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juddering pain in my shoulder and I fell down. I landed hard on my bare elbows, pain and pavement scratching across my arms, and looked up. Two men, their faces covered, their hands grasping for my purse. I felt it tugged from my hands, almost before I could blink. The mace was in there – worse than useless, now they had it. I tried to scream, but my chest felt constricted and no breath seemed to come. One of the men kicked out at me, I ducked away and his shoe missed my face by millimetres. I was on my feet now, backing down the alley, knowing that going deeper was stupid, that I was going further from the bright lights and the crowds that could help me, but the two men were blocking my way out.
    My right ankle twisted and I staggered with a yelp. The heel of my shoe had slipped into a crack in the pavement. As I tried to regain my balance there was a plastic splintering noise and it broke off. I could feel my hands and arms and knees trembling, like an earthquake was passing through me. One of the muggers grabbed for me and I couldn’t move quickly enough – as I tried to duck away his hand struck the side of my head, all the bones in my jaw ground together and flashing white dots swarmed in front of my eyes. I felt one of them grab my hair and push me back, further away from the road.
    I tried to lash out, not much more than a desperate flail – but my arms twitched all over and wouldn’t move right. A giant, body-shaking shudder ran all the way down my spine and I convulsed under the man’s hands, so hard he actually let go. My legs wobbled and gave way and a juddering shock of impact ran through my whole body as my knees hit the ground. My face felt numb and tingling at once.
    Was I having some kind of fit?
    I can’t feel my fingers .
    One of the men made a choking noise and dropped my purse. I lunged for it with all my might, but I only managed to roll onto my front, my legs kicking out behind me. He leapt away, turned and ran, with his friend not far behind him.
    My stomach churned and I tried to crawl forwards but my arms and legs just twitched and jumped. I felt something slide across my back and looked down to see the dress hanging off me – my cleavage, my arms, all of me, shrinking and changing and...
    When the orange fur burst from my hands, I finally understood.
    For about five seconds, panic turned my mind into a swirling pool of madness and I twisted, scratched and bit at anything I could still reach, my mouth full of Cavalli silk and my claws scraping along the pavement.
    But then I breathed in, and I lay down on my side, keeping still except for the heaving of my ribs. The world rose up all around me, like time-lapse footage of mushrooms ballooning in the forest. I let out a yelp as my arms drew back into my body and my elbows clicked into their new positions. I could feel myself flattening against the concrete. My ears twitched involuntarily. I screwed my eyes tight shut and yowled, feeling my tailbone lengthening and pushing out of my back. I could feel the hairs on my tail, feel it swishing beneath the fabric of my dress.
    I opened my new eyes onto a different world.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I was a fox.
    Everything smelled. And not just in a bad, back-alley way – although there was a patch of stink just to my left that set alarm bells ringing in my mind. Human territory , it said, foul, keep away .
    But everything smelled – the pavement carried the scent of sand and metal and dirt and heat, a city-smell, underlying everything around me. I could faintly make out a tangy, fizzy airborne smell coming from the electric lights out on the street.
    I bent to sniff my dress, intrigued. On top of the synthetic, fabric-dye-smoke-alcohol I could smell from the dress itself, my human scent was floating, unmistakeably animal. My instinct told me female , and comparing it with the foul patch to my left confirmed that as male , and mature , and something chemical – which, after a second’s puzzled thought, I