All you Need is L-- er... Leverage

Harold looked perturbed when I finished telling him about the trip to Offley Street.

"Then what?" he said. "Did the hero get the girl or what? You stopped halfway through."

"What hero?" I said. "Have you listened to a single word?"

"Of course." Harold pulled his duvet over is lap and rested his cup there. "This Winston fellow is obviously in love with the Welsh bint so the story should end with a 'happily for weeks'."

"It's not a story, Harold. This is where I was all day yesterday. You know Winston and Meinwen. They've both been to this house in the past. Now I have a Faery portal in the workshop that contains a wanted felon. and I can't winkle him out."

"Wanted by Hell's minions," said Harold. "I can't say I blame him, really. Stay in Faery or go and have a boiling lava bath in Hell for the rest of eternity?"

"He slaughtered his own wife and children, Harold. That would be like you killing Lucy to open a Gate. This is worse than your Grandfather Herbert. He was an evil so-and-so but at least he never got as far as sacrificing his own children – or anyone else's for that matter."

"Well what am I supposed to do about it?" said Harold. "You tried, you failed, you came crying to me. End of story."

"It's not the end of the story at all," I said, wishing for someone else to ask. I could ask Julie, I suppose, but she doesn't have the innate cheery 'luck of the devil'* that Harold has possessed since birth. "I need you to go in and pull Thorburn out of Faery so he can get his just desserts."

"Pudding?" said Harold. "Why didn't you say?"



*quite literally