It didn’t take much convincing to get Cora on board in the hunt for Ruben. She was still in the dark about the whereabouts of her friend Liam, and if it was true that Ruben had poisoned Dax, it seemed very likely he would also have had something to do with the abduction.

Cora met them at Victoria Station, and two Tube rides and three buses later they were stood at the edge of Epping Forest, looking in at the vast thicket of trees.

“I always knew there was something off about that scrawny alchemist,” Cora said as she prepared her scanning spell. “Right, step back.”

Cora traced a strange symbol in the air with her finger, leaving behind a glowing purple line, then she pushed it with her palm and it dispersed. Saffie had never seen anything like it, and neither had Nate judging by his confused expression.

“She’s a glitch hunter,” Saffie said to him, and Nate nodded slowly with one eyebrow raised, seemingly none the wiser.

Cora turned back to them and scrunched up her face.

“He’s too far inside for me to pick up any signal here. We’ll have to go in blind and explore until something pops up on my radar.”

“What do we do when we find him?” said Nate.

“We stay calm,” said Saffie. “As much as I’d love to blast him with a fireball for what he did to my uncle, he’ll just run away if we frighten him, and we’ll have no chance of getting any answers.”

Nate agreed, and Cora didn’t answer, so with that, they began their journey into the forest.

As they squished the soft, mossy floor, Saffie found the air to be hot, humid, and still, and the further in they went, the stranger the place became. Wide, glowing discs of fungi began to adorn the forest’s knotted trees, strange flowers seemed to release intoxicating aromas as they brushed against them, and the sound of cackling pixies echoed from the distant depths.

“You’d think there’d be no internet signal for Overworld to exist out here,” Nate pondered.

Cora gave him a sideways glance.

“This isn’t the noughties,” she said. “Everywhere has signal.”

As they scouted for Ruben, Acorn chased and pounced on little glowing flies, and Talia soared high through the leafy canapés. Vesper, on the other hand, floated a few yards ahead of them, scouting for any unusual movement, which had to have been difficult because the forest was alive with Overworld creatures and critters.

At one point, Cora wafted her hand above the group, saying “Impenetrable,” and a blanket of glittering purple light fluttered over them.

“A Pinestinger ward,” she explained, continuing to walk. “You don’t want to get stung by one of those. It’d make you lose your mind.”

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They continued on under the protection of the ward in relative silence for a while, until Saffie broke it with a question that had been on her mind since her confrontation with Cora.

“Why the library? How did you even get in there?”

“I have secret access,” she said, as if that explained it, then she added, “my mother works there. I duplicated her key a long time ago and learned how to disable the security alarms.”

At the mention of Cora’s mother, another question suddenly popped into Saffie’s mind.

“What are Liam’s parents doing about his abduction? They contacted the police, right? They have to be looking for him.”

Cora sighed.

“Liam’s parents… kind of think he’s at a summer camp right now.”

“Then what about the camp leaders?” Saffie asked. “Where is this summer camp?”

“It doesn’t exist,” said Cora. “My parents, his parents. We lied to them all so we could spend the summer glitch hunting out in the wild. We even set up fake scheduled messages to be automatically sent from our phones. His mum would have gotten a text from him just this morning saying ‘Made so many great friends here!’ We even took staged selfies to go with them. Us in the pool, us with camping gear, us around a bonfire.”

“That’s kinda genius,” said Nate. “Until one of you gets kidnapped.”

“Yeah,” said Cora. “We convinced them the camp stay had to be paid in cash, and planned to live on that cash. Wait, I’m getting something - a signal.”

Cora stopped and turned to her left, then began walking in that direction. Saffie and Nate could only follow.

They continued following Cora for another hour, and Saffie could feel that her real clothes underneath her Overworld robes were now sodden with sweat and sticking to her skin.

“Guys, I’m starting to strugg-” Nate began, but was cut off by Cora, who hissed “Shhhh!”

She put one finger to her lips, and with her other hand pointed at a tree just to their left that was practically illuminating the surrounding area with the amount of colourful fungi growing from it.

There was a deep voice.

“Leave my forest, trespassers.”

Saffie spun around, raising her hands, ready to cast a spell, but she couldn’t see anyone. Nate drew his dagger and swiped it a few times in front of him.

“Who’s there?” Cora snapped.

“The tree.”

Saffie felt her whole body stiffen as her eyes darted across the surrounding trunks.

“The tree?” Cora said. “Which tree?”

There was a short pause.

“The… um… all trees.”

Cora rolled her eyes, and Saffie relaxed a little.

“You should have drunk more of that voice deepening potion, Ruben,” Cora shouted. “There’s no mistaking that irritating voice of yours!”

There was the sound of a glug and a gulp before a slightly deeper voice said:

“Never heard of a Ruben. I am trees.”

Saffie continued to glance around her, and noticed that there was something odd about a particularly gnarly trunk on her right. One of its knots slowly peeled itself open to reveal a blue eye that surveyed the group, then quickly shut itself again when it saw Saffie was staring right back at it. She could now make out Ruben’s whole, gangly body, pressed against the bark, with his toad panion Bultras clutched in his arms. He had to have taken some kind of camouflage potion.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Saffie said loudly, and she heard Cora mutter “Speak for yourself.”

“We just want to ask you some questions,” Saffie continued. Patches of pink flesh and blonde hair started bleeding through the bark. The effects of his camouflage potion were beginning to wear off, and Saffie could see panic rising in his face. With a swift movement, Ruben yanked a bottle from his belt, which Saffie at first thought had to be another camouflage potion, but instead of drinking this one, Ruben threw it at the forest floor and it shattered.

A plume of yellow smoke billowed from the smashed bottle and consumed the area, making the group cough and splutter. As Saffie caught her breath and peered into the smoke, she could just about make out a silhouette getting smaller and smaller. Ruben was making a run for it.

Saffie was too exhausted to play nice any more.

“That’s it,” she said angrily. “Get him.”