The Cake Stop Bar and Grill appears to have been hit by the Changing Rooms team — only they can only have got as far as demolishing what was there to make way for something new, without putting in the something new. The door is hanging off the hinges and there is a section of the wall missing where some of the building has simply been removed. The gap has been shored up by a sheet of thick, clear plastic that has been scrawled over by fat marker pen in a variety of different hands.

From beyond the Seven-Acre Wood, where lies the Temple of the Triple Goddess, a long plume of grey smoke can be seen curling upwards into the pale blue sky. Some of the Sheffield racks have died and are withering away, rotting on their roots. Huginn and Muninn tumble out of the sky in their usual haphazard manner, to take a perch on one of the affected racks. As they alight on it the once luscious green and orange rack, now brown and desiccated, fragments and crumbles. They flap, squawking, to avoid falling to the ground and find a perch on a stand that is not yet affected.

Ravenbait dismounts, leaving Blackbird standing free, leaning against the rack that the ravens have shown to be at least mostly intact. There are cracks in the concrete beneath her feet and she can see the leaves of the trees and the bushes that surround this best of cake stops are grey, coated with a whitish substance that she has only seen before in polluted cities.

Speechless for once in her life, the Priestess bounds up the cracked and broken steps and pushes open the door to the Cake Stop.

"Ah," says the lovely Mrs Pike. She is almost-dressed in the tightest, skimpiest set of matching cycle kit that RB has ever seen. "How absolutely lovely of you to join us at last."

"I'm sorry," Ravenbait says, thoughts floundering. "I was delayed by remembering to put on all my clothes."

"So gushingly nice to see you," Mrs Pike replies archly, a cold gleam in her eye.

A blur of movement resolves into the figure of Need Another Gear. He grins. "Charlotte's been picking bluebells," he says. "Call the cops!" He zips off, so fast he causes a breeze.

Ravenbait looks around. She spots TimPike, sitting against the wall with a ramrod-straight back. He is wearing a set of Oakleys that have an apparently opaque set of lenses in a ruby colour. AndyGates and Hummers are discussing what might be something to do with molecular biology over in one corner. There is no sign of PW, or Macleach, or Cuddy. Striker is missing. So are the Pingus, Rjevans6, The Roman, TooMuchCake and PhilMalcolm. Nutty is sitting by the bar, watching Spen and Zimzum out of the corner of his eye. There is a tingling in the air; a sense of familiarity; a sense of this entire scene being not quite right. She feels that this scene should be being played out in a different way. Possibly one of two different ways. This is some dreadful mishmash of the two. Neither one nor the other. It makes her teeth hurt just looking at it and being there, and from the look on the Hollow Man's face he is not enjoying it much either.

At least one thing hasn't changed. Chuffy and Bags are still all over each other like teenagers at an adult-free party.

"What happened?" Ravenbait asks. Chuffy looks round, somewhat reluctantly. The Priestess is startled to see that his eyes have changed colour. Black and red orbs gaze insouciantly at her from a face doing its best to appear the picture of innocence.

"When, darlin'?" he drawls.

"'When I was away' would seem the most appropriate response," the Priestess tells him, her own black eyes flashing with just a spark of annoyance.

"Cuddy has declared war, that is what has happened," Nutty intercedes. He is sitting, somewhat incongruously, on an office chair, and he pushes away from the bar, wheeling over to where RB and the Hollow Man are standing. She feels a queer sense of déjà vu; a sick feeling of familiarity, as if she is recognising something that Should Not Be.

"Declared war?" she repeats stupidly, unable to take it all in.

"Yes, I'm afraid so," Nutty tells her. She wonders if it is her imagination or have Nutty's vowels become rounder since the last time they spoke? "He has taken some of the Cake Stoppers with him to plot world domination and an end to ordinary humans."

"Ordinary..." Ravenbait breaks off, racking her brain to try to remember where she has heard words like that before. "And what about here? What happened here? Why is the bike park dying? What is the smoke coming from the temple? I wasn't gone that long, for pity's sakes, and it's not like you don't know where to find me if you need to!"

"Oh, darling," says a sultry Mrs Pike. "Did you not get my email? How desperately inconvenient. It seems our dearest Clare decided it was time for a change and moved that car boot sale thing somewhere else. We just haven't quite got round to redecorating yet. I expect the upheaval has disturbed some of the root systems or something."

"And the smoke?"

"Oh, that'll be the new Pope," says Flying Monkey.

"There's a new Pope?"

"Yes, there is," Nutty confirms. "And you may find this interesting. The new Pope was something of a big name in Opus Dei. Name of Kramer Sprenger. He has taken the name of Innocent XIV."

"What in the Hel is happening here?" Ravenbait whispers, so shocked by this news that she can barely stand. "I'm going to the Temple." She has to know. She has to know if her worst fears have been realised.

"I will come with you," says the Hollow Man. He is thinking that perhaps even the Hierophant is not aware of the extent of the damage.

They leave the Cake Stop Bar and Grill and head for the Temple.

The path out through the Seven Acre Wood looks as though it has been churned up by 4x4s. Ravenbait tries to convince herself that there are some very fat MTB tyres on the market, but she knows that no bike tyre made these tracks. No bike would leave that chemical, cloying, choking scent in the air either. That scent has never been witnessed there before. She finds it difficult to believe that she is smelling it now.

The Temple doors, made from the same sacred yew that was sacrificed to make the doors to the House of Fun and Mirrors, have been sprung from their hinges. The exterior walls show signs of blackening and scorching. Some of the panes of glass in the windows have been smashed. Coils of smoke writhe from the broken doorway, and escape in serpentine tendrils from the jagged remains of the windows.

Ravenbait runs inside. The interior of the temple is in smoking ruins. She can see no Temple Guards, no Temple Maidens. The entire temple seems deserted. The sacred chainrings have been pulled from their chains and left scattered, bent and useless. The titanium mug at the sacred fountain has been hammered out of shape. The sacred fires have been extinguished: the smoke comes from the smouldering ruins of the furniture and hangings that had been piled in the middle of the anteroom and set alight.

The Priestess falls to her knees, unheeding of the sharp, hard fragments of stone that bite into her flesh. Tears spring from her usually emotionless eyes.

"How?" she asks bitterly, grief-stricken. "How can this be?"

"Priestess?"

Ravenbait and the Hollow Man are startled. They had thought everyone had gone. They whip round.

"Helga!" Ravenbait cries. She flings her arms around the Temple Maiden, overjoyed to see her. "What happened?"

"Desecration, Priestess," Helga says, sniffing sorrowfully. "There is something you must see."

The three of them walk slowly through the ruins to the inner sanctum. Ravenbait feels dread fingers clutching at her guts as they draw close, and half of her does not want to see what Helga has to show her but the other half knows she must.

They enter.

Ravenbait's tears cease falling. They are replaced by a cold, hard rage distilled so far beyond emotion it is an almost physical thing. She gazes around her at the broken statues of the Triple Goddess, and the cracked, smashed mosaic of the sacred chainset in the floor. Only the peace and serenity of the sanctum remains, as if even this is not enough to destroy the influence of the Goddess entirely.

"Leave me," the Priestess says, her voice as cold and hard as steel in snow.

They leave her.

Once she is alone she steps slowly across the shattered floor and kneels before the head of the Road Goddess. It lies on the floor, tilted at a slight angle. All three of the Sisters of the Wheel lie tumbled around one another. Ravenbait wonders what machinery had been used to wreak such havoc.

"Is this it?" she whispers, reaching out one hand and touching the cold, stony cheek of the Road Goddess. "Is this the end?"

Stone lids grate open over crystalline eyes.

"What has been broken can be rebuilt, my child," says the Goddess. "What has been done can be undone. You have the skills; you have the power. Even in this there is balance. Find the source, child. Find the source."

"The source of what?" the Priestess asks, confused.

"Of the change, dummy" the BMX Goddess tells her, blue eyes snapping open on Her fallen head. "I mean, I know it's like a shock an' all, but I thought you were quicker than that."

"There is a clue in St Malachy's Prophecy of the Popes," the MTB Goddess says, winking. Her head has landed upside down, making the gesture appear very odd and less than comforting.

"Best get on with it," the BMX Goddess adds. "It's a priority tag, right?"

"Right," RB murmurs.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" asks the MTB Goddess. "A route sheet?"

"Shouldn't I stay... shouldn't I arrange for something to be done about all of this?" Ravenbait makes a sweeping gesture with one hand.

"What is the point in worrying about a Temple, Priestess, when the very future of cycling is at stake?" the Road Goddess says, and Her tones are harsh. "All things in their proper time. Now go. We know your contract with the Hierophant. Know you that it is more than his sense of propriety that is at stake."

With that all life vanishes from the ruined statues.

When the Hierophant had called her and told her what he wanted, she had thought he was just being precious. She had shrugged off the peculiarity of him requesting her to do a job rather than employing one of his minions, and she realises now that she should not have done. The Hierophant is paying for a job that he should have been able to have done for free. He would never do such a thing. That means that he is not capable of sorting this out.

That, in itself, is another clue.

It is time to have a proper talk with Nutty, and then she would have to track down Cuddy and the others who had left. This is not going to be the simple matter she had hoped. Catching the thief who had taken Brisingamen would soon seem like a positive holiday by comparison.