The London Pride Read Online Free Page B

one way, exactly what he had found them to be: jolly good and willing to sacrifice themselves to help rescue his sister.
    There was something else about them that had changed.
    ‘They’re glowing a bit,’ he said. ‘Bluish …’
    The fireman closest to him nodded.
    ‘They all are. Something to do with whatever is stopping them moving.’
    Will remembered the blue light from within the museum, and the chanting and the blue flash that had radiated out from it as Bast had roared her curse. He looked more closely at the statues. There was a thin coating on them, not quite like a frost, more like a skin of water that wasn’t wet and didn’t slide off the metal beneath.
    ‘No time to hang around,’ said the fireman. ‘You get these two back to Grays Inn Road. Then, Quad, you go like the clappers and get this Grenadier back to Pall Mall. You’ll be cutting it fine, so get a ruddy bend on.’
    Will and Jo held on tight as Quad flicked the reins and set them in motion, overtaking a pair of marble women in togas who were carrying a heavily bemedalled soldier in Victorian dress uniform sporting an impressively lavish moustache and a surprised expression on his unmoving face.
    ‘Mind your backs, ladies!’ whooped Tragedy. And they were off.
    And as they jinked through the stalled traffic and the groups of statues rescuing other statues, the worst thing was not the unfamiliarity of it all, or the slight seasicky feeling caused by the swervy stop–start motion. It was that the streets – frozen in time before the lights had come on – were not as dark as they had been.
    ‘It’s the people as well,’ said Jo. ‘They’re getting a blue glow too.’
    She was right. The thin film, the not-quite-frost and not-quite-wetness that coated the statues was also covering the people, making them glow a faint blue that – when the pavements were crowded – provided their own source of light.
    What neither of them said, as they passed these knots of people, glowing in the dark, was that somewhere in the city their mother was like this, encased in a skein of blue magic, unmoving and alone.
    The thought of this kept them quiet for a good ten minutes. Will saw they were on High Holborn and picking up speed as they got closer and closer to the Fusiliers Monument in the middle of the street. He saw the broken-backed figure in the distance and felt like retching at the sight of it.
    ‘It’s getting worse,’ said Will. ‘I think it’s my fault.’
    ‘Will,’ said Jo. ‘Why does everything have to be your fault! It’s like you’re totally addicted to being guilty or something. It’s not healthy. And this whole thing isn’t our fault. Everything freezing is not your fault.’
    ‘Not the city freezing, that’s not my fault,’ he agreed. ‘But the soldiers? Think that’s down to me. Was my fault you got taken by the dragon, so it’s my fault they had to rescue you. And because they helped me, this happened. Because of me, it got much, much worse.’
    She looked at him.
    ‘You’re SUCH a misery guts,’ she said. ‘And you know how they say misery loves company?’
    He nodded.
    ‘Well, sometimes company doesn’t love misery back, Will! Sometimes company thinks misery is a real pain in the—’
    The chariot came to a sudden halt and they had to grab on to avoid being thrown forwards.
    ‘Look out!’ said Tragedy, pointing at two winged shapes dropping out of the sky in front of them. ‘Here comes trouble …’

6
Bathed in blue
    Bast the Mighty had allowed her lion-headed hand-maidens to carry her back into the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. The museum curators were still frozen in the fatefully unwise act of replacing the broken chunk in the black sarcophagus. It had been unwise because in doing so they’d completed the strip of picture-writing ringing the sarcophagus. Blue light had immediately swept round it, activating a charm freeing Bast from the curse that had penned her immobile inside the body of a small