It should be one of those awkward moments where Holly and I look at each other, half afraid of Tam, half afraid of each other. It should be a silence that stretches out forever, heavy, ominous.

We need to tell him where Emily is, my eyes should say.

We can’t tell him where Emily is, hers should say at the same time.

He’ll kill us both if we don’t tell him, mine should say.

She’ll kill everyone if he sets her free, hers should respond.

But there’s no long menacing silence full of meaning, because less than a second after Tam leaves, Holly-Anne nearly knocks me over as she barrels past me.

‘Holly, no!’ I say, grabbing at her, but her shirt slips through my fingers, suddenly thick and nerveless.

I expect to hear the smack of flesh on flesh as she throws herself at Tam, and then perhaps a truly ominous silence, but all that comes is the rusty groan of pipes. When I leave the shed, I see Holly on the ground, mouth pressed to the garden tap, drinking deep.

Tam is nowhere in sight. I know he’s not a fairy, but his apparent ability to appear from and disappear into thin air is more unnerving than just about all the fairy shit I’ve ever seen Finn do.

They will never find where I will hide the bodies.

I swallow.

After what feels like hours, Holly finally turns the tap off and stands. ‘Shit, that feels so much better,’ she says, wiping her hand across her mouth. ‘Do you have any Nurofen or anything? My head is killing me.’

‘Um, maybe,’ I say. I take my wallet out of the back pocket of my jeans and dig through until I find the little foil pack of ibuprofen I keep there in case of period pain emergencies. ‘Here you go.’

She pops a couple out and downs them with more tap water. ‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it. We should get out of here. Like, now.’

‘Did you drive? Can you drop me in town? My car’s there.’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘Guess I’m walking then. I can give you a ride home if you want to walk with me.’

‘That’d be great. Thanks.’

‘Just a sec.’ She ducks back into the shed and emerges a few moments later with her handbag.

It takes about fifteen minutes to walk into town from Finn’s place. We don’t talk for most of it, largely because Holly is responding to all the messages and missed calls and notifications that have built up on her phone. ‘Yes, Mum, I’m safe,’ she says, in that tone that communicates ‘eye roll’ as effectively as actually rolling your eyes does. ‘I was hanging out with Lili and Tricia, and my phone died. You don’t need to call the cops or anything.’

Maybe it would be a good thing if her mum had called the cops. If they were distracted by another missing girl, then it might give me a bit of extra time before they came for me.

‘I’m on my way,’ Holly says. ‘I just have to drop Tricia home, okay? I’ll be home in, like, I don’t know, half an hour? Forty minutes?’

As soon as she hangs up with her mum, she’s on the phone to Lili. ‘Lil, if anyone asks, I need you to cover for me. I was at your place all day today, okay?’

A pause, and then, ‘Fine, fine, I was with a guy, but you can’t tell anyone.’

Another pause, and, ‘Ewww, no, it wasn’t Finn. We’re done, remember? Plus, he’s dating Pearl now.’

All she does is say my name, and it somehow sounds like an insult. I wish I had that talent.

‘Yeah, I don’t get it either, but no one said boys were smart. Cover for me, okay? In case anyone asks? Thanks babe. Bye.’

My own phone vibrates in my back pocket. It’s Disey.

You coming home soon?

Soon, I reply.

If anyone drove past Holly and me right now, they’d see two stereotypical images of the teenage girl – walking along, not really watching where they’re going, too busy looking at their phones to talk to each other. They’d probably be like, ‘Ugh, those teens, with their selfies and their flower crowns and their boy craziness – when are they going to grow up?’

They wouldn’t know what’d happened. They wouldn’t know what we’d done. They wouldn’t know anything about us, but –

‘Are you okay?’ Holly says. ‘You look like you’re about to burst into tears.’

‘I am extremely not okay,’ I say. ‘I haven’t slept in a thousand years, Phil’s mother is dead, my boss is in jail for a murder she didn’t commit and it’s my fault, and Finn’s gone and the one lead I had on getting him back turned out to be a dead end.’

She doesn’t respond.

‘I mean, I didn’t get kidnapped and tortured, but –’

‘It doesn’t have to be a competition about who’s had a shittier day,’ she says. ‘We can both have had shitty days. That’s allowed.’

‘Oh. Um. Yeah.’

I go to turn the corner but she grabs my wrist (thankfully not the one that Tam nearly broke, which is starting to ache). ‘There’s a bike path through here that’s way shorter. Come on.’

I consider protesting – walking down a dark path through the trees seems like a terrible idea in a town with fairies on the loose – but there’s no point, because there are no fairies on the loose, not any more. The scariest thing we might run across on this path is … I don’t know, fruit bats or something.

It’s ironic, really. The most dangerous creatures in the history of the universe have abandoned Haylesford, and it makes me want to weep with despair.

‘I didn’t mean it, you know,’ Holly says.

‘What?’

‘What I said to Lili. About you and Finn. About not getting it. I do get it.’

‘I … have no idea what to say to that,’ I say. ‘Thanks? I guess?’

‘We have to get him back.’

‘I know.’

‘Tam’s not having his life,’ she says. ‘Even if you give up, I won’t let him. It makes me sick to see him in that house.’

‘I climbed in through the bedroom window,’ I say. ‘He slept in Finn’s bed. He didn’t make it afterwards.’

The noise Holly makes is half sympathetic, half snarl.

‘And I’m not going to give up on him,’ I add. ‘Ever.’

‘Good.’

We walk in silence for a few moments before she speaks again. ‘We should have taken care of Tam when we put Emily down. Chained him to her and let him rot.’

‘He’s not like her. He’d die.’

‘I don’t really give a shit about that, or him, or anything he wants, or anything he cares about,’ she says. ‘He grabbed me at Woolies, of all places.’

‘What, he jumped you?’

Holly shakes her head. ‘Not in the supermarket. That came later. I was in the aisle with all the toothpaste and stuff and he appeared behind me like a ghost and said the Seelie wanted to speak to me. I went with him.’

‘Why did you go? You must have known –’

‘Must have known that nothing good was going to happen to me? Yeah, I knew. Of course I did. But when the Seelie summon you, you go, or what happens to you will be even worse.’

I remember the night Finn and I stood in the bush near my place, watching the Seelie dance, watching them force Holly to dance on hot coals (well, he stood – I grovelled, because my pathetic human eyes couldn’t take it), and shiver.

‘Of course, I should have just legged it,’ she goes on. ‘I had this moment where I wondered whether I might be able to work something out with them – that maybe I could bargain to get Finn back – but … ugh. I should have guessed that he was lying through his teeth.’

‘You couldn’t have known.’

‘I could have worked it out. Finn’s dickhead fairy brother wants all the Seelie fairies back in fairyland so he can close the doors, right? That was the whole reason he was obsessed with working out who the Valentine was in the first place. If I’d thought about it for one second, I’d have realised that there was no Seelie posse waiting to chat with me. I should have guessed it was just Tam trying to get Emily back.’

‘It’s kind of hard to think when he does that thing where he pops up behind you all threatening,’ I say.

Holly sighs. ‘Yeah. I know.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Depends on what it is.’

‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I know you told Finn, but obviously he didn’t tell me, because he respects your – your confidence or whatever, but –’

‘Just get to the point. You don’t need the monologue about how Finn is a good guy. Preaching to the choir. Spit it out.’

I hesitate. ‘You told me once that you’d been mixed up in this your whole life. That the fairies had been using you to spy on us forever.’

‘You want the whole big story?’

‘Not if you don’t want to tell it, but –’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Holly says. ‘And honestly, I was being kind of dramatic when I was all, “This has been my whole life! You don’t understand how I suffered!” It wasn’t bad at first, not really. I was spying on you and Finn and Cardy and Marie for the Seelie, sure, but it’s not like I was one of their possessed zombie-slaves or anything. I didn’t even realise I was doing it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Every year on the same day, for as long as I could remember, my aunt Rosie would come and take me out,’ she says. ‘We’d go walking in the bush together, just the two of us, and she’d hold my hand. That was what I used to remember most about it, the feeling of her hand in mine, because it used to make me feel like everything would be all right. Like it would be more than all right. That it would be amazing. That it was the day before my birthday, and tomorrow was just going to be the best day, and it would last forever.’

‘I asked Finn once what Seelie meant,’ I say. ‘He said that it felt like the first day of summer holidays.’

‘That’s the feeling,’ she says. ‘Aunt Rosie would take walking me into the bush, and then she would get me to talk. About me at first, but the conversation would always circle around to the same topic. She’d ask about you and Cardy and Marie and Finn, and how you were, and what you were doing, and if you were safe. She was always worried about if you were safe. And every year she would ask me who was shining the brightest. That phrase, every time. Which one of you was shining the brightest?’

‘When did you realise? That something wasn’t right?’

‘I think I always knew, deep down, but it took me a hell of a long time to admit it.’ She kicks at a rock, and it skitters away into the semi-darkness. ‘I thought for years that it was some kind of joke that my parents were playing on me, pretending not to remember Aunt Rosie until the day she came for me. I’d mention her at the dinner table, and they’d be like, “Hol, you don’t have an Aunt Rosie.” I thought it was … I don’t know, like a reverse Santa or something, where they were pretending that a real person wasn’t real. Because they’d be there every year when Aunt Rosie came for me, hugging her and kissing her and telling her to drop by more often, because they missed her, and why didn’t she come for Christmas? And she should come for Easter, and –’

Something clicks. ‘The day she came for you was Valentine’s Day, wasn’t it?’

Holly nods. ‘Every year, like clockwork. Last year I wanted to blow her off. I was dating Finn, and it was his birthday, and I wanted to spend it with him, but when I asked my mum for a phone number for Aunt Rosie so we could reschedule, she just gave me this blank look. I was like, “Aunt Rosie, Mum, you know, Aunt Rosie,” and she was all, “You don’t have an aunt called Rosie, Hol,” and I was like, “God, Mum, this joke isn’t funny any more,” and we ended up in this huge screaming argument, and she grounded me. She told me that there was no way I was leaving the house, whether it was to see Finn or anyone else. And then the next day when Aunt Rosie turned up on my doorstep, there my mum was, smiling and hugging her, and sending me off into the bush like nothing had even happened.’

‘Oh wow.’

‘That time, when Aunt Rosie took my hand, I didn’t get that day-before-your-birthday feeling. It was this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. But I was terrified that she would find out, so I faked it. And when she asked me about the four of you, I told her exactly what I thought she wanted to hear, and I … I’m not sure if I lied, exactly, but I kind of shuffled Finn to the back. I talked about all of you, but when she asked me who was shining the brightest, he was the last one on my list. I didn’t want her to get her hands on him.’

‘Did you know? That he was the one?’

Holly shakes her head. ‘I mean, I thought he was special, but just because he was Finn. I had no idea he was some special magical snowflake. I didn’t work that out until the next Valentine’s Day – this year. Finn and I were broken up, but I still – he’s a hard person to stop caring about, you know? I had this game plan all mapped out in my head about the stories I’d tell, about how they should look anywhere but at him. But Aunt Rosie didn’t show up on my doorstep.’

‘Shit.’

‘At first I was relieved. But then Emily showed up the next day, and –’ she shakes her head. ‘Even thinking about it … God.’

‘What happened?’

‘She wasn’t polite about it,’ she says. ‘Aunt Rosie was always … kind, somehow, but Emily just looked me in the eyes and told me I was coming with her. She put her fingers around my wrist and it felt like a manacle, like if I tried to pull away she’d just yank my hand off.’

I almost say, ‘She probably would have,’ but bite it back.

‘She took me off into the bush, and put both hands on the side of my face, and told me that I was going to be her handmaiden, and I was going to tell her everything about her Valentine, and that we needed to celebrate. Then it was like I blinked, and all these fairies came out of the woodwork, and there was music, and I was dancing and dancing and dancing, and I couldn’t stop.’

‘On hot coals?’

‘Not that time. That came later, when I wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear. This time, it was just dancing, and then I was back at my house with no memory of how I got there. But the music … it got into me. I was obsessed with it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I was so scared. All I wanted was to feel better. To feel safe. And the person I knew that made me feel the best and the safest was Finn.’

I do my best to be subtle about the fact that there’s a massive lump in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow.

‘I knew I couldn’t tell him – that I couldn’t tell anyone – but God, I just wanted someone to say nice things to me,’ she says. ‘And he did. He was like, “I can see you’re scared, Hol, and I’m here for you, I’m always here for you,” and he hugged me, and it all … went away. The music, all of it. I could think again. But then he pulled away, and it all came crashing back in, and suddenly I was even more scared, because I knew it was him. All this time, they’d been looking for him.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I lied,’ she says. ‘I lied and I lied and then I lied some more. Emily came back for me again and again, and I lied every time, and that music wrapped its way around me harder and harder. I felt like I was going out of my mind, but I knew I could make it stop by just touching Finn, and that made me feel powerful. We got back together, and that gave me the perfect excuse to keep touching him. She made me dance and dance, and asked me who the Valentine was, and every time I told her I didn’t know, but probably you. Maybe Cardy. Maybe even Marie. But not Finn. Never Finn.’

Holly exhales slowly. ‘But I knew she was going to work it out eventually. When she started using Julian, I knew my time was up. It was only a matter of time before he’d be all “Um, Silver Lady, didn’t you know that Holly’s been dating Finn all this time?” Then she’d work it out in a heartbeat, and Finn would be royally screwed.’

‘So you ended it with him?’

‘A few weeks before Tillie’s party. That’s when everything really went to shit. Once Marie was killed and Emily and the Seelie realised that the Unseelie were after the Valentine too, they went full panic stations, and … well, you know the rest.’

I wonder if anyone in the world has ever made a bigger overstatement than ‘you know the rest’.

‘Just so you know,’ Holly says, ‘I didn’t tell you any of that to, like, mark my territory.’

‘What?’

‘That wasn’t me being all, “Finn was mine first, and he’ll be mine again, and I only broke up with him to keep him safe, and he’s my one true love”,’ she says. ‘We would have broken up anyway, eventually. We wouldn’t even have got back together if I wasn’t so scared. He’s got this thing where he has to be a hero, and I was all crying and vulnerable, and that shit is his kryptonite, I swear.’

‘He really is a fairytale prince,’ I say. ‘He can’t resist a damsel in distress.’

She makes a noise in her throat that’s halfway to a laugh, then something happens that has never, ever happened before in the history of recorded time.

I share a companionable silence with Holly-Anne Sullivan.

‘Hey, can I ask another question?’ I ask a while later, when we’re in her car and she’s driving me home.

She wrinkles her nose. ‘You’re not going to ask me to compare notes on Finn, are you? Because I’m not doing that.’

‘Um, neither am I, so don’t worry. It’s about the music.’

‘The music?’

‘You went to Finn after Emily and her Seelie sidekicks kidnapped you and made you dance and you got obsessed with the fairy music, right? How did you make it go away for good?’

‘Emily took it all away one day,’ Holly replies. ‘It was just after Marie died. She put her hands on either side of my face and said, “Little handmaid, soon there will be nothing left of you, but I need your hands and I need your eyes.” Then she looked me dead in the eyes, and said, “Forget”, and it was gone.’

‘That’s all she said? Forget?’

‘Well, she is a fairy bitch-queen. I’m sure it had a little, you know, juice behind it.’

‘All that time,’ I mutter. ‘I was smashing my hands up and I could have just got Finn to tell me to forget.’

‘That’s right, you got music’d too, didn’t you?’ she says, flicking her indicator on to turn into my street. ‘I almost forgot. But how did you beat it, if Finn didn’t make you forget?’

‘I worked out how to play it.’

‘No shit?’ She sounds impressed.

‘No shit,’ I reply. ‘It’s not going to help me get Finn back, though. Or help with Tam, or get Matilda out of jail, or get the cops off my arse.’

‘You don’t seriously think you could get arrested, do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I got so freaked out about the fact that I called Matilda the night of the murder – about how that looks, you know. Then there’s the fact that I just spent like three weeks researching how to cut someone’s heart out, and –’

‘How long can that take to check? Surely they’d already have you in custody if that was going to be a thing.’

‘Maybe, but it’s Christmas. What if the guy that knows how to check that stuff is, I don’t know, in Bali or something?’

‘It’s a major murder investigation. They’re not going to put things off just because one dude is getting drunk on a beach.’

I try running my hand through my hair the way Finn does whenever he gets stressed out. It doesn’t help. ‘I know, but … then there’s Julian. What if he goes to the police and tells them what I did to him?’

‘Pearl,’ Holly says, ‘if Julian marches into the police station and says, “Oh no, you guys, Pearl tried to cut my heart out,” the first thing they’re going to do is ask to see the mark. And there isn’t one. Finn healed him.’

‘I guess.’

‘Plus, after he tried to pull that revenge porn thing on you and Finn, who’s going to believe him?’

I sigh. ‘I just … there’s so much stuff I haven’t even started worrying about. Like Julian. Or my twin sister. Or Mr Hunter, or how to get Matilda out of jail, or …’

‘You don’t have to worry about it on your own,’ Holly says, easing the car to a stop in front of my house. ‘You’re not the only one in this up to your neck, Pearl. You’re not the only one they’ve hurt. And you’re sure as hell not the only one who wants to get Finn back.’