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citizens of the city were smiling, laughing even, as they bustled about their lives, the insensitive bastards. How could they? Didn't they know his lifelong dream had just gone up in smoke right along with Stuttley's bloody staff factory?
    No. They didn't. And even if they did, would they care? Probably not. Nobody cared. Not even Reg. She'd flown off and left him. He was all alone. Alone, disgraced and unemployed.
    Stop snivelling, Dunwoody,
he told himself derisively.
Self-pity doesn't suit you.
    Maybe not, but wasn't he entitled? After three failed attempts at wizarding hadn't he earned himself at least one small snivel?
    All I wanted was to be a wizard. Is that so damned much to ask?
    Yes. Apparently it was.
    The motor he'd driven out to Stuttley's belonged to the DoT carpool.When he wasn't on official business he caught the bus. Well, he couldn't afford to do that any more. He'd have to watch every last penny now until he somehow managed to find another job. Street-sweeping, probably, if he decided he really couldn't face his revolting cousins and the tailor shop his father had loved and toiled in for most of his working life.
    With his spirits sloshing about his ankles he headed for home, the Wizards' Club, where he rented a room.
    But for how much longer he had no idea.

    At the time of its official opening - October 19, 1274, according to the tarnished plaque by the front doors - the Wizards' Club had been brand spanking new. The wrought iron gates were shiny and silent, the brass-bound front doors undented and scratchless, the windows unwarped, the roof tiles gleaming, and its sandstone bricks clean and creamy white like newly churned butter.
    But down the long centuries the club's pale sandstone bricks had acquired a patina of soot and ivy; exotic weeds began a ceaseless war for equal squatting rights amongst the flowerbeds; and a tangled jungle of briars, blackberries and tigerteeth grew up to flourish like living barbed wire around the property's perimeter, guaranteeing privacy without the tedium of having to regularly renew unfriendly incantations.
    Now, nearly six hundred years later, all that could be said of the club was that it was still there, defiant in its grimy and time-twisted old age like an ancient relative who refuses to be decently shuffled off to the Sunshine Home for Old Wizards.
    Dusk was dragging slow fingers through the tops of the ornamental amber trees as Gerald dawdled his disconsolate, chilly and blistered way along the quiet street. Even the starlings settling in for the night sounded derisive as they commented on his reluctant progress towards the club's now rusty and slightly mangled front gates.
    His heart sank as he scanned the visitors' car park. Errol Haythwaite's gleaming silver Orion. James Kirkby-Hackett's scarlet Chariot. Edward Cobcroft Minor's black Zephyr. Oh lord. They were
all
here? So soon?
    Well, of course they were. Haythwaite and Co had probably rushed right over as soon as the news about Stuttley's hit the streets.
    He perused the residents' car park, hoping to see Monk Markham's battered blue Invincible, but it wasn't there. Hardly surprising. Monk's current secret project for the Department's Research and Development division had swallowed him alive, metaphorically speaking. He hadn't been home for three days.
    Gerald sighed. A pity. Monk was his best friend, and such a genius not even the likes of Haythwaite and Co dared to offend him. What he was doing renting rooms at the club and slaving away as a civil servant when he could name his price anywhere in the world and have his pick of palaces to live in was a mystery.
    The lowering sun sank a little further behind the trees. He shivered.
    Come on, Dunwoody, you gutless worm. You can't loiter out here on the footpath all night. Might as well get it over with.
    He stared at the gates. They were shut. To open them, all he had to do was wave his hand and say the word.
    Except ...
    What if it didn't work? Walking home he'd