In the restaurant at the summit, they talked. After Romy’s swaggering tale, of walking so far downhill she found another train stop, and no way in hell was she walking back up, they finally, finally talked.

About Whiteland, their parents, Callum’s unique escape. Growing up in Devon, growing up on a Scottish island where everything was grey. I ran away once—Callum shrugged—but only got as far as the harbour. He forgot he didn’t have a boat.

School, university, the last year of life. How going back to get their A levels, degrees, or Masters degree, as Callum smirked, seemed impossible. Romy’s sporadic addictions, which she brought up sardonically, drink in hand, slapping the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on the literal and figurative table. She used this to lead slyly in to Kira and Callum. She grinned, relished Kira’s squirming, and then, they were on to now.

Then came Jay. He what? Callum cried, coughing and choking and cursing surprise. His beer went everywhere but in his glass. He told you this? He showed you?

Then came Julia, before he’d recovered. Romy started laughing—I get the psychic bug now—and as Kira swore them to secrecy, Callum shook his head, mouthed like a fish, and spluttered for three more chopes.

The bishop-fish was the one thing Romy wouldn’t believe. They talked about everything, absolutely everything—Mathew, dead and alive again, Anna, Huldra, and air—but that, she couldn’t accept. This isn’t Narnia, she said, very loudly. Fish just do not talk.

As the sky smudges pink and purple through mist, they still don’t have a plan. Hours of run-throughs, food, and beer have lessened the horror of now, and warm with bravado, they pile their thanks on the owner and brave the dusk.

The haze turns to fog on the way down the train line. By the time they reach Callum’s house, Kira is bravado-less, apprehensive, antsy, and cold. The colours may be stunning, kaleidoscopic pastels, but the silence is weighted, muffled, and unnerving, and the chalet is far too still.

The Whispers were here, she can’t help thinking, as she follows Callum inside. Wicking off the wood and flitting through walls, attacking, scaring, air. The ghosts of the ice plains, who baited her mother, sat back and waited, and took her away.

Kira was so close to them, and Jay was almost lost.

And what about Jay? What about Julia, with her dizzying talent? Carol, with hers, not telling the truth? They’re all here, or at least, they were. Everything is quiet and dark. The house feels like it’s brimming.

‘Mum?’ Callum calls, flipping on a lamp. The tabby cat slithers past Kira’s legs, and she jumps. Slipping off her coat and shoes, she nudges it away. ‘Hello?’

‘In here,’ comes the dim reply. Light shines beneath the kitchen door.

Callum relaxes. ‘Just checking,’ he calls. Heading for the fire, he pulls out the grate. ‘I’m guessing we’ll want a fire.’

‘Please.’

Romy loops her arm through Kira’s, and Kira jumps again. Antsy is an understatement. ‘Are you okay?’ she whispers, turning to her sister. Romy is stiff but shifting. ‘You’re shivering.’

‘Mmm.’ With the air of a reluctant pet, Romy rests her head on her shoulder. Callum clomps back out with the grate. ‘I’m unideal,’ she murmurs. ‘But no one needs to know. I’m a jack-in-the-box.’ She squeezes Kira’s arm. ‘I’ll be fine before the weasel goes pop.’

Kira frowns. ‘I’m not sure that means anything.’

‘Are you all here?’ Carol calls.

Kira’s attention shifts to the door. With its singular stripe, glowing in the gloom, it could be the stairway to Heaven, or Hell. ‘Yes,’ she calls back.

A pause. ‘Kira? Romy?’ Carol’s voice is strained. ‘Could you come talk to me for a minute?’

Kira exchanges a look with Romy. Two eyes wary, two white-hot. Kira and Romy. Not Callum.

Like a student sent to the head, Kira tugs her sister to the kitchen. Carol sits at the gnarled table, a tablet discordant in front of her. The screen is black, but the hand at her temple, the way her eyes and her mouth slope down…the last of Kira’s bravado dies.

‘What’s happened?’ Romy asks. Her words could fit in a matchbox.

Carol motions for them to sit. Callum clomps back in again, whistling a song about folding stars. Does he know anything that isn’t Biffy Clyro?

At least you’re breathing. What do you want? I know lots of Biffy Clyro.

Kira shakes the memory. ‘What’s wrong?’ she echoes, resting her hands on a chair back. Through the window, the sunset mist enfolds them. ’Please just tell us. Whatever it is, it looks like we need to know.’

Carol nudges a cactus-patterned mat. Rubs her temple, shuts her eyes, tucks stray ponytail hairs behind her ears, more times than she needs to. ‘The police…’

Kira grips the back of the chair. In the lounge, Callum whistles on. ‘The police what?’

Carol clears her throat, but doesn’t look up. ‘The police found Romy’s friends,’ she says. ‘And now they want you both.’

Romy makes a noise between a cry and a moan. Kira stares, even as her head swoops, struck by vertigo. Something about the woman’s face, hanging like an interrupted exchange… ‘There’s more,’ she says faintly. ‘There’s something else.’

Pulling the tablet toward her, Carol taps the passcode, and stalls. ‘There…is.’ Rubbing her forehead, she shakes her head, and slides it over. ‘I’m sorry. I should just tell you, but I can’t.’

Romy jerks her gaze away, burning into the soul of a cupboard splattered with swimming awards. On the tablet’s screen is a bungalow.

Whistling, whistling. Kira steadies her breath. God, Callum, stop. He’s not completely oblivious. Surely he’s sensed that something isn’t right? Whatever he’s moved on to is dire.

Forcing herself to focus on the tablet, she scrolls down the screen. What else can there be? Romy’s friends, as Romy said. The text leaves them cold. The link to her, to the house in Devon. And then…

Then, there’s a picture.

Then, there’s a name.

Animals in stolen hides. Callum’s raucous song sinks in. Dig the grave and watch them cry.

Climbing the stairs to the pounding bass.

‘Stop it!’ Kira whips around. Staggering, Romy grapples for the fridge. Her face turns to ash; she’s recognised it, too. ‘Why the hell are you whistling that? Stop!’

Kira whirls from the kitchen, but Callum doesn’t stop. The fire is lit, and he crouches before it, burning his hand in the flames.

I hope the wilderness will call. Kira’s whirl falters by the sofa.

Let’s become a carnival now Ragnarok is visceral.

‘Callum!’ She lunges, bashing the side table. ‘What’s wrong with you? Oh, god, your hand.’ She rips his arm out of the fire. It smells like grilling. The whistling stops. ‘Why would you do that? How is that not killing you?’

Wide-eyed, openmouthed, she pulls him up beside her. ‘Callum?’

Glancing at his face, she stops. Her heart flutters. There’s nothing there.

Nothing real. Nothing him. White skin, shadowed cheeks. His eyes are full, matte, black. A curdling rumble growls in his throat. His hand hangs limp and smoky.

Romy in the hospital. It’s happening again.

Kira screams. Stumbling backwards, she hits the side table. It topples, and jabbed and tangled, she trips and crashes down. The not-Callum’s eyes get wider, blacker. Its acrid smell approaches slowly. She whimpers, winded, scrabbling away. Away, away, a chair scraping, her head colliding with someone’s shins—

As quickly as it darkened, the hollowed face clears.

It’s death, and then it isn’t. Callum’s eyes are dazed and blinking. His hand is his hand again, scarred but nothing more.

‘Kira?’ He frowns. She sees the moment he focuses, flicking between her and his mum like a child who’s just woken up. ‘What’s going on? Why are you—’

His mouth works, but his words falter. Kira can’t help him, can’t explain. Propped on her elbows, her heart a machine gun, it’s all she can do to breathe.

‘Mum?’ Callum looks between them again. The waking child is growing alarmed. ‘Will someone please talk to me? Kira?’

In the kitchen, Romy mumbles something.

‘Pardon?’ Carol asks, as faint as Kira feels.

‘It’s the mist,’ Romy repeats. Kira turns her head an increment, keeping her eyes on Callum. Clinging to the fridge, Romy stares out the window. ‘You said strange things came out of the mist, like ghostly things that chased you.’

She nods at the glass. Beyond it, the haze swirls, vague and grainy but present.

‘Yes,’ Callum says. ‘But that was to keep us out of Whiteland.’

He lowers himself to the arm of the sofa. Kira’s heart fires off another round, or five. Although he seems normal again, glancing between them with bewildered hurt that he probably doesn’t think shows… She swallows, unsticking her tongue from her palate. He became so other so fast.

‘It was a warning,’ she croaks, and swallows again. Callum’s hurt spreads like a bruise. ‘We’d been investigating, and got too close. Far too close, seeing as we got in.’ Stiff and unsteady, she struggles to her feet. She landed hard on her rear and her thighs, and now they feel battered to her bones. ‘There’s no—ow—reason to warn us off now.’

‘Because there’s no way in hell we’re going back.’

‘Basically.’ Rigid, she leans on the wall for support, nodding through the doorway at Romy. ‘And I thought it wasn’t the Whispers anymore.’ She aims this last at Carol. ‘They were the ones who said there was trouble.’

Carol pushes off the door. ‘It’s not them.’

She moves to stand by the kitchen window. Kira looks after her; the outside world is hung with mist, the orange-blue garden a deepening shroud. It’s stifling, potent, and she rubs her goose-bumped arms. The fire might as well have been left unlit; the house doesn’t feel any warmer. Not when something other found a way to slither in.

‘They want this collision of worlds to stop.’ Carol turns back, looking to Kira, to Romy, pale by the fridge. ‘And they have no interest in hurting you. They never did. I know you’ll be thinking Jay, but that was…’ Her mouth contorts. ‘Different.’ She wraps her cardigan tight around her. ‘At least to them. He was eavesdropping. The Whispers are brutal, but they don’t lie, so if they say they want to make this stop, then that’s what they’re doing. If I was to guess…’

She doesn’t need to say it. Callum’s face was too familiar, too close to the screaming effigy stuck in Kira’s dreams.

‘The Kyo.’ Her voice is flat. Her eyes are still trained on Callum, returning to tend to the fire. He’s either showing remarkable patience, or he’d rather not know what happened. Either way, she’s watching.

‘They’re getting stronger.’ Carol moves past her, skirt swishing in a sweep up the stairs. ‘I thought it would be too much, to show you earlier, but now…’ She dips into one of the open rooms.

Kira frowns. ‘Show us what?’

A long, black feather in hand, Carol swishes back down to the kitchen.

‘Could you…?’ Placing the feather on the table, she nods at the light switch. Kira pushes off the wall. ‘Thanks.’ The lights go out. ‘Just for a minute. You’ll only see if it’s dark.’

In the centre of the table, the feather starts to glow.

‘Oh, wow.’ Romy moves closer on a breath.

Kira feels like stone. ‘It’s from a Hyrcinian bird,’ she says, her voice a field-mouse hush. A short way from the feather’s tip, a cold light is pulsing, a delicate, electric, phosphorescent blue. She puts a gloom-veiled hand to her mouth. ‘How is it here?’

Drifting in with woodsmoke and pine, Callum steps up behind her. She thrills with a frisson of fear. Silent and watching, tall and tense.

And the Kyo are getting stronger.

‘I found it in the garden.’ Carol regards the feather sadly. ‘I’m assuming it’s a calling card, or the dead edition of “look at my strength.”’ She touches the pulsing blue. ‘Unfortunately, all of this ties in with what the Whispers suggested. That the Kyo are the ones who want you, and have somehow found a witch. Could you…?’

She nods at the light switch again. ‘A witch,’ Callum says quietly.

‘Yes.’ Carol tucks her hair behind her ears. Her under-eyes are purple. ‘None of this is possible without one. An unbelievable witch, too, if she can reach out here.’ She’s quiet. Then, as the lights click on, ‘The Whispers think they’ve sent the huldra to push you back to Whiteland.’ She pauses, staring through the table. ‘The huldra and your father.’

Romy’s head jerks up. ‘You’re admitting it?’

Normally, Kira would wince, but the feather holds her still. Electric blue, tinkling to black. As it fades, her memories fly: buffeted off the path with Callum, wing tips pulsing with colour in the night. The two of them were breathless spectres, the magic pure and cold. The birds were silent, harmless guides, and now…a calling card. Kira drags her eyes away. Did one of them die for this?

‘I heard the whisper to Kira.’ Carol glances at the window. Kira follows her gaze; through it, there’s the hedge, and a single, popping star. The mist has slithered away. ‘When they’re here, they’re in my head. They don’t have to be talking to me.’

Carol moves around the table, stretching on tiptoe into a cupboard. Romy narrows her eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘Because I didn’t think it would do any good. As far as everyone knew, he was gone. Until’—Carol rummages around—‘he wasn’t. Suddenly, he’d left the forest with a huldra, for reasons no one would ever have guessed.’ She surfaces with the ruby bottle Romy chose to skim. Romy looks away. ‘I was going to tell you when you needed to know. The Whispers…’ She sets the bottle on the table. ‘Well, they had other ideas.’

Rubbing a fire on her arms, Kira shivers. She shouldn’t chastise her runaway self, but she should have bought a sweatshirt. ‘That’s what they want? To draw us back to Whiteland? Why—actually, never mind.’ She holds up her hands. The answer is obvious. ‘It’s because we got away.’

Romy bursts with a humourless ‘ha.’ ‘Wonderful.’ She rolls her eyes, picking at the back of a chair. ‘Fantastic. Fab. And with a witch on board, they’re strong enough to prod while their puppets lure.’ She drops a splinter of wood to the table. ‘Such amazing fun.’

This time, Kira winces; their dad’s not a puppet. Talie said he was bewitched. That’s a very different thing.

Is it?

It has to be.

‘To a certain extent, they’ve always been strong enough.’ Retrieving a handful of small, narrow glasses, Carol bangs them down. ‘Their extent being the car park. You found that out before.’ She bats Romy’s hand away from further chair destruction. Romy scowls. ‘I’ve never seen them reach this far.’ Her gaze drifts up over Kira’s shoulder. ‘Speaking of.’ Her face sags. ‘Callum, are you okay?’

Kira had forgotten he was there. ‘I’m fine.’ He toes a chair toward him. Its spindly legs screech, and the last of the spell of the feather is gone. ‘Are you cold?’ He nods at Kira’s arms.

She clutches her prickled skin. ‘I guess.’

‘The fire’s blazing. It should warm up.’ Sitting down heavily, he slots both arms behind his head. ‘Now that we’re done with birds and harpies, will someone tell me what happened? I’d lit the kindling, and then…’ His lips turn down at the corners, and he looks at Kira. ‘And then.’

Black eyes. Rumbling death. Kira looks away.

‘You didn’t hurt anyone, if that’s what you’re wondering.’ Pushing a full red glass toward him, Carol attempts a smile. ‘I didn’t see all of it, though.’

Deferring to Kira, she gestures wide. Kira twists her mouth. ‘It wasn’t you.’

Taking a breath, she comes to the table, accepting the proffered glass. Not-Callum shook her badly, but that’s just it: it wasn’t him. Just like it wasn’t Romy, and just like it’s not their dad.

After the tale is told, Callum tips back on his chair. ‘And I’—he runs his hands down his face—‘had no idea at all.’

Romy harrumphs, sitting down with a thump.

‘Yeah.’ He drops his chair. ‘Like you. And my hand…’ He turns it this way and that. ‘Were any of the kids around?’

Carol lifts the bottle. ‘The twins aren’t here.’ She tops up the glasses, one eye on Romy. ‘They’re at a sleepover. After what happened to Jay, I wanted to get them out. Jay himself is walking Diego.’ Wryly, she smiles. ‘He can moan until the cows come home, but he loves that dog to pieces. If anything else happens’—the smile fades fast—‘then he can stay elsewhere, too. Just while we sort this out. I’d hope nothing would, but…’

She gestures to the tablet. A spot of liquor blots it, raspberry, or blood. Frowning, Carol wipes it off.

Kira’s memory jolts; the picture. Oh, god. The picture, and the names. The names, the names, the names. Callum and the Kyo shook them from her mind, but in a rush, in a scream, they sear back.

Trouble has teeth, and its jaws are closing.