Rampage!

SMASH!

The ancient amphora of red roses crashed against the wall, narrowly missing an oil painting of Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, before exploding in a shower of shards, water and blooms that slithered to the floor.

WHAM!

A two-thousand-year-old Greek urn spun through the air, slammed into a watercolour of Queen Marie Antoinette’s pinkly smiling face, and splintered the glass across her neck.

CRACK!

The heel of an airborne stiletto shoe (with the latest sapphire-blue sole) struck the sketch of King Harold, slap-bang in the eye, and sent the picture tinkling to the ground.

Pausing for breath, Medea the immortal Greek sorceress, surveyed the pictures of all the other famous people, now shattered and hanging wonkily on the walls of her secret room tucked deep beneath her London boutique. Beside each person’s ruined portrait hung a framed sketch of the clothes they were wearing in the
picture, showing the sorceress’s designs for their outfits – ones that she had later hand-stitched for them.

The ones that they had died in.

She turned to the earliest portrait. A pretty Greek woman smiled back from beneath the broken glass, radiant in a headdress of cream roses, dressed in a snow-bright wedding
chiton
. Now little more than an image on crumbling parchment, it still gave Medea an icy thrill whenever she looked at it.

Princess Glauce.

Her first ‘customer’.

Faintly soothed by the sweet memory of that success, Medea began walking along the row. Here was Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor, with a wreath of laurel leaves in his hair, draped in the handmade cloak of damson purple, on the day he was stabbed to death. Beside him, a papyrus sketch of Cleopatra clad in the cream linen kaftan she’d been wearing when the poisonous asp bit her. Several pictures along, Anne Boleyn, the English queen, stood quietly glamorous in a silvery-grey gown in front of the executioner’s axe. A cheering General Custer in his buckskin jacket and a big hat with gold stars stitched on its band was next, leading his last charge, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and further along Captain Edward Smith beamed from beneath a gold-brocaded cap as he stood on the top deck of the RMS
Titanic
.

Medea smiled coldly as she strolled past the images of each of her celebrity clients.

Until her gaze fell upon the last ‘picture’ in her
collection, nothing more than an empty frame, hanging beside a sketch of a gorgeous pink gown. She glowered at the teasing blank glass and felt a snarl curl in her throat. It should have held a picture of Hazel Praline, the teenage pop sensation, all candyfloss-coloured cheeks and blonde ponytail. She flinched, hearing a thin echo of the girl’s voice, twittering like a Texan sparrow on the stage at Leicester Square, at the premiere of her movie.

The last time she’d seen her.

The last time
anyone
was supposed to see her.

Three weeks ago.

Turning away, the sorceress caught her hand on a sprawling vine. Standing in its own gravel bed, it had been a luxury lolling spot for Hex, Medea’s familiar,
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a deadly black mamba snake, who’d loved snoozing in its crags, his coffin-shaped head gorgeously ominous. Actually, as far as the sorceress was concerned, lolling, snoozing and
looking
ominous were the only things Hex was ever any good at, since he’d preferred them to anything as messy as magic. Which was why she’d planned to dispose of him.

Horribly.

Except that he’d even managed to spoil that fun by deserting her first.

Three weeks ago.

Swiping the vine with the back of her hand, she sent
it clattering to the floor in a storm of snapped branches and scattered stones.

Now, those of you who weren’t brave enough to read about Medea in my last book might be surprised at this sort of behaviour. After all, you probably expect an Ancient Greek sorceress to be a beautiful woman, trailing the skirts of her long green velvet dresses around a workshop tangled with ivy whilst she gazes dreamily at vials of indigo-coloured potions. Rather than, say, using her private art gallery as a firing range?

Well, reboot your brain.

Because whilst it’s true that Medea was certainly beautiful, with wide silver eyes, a tip-tilted nose and long black hair, brightened by a single streak of violet, the only trailing she did was of bitter curses. Stroking was reserved for the snugly-wuggly fur on tarantulas’ tummies and, as for dreamy, well, only about as dreamy as a lizard seconds before it flips out its carpet-roll tongue and snaps up fly-breakfast.

And I’m afraid it gets worse.

You see, for hundreds of years, Medea had been horribly busy, stitching the glittering curls from the Golden Fleece into her own range of handmade clothes created for the rich and famous, the special few whose pictures now hung on the walls around her. The Fleece, as you might already know, was a ram’s coat made of dazzling gold ringlets and its rightful owner was Aries, who was indeed a ram, now a ghost ram, and a bald one at that.

Long ago, the Fleece had hung in a sacred grove in
Medea’s homeland of Kolkis, or at least it had until Jason, a Greek prince, arrived with his fifty men, the Argonauts. (The full story is in the back of this book, because frankly I don’t feel like talking about it now.) Falling deeply in love with him, the sorceress helped him steal the Fleece, and together they’d sailed off into the moonlight.

And lived unhappily ever after.

Because, you see, no sooner had the confetti been swept from the palace steps than Jason left Medea for another woman, Princess Glauce. Yes, that’s right, the lady in the first portrait. However, in deserting Medea, Jason had unwittingly condemned his lovely new bride to the sorceress’s Changing Room of Doom. Now mixing sorcery and stitchery for the first time, Medea used the Fleece to fashion the most magnificent wedding dress as a gift for Glauce. Beautiful and shimmering, it wreathed the young princess’s body like mist and pooled in pearly ripples at her feet. But, as she cooed over her gorgeous reflection in the looking glass, the gown burst into flames and killed her.

And the rest, as they say, is history, because ever since that day the sorceress had snipped and stitched through the centuries, feverishly sewing twists of golden wool into the clothes of the richest, most powerful and glamorous people on Earth. Banned by the Greek gods from the Underworld
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for her wickedness, she’d simply
vanished for decades at a time, only to reappear years later, bright and talented, at the courts of new kings and queens and emperors, military leaders and film stars alike, creating their most glorious outfits, the ones that they died in.

Gasp!

         
Thud!

                   
Aaaargh!

                                   
Thud!

                                              
Urgle!

                                                         
Thud!

Like that.

But all things, even
bad
things, come to an end, and finally so did the Fleece.

Three weeks ago.

Oh, it had been with sadness that Medea had used its last curl in Hazel Praline’s dress, but it had been with mind-numbing, blood-freezing, cat-squealing fury that her plans for creating a hundred more Golden Fleeces to power her evil magic had been foiled. By Aries, together with his best friend Alex, a ghost boy, who’d returned from the Greek Underworld to find the Fleece. Up in modern London, they’d met Rose, who, in case you’re wondering, wasn’t a ghost but an ordinary twelve-year-old schoolgirl, who helped them to defeat a sorceress. Which, when you think about it, makes her rather un-ordinary. A fact that, unfortunately, Medea had already noticed, so that even now after everything 
that had happened, remembering Rose’s sweet face made the sorceress’s heart flutter like a poisonous octopus in a warm tide. Which is thoroughly
bad
news, because believe me, being the object of a sorceress’s soft spot is absolutely not what you want to be.

You’ll see.

Medea slumped down on to the sofa and clenched her fists. Oh, how she ached to fling deadly curses at Aries and Alex, to squash them like June bugs. Just thinking of Aries with his mad rammy face squashed up against Rose’s wild red ringlets as she hugged him, and that goody two-sandals, Alex, made the blood thunder in her ears. If she ever saw those two again, she’d turn them into toads and stamp on them and paint her bedroom walls with the goo and dye some fabric in what was left over to make a matching set of curtains and, well, you get the picture because, without their outrageous interference, not only would Hazel be nothing more than a downloadable tinkle of songs featuring the late tragic star but Medea would still have serious sorceress power of the cruellest, wickedest and most grimly gruesome kind.

Because, you see, without power – the particular sort of power that a Golden Fleece provides – sorcery is rather like trying to make a decent brew without a kettle. You end up with a cup of cold water, a sorry-looking teabag and nowhere to dunk your Custard Cream. Thanks to Alex and Aries, Medea had been reduced to
the level of a common-or-garden witch, an elementary witchette with a few dribbly-magic tricks that even the most hopeless Brownie working for her first badge in Supernatural Wickedness could pull off.
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She scowled.

Was it any wonder that she’d lost it when the police flooded into the theatre that day and she’d punched those officers? It was their own fault for buzzing around her like houseflies and stopping her from getting her hands on the boy and the ram. Whilst those two had scuttled back to the Underworld, where she could never reach them, she’d been arrested, spent a night in a grubby cell on a bunk bed with a scratchy blanket and been sentenced by a judge who looked like a walrus with a beard to three weeks of community service.

She, Medea of Kolkis, forced to spend the last twenty-one days polishing policemen’s boots, cleaning the toilets at the local library and washing up after banquets at the Mayor’s offices! Giving herself a quick mental shake, she reminded herself that now was not the time to reminisce. There were far more important things to think about. Her Plan B, for finding a new source of magical power. Quickly stepping out of the scattered mess of vine on the floor, she swept her hair into an untidy bun and turned back to the group of portraits from the seventeenth century. A row of snooty
women with powdered white faces and tight red lips regarded her as she passed before stopping in front of a portrait of two men. A father and son, they smiled out kindly, sharing the same handsome, heart-shaped faces, shoulder-length dark hair, beard and neat moustache. Walter Raleigh, a nobleman at Queen Elizabeth I’s Court, and his son, Wat, who’d explored the New World
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together. Ever the seamstress, she paused for a moment, admiring her handiwork on their linen shirts and stiff lace ruffs, recalling how the Flanders lace had made her fingers sting. But it had been worth it. Her efforts always were. Chuckling, she recalled the news of their delightful deaths.

She quickly lifted the picture off the wall to reveal a small safe. A few taps and twists later, the door creaked open and she lifted out its contents: a tattered roll of parchment and a blue velvet bag. The parchment was mottled the colour of weak tea, and steeped in a pungent smoky smell that made her nose tingle. Unfurling it gently, she was delighted to see that the four-hundred-year-old writing and picture, scrawled in chocolate-brown ink, was still clear. Next, she snatched up the bag and glimpsed inside, catching a glint of engraved gold.

Clutching them both to her chest, the corners of the sorceress’s mouth twitched upwards and her eyes grew
dark, flat and dead as a shark’s when it senses a vibration in the water and, with a flick of its tail, turns towards the splashing of swimmers by the shore.