‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘We can fix it.’

‘No, we can’t, Pearl!’ Cardy exclaims. ‘He’s in jail! On murder charges! We can’t just waltz in there and get him out.’

I should have expected something like this. Honestly, how did I not expect something like this? From the second I realised that the prince had brainwashed the police to look away from me, I should have realised that aw, kitten, let me give you a helping hand would also come with a knife in the back.

The police knocked on the Blacklins’ door this morning. Tam was the only one home. They had a warrant.

He didn’t know that he could say no, you can’t make me do anything without one of my guardians present, because no one told him. I didn’t tell him. Instead, he lashed out. Broke one cop’s jaw and another one’s arm before they tazed him.

And when they searched him, they found bones in his pocket. Finger bones.

Marie’s finger bones. Bones that I put in Tam’s pocket a few weeks ago when I went looking for the Rider’s heart and he saved me from an attack by Unseelie birds.

It’s almost funny, in its way. Why today, of all days, did he have to be wearing those pants? How can you be so careless with your laundry that you forget that you have finger bones in your pocket?

Finn would be horrified. Hor-ri-fied.

And then, of course, when the police searched the house, they found Julian, bound and gagged in the guest bedroom, and he was more than happy to tell them, in excruciating detail, about how Finn is a murderous murderer who murders.

So now on top of the murder charges, they have Tam – Finn! – on kidnapping, assault, and resisting arrest.

I bet the prince doesn’t think it’s just almost funny. He must be rolling around on his fairy floor giving himself a very unprincely stitch right now.

‘Is it just me, or is this not really a problem?’ Holly says. ‘We couldn’t trust Tam in the first place. Now, he’s out of the equation. No big deal.’

‘Of course it’s a big deal!’ I say. ‘He’s going to get the most Misrule powers of all of us! Finn’s and Emily’s! How the hell are we going to pull this off without those?’

‘I’ll get Emily’s powers,’ Holly says.

‘Oh cool, so we’ll be able to find them,’ I say. ‘That’s no use if we can’t heal them!’

‘Odds are you’ll get Finn’s powers.’

‘I’m not his pet.’

‘Pearl, just because you don’t want it to be true doesn’t mean that it isn’t true.’

‘I am not his pet,’ I repeat, teeth gritted. ‘I’m something, but I’m not his pet.’

‘Can we just think about this logically for one second?’ Phil says. ‘Let’s leave Tam out of it for a minute. Who is the one person we definitely need if we’re going to break into fairyland?’

We all look at her.

‘Julian, dipshits,’ Phil says. ‘When midnight rolls around, he’ll get the prince’s powers. Now Dave’s dead, he’s the only one that will. That makes him the only one that can open the door to fairyland.’

‘That we know of,’ Cardy mutters darkly.

‘Tam might be handy to have along for the ride, but we need Julian,’ Phil goes on. ‘We can’t do anything without him. He has to be our number one priority.’

I close my eyes. ‘What’s the bet he’s taken off all that iron?’

‘Shit,’ Holly says. ‘If the prince gets hold of him – he could have taken him anywhere.’

That would be just like the prince. To take the one thing I need more than anything in the world and put it on a high shelf, just out of my reach. Oh kitten, he would say, there are some toys you cannot play with – hang on, wait.

‘No, he won’t,’ I say. ‘The prince’s still got to ask me to go with him again. Tomorrow night. He blew up his other body. He can’t have taken Julian far.’

‘Hello, Mrs Bishop?’ Phil says into her phone. ‘It’s Philippa Kostakidis.’

There’s a pause. ‘Thank you for your condolences,’ she says. ‘That means a lot. But that’s not why I’m calling. I, uh, got wind of what happened with Julian. The – the kidnapping.’

Another pause. ‘Yes, I was surprised too,’ she says. ‘I never would have guessed. And – look, I know things didn’t end well between Julian and me, but this whole thing … when I heard what happened I got so worried. Can you tell me where Julian is now? I just – I need to see him. I need to know he’s all right.’

A third pause. ‘Thank you so much, Mrs Bishop. Talk soon, all right? I’ve missed our chats. Bye.’

She hangs up. ‘He’s still at the police station. They’re taking his statement.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘We can two-birds-one-stone this, and get Tam out at the same time.’

‘Um, Pearl, somehow I don’t think they’re keeping the victims and the perpetrators in the same place,’ Cardy says.

‘They can’t be keeping them that far apart either!’ I protest. ‘The police station isn’t exactly a palace.’

‘Yes, but getting Julian out is one thing,’ he says. ‘They’re not holding him. We could literally just wait outside the police station for him. I’m sure they’ll let him out before midnight. But Tam –’

‘They’re not letting him out,’ Holly says. ‘And they shouldn’t. Or have you forgotten the thing where he literally tortured me?’

‘We need him,’ I say, teeth gritted. ‘He’s the only one that can heal Finn. Or is that what you want? Unconscious, lifeless Finn? Totally powerless to do anything about the fact that everyone thinks he’s a murderer? Because it’s not Tam they’ve arrested for murder. It’s Finn.’

‘Don’t you dare accuse me of not caring about Finn,’ Holly snarls. ‘Don’t you dare.’

‘Both of you, stop,’ Cardy says. ‘This isn’t helpful.’

We subside, but I can still feel Holly glaring at me like she wants to drill holes in my skin with her eyes.

‘I think we can all agree that Tam isn’t exactly trustworthy, right?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ Phil says firmly. ‘We can agree that.’

‘But we can also all agree that it would be better to have him along with us than not, right? Given that you were kind of broken up, we don’t know how well you’re going to be able to control Emily’s powers, Holly, and we don’t know if you’ll get Finn’s at all, Pearl.’

‘We do,’ I say. ‘I won’t.’

Holly rolls her eyes. ‘Pearl, come on,’ she says. ‘Didn’t you tell us all that you’ve been walking into Finn’s dreams? You’ve already got some of his powers. Why wouldn’t you get those ones?’

‘Off-topic,’ Cardy declares. ‘It would be better to have Tam than not. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ I say.

‘Agreed,’ Phil says.

‘Fine,’ Holly bites out.

‘So, Pearl, you said you could fix it,’ Cardy says. ‘Tell us what you mean.’

I exhale a long, slow breath. ‘Please don’t judge.’

‘No promises,’ Holly says.

Cardy shoots her a look.

‘There’s a cop,’ I say. ‘And I can get her to do whatever I want.’

In the briefest terms possible, I tell them what happened in the hospital corridors on New Year’s Eve. Me, sneaking off to see the prince. The cop, stopping me. Asking me how I deleted my phone records, why they couldn’t access my internet history, whether Shad was involved.

The clock, ticking down. Me, scared of what the prince would do if I wasn’t there on the stroke of midnight, opening my mouth and starting to sing.

‘Pearl,’ Phil says, ‘we went round and de-brainwashed everyone you used the music on a few days ago. We had a list and everything.’

‘I know.’

‘And you said you de-brainwashed everyone from the hospital that you sang at when the prince killed Dave.’

‘I did, but –’

‘The music can kill you,’ she says. ‘We’ve all felt it. You’ve felt it. You know what it can do to people.’

‘I know.’

‘Why didn’t you de-brainwash the cop?’

‘I asked you not to judge.’

‘Pearl!’

‘Because I was scared, okay?’ I explode. ‘Because the thought that there might be other cops at the station that the prince didn’t brainwash – that there still might be a chance that I’d get arrested – that you might get arrested – that everything would be destroyed, and that there’d be no chance that things would ever get back to normal – that scared me worse than anything the prince has ever done.’

They’re all still just looking at me.

‘There’s so much I can’t control right now,’ I say. ‘But the music – the power that gives me – that, I can control. And I just needed one thing I could control. One thing I could say, “Okay, fine, that’s a mess, but I’ve got it under control. I’ve fixed it. I’ve sorted it out.”’

More silence.

Then, ‘Okay,’ Phil says. ‘That makes sense. But you can’t let it go on any longer.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I promise. Just – tonight, all right? We’ll use the cop to get Tam and Julian out, and then I’ll make her forget.’

Holly looks at her phone. ‘If we’re going to do this, we better get on with it,’ she says. ‘It’s already six.’

Cardy says nothing.

We crouch in the alley between the post office and the fruit shop, two blocks away from the police station, and debate about who should be the one to go in to get the cop.

I’m all for it being me – ‘I at least know what she looks like!’ – but I get shot down immediately. ‘If the prince has gone to all this trouble to send them after Tam, do you think he’s really going to let you just waltz in there?’ Phil asks.

She suggests herself – ‘I’m pretty good at blending in when I need to be’ – but I disagree. ‘You’re the most likely person for the prince to try to use against me. What if you walked in and they immediately arrested you too?’

‘Okay, what about Cardy?’

‘A black kid walking into a part of a police station where he’s not supposed to be? I’d be the most likely to be arrested out of all of us.’

So it ends up being Holly that we send in. ‘Tell her I’m outside, and I’ll sing for her if she comes out,’ I say, after I’ve given her a description of what the cop looks like. ‘You’ll know you have the right one if she reacts when you mention the music.’

‘Yeah, I get it,’ she says. ‘I’m not stupid, Pearl.’

‘I didn’t say you were.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, both of you, shut up,’ Phil says.

It doesn’t take long for Holly to come back with the cop. ‘Turned out it was easy,’ she says. ‘She was working the front desk. All I had to say was your name and she basically sprinted out of the building.’

But I barely hear her, because the cop has fallen to her knees in front of me. ‘Please,’ she sobs. ‘Please, Miss Linford. I need to hear the music again. I need it so badly.’

‘Soon,’ I say. ‘First, I need you to do something for me.’

‘Anything.’ She’s crying, streams of tears falling from her eyes. ‘I’ll do anything,’ she says, clutching at the hem of my shirt. ‘Just please, promise me that you’ll sing for me.’

‘I promise,’ I say. ‘But if you don’t do this, you’ll never hear the music again, do you understand?’

‘Yes. Yes, yes, I understand.’

‘There are two things I want you to do,’ I say. ‘First, I want you to find Julian Bishop. I want you to put this bracelet on him. And I want you to tell him that Phil Kostakidis is here, and she needs to see him.’

She nods, slowly at first and then faster and faster until her head is almost vibrating. ‘I’ll do it,’ she says, clutching the iron bracelet I’ve given her in her hands. ‘I’ll find him. I’ll tell him.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Then I need you to find where they’re holding Finn Blacklin. I need you to unlock the door. I need you to tell him that Pearl’s come for him, and to meet me outside. And I need you to distract anyone who tries to stop him leaving.’

Horror spreads across her face. ‘I can’t do that,’ she says. ‘He’s a murderer.’

‘He’s not. Believe that.’

‘I believe you. But … I can’t. Please. Please don’t make me.’

‘I’m not asking you to help him escape. He can do that on his own. I just need you to open the door, and encourage everyone to look the other way.’

She looks up at me, the tears silver on her face in the reflected light. ‘I’m begging you,’ she says. ‘Don’t. Please.’

‘If you don’t, you’ll never hear the music again,’ I say.

She buries her face in her hands and the sound of her sobs feel like someone’s taken a cheesegrater to my heart. ‘All right,’ she weeps. ‘All right, all right, all right.’

‘Go. Now,’ I say, before I weaken, before I crumble, before I melt.

‘Will you sing a little for me first? Please?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You get me Julian, and get me Finn, and then I’ll sing.’

‘Here,’ Phil says, finding some tissues in her bag. ‘You look like you need these.’

‘Thank you,’ the cop says.

She stands, and for the first time, I see her name badge. Constable Emma Spinelli.

I wish I could unsee it. I wish more than anything she could just be a nameless cop to me.

‘Did you have to be so brutal, Pearl?’ Cardy asks me quietly, when Constable Spinelli has gone.

‘Yes.’

‘What if she loses her job?’ he asks. ‘What if something happens to her when she lets Tam out? What if she gets hurt? What if she gets charged as an accessory?’

‘I can’t think about that,’ I say. ‘Not now.’

‘You have to think about that. If you don’t think about that, you’re no better than they are.’

‘It’s not like I liked it. It’s not like I did it for fun. You know why I did it. You know –’

‘When do the ends stop justifying the means?’ he says. ‘When, exactly, is it all right to take someone’s free will away? What has to happen to make that okay?’

I groan. ‘Cardy –’

‘You’ve never been on the other end of this, Pearl,’ he says. ‘All that time you spent saying that what you and Finn had was different? You were right. It is different. You can’t possibly know what it’s like, to have something come into your mind. To take you over. To make you do things that you –’

‘Someone’s coming,’ Holly says.

For possibly the first time in my life – and definitely the first time since he started dating Phil – I’m happy to see Julian.

For obvious reasons, I’m not expecting him to be happy to see me, but his eyes slide over me dispassionately before they land on Phil. Then they become anything but dispassionate. ‘Phil,’ he gasps, hugging her so tightly he literally sweeps her off her feet. ‘Oh my God, Phil, I’m so happy to see you.’

‘Me too, Jules,’ she says, awkwardly patting him. ‘Look – um – could you put me down for a second?’

‘It was Finn the whole time,’ he says. ‘He kidnapped me, Phil! He held me captive for nearly a week! And the whole time he was texting my mum, pretending to be me, being all like, “Oh yeah, I’m just staying with a friend, everything is fine” – and did you know they found Marie’s bones in his pockets? I knew it was him, I knew it was him this whole time, and – do you have any food? I’m starving, like, it feels like my stomach is eating itself, and –’

‘Jules, Jules, stop,’ Phil says, cutting him off mid-babble. ‘I need you to help me with something, all right? I need you to listen.’

‘No, no, listen to me first,’ he says urgently. ‘My head could crack like an egg.’

‘What?’

‘Pearl knows what I mean,’ he says. ‘My head could crack like an egg, at any moment.’

I freeze. I look down.

He’s not wearing the iron bracelet.

‘Should it?’ he asks. ‘Should it crack like an egg?’

‘I got your point last time,’ I say to the prince, trying to keep my voice as steady and even as possible. ‘I know what will happen if I say no to you tomorrow night. This has nothing to do with you. I’m just trying to help my friend.’

‘Your friend,’ he says, a ghost of that horrible smile flitting across his face. ‘I do not think my brother’s fetch thinks of you as a friend, kitten.’

‘Dude, Tam is not into me,’ I say. ‘Trust me.’

He just smiles.

And then the prince is gone, and Julian is back, babbling. ‘There’s so much I need to tell you, Phil,’ he says. ‘I’ve been – it’s like I’ve been having dreams, and –’

‘Good, good, you can tell me all about it,’ Phil says. ‘But first, put this on, all right?’

She slips her iron necklace off – thank God we all had the forethought to wear multiple pieces of iron jewellery, and thank God I stockpiled it before Matilda got arrested and murdered – and loops it over his head instead. ‘How about we go and sit in the car, all right?’ she says.

‘Is there food? I’m so hungry, Phil.’

‘I might have a muesli bar in my car. And it’ll be quieter in there. I really do need to talk to you.’

That leaves Holly, Cardy and me alone in the alley. None of us speak – well, actually, no, that’s not true. We say a lot, but we don’t use words.

The curl of Holly’s lip says I can’t believe we’re wasting this much time and energy on the guy that tortured me.

Cardy’s head, tilted back to look at the sky as he leans against a wall, says, You have done something bad and wrong and immoral and I can’t even look at you right now.

I fold my arms and try to yell, I am going to get Finn and the other three kids back no matter what tough calls I have to make, so shut up, as loud as I can.

Because we’re all so quiet, we hear the commotion from the police office even though we’re two full blocks away. It starts with shouting, which gets louder and louder, until it’s drowned out by sirens.

‘I take it Tam got away,’ I say.

‘The cop’s not back yet,’ Cardy says. ‘I take it she didn’t.’

As someone that this has actually happened to, I can tell you with absolute honesty that those words feel basically the same as being stabbed in the gut.

‘If Tam got away, where the hell is he?’ Holly says.

We wait. And we wait. The sirens get louder, and we all duck down behind a dumpster when red and blue lights sweep through our alleyway as cop cars race by.

My phone rings. ‘Oh, thank God,’ I say, answering it. ‘Tam? Where are you? Wait, no, don’t answer that. You need to get here now. I’m pretty sure they can trace your phone if the call is longer than a minute, so I’m going to hang up as soon as I’ve said this, okay? We’re in the alley behind –’

‘You lied to me.’

I do not think my brother’s fetch thinks of you as a friend, kitten.

Oh shit.

‘He told you,’ I say numbly. ‘The prince told you.’

‘I asked you – to your face – whether the prince sought the Silver Lady’s return,’ he snarls. ‘You have accused me of lying to you time and time again, but it is you who have been lying with every breath.’

‘Tam, I had to,’ I say. ‘I know how you feel about Emily. I knew you wouldn’t help me if you knew, and I need your help, Tam. I can’t do this without you. I need to save Finn, and I need to save my sister – your sister! – and the others, and I need your help to do it. Everything else I said was true, I promise. I’ll make sure we get Emily back to fairyland. I’ll make sure you can have the life you want, your life – Finn’s life. I’ll make sure –’

‘Liar.’

‘Emily lied too,’ I try. ‘She made you think Misrule was Valentine’s Day, and it wasn’t. She didn’t trust you enough to let you remember.’

Silence.

‘Please,’ I say. ‘I’m begging you, Tam. You have to trust me. You have to help me.’

‘I have a duty,’ he says, ‘and I intend to fulfil it.’

The line goes dead.