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with various jazzy remnants, including a flowery bit of curtain. Despite his comical clothes, the kid had an air of genuine dignity, as if his tattered hand-me-downs were just a costume he was wearing for the time being.
    We trailed our little urchin through a maze of sleazy courts and alleyways, finally emerging in a street market.
    It was total mayhem. Stall holders competing for who could yell the loudest. Two women having a cat fight, literally pulling out clumps of hair! Plus a driver was backing a brewery wagon into a very narrow entry, while bystanders yelled contradictory advice.
    But the little boy in the patchwork coat just sauntered through the chaos, dodging all the slippery cabbage leaves and fruit peel underfoot cheerfully scuffing up dirty hay with his boots as if it were autumn leaves. He was having his breakfast on the move, I noticed, helping himself to a bread roll when a baker’s boy wasn’t looking, sneaking a quick dipper of milk from under a milkman’s nose.
    He strolled up to a stall selling the lurid Victorian horror comics known as Penny Dreadfuls and started reading furtively, while he munched away on a stolen apple.
    I should be taking notes, I remembered, and fumbled in my bag until I found my notebook.
    Our human is probably about ten years old , I scribbled. But v undernourished, so looks younger. He can read though he doesn’t seem to go to school .
    The Penny Dreadful stall was next to a stand serving freshly-made coffee and cooked breakfasts. An elegantly dressed gentleman stood apart from the regular customers, self-consciously turning his coffee cup in gloved hands, looking as if he’d been up all night.
    “Slumming,” Brice commented. “You get a lot of that here. Toffs coming down to get their thrills.”
    “Toffs!” I mimicked. “Who are you? The Artful Dodger?”
    I’d become vaguely aware of a news vendor bawling on the other side of the market. I couldn’t actually hear what he was saying at first. It was just another raised voice, competing with the voices of barrow boys and costermongers yelling about fresh fish and shallots. Even when I finally managed to make them out, the words still didn’t really register.
    “Another murder in Whitechapel. Read all about it!”
    I saw people gasp and turn to each other to make sure they’d heard correctly.
    I suddenly felt sick. “Omigosh. The Whitechapel Murderer. That’s what they called Jack the Ripper.”
    Lola’s face went white. “The Ripper was in these times? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
    Brice sounded stunned. “I assumed you knew. That’s why I—”
    And suddenly I felt as if I was falling through space.
    I had actually chosen to come here. I’d even imagined it would be fun, like when my mates and I used to watch dross like Jeepers Creepers to scare ourselves into hysterics. But it wasn’t thrilling to be on Jack the Ripper’s turf for real. It felt unbelievably sordid and scary.
    And suddenly I knew what was wrong. It wasn’t the fog and the soot that made the streets of Victorian London so dark and brooding. It wasn’t even the poverty. Plenty of times are poor and dirty, but only a small handful of them are a breeding ground for cosmic evil. And for shallow and pathetic reasons which I was totally ashamed to remember, I had brought my lovely soul-mate to one of them.
     

Chapter Four
    I ‘m not going to try to justify what I did next.
    OK, so possibly my angelic system was affected by its brief exposure to those negative Victorian vibes. That could have clouded my professional judgement. Even so, that’s no excuse.
    I should have called the trip off then and there. I was going to, I was, honestly. I opened my mouth, drew a big breath - and did absolutely nothing. I pictured Brice smirking to himself as I mumbled my way through my apology, then I pictured Lola and him exchanging glances over my head, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give him the satisfaction. There was this crucial split second