Fifteen years, maybe more."

Mirac growing up never knowing his mum as Kyle would refuse to let him visit his jailbird mother. Weekly visits from Sharon where we stared at each other through Perspex screens. Me in an orange jumpsuit, carrying slops on a tray in a dining room while watched by a hostile crowd, all of them waiting for the prison guards to turn their back so they could jump me.

Maybe I'd watched too many TV series set in prisons, but it would be safe to assume I'd be a target for a lot of people.

My eyes burned, and I blinked dislodging fresh tears. Julie took her hand off the steering wheel—a manoeuvre that took us perilously close to the central line before she righted herself—and opened the glove box.

"There are tissues in there."

I took the packet out and blew my nose.

We'd reached the city's main police station. Kirsty drove straight up to the front door. Inside, the woman on the desk wrinkled her nose at the state of me—piss-soaked jeans, battered face and bald patch all too evident. But the questioning this time took place in a well-lit room, Julie by my side and with two officers who didn't use their fists.

They asked the same questions repeatedly.

"Where did the goods come from? Who told you about them? When did you have this discussion with that person? Did you steal them yourself?"

I said 'no comment' to everything, which made the officers sigh. They didn't punch me, so I considered it a win.

When they mentioned how much bail money, I would need to put up to be released, I wailed. "But I don't have much money!"

Julie retrieved a credit card from her bag. "I'll pay it."

Astonishment made me open and shout my mouth, goldfish-like. At the front desk, she waved the card over the Square reader payment machine and the figure with its too many noughts flashed up.

The swing doors to the police office closed behind us as we wandered out, me a free woman once more. It was still Christmas Day, the streets around us eerily quiet. The battery on my phone had died hours ago. Sharon must be doing her nut in.

"Thanks, Julie. You've been so wonderful and I'm so sorry, and..."

She held up a hand. "Just don't do a runner, right? It's not my money anyway—it's Dorian's."

Some jobsworth had slapped a parking ticket on Julie's car. She peeled it off the window screen, shaking her head. "They make them work on Christmas Day. Wow."

"Dorian's money?" I asked.

"Yup. He owns the building where you were storing those chemicals. Can you see yourself home? I need to bail him, Kirsty and Gregor out too."

Bloody hell. How much would that cost? Dorian must be seriously loaded. He was one of those affable guys who was friendly enough, but never gave much away, but a lot of things fell in place. I'd first met him when he reached out to Justin, the unexpected kindness touching, a firm declaration he didn't approve of the world as it was. Then, the way he and Justin had disappeared down south for months. Had he been working on a plan all along? He must be the same age as Jonno Dupont. Maybe they'd known each other for years, hatched up a plan to steal from Sunshine Health, and recruited me to help...

Mind mulling this over, I set off for Sharon's house, the wind picking up. It would take me at least 40 minutes, if I hadn't frozen to death before I got there.

The by-now familiar taxi pulled up ten minutes later. Not Jason this time, though. My father thrust open the door.

"Hop in," he said, "I'm going to take you somewhere and explain everything."

*****

Jonno let me charge my phone, which bleeped repeatedly the second it powered on. Missed calls and messages from Sharon, and several from Cheryl, and Marc Andre, who acted as the Liberal Life Party's whip—i.e. the guy in charge of ensuring politicians toed the party line. They must have got wind of my arrest.

I took a deep breath and phoned Sharon. "Where are you?" she squawked, voice loud and clear even though I hadn't put her on speaker phone. Jonno raised an eyebrow.

"With my dad."

"Christ almighty. Is he anything to do with this—you getting arrested? NewsNow says you're involved in an alleged case of stolen goods worth millions of pounds! And Kyle turned up with Mirac."

The all-too ready tears threatened again. "Is Mirac okay?"

"Fine, but you'll need to come home asap if you want to see him. Kyle's been here three hours already and he's really pissed off."

God, what was I to do? Jonno sent me an imperceptible shake of the head. If I wanted an explanation—and presumably a way out of this mess—I would need to delay returning to Sharon's and annoy Kyle even further.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," I said, praying that Sharon would work magic on Kyle and persuade him to stay.

Jonno patted my knee awkwardly when I hung up. "I'm sorry."

"What for? Abandoning us all those years ago? Or for dumping a near-impossible task on me and then disappearing? Not taking me straight to Sharon's, so I can see your grandson and persuade his father to hand him over, so I get to spend some time with him before they fling my sorry ass in jail?"

"Guilty, as charged. And I know sorry doesn't cover it. I used to tell myself what I did was for the greater good of humanity, but Jason reckons I'm an adrenaline junkie pure and simple. He's right."

"Whatever. Why can't this explanation take place in the car, so I can get back to my son before his dad storms out of Sharon's in the huff?"

"There's someone I need you to meet."

His eyes flicked to the mirror. "Christ. That Ford Mondeo never gives up. You see those traffic lights ahead? We're gonna overtake those two lorries in front of us and then get the lights to change to red the minute we're past them, okay?"

"I don't know how to...

"Yes, you do."

With that, he flattened his foot to the floor and the car sped off, hurling past the HGVs, and narrowly avoiding the oncoming traffic, whose drivers hastily twisted their cars out of the way and honked their horns.

The lights ahead stayed green. I shut my eyes and pictured the sequencing of traffic lights as I'd found out in that long-ago traffic control committee meeting. Red, red-amber, green, amber, red. As our car sped through, the light changed, and behind us the lorries halted.

"Won't the Mondeo just drive past them?" I asked, and Jonno shook his head. I wrenched myself around in the seat to the sound of cars tooting and brakes screeching.

"While you were working your magic on the lights—great job, by the way—the second lorry spilt its load all over the street," Jonno said, grinning at me. "Do you like cabbages?"

"God, no. Does anyone?"

"That's what the lorry was carrying. They're now rolling all over the road and preventing anyone from going anywhere."

Despite everything, I laughed—a snigger that turned hysterical as I imagined the outrage on the faces of those people in the Ford Mondeo trying to negotiate their way over thousands of cabbages. And hey, wouldn't the kids of Dunrovia love us for ensuring their well-meaning parents couldn't put cabbages in shopping baskets for days to come? When they eventually let me out of prison, I'd tell Mirac the story.

Jonno's car turned into a residential area near the big park in the south of the city, and into a long driveway up to a red-brick mansion. "This is your safe house?" I asked, having imagined a basement flat in one of the more crowded parts of the city.

"Yup. Always hide in plain sight. The house is registered to one Elizabeth Hamilton. The granddaughter of James Hamilton. Name ring a bell?"

The man who'd drawn up the agreement that put in place state licensing laws for vampires. It its original form, the agreement had been strict but fair. In later years, successive National Conservative governments had added clauses making the regulations tougher and tougher.

The door on the garage to the house's left lifted automatically, as Jonno approached. It opened into a space big enough to house eight vehicles. Jonno parked nearest to the door on the right, which opened as we got out of the car.

The woman who stepped out came as a surprise, though maybe it shouldn't have taken me aback. She wasn't dressed in her usual 'uniform', instead clothed in a silk dress, high-heeled pumps and her short hair gently curled.

Jonno smiled at her. "Maya, meet Elizabeth Hamilton."

Elizabeth Hamilton stepped forward to embrace me—thin, wiry arms wrapping around my body.

"Hello, Maya."

"Hello, Nell."

AUTHOR'S NOTE - thanks for reading! Next update, Friday 13th August, 2021.