‘Stand back,’ Disey says. ‘Give him room. Is there anyone with medical experience here?’

This church could be filled with doctors and it wouldn’t change a single thing. There’s no doctor in the world that can fix the fact that Phil Kostakidis just burnt a fairy’s face off in front of everyone.

What do I do? What do we do?

I could start playing again, I suppose. Maybe that would help. Maybe I could put everyone into, like, a magic music trance, and Tam and Phil and Cardy and Holly could sneak not-Marcos out and … I don’t know, find some iron and lock him down and hide him wherever Holly hid Emily, and then make up some excuse as to why Marcos wasn’t there any more.

Or maybe it wouldn’t help, and everyone would be like, ‘So, um, that was an interesting choice, going back to playing the piano after that dude’s face was on fire for a minute there’.

‘I have my first-aid certificate,’ Cardy says, elbowing his way forward.

‘So do I,’ Helena says. ‘Come on, everyone, let’s move away. You all hovering over him isn’t going to do any good.’

‘What did you do, Pippa?’ one of Phil’s aunts yells at her. ‘What did you do?’

Phil’s face has moved beyond pale into a shade of grey-green. ‘I don’t – I just –’

‘She just lost her mother,’ Disey says. ‘Leave her be.’

‘She just punched her uncle in the face!’

‘He’ll be all right,’ Cardy says, but this is clearly a blatant lie, because nothing about this is all right. ‘Move back. Please.’

If Finn were here, he’d fix this. He’d march over to not-Marcos, and make it look like everything was fine. Then he’d find his way into everyone’s minds like he did at Cardy’s fundraiser concert and suddenly everything would be all right and it would be like none of this had ever happened.

But I don’t have Finn.

Think, Linford. Think.

Crowds are stupid, right? What’s that saying – doesn’t matter how many smart people are in a crowd, they’re only as smart as their least smart member? If I can take charge …

‘Everybody out!’ I say, using every little bit of the projection skills singing has taught me, and doing my best to mimic the note that Finn gets in his voice when he’s using his fairy powers to command someone to do something. ‘Let Cardy and Helena work!’

And you know what? It’s New Year’s Eve, and I must have finally run through the quota of nightmare luck that it’s officially legal for one person to have in a year, because it works. It freaking works.

It’s not like when Finn does it, of course. If Finn had ordered everyone out, they would have gone silent and probably filed out in perfectly ordered military fashion, marching two by two. This crowd grumbles and protests and there’s a bottleneck at the door.

But they leave just the same.

I scramble down from the piano and almost face-plant in my hurry to get to Phil before she gets swept up by the departing crowd. ‘Are you okay?’ I demand.

She’s shaking. ‘P-Pearl,’ she whispers, ‘he – he –’

I follow her pointing finger to the lump on the floor that’s definitely not her uncle. Cardy and Helena have rolled him onto his side into the recovery position, facing away from the crowd, but even without his face showing, it’s obvious he’s not Marcos. He’s wearing Marcos’s clothes, sure, but even before he started going bald, there’s no way that Marcos had a head of hair like that, long, thick, dark, luscious.

‘I have to go,’ Phil mutters. ‘Out. I have to get out.’

I look around for someone to help me, but everyone’s gone. Even Disey and Shad have disappeared. The only two people left are –

‘Holly,’ I say. ‘Tam. Get over here.’

‘I have to get out. I have to get out. I have to get out,’ Phil chants.

She’s started rocking back and forwards on the soles of her feet. I put my hand on her shoulder to keep her still, but she’s stronger than me. ‘Holly, get Phil out of here,’ I say.

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know! Just –’

‘I’m doing it, I’m doing it,’ Holly says. ‘Come on, Phil.’

She loops Phil’s arm over her shoulders and guides her away. ‘Tam –’ I begin.

‘I’m not leaving you,’ he says. ‘You cannot come to harm, or –’

‘Does he look like he’s getting up?’ I snap, gesturing at the mess of a fairy on the floor. ‘If he does, I’ll play at him or sing at him or something. I need you to find the real Marcos, okay? This guy has to have stashed him somewhere. We can’t walk out of this church without him.’

‘I’m not –’

‘Tam, just do what I say!’ I exclaim, doing my best Prince Finn the Valentine, He Who Must Be Obeyed impression. ‘Go and find Marcos. Now.’

His fingers go slack on my wrist, and he walks away.

I’m not entirely sure whether he’s walking away because he’s following my directions or because he’s pissed at me, but it’s not exactly like I have time to contemplate the nuances of his body language. ‘How bad is it?’ I ask, kneeling next to Cardy on the floor.

‘Bad,’ he says. ‘Really bad, Pearl.’

‘Can he talk? If he’s hidden the real Marcos in some –’

Cardy grabs not-Marcos’s shoulder and flips him over onto his back.

His face is in terrible shape. His whole right cheek is gone, and I can see right through to his shark teeth, jagged and deadly. What isn’t bloody is covered in ash, and blisters are already forming.

But that isn’t what makes me scrabble backwards in horror.

‘Kel,’ I whisper.

His words don’t come out quite right. I guess when half your face has literally fallen off, articulation is not your number one priority.

‘Hello, disappointment,’ he says.

His eyes flicker to Cardy. ‘Disappointments,’ he amends.

I can feel the panic attack rising up inside me. It feels like water rising, rising, me desperately kicking upwards, trying to keep my face above the surface, but something has hold of my feet, pulling me down, and the water closes over me, and it’s in my nose, in my mouth, filling me up, and it’s Jenny that has hold of me, and Kel’s swimming towards me, his shark teeth gleaming in the water, and –

‘Here’s some water,’ Helena says. I hadn’t even noticed she’d gone, but she bustles back in carrying an overflowing bucket. ‘I don’t know Derrigong very well, but I checked my phone, and there’s a creek half a kilometre away.’

‘Salt or fresh?’ Flecks of black blood speckle the floor when Kel speaks.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’

She sets the bucket down next to Kel, and he plunges his entire head in. There’s something almost pornographic about the groan he makes when he pulls it back out. ‘More,’ he growls.

She picks up the bucket – now completely dry and empty. ‘Of course.’

‘You’re helping him?!’ I exclaim.

Helena looks at me with pleading eyes. ‘Pearl, I have –’

‘You have to?’ I snarl. ‘Fuck that.’

I reach out and grab Kel’s forearm with my right hand – the hand with the iron ring.

The scream he lets out is inhuman. It rings in my ears, so loud that if I was standing up it would have messed with my balance, but I just hold on tighter. His skin is melting underneath my grip, running away through my fingers, and –

‘That’s enough,’ Cardy says, pulling me off him.

‘What do you mean, that’s enough?’ I exclaim. ‘Have you forgotten what he did?’

‘No!’ he snaps. ‘How dare you say that to me, Pearl? How dare you ask me, of all people, whether I’ve forgotten what he did?’

Oh. Shit.

‘He violated my mind,’ Cardy says. ‘He and his sister got into my brain and they took me over. I’m not going to forget that.’

It’s probably really insensitive if I ask, ‘Then why won’t you let me torture him?’, right?

Cardy answers the question for me, before I can jam my foot any further down my throat. ‘But the last thing we need is people hearing him scream.’

‘Do you remember?’ Kel says, his breath whistling through his teeth. ‘Do you remember what it was like when we cut the Rider’s heart out, James? Do you remember how he screamed?’

‘It wasn’t me,’ Cardy says shortly.

‘Oh, it was,’ Kel says. ‘All we asked you to do was hold him down, but you couldn’t. You weren’t strong enough, not like me, not like Jenny. “How about I do the cutting, and you hold him?” you said, and all the while he was screaming for mercy.’

‘That’s enough,’ I say.

‘Do you remember what it felt like?’ Kel says. ‘Driving the blade into his chest? Reaching in? Feeling the pulse of his heart in your hand?’

‘Please,’ Helena says, setting another bucket of water down beside Kel. ‘Sir, there’s no need for this kind of –’

‘Silence,’ Kel tells her, and it’s like someone’s pushed the mute button on her.

‘What are you doing here?’ I demand. ‘You should be gone. You should be broken. Finn – the Seelie – they broke you.’

Kel just grins, revealing row upon row of shark teeth through his missing right cheek.

‘Let me rephrase,’ I say, positioning my ringed hand over what remains of Kel’s face. ‘Tell me what you’re doing here, or you’ll wish it was the Seelie who’d come for you, because I’ll break you worse than they ever did.’

‘You were delicious, disappointment,’ he says. ‘Your flesh tasted like –’

I press my hand against his face. His skin is icy, like the inside of a freezer, but I press, and this sound is yanked out of him, like someone’s put a giant hook down his throat and pulled, and I press harder, and –

Cardy pulls me away again. ‘He can’t answer if he doesn’t have a mouth, Pearl.’

‘What are you doing here?’ I demand, yanking my arm away and positioning my hand a hair’s breadth over Kel’s face again.

‘What will you give me if I tell you?’ he says. ‘Will you give me another taste?’

I see starry explosions of colour, like the New Year’s Eve fireworks have started going off early, and taste bile in the back of my throat.

‘A limb,’ Kel says. ‘Give me one of your limbs, disappointment. Let me take off one of your arms, and when I have sucked every bone dry of every last morsel of flesh, then I will tell you.’

‘Kelpie, that is not a request to make of one under the protection of the Seelie.’

Every hair on the back of my neck stands up.

‘Julian,’ Cardy whispers.

But this is not Julian walking towards us. It might look like him and sound like him, but this is not the boy who pleaded on his knees for Phil to listen to him, not the boy who cried about how hungry he was, not the boy who could be scared off by my brother.

‘Prince,’ Kel croaks.

The prince’s shoes squeak on the floor as he walks towards us. Running shoes. He’s wearing running shoes with rubber soles, and they’re squeaking, and it’s so terrifying it’s almost funny.

‘Those who dealt with you last time were merciful,’ he says. ‘I am less so.’

One heartbeat passes. Two. Realisation dawns in Kel’s eyes.

Three.

The prince plunges the iron knife into Kel’s chest.

It’s not an easy thing, to remove someone’s heart.

I should know. I mean, I haven’t done it personally – the heart surgery I performed out in the bush was about putting a heart back in – but I did a lot of research beforehand. There are bones to negotiate. Organs to feel your way round. A ribcage in the way, designed to protect it.

The prince cuts Kel’s heart out in an instant. My heart beat once, and Kel’s was still in his chest. It beat again, and Kel’s was in Julian’s hand.

I gasp, one of those gasps that’s so sudden and so violent that a giant bubble of air gets trapped in your chest and makes you feel like you can’t breathe and that something inside you is going to explode. Helena yelps and flings herself backwards, landing ungracefully on her arse. Cardy freezes, going so still he feels like a statue beside me, but even despite Helena’s yelp I can hear his sharp intake of breath.

Kel doesn’t make any sound, and that’s the loudest sound of all.

His eyes widen. His mouth opens ever so slightly, a dark, jagged gap between the rows of pointed teeth.

It happens so fast that he has time to see his heart in Julian’s hand. Realisation dawns on his face.

For a second, everything is silent.

The heart pulses once, a heartbeat I can hear as loud as my own, a heartbeat I can see.

Then Julian crushes it in his fist, and suddenly I’m kneeling beside Cardy in an icy-cold puddle, because Kel’s body has melted away.

No. Not melted. That’s the wrong word. It’s too gentle.

It’s like a tidal wave. Like when you see those global warming videos and you see bits of glaciers breaking off and crashing into the sea. Everything Kel was – face, teeth, body – breaks apart and crashes into the sea, and he’s not a glacier any more, not ice, not anything more than a pool of water on the floor of a church.

Julian wipes his wet hand on his shorts. He just straight-up murdered a fairy and he’s wearing shorts and running shoes and a T-shirt advertising some metal band.

This is what Julian thought would be appropriate to wear to crash Phil’s mother’s funeral?

But this is not Julian. Not even close.

He’s wearing a glove on his other hand, the hand that held the knife. A bright yellow mitten, handmade, with pom poms, like someone’s nanna would make.

It’s ridiculous, and it’s more frightening than anything I’ve ever seen.

‘Perhaps I should thank you for leaving this knife behind when you graced my land with your presence,’ the Crown Prince of the Seelie says to me. ‘It has proven … useful.’

Oh God. I dropped the Rider’s knife the night he made me choose. Fairies aren’t very good at killing each other – that was the whole reason they had the Riders in the first place, to do their dirty work – but I’ve just delivered a weapon right into his hands.

Finn. Finn.

A weapon he could use on Finn.

‘Aren’t you going to thank me?’ the prince says to me.

Think, Pearl. Don’t panic. Even if your dream was real – even if the prince did put Finn to sleep for a year and a day – the Seelie would riot if he actually murdered their precious Valentine, right? Wasn’t that the whole reason they were so desperate to get Finn to come home anyway? To keep him safe?

I stand up.

I open my mouth to speak.

I lunge at him instead.

I try desperately to catch him with the iron ring on my right hand, but he dances back out of my reach, an infuriating grin on his face. Cardy dives towards him, a full-bodied tackle, shoulder-first, but even though he catches him solidly in the mid-section, the prince doesn’t move a muscle. He just grabs him by the scruff of his neck, murmurs, ‘You would have been an interesting brother,’ and flings him into the wall.

Something cracks. I hope it’s the wall. I’m afraid it’s Cardy’s spine.

‘Hello, kitten,’ the prince says. ‘It seems you are in my debt.’

I stare at him.

‘I have killed the kelpie who would have sucked your bones dry,’ he says. ‘Are you not going to thank me?’

I raise my chin. I’m not going to panic. I’m not going to falter.

I’m not going to kneel.

‘It seems to me like you’re the one in my debt, and you should be the one thanking me,’ I say.

He raises an eyebrow.

‘Let’s do the maths real quick, shall we?’ I say. ‘Sure, you just killed Kel, and I’m not exactly a massive fan of his, so point to you. But Kel wouldn’t be after me in the first place if it weren’t for you and your family stashing your Valentine away in my town. Point to me.’

The corner of his mouth quirks upwards. He’s amused. This is cat-videos-on-YouTube territory.

‘You stopped Julian from blabbing shit about me to the police and stopped them from trying to pin Mrs Kostakidis’s murder on me.’

‘Aren’t you clever?’ he says, a note of such smug condescension in his voice that if it came to life it would immediately put on a fedora and start mansplaining things to people on the internet. ‘You are no fun to play with if you are locked away, kitten.’

‘Fine – point to you. You’re ahead, 2–1. But – wait! What’s that? Did someone say “Riders”? Did I hear you say, “Oh wow, there was this terrifying ancient murder death cult rampaging about that wanted to kill me and my family and actually did kill my dad”? And who was it that broke them apart – and scored you that little knife you just waved around? Me.’

He chuckles. He actually chuckles. God, I hate him so much.

‘And you know what? I’ll be generous,’ I go on. ‘I’m only counting the Riders as one point, even though they should be, like, forty-seven. Two-all. Deadlock. No one owes anyone anything – until we get to the fact that you kidnapped my boyfriend.’

‘The Valentine belongs to me more than he does to you, no matter how alluring he may find you,’ the prince says. ‘He is mine by right of blood.’

‘Fine,’ I snap. ‘Then Oyster’s mine by right of blood. You took her from me. You broke her.’

‘You could have had your sister back,’ he says, in that same infuriating mild tone he always uses. ‘And you could even have had the Valentine. But you chose not to take them. I offered you a choice, and you took the ironheart. That is, as you would say, a point to me.’

‘You stole Phil in the first place!’

‘I did no such thing. She careened into my lands, unannounced, uninvited. I would have been well within my rights, as sovereign of the land she invaded, to kill her, but I did not. Might that be another point to me?’

‘No,’ I snarl. ‘If you get credit for not killing Phil, then I get credit for not killing you, right here, right now, where you stand.’

‘Oh, kitten,’ he says. ‘I would like very much to see you try.’

I want to scream. There are no words for how infuriated I am. I want to walk right up to him and use every bit of vocal training I have ever had and scream right in his face, scream from deep in my lungs, scream so loud and so hard that his eardrums burst and blood starts pouring out of his head.

‘But I will leave without your thanks,’ he says, ‘if you do what I ask of you.’

I take a leaf from the Tam playbook by folding my arms and saying nothing.

‘You will have heard, I think, that I wish to close and lock the doors to my kingdom,’ he says. ‘And I have locked all but one – the Summer Door which opens in your woods. I will not lock that door until all those who are Seelie have returned. You have my Silver Lady.’

My nostrils flare.

‘Well,’ he corrects himself, ‘perhaps I should not say my Silver Lady. It is not on my bones that her name is written.’

‘This is a really excellent strategy you have going on here,’ I say. ‘Please, tell me more about how my boyfriend has a magical fairy fiancée that you want him to spend eternity with. It’s definitely going to make me do what you want.’

‘Perhaps I can make this deal sweeter for you,’ he says. ‘I could force you to return the Silver Lady to me. I could force you to do many things. But I like you, kitten. I confess I was disappointed when I found I had a brother, not a sister. I have grown fond of you, and so I extend to you again the offer that the Silver Lady extended to you on my behalf. Come and live with us.’

‘Come and live with you,’ I repeat incredulously.

‘My brother misses you,’ he says. ‘You must miss him. And I am not the monster you think me to be.’

He’s a fairy. He can’t lie.

He really believes this.

This – this creature, who reached out with his fucking psychic superpowers from another dimension and destroyed my sister, who broke her bones and caved in her skull and crushed her mind like he crushed Kel’s heart in his fist, thinks he’s not a monster.

‘You genuinely expect me to go for this?’ I say. ‘To be like, “Hmmm, yes, what a good idea, I’ll hand over Emily and trot off to fairyland with Finn’s psychopathic brother”?’

‘Of course, I do not expect you to decide at this very moment. That would not be fair.’

‘Since when are you interested in fair?’

‘I am extremely interested in fair,’ he says. ‘I am a prince of fairies, and there are rules by which we are bound and must obey. And here are the rules of this game, kitten. I will return to you at midnight, when the old year turns into the new. You will give me your answer. If you are wise, you will agree. You will return the Silver Lady to me, and you will come me with me through the Summer Door. If you do not agree, however, I will return to you three days hence, at midnight, and I will offer again. If you refuse again, I will return in another three days at midnight, and offer one final time.’

‘What happens if I say no the third time?’

‘Oh, kitten,’ he says, ‘you would be wise not to find out.’

Bluff. That’s a bluff.

If he’s bluffing, then I’ve got the upper hand.

Perhaps he sees the light of self-congratulation in my eyes. Perhaps he just wants to take me down a peg or two. Or perhaps he just thinks it would be funny.

‘But allow me to give you a preview,’ he says, and hauls Helena suddenly to her feet.

She squeaks in surprise, and he laughs, a dark, hollow sound. ‘Hello, little fetch,’ he says.

I don’t quite know how to describe the sound that escapes Helena’s lips. It’s somewhere between a gasp and a squeak, but it’s the purest sound of terror I think I’ve ever heard.

‘You were given orders,’ he says. ‘Perhaps those who raised you tolerate insolence, but I am not to be disobeyed.’

‘I – I – I – I –’

‘What’s that?’

‘I – I – I’m sorry,’ Helena stammers.

‘Oh, you are sorry,’ the prince says. ‘I understand. Will she, though?’

He grabs Helena by the back of the neck and angles her head towards me.

‘Tell her,’ the prince intones. ‘Tell her what you did, little fetch.’

Helena’s whole face is white, even her lips drained of blood. ‘Pearl –’

‘I told you to tell her,’ the prince says. ‘Will you disobey me again?’

‘Pearl,’ Helena says, her voice high, shaking. ‘I – Matilda – I –’

There’s a crack, loud and sharp, almost like a gunshot.

There’s a strangled sound, a mangled word, pulled from Helena’s mouth.

Then there’s a splash as her head falls into the puddle on the floor. Another splash a moment later, louder, as her body follows.

‘She was disobedient,’ the prince says. ‘And I cannot let such a slight go unpunished.’