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I returned to the Dragonslayer’s office to find the whole street crowded with even more journalists, TV crews and onlookers. The police had thoughtfully closed the road, erected barriers and kept the public to the far side of the street. I parked outside and jumped out of the Slayermobile to the rattle of cameras and popping of flashbulbs. I ignored them. I was more concerned with a small man dressed in a brown suit and wearing a matching derby hat. He was aged about forty and tipped his hat respectfully as I placed the key in the lock.

‘Miss Strange?’ enquired the small man. ‘I’ve come about the job.’

‘Job?’ I asked. ‘What job?’

‘Why, the job as apprentice Dragonslayer, of course.’

He waved a copy of the Hereford Daily Eyestrain at me.

‘On the Situations Vacant page. “Wanted—”’

‘Let me see.’

I took the paper and, sure enough, there it was in black and white: ‘Wanted, Dragonslayer’s apprentice. Must be discreet, valiant and trustworthy. Apply in person to number 12, Slayer’s Way.’

‘I don’t need an assistant,’ I told him.

‘Everyone needs an assistant,’ said the small man in a jovial tone. ‘A Dragonslayer more than anyone. To deal with the mail, if nothing else.’

I looked past the small man to where there were perhaps thirty other people who had also replied to the advert. They all smiled cheerily and waved a copy of the paper at me. I looked back at the small man, who raised an eyebrow quizzically.

‘You’re hired,’ I snapped. ‘First job, get rid of this little lot.’ I jerked my head in the direction of the wannabe apprentices and went inside. I shut the door and wondered quite what to do next. On an impulse I called Mother Zenobia. She seemed even more pleased to hear from me than usual.

‘Jennifer, darling!’ she gushed. ‘I’ve just heard the news and we are so proud! Just think, a daughter of the Great Lobster becoming a Dragonslayer!’

I was slightly suspicious.

‘How did you hear, Mother?’

‘We’ve had some charming people around here asking all kinds of questions about you!’

‘You didn’t tell them anything, did you?’

I had no real desire to have my rather dull childhood splashed all over the tabloids. There was a pause on the other end of the phone, which answered my question.

‘Was that wrong?’ asked Mother Zenobia at length.

I sighed. Mother Zenobia had taken over the role of my real mother almost perfectly, even that unique motherly quality of being able to acutely embarrass me.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I replied with a trace of annoyance in my voice, a trace that she obviously didn’t pick up.

‘Jolly good!’ she said brightly. ‘If you get the offer to appear on the Yogi Baird Radio Show don’t turn it down, and if I may say so, I think Fizzi-Pop is a fine product. I have a jolly pleasant young man who is very keen to talk to you.’

I thanked her and rang off. The doors to the garage opened and the small man in the brown suit expertly reversed in the Rolls-Royce. He hopped down from the armoured car, put the sword and lance away – he could without being vaporised, since I had employed him – and offered me a small hand to shake.

‘Gordon’s the name,’ he said brightly, pumping my arm vigorously. ‘Gordon van Gordon.’

‘That means “Son of Gordon”, doesn’t it?’

He nodded enthusiastically.

‘I come from a long line of Gordons. My full name is: Gordon van Gordon Gordon-son ap Gordon-Gordon the IV.’

‘I’ll stick to “Gordon”,’ I said.

‘It may save some time.’

‘Jennifer Strange,’ I announced, ‘pleased to meet you.’

‘And you.’

He didn’t stop shaking my hand. He seemed so happy to be here he wanted everything he did to last as long as possible so he could savour it to the full.

‘I don’t know who put the ad in the paper but it wasn’t me,’ I told him.

‘That’s easily explained,’ he said with a grin. ‘It was me!’

‘You? Why?’

‘I wanted to be first in the queue. Dragonslayers always need an apprentice so I thought I would save you the trouble of advertising.’

‘Very enterprising,’ I said slowly.

He raised his hat again. ‘Thank you. A Dragonslayer’s apprentice has to be discreet, valiant, trustworthy and enterprising.’

‘Gordon?’

‘Yes?’

‘Can I have my hand back?’

He apologised and let go.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s our first move, chief?’

‘Nothing yet. I’ll be living over at Zambini Towers as usual but it might help to have some food in the house. The Quarkbeast likes to rest in a dustbin; you’ll have to buy one from the hardware store but make sure it’s painted and not galvanished as he will chew it. He eats dog food but isn’t particular as to the brand. He needs a link of heavy anchor chain to gnaw on a week and a spoonful of fish oil in his water dish every day – it keeps his scales from chipping. Do you cook?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m vegetarian but not particularly militant – you can eat what you want.’

He had been scribbling down notes on his cuff. I swore him to secrecy and told him about the prophecy regarding next Sunday. This filled him with greater enthusiasm than cooking, dustbins or the Quarkbeast’s peculiar eating habits.

‘Great!’ he enthused. ‘I’ll change the oil on the Slayermobile so when you come to do some slaying we’ll be ready and—’

‘Wait a minute!’ I interrupted hurriedly, grabbing his lapel between finger and thumb as he tried to hurry off. ‘I want to make this very clear. I don’t ever intend to actually kill a Dragon.’

‘So why are you a Dragonslayer?’ he asked with blinding directness.

‘Because . . . because . . . well, that’s the way Old Magic made it happen.’

‘Old Magic?’ he said uneasily. ‘Wait a minute. You never mentioned anything about Old Magic in the advertisement.’

‘Didn’t I?’

‘No. We’re going to have to discuss new terms if Old Magic is involved.’

I thought for a second.

‘Hang on. Gordon, you wrote the advertisement!’

He paused for thought.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ he said at length. ‘Well, I’d better let it go this once, then.’

He looked crestfallen, but soon perked up when I told him he could be my press officer, and he dashed off to get some paper and crayons from the dresser to draft a quick press release.

I needed to get back to Zambini Towers but hadn’t got more than one pace from the door before a scrum of people quickly ran towards me.

The first to talk to me was a businessman wearing a very large hat and an expensive suit.

‘Jethro Ballscombe,’ he said, passing me a business card the size of a roofing slate. ‘I want to make YOU a very rich young woman.’

He grinned at me, showing a ridiculously large gold tooth that must have made metal detectors in airports throw an electronic fit. He thought that my silence indicated assent rather than a curious interest in his dentition, so he continued:

‘Do you know how much people will pay to come and see a real live Dragon?’

He grinned wildly, expecting me to leap up and down or something.

‘You want to put Maltcassion in a zoo?’

He put an arm around my shoulder and hugged me as though I were a long-lost niece.

‘Not so much a zoo but his own special one-species family-entertainment exclusive themed adventure park.’

He waved a hand in the air and stared into the middle distance to make his point.

‘DragonWorld(^TM),’ he gasped, hardly daring to say the word owing to the size and breathtaking audacity of the project. ‘You and me, partners, fifty-fifty. What do you say?’

He smirked at me expectantly, moolah signs in his eyes, waiting for my reply.

‘I’ll mention it to him,’ I said coldly, ‘but he’ll probably say no.’

‘Mention it to who?’ he asked, genuinely confused.

‘Why, Maltcassion, of course!’

He slapped me on the back and laughed so loudly I thought he would surely choke.

‘I like a girl with a sense of humour! Well, that’s agreed, then. You won’t regret it!’

He shook my hand heartily and bade me goodbye, climbed into a waiting limousine and was gone, convinced that his project was a certainty.

Another man tried to collar me about licensing a range of collectible ornamental plates entitled The World of the Dragonslayer and there was even another offer from Fizzi-Pop, this time for forty thousand moolah. I told them I wasn’t interested and then, with the press clamouring for a further statement, I nipped back inside. I found Gordon van Gordon vacuuming up the grey ash that had once been Brian Spalding.

‘I know, I know,’ he said when I remonstrated with him. ‘I’m going to put him in this empty syrup tin. You can take him up to the Dragonlands next time you go.’

It was fair enough. I looked for a back door to the building and opened it on to an alleyway that was thankfully empty. I made my way quickly to the Dog and Ferret, where I had left my Volkswagen, and drove from there back to Zambini Towers.