Excerpt:
I put the devil's toenail on the ground cloth. Then I knelt in front of it and curled the hair round it into a circle.

That looked classy, sort of magical—not that I believe in magic, obviously, haven't for ages, not ever, really: not ordinary sorts of magic, anyway. But this was something different. Something special.

Right. Now I had power. Lots and lots of power.

And somehow it was as if a small voice inside me was whispering: Thing revenge.

The power was like a bud: quite suddenly it opened up all around me, so big that things went out of focus and made me dizzy. And the small voice inside me was saying, You can have whatever you want: and it was showing me pictures of all the different things I could do.

It was so confusing that I almost wished for the wrong thing. I mean, it was all very well to think, Make Dad fall off a cliff; but then how would we get home? (Mum doesn't drive: she's useless.) And when I thought about Dad falling—his coat going up over his head, and his legs kicking—well, I sort of decided it wouldn't be practical.

But parents are the enemy, Stevie. You don't care about them.

I was so dizzy by then that I wasn't even sure which way up was; but at the same time I felt like you do when you're at the top of a really big slide—and I knew I had to let myself go for anything to happen. Just for a moment I almost chickened out; but the something inside me was still whispering about revenge, and of course it was right. Well, when you have enemies you have to get your own back, don't you? If you don't, they just do more and more and make fun of you for being useless. At my old school there was a boy like that and things got worse and worse for him.

So what would a cool person do, Stevie?

When you look at the cool people, they've all got the right idea, which is to hit back really hard. Gavin Osbourne, he said Daniel was gay, and Daniel and Jack were going to break his arm; but Gavin said sorry and kissed Daniel's feet just before the joint cracked. Matt said it was just messing about.

But this is real, Stevie. Real. Real. Real.

The devil's toenail fizzed suddenly, fiercely, and somehow everything around scooped itself up and wrapped itself round me: and suddenly I was either somewhere dark, or else my eyes had stopped working. An that was such a surprise that I think I mush have lost concentration for a moment; at any rate, my fingers had opened and the devil's toenail was falling down onto the ground.

Stevie! Listen to me, and I will give you—

But then there was a voice. It cut through the darkness like acid; and as soon as that happened I was back in the real world—I almost heard a click!—and I could see again, and it was Mum. And she was saying something about toast. So I put the devil's toenail in my pocket and went had some.

I wasn't really sure what had happened. I mean, I hadn't really thought anything much—I hadn't even got round to deciding what I wanted to happen to Dad. But the power of the devil's toenail: well, it was really really strong. Quite scary, in a way. Not that I was scared obviously.

But anyway, I was back in the real world where only ordinary things happened. And in the ordinary world there was Clair, who made me play with her—well, she kept hitting me with her wand; and I think I was still a bit too weak from—whatever it was that'd happened—to resist. We've got this game where we get all Claire's Barbies and tie blindfolds round their heads, and then we line them up against a wall and shoot them with elastic bands.

Yeah, I know, but it keeps her quiet.

So, I'd forgotten all about everything except firing squads until Mum finally stopped fidgeting about the dirty dishes/dirty clothes/breakfast stuff and said "Dad's late!"

And I had this feeling as if I was a drainpipe and there was cold water running all the way down inside me.