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of Troy . I told him her flirting would start a fight! Do you know what he said?’
    â€˜No, ma’am,’ said Alex hurrying past page twenty, page twenty-one …
    â€˜That the roses could do with a pruning!’ exclaimed Persephone.
    Page twenty-two …
    â€˜Three thousand Greeks about to be wiped out, and Hades is talking to me about gardening! That’s why I had to call Aunt Athena.’
    Page thirty-one.
    Alex felt his jaw drop.
    â€˜What is it?’ demanded Aries, batting down the edge of the magazine with his muzzle. ‘“Fashion designer turns over a tropical new leaf”?’ he read. Yes, read, because Aries, like Alex, still owned the gift of tongues that Athena had bestowed upon them earlier in the summer, the ability to read, speak and understand any language on Earth, including the Spanish in the magazine that the queen had brought back.
    â€˜ Tropical leaf?’ He looked up at Alex. ‘I thought the police in Britain were dealing with her.’
    Which was charmingly optimistic, really.
    Don’t get me wrong, London’s police force is famous the world over, but even the capital’s finest is up against two major problems with Medea. One, she’s a crafty lying sorceress. And two, well, like I said, she’s a crafty lying sorceress.
    Which Alex might have pointed out, had the photograph not frozen him speechless.
    In it, Medea stood at the centre of a group of men and women with black hair, cut high over their brows, and golden-brown skin. Like everyone else, she waswearing a printed sarong and a necklace strung with yellow and blue feathers. Silvery-eyed, she smiled out from beneath a spectacular headdress of black feathers, each of their tips splashed with white whilst her face was painted with ochre-red stripes that ran in lines over her nose and cheeks, making her look like a cat. A scratchy, spiteful one.
    Seeing the sorceress’s icy face again, Alex felt his heart start to hammer and, taking a second look at the wide paddle-shaped leaves behind her, he was grimly certain that their feathery fronds and the fire-red flowers cupped in them were nothing like the spindly trees he remembered seeing on London’s streets.
    â€˜She’s in Brazil,’ explained Persephone, pulling herself back up on to the throne. ‘The Amazon rainforest.’
    â€˜The Amazon?’ said Alex, exchanging a nervous look with Aries.
    There was a nervous snap of fangs as Hex squirmed through Aries’ horns and stretched up into the air and looped about Alex’s shoulders, in order to look at the magazine.
    â€˜According to this,’ said Alex, scanning past pictures of a waterfall and a tall mountain of rock, ‘Medea’s heading into the jungle to make jewellery with a tribe in the Amazon rainforest. ‘In an exclusive interview with our magazine,’ he read out loud, ‘she told our reporter that she wants to make amends for what she calls her terrible behaviour towards the police at the Leicester Square Luxe theatre earlier in the summer. “I can’t imagine what cameover me,” she said. “I’m so ashamed. Now I just want to put it all behind me by doing something good.”’
    â€˜Something good?’ Aries groaned in disbelief.
    â€˜The magazine says,’ replied Athena, ‘that the Amazon Indians share their traditional skills with her and are properly paid for their wares in return. They call it Fair Trade.’
    â€˜Ssscare trade, more like,’ muttered Hex. ‘There’sss no way ssshe’sss there out of the kindnessss of her heart. Ssshe does-s-sn’t have one.’
    Aries turned and clattered over the floor to the pile of packing cases by Persephone’s throne and pressed his muzzle against the Scroll.
    â€˜Oy! Paper knickers! You’re supposed to know everything. What’s she really up to?’
    â€˜As a matter of fact,’ replied the Scroll primly,