My hands are still shaking as I flick through the coat-hangers in my cupboard later that afternoon, trying to find something to wear.

All I can see is the snarl on the cop’s face in my mind, the way he basically bared his teeth at me. Leave. Now. Before I arrest you.

Arrested. I nearly got arrested today.

It’s so ridiculous that that’s what I’m scared of. Jail. Finn is in another world, and so is my long-lost twin sister, and Phil’s mother and Matilda are dead, actually dead, and jail seems like such a small thing to be scared of in comparison, but I am so, so scared.

The prince would laugh if he could see me right now. Oh kitten, he would say, you can face me, but you cannot face your own kind?

He’d pat me on the head. Ruffle my hair like I was a small child. You could come away with me. We are always in need of servants.

No. I scrub furiously at my eyes. I’m not going to drown in my own fear. I’m not going to let him patronise me, even in my imagination.

Focus, Linford. One problem at a time. Baby steps. Find something appropriate to wear to a wake.

Something that you wouldn’t also mind being arrested in.

FFS, stop.

What are you even supposed to wear to a wake? How formal is it? Is it the kind of thing where men have to wear jackets, even when it’s forty-seven million degrees outside?

I hope you don’t have to wear black. I own exactly one black dress, and I wore it to Finn’s house a week ago. The night I walked into his yard, found him floating quietly in the pool in the backyard, took all my clothes off, and walked in to join him.

He must have snuck downstairs later while I was dozing to pick it up, because the next morning, my dress was hanging neatly over the back of his desk chair. Of course the neatest boy in the world wouldn’t let it lie in a rumpled heap next to a pool.

A week ago, he was here, with me, ready to fight, and he wasn’t giving up.

I close my lips tight, press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, and bury my face hard in my hands until I’m sure I’m not going to cry.

I do my best to stick close to Phil at the wake, but it’s not easy. It’s supposed to be an intimate gathering, smaller than the actual funeral, but ‘just family’ for her means a hell of a lot more people than it does for me.

I manage to stay near Phil during the actual formal bit of the evening, where the priest prays over her mother’s casket. That doesn’t take long, and I start hoping I can hustle her in and out of there in under an hour, and maybe even snatch Phil from her family and take her home with me.

But there’s no such luck, of course. After the prayers, there’s some eulogies, and then so many people she has to … is greet the right word? ‘Welcome to my mother’s wake, are you psyched for the funeral?’ doesn’t really flow off the tongue.

Disey, Shad and I end up standing in a tight little knot of Linfords between the door and the table with all the food on it, halfway between a quick escape and the biscuits. And it’s terrible, because I have so many other things to worry about, but I start thinking about how this would be if Finn was here with me. He wouldn’t be able to fix it – even he can’t bring people back from the dead – but he’d be beside me. He’d hold my hand.

Though who knows what excuse he would find to run away.

I pour myself a tiny plastic cup of water and drink it slowly, trying to calm myself down.

That’s all I seem to do these days. When do I get to the point where I’m totally, effortlessly, annoyingly calm all the time? When I can swan about with a serene, in-control smile on my face, like Finn’s arsehole brother?

‘Phil’s holding up well,’ Shad murmurs.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Disey replies. ‘Remember Mum’s funeral? This is exactly how I reacted, and I was hanging on by a thread.’

Phil catches my eye across the room and jerks her head sharply towards the door.

‘Back in a sec,’ I say.

I fish Phil out of a knot of – I don’t know, second cousins, maybe? – with some excuse about needing her in the bathroom. That’s exactly where I intend to take her at first, but there’s a line about ten women deep, so we go outside instead.

As soon as we’re out of sight around the corner, she puts her hands on her knees, drops her head, and starts breathing heavily.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask. ‘Do you want me to get you some water, or …’

‘No, no, don’t go,’ she says. ‘It’s just … the crowd. I can’t be – it’s too hot in there. There’s too many people. I just – I need a second.’

‘Take as many seconds as you need.’

She straightens after a few moments and leans back against the wall. ‘God, I could really use a cigarette.’

‘Phil, you don’t smoke. Remember when you tried one that time at Suzie Morton’s party and you –’

‘Nearly choked, yeah, of course I remember.’ She takes a few more deep breaths. ‘It just looks like such a good ritual, you know? Such a good way to reset. Go outside, have a smoke, clear your mind, worry about the lung cancer later.’

‘If you really want to do something capital-B bad, we could try sneaking into Club H,’ I say. ‘Loud music. Bright lights. Creepy bros that would love to buy us drinks.’

‘Gross.’

‘Or we could swipe some wine right off the refreshments table. I don’t think you’re at a moment in your life where anyone is going to come at you over underage drinking.’

‘Is it weird that the Club H thing kind of sounds more appealing?’

‘No.’

‘I just … her coffin was right there, Pearl. Right there in the room. I was standing there, and she was there too, not even a metre away, and – and – and –’

‘If you want to cry, you can cry. No one will hold it against you. Especially not me.’

‘I don’t want to cry!’ she explodes. ‘I just – I don’t want to be here! I don’t want any of this to be happening!’

‘Do you want to go?’

I half-expect her to protest, but I’m not surprised when she nods.

‘No problems,’ I say. ‘I’ll just run inside and get Disey’s keys. She’ll tell your dad and make your excuses and stuff.’

I’m not gone more than a minute. Maybe a minute and a half, if you count the ‘I’ll come with you’ / ‘No, don’t, I think she just wants to be on her own’ back and forth I have with Disey. It’s hardly any time at all.

But when I get back, Phil’s not alone.

‘Jules, I don’t want to see you right now,’ Phil says.

‘Just a few minutes,’ Julian begs. ‘Will you listen to me for just a few minutes?’

I’m about to come charging around the corner to confront him, but Phil sees me over his shoulder and shakes her head slightly. ‘What do you want to talk about?’ she asks. ‘What’s so urgent that you had to come barging into my mother’s wake?’

‘I need to talk to you,’ he says insistently. ‘Phil, please.’

Phil doesn’t speak for a moment. The only sound is the chorus of summer cicadas and the distant hum of car engines.

‘Give me your hands,’ she says at last.

Julian holds his hands out obediently. Phil takes them – not like a girlfriend would, fingers interlaced, but the way you would if you were going to pull someone up over the edge of a cliff; a hard, strong grip.

Iron. Of course. She’s wearing her iron ring.

Julian doesn’t react to her grip at all – well, no, that’s a lie. The iron doesn’t burn him, but he does react. He takes Phil’s left hand and presses it to his lips.

She pulls away immediately. ‘Don’t do that.’

‘I’m sorry, Phil. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. About everything.’

‘Julian, spit it out. What do you need to tell me?’

‘I’m so hungry.’

‘That’s what you came to tell me? That you’re hungry?’

‘No no no no.’ He hits himself in the head with the heel of his hand. ‘Not that. Not that.’

‘What, then?’

‘You need to get away from Pearl,’ he says. ‘She’s a killer.’

I want to hit myself in the head too. I have exactly zero brain space to deal with Julian and that whole can of worms right now.

‘Jules –’

‘Phil, listen, please!’

Julian falls to his knees on the ground in front of her. ‘Please,’ he repeats. ‘I need you – I need someone – I need anyone to believe me. There’s something wrong with Pearl. Finn, too. Something bad. They’re – they’re doing something to me. Drugging me or something. It’s like – like they’re in my head. I’m losing whole chunks of time, big ones, and – I don’t know what’s happening – and oh God, Phil, I’m so hungry.’

‘You’re – ’she stops as he throws his arms around her waist and buries his face in her abdomen, ‘– Jules, you’re confused.’

‘She tried to cut out my heart,’ he says, looking up at her.

I guess he’s got me with that one.

Wait. Hang on. Why was Julian in the bush that night a week ago?

For days before that, there’d been a fairy impersonating him. But the real Julian turned up in the bush at the right place at the right time – ‘right’ in the sense that ‘right’ led me to believe he was the sixth Rider, and I cut him open so we could put his heart back: a process through which I’d got terrifyingly far before Cardy realised that he already, you know, had a heart.

But if he wasn’t the sixth Rider, why was he there?

‘I tried to go to the police,’ he says. ‘I tried. I tried. I was going to tell them everything. But when I opened my mouth …’

‘What? What happened?’

‘I don’t remember. I opened my mouth, and then it all went black, and I woke up four hours later in my own bed.’

Then, finally, it clicks.

Julian. Julian, the prince’s plaything.

The police, who have been pointedly not arresting me, or questioning me, or anything, despite the fact that even the quickest look at the evidence makes me look incredibly guilty.

Those smiles on their faces in the hospital. How are you, Miss Linford?

Always the same words. Always the same script. Always the same smile: the same forced grinning skull smile.

They’re not going to arrest me. They’re not building a case against me. They’re not going to do anything to me.

Because Finn’s brother has brainwashed them to look the other way.

‘I’m so hungry,’ Julian sobs into Phil’s belly. ‘Phil, I’m so, so, so hungry.’

All the pieces fall suddenly into place. The Crown Prince has been driving Julian around like a bus, using his hands and his eyes and his body – using it as a vehicle for his magic, so he can make everyone do whatever he wants.

He’s done exactly what I was so desperate to get Finn to do for me – get the police off my back.

Except …

Leave. Now. Before I arrest you.

It isn’t just bad luck and people doing their jobs and me being more scared of being arrested than being killed that’s been juggling Hunter out of my reach.

It’s him. It’s the prince. It’s all been him, this whole time.

All the people that might be able to put me on the right track, that might be able to help me break into fairyland and get Finn back … the prince is taking them away from me. Hunter’s in a coma and I can’t get near him.

Then there’s Matilda. What if it wasn’t Helena and the Unseelie that killed her? What if it was the prince?

And what if Helena going away wasn’t because she was fulfilling some Unseelie revenge plan? What if the prince made her get out of town because she’s one of the few people in my life that knows about fairy stuff?

Why go to all this trouble to keep me out of prison, though? Surely if I got arrested, the prince could be guaranteed that I wouldn’t find my way anywhere near fairyland.

But it wouldn’t be funny if I were in jail.

That’s what he wants. That’s what this is. Entertainment.

He knows I’m going to try to get Finn back. Oyster, too. He dangled them in front of me like bait.

And now he’s dangling what I need to know in front of me, and snatching it away just as I grab for it.

Kitten. That’s what he called me, the night he made me choose, the night I called him a liar.

And that’s what he’s treating me like. He’s playing with me.

‘Ow!’ Julian exclaims suddenly.

He pulls away from Phil so quickly it’s like he’s been hit, falling inelegantly on his arse on the concrete. ‘You burned me!’ he exclaims.

‘Jules, I’m –’

‘How did I get here? Where – is this the funeral home?’

‘Yes. It’s my mother’s –’

‘Ironheart,’ he says. ‘Such a shame, about your mother.’

He stands. Julian has never been a graceful person – sometimes it’s like he has fourteen elbows and thirty-eight knees – but he flows to his feet like a ballet dancer.

‘It’s a terrible thing, to lose a parent,’ he says. ‘I should know.’

‘Both your parents are alive, Jules,’ Phil says faintly.

He reaches out and runs a long finger along the curve of her cheek. ‘Do not play naïve with me, ironheart,’ he says softly. ‘It does not become you.’

He turns, and even though I’m hidden behind the corner, he’s looking right through me.

‘Goodnight, kitten,’ he says. ‘Be safe.’