It doesn’t bleed.

There should be a river of blood pouring from Helena’s body, from the place where her head was once attached, turning the puddle that once was Kel red, but there’s nothing.

She was a person, and now she is not. She is a body, and she is a head, and she is gone.

I hurl myself at the prince, but he catches my outstretched right hand in his left. I grope for the iron pendant around my neck, but he grabs that wrist too, and yanks both my arms above my head. ‘I like you, kitten,’ he says, his face so close to mine I can see every one of Julian’s freckles. ‘But that does not mean that you can do what you like to me.’

The chunk of iron hits him right in the back of the head.

It hits him hard, and the impact nearly makes him head-butt me. I skid backwards in the puddle, nearly falling as I yank my hands out of his grasp. He staggers towards me, and this time I do fall over, right beside the headless body that once was Helena’s, and I see his eyes and they’re not laughing any more, not mocking.

‘Pearl,’ Julian snarls. ‘I’m going to –’

His voice is cut off in a strangle as Cardy rises up behind him, locks his elbow around his windpipe, and forces him to his knees. His face goes purple. His eyes bulge. His mouth goes wide, a horrible cavernous gasp.

I’ve seen people get choked out before. I’ve seen movies. But there, it’s always quick. It takes like four seconds for the person to lose consciousness. This ordeal goes on for what feels like four hours, the veins on Cardy’s forearm standing out, before Julian finally goes limp.

Cardy lets go, and Julian topples sideways, landing heavily on his side. ‘Is he breathing?’ Cardy asks anxiously. ‘Did I kill him? Please tell me I didn’t kill him.’

I kick Julian over onto his back. ‘He’s breathing,’ I say. ‘But we need to get iron on him now before the prince comes back and tries to kill you.’

‘That was all I had.’

‘You threw the only iron you had at him? Shit, Cardy, what if you’d missed?’

‘The thought had occurred to me,’ he says, and I realise that he’s shaking.

‘Find your iron and put it back on right now,’ I order him, kneeling down, reefing my iron necklace over my head, and then putting it over Julian’s. ‘Like, right now.’

‘The Seelie prince cannot find a way in here,’ he says. ‘This boy is mine.’

FFS, can fairies just stop? Can they just, you know, not? For like five minutes?

‘I don’t have time for this,’ I say, reaching out with my right hand, the one with the iron ring.

But the expression on Cardy’s face stops me just before I touch him. It’s not one I’ve ever seen a fairy wear before.

Horror.

‘Brother,’ he whispers, staring at the puddle.

‘Jenny?’ I ask.

She turns Cardy’s eyes on me, and they’re flashing with fury. ‘Betrayer,’ she hisses.

I slap her across the face with my right hand.

‘You back?’ I ask.

‘Yeah,’ Cardy says, wide-eyed. ‘What – did they –’

I grab the iron knife off the floor and hand it to him. ‘Hold this. I’ll find your pendant.’

It takes me a while, but eventually I find it, next to the water cooler. It does one of those bubble things where it sounds like it’s burping just as my fingers close around the lump of iron, and I jump about ninety metres into the air, slipping when I land and ending up sprawled in the puddle again. I knock Helena’s head with my foot, and it rolls away, turning over.

Her eyes stare at me.

‘Take this,’ I say, scrambling to my feet and pressing the pendant into Cardy’s hands. ‘And for God’s sake, don’t take it off again.’

‘I am never taking it off again,’ he says, reefing it over his head. ‘That took, what, all of two seconds before they took me over?’

‘Not they,’ I say. ‘Her.’

‘Jenny?!’ His expression is almost exactly the same one as was on his face a moment ago, when Jenny saw what had happened to Kel.

‘You can’t freak out now, okay?’ I say, prying the iron knife from his white-knuckled fingers before he accidentally stabs himself with it. ‘We have to fix this.’

Cardy looks around and takes the scene in before he looks back to me.

‘Pearl,’ he says, ‘we can’t fix this.’

‘We have to try,’ I say. ‘First of all, what are we going to do with Julian? I’ve put my iron necklace on him, but –’

‘Pearl.’

‘– it’s not like we can just take him home! He’ll take that necklace off, like, immediately and then the prince can grab him again any time he likes and we’ll be right back in the –’

‘Pearl.’

‘– same position. But it’s not like we can just kidnap him either! I mean, I know he’s disappeared before, but then there was an Unseelie fairy that subbed in and took his place – I still haven’t worked out why they did that, but it’s not like we have a handy shapeshifter on call that can do it for us this time, and –’

‘Pearl!’

‘I know, Cardy!’ I say. ‘I know! I just – I have no idea what to do, all right?’

I can’t look at her. I won’t look at her.

She was alive. Just a few minutes ago, she was alive, and she was frightened, and she was trying to say something – and then there was clear space between her head and her body and she was gone.

‘Oh God,’ I whisper. ‘What do we do?’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Tam says.

He strides into the church. Marcos’s body is over his shoulder, and he sets him down in the middle of the aisle with an audible thunk. ‘I will need something to wrap the body in,’ he says, regarding the puddle of Kel and the two pieces that once were Helena dispassionately.

‘T-Tam –’ I manage to stammer.

‘Pearl,’ he says, ‘this is not the first body I have buried.’

He pulls the swathe of fabric off the top of Mrs Kostakidis’s coffin and lays it on dry ground. His feet make a gentle splashing sound in the puddle as he grabs Helena’s body under the arms. He drops her on the sheet in a pile of limbs, then returns for her head. He picks it up by the hair. Her eyes stare at me.

I turn around and pick a spot on the wall to focus on and try very, very hard not to be sick.

‘I can take Julian too,’ Tam says.

‘No,’ I say. ‘No more bodies. No more dying. No more.’

‘I did not mean that I would kill him,’ he says, his tone almost conversational. ‘But I can keep him with me, keep him under iron. I am alone in my house.’

The spot on the wall that I’m trying my hardest to focus on is swimming in front of my eyes.

‘We can’t keep him there forever,’ I force out. ‘People will wonder where he is.’

‘Perhaps not, but we can keep him for a little while,’ Tam says. ‘Enough time for you to plan your next move.’

I can’t imagine moving ever again. If I move from this spot on which I’m standing – the second I do anything, or say anything, or try anything – someone else will die.

‘Is Marcos …?’ I manage.

‘He is not dead,’ Tam says. ‘He is unconscious, but he is breathing.’

‘W-where was he?’

‘Up a tree. You can turn around.’

‘No, I can’t.’

There’s the sound of footsteps, and then his hand is on my shoulder. ‘Pearl,’ he says, ‘there is nothing to see.’

I turn.

Helena’s body is gone. In its place is a formless, fabric-wrapped lump.

I turn back around, try and find my spot on the wall to stare at again. ‘No. No. I can’t.’

‘Do not fear,’ Tam tells me. ‘I will make sure that no one finds her.’

They will never find where I will hide the bodies.

His hand is still on my shoulder.

‘Okay,’ I say, walking away to a safe distance. ‘Okay okay okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. Tam, you’re going to – take care of that, and you’re going to take Julian, and you’re going to keep iron on him at your place until we have a chance to work out what to do. I’ll find his phone and text his parents and say that he’s staying with a friend for a few days or something.’

‘As you wish.’

‘Cardy, you and I are going to take Marcos to the hospital,’ I say. ‘And if anyone asks where Helena is, we’ll say that – that she left. That she went away again. Okay?’

Nothing.

‘Cardy, are you listening to me?’ I say.

He looks up, blinking. ‘Sorry, what?’

He’s not standing where he was before. At some point in my conversation with Tam, he found his way to the piano stool. I closed the lid over the keys before, but he’s opened it, and as I watch, he starts hitting keys at what seems like random. He tries to play a scale, but gets tangled up in his own hands. He tries again, but ends up turning it into ‘Chopsticks’, and exhales in visible frustration.

I can see a whole new massive problem dawning on the horizon. Like a sunrise, but more, bigger. I remember learning in, like, Year Five that when the sun eventually explodes, it’ll turn into a red giant. That’s about the size of the problem I’m about to have.

‘Cardy,’ I say, trying to keep my voice calm, ‘come down from there. Now.’

‘Hmmm?’

‘Close the lid. Come down from there.’

‘Just a second. I –’

‘Cardy!’ I bark. ‘Get away from there!’

That seems to snap him out of it, because he almost leaps away from the piano, the lid crashing shut over the keys. ‘Oh shit,’ he says, eyes wide. ‘What did you do, Pearl?’

Before this year, I’d been inside a hospital exactly once in my life. I was eight years old, and Disey and Shad took me to Adelaide so we could go and see our grandma. It wasn’t a pleasant experience – I mean, she was dying of cancer, so it wasn’t ever going to be hurrah-fun-times-yaaassss-hospitals – but it was normal, somehow. Grandmas get old and die. You go to the hospital to see them. It’s sad, and you start associating the smell of disinfectant with death, but it’s just the way it works.

I’ve been to the hospital so many times this year they should probably name a wing after me, and not once has it been for something normal.

When Cardy and I get there, we’re met with a crowd of Phil’s relatives in the carpark. This is useful – there was no way Cardy and I were going to be able to lug Marcos inside – but it’s also very unnerving.

‘What are you all doing here?’ I ask Phil’s aunt Efghenia. ‘I messaged my sister and told her we were coming – did she let you know?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘When we left the church, it just seemed … we just thought … the hospital just seemed like the place to go.’

She blinks, and a look of confusion crosses her face. ‘Why didn’t we just stay at the church?’ she wonders aloud.

I’m saved by Shad bellowing, ‘Pearl!’ from across the carpark.

He and Disey come legging it across the carpark.

‘Are you all right?’ Disey demands. ‘I’m so sorry we left you there, Pearlie. I don’t know what came over us.’

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I told you to leave.’

And they left.

Oh God, I told them to leave, and they left.

‘Why didn’t you call the ambos for Marcos? Why did you drive him here yourself?’

‘It all happened so fast,’ I say.

‘Why didn’t we call the ambos?’ Disey wonders, brows furrowing.

‘Where’s Helena?’ Shad asks. ‘She stayed behind with you, right?’

‘She’s gone,’ I say.

I cut off Shad’s next question by bursting into tears.

Hospitals are like funerals, in that they do weird things to time. In some ways, they’re quite regimented: doctors and nurses do rounds at certain hours, meals are served to patients at specific times. It has that same ritual sense as the stand-up-sit-down-now-kneel of a funeral. But at the same time, you’re never quite sure how long anything is taking either, because you’re cut off from the normal world. You’re in a new place, a weird place, apart from the everyday, where the rules are different. You’re never quite sure if it’s night or day, or if you’ve been here a second, an hour, a minute.

Is this what fairyland is like? I am a prince of fairies, the prince said, and there are rules by which we are bound and must obey. Fairyland must have its regiments, its rituals, like a hospital, like a funeral. But the rules that apply there – that apply to him – aren’t the normal rules.

He’s playing a game with me, and I don’t know when he started, or what kind of game it is, or what happens when he wins.

He ripped her head straight off her body with his bare hands.

I have the iron knife in my handbag. I run my fingers along the blade, and imagine how it’s going to feel when I drive it into his heart.

Cardy must have texted Holly and Phil, because they show up after – yeah, I don’t know how long. A while. ‘Is everything okay?’ Phil asks me. ‘Is Marcos …?’

‘We don’t know yet,’ I say. ‘We’re waiting to hear. But there’s something else.’

I can feel Disey’s eyes on me from the other side of the room.

Fairies? Holly mouths.

I nod.

Julian? Phil mouths.

I nod again.

I can still feel Disey watching.

‘I’m going to get some fresh air,’ Holly announces.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Phil says.

‘Yeah, why not?’ I say, trying to sound casual, even though I know this is the most obvious staged getting-of-fresh-air in the history of the universe.

I tell them what happened, huddled in an alcove in the smokers’ area outside.

‘Helena’s dead?’ Holly exclaims.

‘Keep your voice down,’ I hiss.

‘He killed her,’ Phil says. ‘Julian killed her.’

‘No, he didn’t,’ I say. ‘It was the prince.’

‘It was Julian’s hands!’ she says.

‘It won’t happen again,’ I say. ‘Tam’s got him. He’ll keep him locked down.’

Holly makes a noise in the back of her throat.

‘I know you don’t trust Tam, but we owe him for this,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been there.’

Holly shakes her head. ‘Remind me to tell you what happened when Tam caught Julian dragging his feet on obeying one of Emily’s orders once,’ she says. ‘You’ll think twice about trusting him then.’

‘I don’t trust him,’ I say. ‘Much. But we need him.’

Holly leaves instead of coming back to the waiting room with us. ‘It’s crowded enough in there,’ she says. She’s not wrong, but I still wish she hadn’t gone, because when we get back to the waiting room, it’s full of Phil’s disapproving relatives.

‘Pippa,’ her aunt Christina says, a frosty note in her voice. ‘We have some news.’

‘Is it Uncle Marcos?’ she asks. ‘Has he woken up?’

‘No,’ Christina says shortly. ‘It’s about the burial.’

‘Oh,’ Phil says faintly.

‘We’ve had to make some rearrangements, what with the … situation with Marcos,’ Christina says. ‘The burial can’t go ahead this afternoon, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Phil echoes.

‘Efghenia and I have made arrangements to have your mother buried on the sixth.’

‘But – that’s days away,’ Phil says. ‘Can’t we – can’t we just do it quickly? Tomorrow, maybe?’

‘Marcos would want to be there,’ Christina says. ‘It’s his sister’s burial. We need to give him every chance to go. And with the way he is now …’ She makes that weird clicking sound of disapproval people make with their tongue.

‘Aunt Christina,’ Phil says, ‘I have to tell you – I’m so sorry. I can’t – what happened – I just – I –’

‘And we wanted to know if you would play, Pearl,’ Christina says.

Her whole demeanour changes. It’s as if she’s become a different person. She’s like a grey day that the sun has suddenly come out on, flooded with brilliant light.

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure that would really be appropriate, would it? Playing in a cemetery?’

‘It’s not usual, yes, but we could make it work,’ Christina says.

‘Um –’

‘We could get one of those electric keyboards, and an extension cord,’ she says. ‘Maybe a few of them linked together, if we can’t find one long enough. It would be so wonderful, Pearl. Please. It would mean so much to all of us.’

‘Are you talking about the music?’ Phil’s aunt Efghenia says, coming into the room behind us. ‘It was so beautiful today. I don’t remember it ever sounding like that before, but – oh, it was just divine, Pearl. How awful that it got cut off.’

Phil flinches.

‘Please say you’ll play,’ Efghenia goes on. ‘Please.’

‘I – um – sure,’ I say. ‘If you can find me a keyboard and a way to plug it in, I’ll play something.’

‘We can bring Pearl’s keyboard,’ Disey says from across the room. ‘It fits in my car.’

‘Excellent!’ Christina says. ‘We’ll take care of the extension cord.’

‘Do you think they have a keyboard here?’ Efghenia says. ‘There’s no change with Marcos, but if he could hear that music – how could he not wake up?’

‘Or we could bring the keyboard in here,’ Christina says. ‘I’d love to hear it again first.’

‘Me too,’ Efghenia says.

Then suddenly we’re surrounded by a knot of Phil’s relatives, pressing so close I have to bring my elbows up to maintain any kind of personal space at all.

‘That music was so wonderful,’ one of them says.

‘I’ve never heard anything like it.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘Where did you learn it?’

‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’

Phil shrinks behind me as they keep pushing in. ‘Would you mind moving back a bit?’ I ask the worst offender.

‘How did the tune go again?’ he asks. ‘Could you hum it, or –’

‘Move back!’ I snap at him. ‘Now!’

He backs away, hands raised.

‘Everybody step back,’ I order.

They obey.

‘Please,’ I add, way too late.

‘We’re sorry,’ Efghenia says. ‘We just loved the music so much.’

What am I doing? What the hell am I doing?

‘I’m, um, going to the bathroom,’ I say, and escape.

Or not. ‘I’ll come with you,’ Christina says, grabbing my elbow.

‘Don’t follow me,’ I say. ‘Please.’

I run out of the room.

A few corridors away – when I’m sure that there’s no one on my tail – I lean my head back against the cold wall and take a few deep breaths.

Music. I played fairy music. In front of fifty, sixty, seventy – God, I don’t even know how many people.

How could I have been so stupid? I know what fairy music does to people. I know what it feels like when it eats you up, coils itself around your insides and squeezes until you think you’ll burst if you don’t hear it again.

I know that, and I played it anyway, and – and – and now –

And now they all have to do what I say.

I told them to step back, and they all stepped back.

I told them not to follow, and they didn’t follow.

I told them to get out at the church, and they got out. Disey, Shad, everyone – they all got out.

No. Holly didn’t. Tam didn’t.

… because Emily made them immune. Forget. Isn’t that what Holly told me Emily said to her?

Even Phil was affected. She wasn’t rocking back and forth and saying she had to get out because she was traumatised! She was doing that because I did that to her.

Shit. I abandoned her in the middle of all her relatives.

I turn on my heel to go back and get her when –

‘What was all that about?’

It’s the cop outside Hunter’s room. She’s slouched against the wall, arms folded. ‘They seem excited,’ she says, nodding back towards the waiting room. ‘Baby being born?’

‘Um, no,’ I say. ‘They’re just – it’s all – they’re a bit on edge. Sorry, I really have to pee.’

I basically sprint to the bathroom. When the door swings shut behind me, it takes everything in me to resist the urge to dramatically press myself against it to hold it shut.

Is this what it’s like to be Taylor Swift? You’re having about fifty crises all at once, but then a bunch of people burst into the room and are like, ‘OMG, Taylor, can you just play every song off 1989 real quick? It’s my favourite album ever and it would mean so much to me. You’re so wonderful. So talented. I would do just about anything for you if you would just do that for me.’

I splash cold water on my face and look at myself in the mirror. I sure as hell don’t look like Taylor Swift right now. I look hollow, gaunt. There are huge dark circles under my eyes, somewhere between purple and green. My hair is standing straight up – not in that tousled bedhead I-woke-up-like-this way that some people manage, but in a way that looks like I genuinely woke up like that, possibly twelve days ago. I sweated off the makeup I was wearing for the funeral and then sweated some more, and the unkind lighting shows every blemish on my face, every pimple I have now and every pimple I have ever had in my entire life.

I am not a hot mess right now. I’m just a mess.

And holy hell am I in a mess. How is it that my sister-in-law being literally decapitated might not even be my biggest problem today?

When I first heard the fairy music that time in the bush, when Finn and I saw the fairies forcing Holly to dance on hot coals, it sank its teeth into me – but it was nowhere near this fast. I didn’t realise for a couple of weeks that something was very, very wrong. Sure, I’d spent a lot of time at my piano by then, but I thought it was just regular musical curiosity, like I get all the time. It was a slow burn, and I didn’t realise it was crushing me to death until it had me well and truly tied up.

I had Finn’s magic hands – Finn’s magic hair – to tide me over until I taught myself to play the music and free myself from its clutches.

But I’ve only got one bracelet of Finn’s hair, and I just played this music in front of an army of people, who are going to follow me around like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, until the music …

I have no idea what the music is going to do to them. Turn them into Julians? Kill them? Have I just signed the death warrants of dozens of people?

Breathe, Linford. Breathe. Don’t turn this into a disaster when it doesn’t have to be one. Sure, this is bad, but you know how to fix it. Just tell them to forget. Emily told Holly and Tam to forget, and they’re fine!

Of course, Emily is an all-powerful fairy, and I’m just someone who’s good at playing the piano.

The door swings open. I tense up, about to bark a GO AWAY command, but then I see it’s just Disey, and I relax.

Then I tense up even more, because I know what’s coming, and I so do not have the brain space or the emotional space or any kind of space to be having this conversation right now.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘Hi,’ she replies.

‘I was just … um …’ I gesture futilely towards the sinks.

‘We need to talk, Pearlie.’

I want to back away. I’ve stood toe to toe with the Seelie prince and not wavered, but I’m so scared now that I want to run. I want to back away until I’m pressed against the bathroom wall, and then I want to keep backing away. I want to leave a Linford-shaped hole in the wall as I flee into the night.

‘Pearlie, what’s going on?’

I bite my lip.

‘At first, I was chalking it up to bad luck,’ she says. ‘Your friend dying. The coma. The thing at the creek. There was – you nearly got killed by a goddamn serial killer, and that’d screw with anyone. I thought you were acting out and having the teenage rebel moments that you never really had before. Fighting with your friends. Dating a bad boy.’

‘Finn isn’t a bad boy.’

‘That’s not the point.’ She takes a step forward, and I have to clutch at the sink to keep from taking one back. ‘Finn’s a symptom. He’s not the cause. There’s something else going on.’

I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of one single thing.

‘This is more than just bad luck,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it.’

It’s not a question. It’s a statement.

The good thing about statements is that they don’t require an answer, so I don’t give one. I curl my fingers tighter against the cold porcelain of the sink.

‘Every single time something’s gone horribly wrong in this town in the last few months, you’ve been a part of it,’ she says. ‘You’ve been right in the middle of it. You and Phil.’

‘Are you –’ I swallow, not really believing that these words are about to come out of my mouth, ‘– accusing us of something?’

‘No, Pearlie,’ she says. ‘I’m just asking you to tell me the truth.’

‘I do,’ I say. ‘Always.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she replies. ‘Not the whole truth, anyway. What’s going on? What are you mixed up in? What are you not saying?’

I promised not to lie to her.

I promised.

‘Pearlie,’ she says, ‘I am always on your side. Always. There is nothing you can do and nothing you can say that will make that not be true. But I need you to tell me what’s going on.’

‘Helena’s dead,’ I whisper.

‘Helena’s dead?!’

‘They killed her. He – he killed her.’

‘Who?’ Disey says. ‘Who is doing this, Pearl? What’s going on?’

‘Fairies,’ I say.

‘Fairies,’ she repeats, blinking slowly.

‘There are fairies in this town,’ I say. ‘They’re terrifying and beautiful and cruel and they don’t ever stop until they get what they want.’

‘Fairies,’ she says again.

‘They left a baby here,’ I say. ‘A changeling. Nearly eighteen years ago. On Valentine’s Day. And then they came back to find it, except they didn’t know who it was. Finn. Cardy. Marie –’

‘You.’

I shake my head. ‘Not me. Finn. It’s Finn.’

‘Finn’s a fairy.’

‘A fairy prince,’ I say. ‘But now they’ve taken him back, and –’

‘Pearlie, we just saw him today. He was at the funeral. We picked him up, for God’s sake.’

‘That’s not Finn. That’s Tam. His … the fairies didn’t just dump their baby here, they swapped him. They left Finn, and they took Tam.’

I always thought that ‘jaw drop’ was just an expression of speech, but Disey’s jaw drops as I speak. It’s not sudden, like you see in cartoons or whatever, where someone is OMG SHOCKED and then their jaw literally hits the floor, but gradual, an incremental opening of the mouth until she’s absolutely gaping.

‘And they took someone for the rest of us as well,’ I say. ‘For Cardy and Marie – and for me. They took my twin. My identical twin.’

Disey stares.

‘She’s trapped,’ I say. ‘The prince – not Finn, his brother, his older brother, the one that killed Helena – he’s made her into his – his – they call it a pet. She disobeyed him, and now he’s punishing her, and –’

‘A twin,’ Disey breathes. ‘She was right.’

‘… what?’ I say faintly.

‘Mum,’ she says. ‘When she was pregnant with you, she always used to say …’

‘She always used to say what?’

‘That she’d been blessed,’ Disey says. She’s not looking at me, but she’s not not looking at me either. It’s like she’s looking through me, past me, her eyes registering me but seeing something else entirely. ‘That she’d been blessed with twins again. By the fairies.’

Oh my God. Oh my God.

‘Shad and I always used to tell her she was being stupid,’ she says. ‘We – she didn’t want to, but we would make her go to all her appointments. We saw her ultrasounds. One baby. Just one baby. Every single one showed just one baby. There was once when they were listening for a heartbeat and they thought they could hear two and she was so excited, but then they couldn’t any more and they thought … I don’t know what they thought. That it was some kind of error, maybe.’

If I clutch any harder at this sink I’m going to crush the porcelain in my fingers, but if I don’t, I am going to buckle at the knees and fall to the floor.

‘We told her over and over again that it was just one baby, that she was going to have just one baby, but she wouldn’t listen,’ Disey says. ‘I remember – near the end. She was huge. So huge she looked like she was about to burst. I was brushing her hair for her, and she was stroking her belly. “They’re going to be born soon, Paradise,” she said. “I can feel it.” So of course I was like, “Mum, it’s just one baby, you know that, she’s going to be born soon,” and she shook her head and said, “No, no, no, Paradise. The fairies have blessed me. You just wait and see.”’

‘What did she mean, the fairies had blessed her?’

‘I have no idea,’ Disey says. ‘She was always … that was the kind of thing she was always saying. If she couldn’t find something, she’d be like, “Oh, the pixies took it,” or she’d look at the moon when it was a crescent and be like, “Oh, the fairy queen is smiling tonight”. Ridiculous stuff. I thought she was just … being her, you know?’

I want to stick my head in the sink, turn the cold water on, and let it run over me for a long time. Why can’t I find out information at a reasonable pace at a reasonable time at reasonable intervals, when I have time to sit down and figure out what it all means? Why do I have to find out everything at once?

My mother knew about fairies. My goddamn stupid mother, that I’ve barely devoted a thought to for years, knew about fairies.

And she thought they blessed her. With twins.

‘I remember that Valentine’s Day,’ Disey says. ‘It was the middle of summer, but it was cold. Rainy. Windy. I remember hoping like hell that you wouldn’t be born that day because I had my first ever Valentine’s date all planned out with this girl from Derrigong, and I was desperate not to miss it. But then the hospital called the school and Shad and I got pulled out of fifth period because Mum was in labour.’

‘Did you go?’

Disey nods. ‘We went. It was this hospital. Not this wing, obviously, but they all kind of look the same. We were in the waiting room for what seemed like forever, and then this nurse came out and asked us if we wanted to go in and meet our little sister.’

‘And …’ There’s a question on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t even know what I’m trying to ask.

‘So we went in,’ she says softly. ‘And they handed you to me, and you were so small and so perfect, Pearlie. You had these little hands but with long fingers, the longest fingers I’ve ever seen on a baby. You curled them around Shad’s thumb, and he was like, “I think she’s going to play piano like you, Mum,” but she wasn’t listening. She was arguing with the nurse, telling them that there was another baby. That it was twins. She said –’ Disey swallows ‘– she said she was carrying two precious pearls.’

She’s standing close to me now, and I’m not the only one clutching onto a sink to stay upright.

‘But she wasn’t,’ she says softly. ‘I was there, Pearlie. Shad and I both were. We stayed for hours. We were there when she made seven different doctors confirm for her that there was only one baby. I’m sorry, but you don’t have a twin.’

‘But I do, Dise,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen her.’

‘You’ve seen her?’

‘The prince of the fairies,’ I say. ‘He made me choose. He said I could pick one person to stay here with me in the human world. I could have Finn, or I could have Phil, or I could have my sister.’

‘And you picked Phil.’

I nod.

‘This is crazy, Pearlie. You don’t have a twin. I was there. The whole time. I know you don’t have a twin.’

‘There’s this … thing that fairies can do,’ I say. ‘They can mess with your mind. Screw with your memories.’

‘Are you telling me that a fairy brainwashed me into forgetting I had another sister?’

‘Yes.’

She shakes her head. ‘No. Anyone in the world could do anything to me, try any form of mental torture they liked, but I’d never forget you, Pearl. I couldn’t. I can’t. It would literally be impossible. If I had another sister, I would know.’

‘I don’t know what to tell you, Dise,’ I say. ‘They’re terrifying and powerful and they don’t ever die and I don’t know even half the things they can do.’

‘And you’re sleeping with one of them,’ she says, running her hand through her hair and laughing that laugh you laugh when things are not even a little bit funny. ‘Great.’

‘Finn’s different,’ I say. ‘He grew up here. He didn’t even know what he was until I helped him work it out. He’s not like the rest of them.’

‘So he can’t brainwash people?’

I hesitate for far too long trying to formulate an answer. Disey swears.

‘He doesn’t kill people, though!’ I say. ‘His brother does that. And now Finn’s trapped there with him in their alternate dimension fairyland place, with our sister, and with the other kids they stole. But I’m going to get them back.’

She shakes her head. ‘No.’

‘I can’t just leave them there.’

‘You just said that the fairies are terrifying and immortal and have basically limitless power. And that one of them killed Helena – and I’m assuming they’re the culprits behind all these murders?’

‘Yes. Well, kind of. There are two – teams, I guess. The prince is Seelie, and he’s the one that killed Helena, but then there’s the Unseelie, and they killed Marie. And Helena worked for the Unseelie, because she was a human they stole away and then put back, and I think she killed Matilda for them – and then Mrs Kostakidis was another thing, that was the Riders, and –’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Disey says. ‘You’re finished with this, Pearlie. I’m not letting you risk your life.’

‘Dise, that’s my boyfriend over there,’ I say. ‘I’m not leaving him. And if you had any idea what they’re – what the prince – is doing to our sister, then …’

‘Pearl, we don’t have another sister.’

‘Yes, we do.’

‘We can’t have another sister. I would know. Shad would know. We wouldn’t just forget.’

‘I told you. They’re so powerful, and –’

‘Either way, you’re out, Pearlie,’ she says. ‘Even if we do have another sister, there’s no way I’m letting you risk your life.’

‘You can’t stop me.’

Then suddenly she’s right in front of me, almost nose to nose. ‘Watch me,’ she growls, her fingers curling around my arm, so tight it’s painful. ‘You are the most important thing in my life, Pearl, and I am not going to lose you. I’d rather have one living sister than two dead ones. You’re done. You’re out. Forever.’

The silence stretches, long and weighty.

One of the fluorescent lights starts flickering, the most low-rent strobe light in the history of the world.

It flickers once. Twice. Three times.

Then I take a deep breath and do the worst thing I have ever done in my life.

‘Remember that music I played today?’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Everyone does. It’s a freaking earworm.’

‘Think about it,’ I say. ‘Hold it in your mind.’

‘Pearl –’

‘Just do it,’ I say. ‘Think of the music. And think of everything I just told you, about the fairies and Finn and our sister.’

She looks at me. Her fingers dig tighter into my arm.

I shake her off. I put my hands on either side of her face. I take a deep breath. I look her dead in the eyes.

‘Forget,’ I say.