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conscious decisions about where you’re going. Decisions you can undo.”
    “And won’t these Regulators have registered the Shifts?” I said, straightening up.
    “Probably, but in the chaos it’d be hard to pin it down to one Shifter. Come on, I think it’s this way.”
    We wandered down side streets as Aubrey tried to get her bearings. The mix of adrenaline and alcohol flooding through my system was making me feel giddy. I was walking the streets of London with a beautiful girl and I was thinking that anything was possible. Apart from going home, it turned out.
    It took me a while to place the repetitive bleeping coming from my inside pocket. At first I thought it might be another alarm. I finally remembered it was my phone and answered the call.
    “Scott, where the hell are you?”
    “Hugo! My man. You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
    “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours. These men turned up at the Rec. Official looking, like something straight out of Men in Black, you know?”
    That started to sober me up. I looked at Aubrey and mouthed the word “ARES”.
    “They started asking questions about whether anything unusual had been going on, and Lucas, the idiot, told them about you trying to climb the Pylon and they started asking all kinds of questions about you and what you were like and how they could find you, and Lucas, the absolute moron, gave them your address. And then they left. It was really weird.”
    “S’OK, Hugo. It will be fine. I’ll catch you tomorrow.” I hung up as Hugo started to mumble about aliens. “Looks like they’ve tracked me down after all,” I said to Aubrey.
    “Well, it was going to happen, I guess. I’ll take you in tomorrow and we’ll try and explain. In the meantime, you can crash at mine,” Aubrey said. “My place isn’t too far from here.”
    Shock and confusion chased themselves around my foggy head. Settling on smug satisfaction, I grinned.
    “Don’t even think it,” Aubrey said, glaring at me.
    “No, of course not, I mean, I never even thought,” I lied badly. “I’d better call my parents.”
    I fumbled in my pocket for my phone and tried to bring the glowing screen into focus.
    The phone rang about fifteen times before it was finally answered.
    “Hello?” I heard a tired Katie from the other end.
    “Katie? What are you doing up?”
    “Well, there was this annoying ringing noise,” she said sarcastically. “And given that Dad’s snoring in front of the TV and Mum’s out in the shed, someone had to shut it up. What do you want, Scott?”
    “Oh, right, well, I’m sort of not coming home.”
    “Are you drunk?” she whispered, and I could hear a muffle as she covered the phone with her hand.
    “No! Well, I might be a teeny weenie bit tipsy. But that’s not important. Katie, I need you to cover for me.”
    “What do you want me to say?”
    “I don’t know. You’re good at making things up. Just make it believable.”
    “I’ll tell them you and Hugo have finally come out and you’ve run away to get married then?”
    “Ha bloody ha.”
    “I say you’re staying over at Hugo’s. Playing your dumb monster games, will that do?”
    “I love you Katie.”
    “Yeah, yeah. You owe me, big time. Oh, and you might want to come up with something better to explain why two men from the government came looking for you earlier,” she said and hung up before I could ask any more.
    I leant the cold screen of the phone against my head. I was going to be in so much trouble. But I could worry about that tomorrow.
    Aubrey was patting a painted sculpture of an elephant, which seemed pretty random in the middle of the street. But given the evening I’d had, I was lucky it wasn’t a dancing, talking elephant.
    “All good?” she said.
    “Um, yeah. All good,” I said.
    We walked down a street of kebab shops and minicab places. This was what my mother would call, “not the nice part of town”. The old tramps growling at us as we