I struggle. I try and scream, but the bag gets caught in my mouth and – I can’t breathe I can’t breathe – and my throat is dry and I’m retching and gagging but I can’t breathe and my mouth is full of cotton and I can’t breathe.

‘Don’t suffocate her, you idiot!’ a voice hisses.

‘Do you want her to scream? Her sister’s home.’

‘Just get her out!’

How long have Holly-Anne and Julian been in my room? Where were they? The wardrobe? Under the bed? I am going to goddamn murder both of them if I don’t choke to death in the next five seconds.

I’m wriggling and flailing and hitting out wildly with my tied-together fingers but they get me out the window and I feel the cool of the evening air on my skin as they carry me away.

I’m heaving frantic breaths through my nose, bile burning my throat. My brain is exploding, pulsing, bursting, the song hammering through my veins, the lack of oxygen screaming over the top of it.

I use the last of my willpower to go limp.

Holly swears. ‘You killed her!’

‘I did not,’ Julian protests, but he – or she, or someone – sets me down on the ground and loosens the gag and the bag around my face.

I want to run. As far and as fast as I can. But it turns out oxygen deprivation = kind of hard to recover from in a single second.

I cough, splutter, gulp in breaths, heave them in, filling my lungs over and over again. My throat is dry and I desperately want some water, which is kind of ironic given how frightened of it I am.

‘See, she’s not dead,’ Julian says, and even through the red haze in my mind I can hear the sulk in his voice.

‘You need to be more careful,’ Holly says. ‘You don’t know what They’ll do to you if –’

‘I know what They’ll do. You think you’re the only one that’s been punished?’

I swallow, again and again and again.

‘You don’t know anything. Not one single thing. This has been, what, three months of your life? It’s been forever for me, and –’

I bolt.

I’m amazed I don’t fall over. I nearly do, because the bag is still over my head and I step on one of the trailing ends of the ribbon from my left hand and almost trip. That ribbon pulls tight, so tight that I can feel my fingertips going numb, but I can’t stop.

With my other hand, I fling the bag away and run.

We’re in the bush, but I can still see the lights of my house. Disey’s window is lit up all warm and buttery and golden, and I run towards it, everything hurting, everything screaming, and –

Wait. No. I’m going the wrong way. That’s my house over there.

I turn, sprinting towards the right lights, but they’re not right at all, because my house is over there, and there, and there, and there.

I almost don’t hear her laughing at first, because her laugh is like the wind in the trees, the sound of silver bells, the sound of moonlight, what cherries would taste like, and it is just another melody in the tangle of melodies twisting themselves around my mind.

But then I see her, and I know that I’m going to die.

She’s a fairy. There’s no doubt about that. The trees and shrubs have twisted together to make a throne for her. There are wild blackberries dangling right near her head but not tangling in her long red hair, as if they’re too frightened to. Looking at her is like hearing a piece of music that you feel deep in your gut, one that makes you shiver, makes your heart race, gives you goosebumps. And looking at her is like staring into a star, distant but impossibly near, beautiful, sparkly, but too much to be this close to.

She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I know her, because her face was once my own.

Let me take you back in time. The night that Finn and I saw the Seelie fairies dancing and torturing Holly and I first got this awful tune stuck in my head, we went back to my place, and there was some hardcore hooking up, and it was excellent. The next day, we were both pretty eager to repeat the event, on account of the excellence, and our venue of choice was a cleaning cupboard at school, because we are both classy, classy people. But because it was at school, we got caught by Ms Rao, and Finn’s immediate reflex, to hide my identity, was to use his fairy superpowers to make me look like a red-headed girl.

A red-headed girl he’d never seen before, but who was somehow the first person to come to his mind.

I could pretend that that red-headed girl isn’t the girl I’m looking at now, but there’d be no point. You don’t forget a face once you’ve worn it.

I’m on my knees. No, I’m on my hands and knees, and the shrieking pain from my left hand is the only thing that’s keeping me tied to my body, locked to my own consciousness. I can’t look at her but I can’t not look at her and she’s laughing and laughing and that laugh is going to eat me alive.

No. No. I won’t be eaten. I will not be eaten.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Stay perfectly still for a second, just a second, even if your whole body quivers.

I close my eyes tightly shut, brace myself awkwardly on my swollen, tied-up hands, and push myself to my feet. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die standing. I might lose everything else, but I am going to keep my goddamn pride.

Iron. Iron will protect me.

I grope blindly for the pendant around my neck but it’s not there. The fairy girl laughs again, a laugh that feels like a cyclone, ripping at me. ‘Do you think I am so foolish as to allow you to bring iron into my presence, disappointment?’ I try to tell myself that it’s all right, that I took those iron tablets, that they’ll keep me safe. But how much iron is in those, anyway? Enough to resist a – a –

‘Look at me, disappointment,’ the girl says.

‘No,’ I manage.

I swear I can feel her anger, battering against me like a stormy sea. ‘You will look at me, or I will kill your friend.’

Phil.

I open my eyes, but it’s not Phil the fairy girl has beside her. It’s Julian, on his knees. His face is blank, but Holly-Anne, standing behind him, looks genuinely, utterly, incredibly terrified.

Fear is vulnerability. And when someone who can’t stand you will show that kind of vulnerability in front of you, you know they’re in serious trouble.

‘Look at me, or I will reach in and crush his mind like rotten fruit,’ the fairy girl says.

Does she mean with her mind or with her hand? How exactly – FFS Linford, focus.

Julian and I are not exactly besties – the most you can say is that I tolerated him for Phil’s sake, and that’s kind of a non-issue now – but I’m not a huge fan of the notion of him getting gruesomely murdered because I refused to perform a basic task, so I obey. I look at the fairy girl.

I wobble on my feet and have to grab at a tree to keep my balance. Unfortunately, it’s a paperbark tree and a whole chunk of it just comes off in my hands.

But I stay standing. It’s such a small thing, but it feels like a win. And the joy of that win seeps through my veins and I stand taller, my spine straighter, chin up. In. Out. Stay still, even if it hurts. I can do this.

The fairy girl has used her fairy powers to tone down her pretty, so she’s no longer as dazzling and overwhelming as she was before. She’s still so beautiful it hurts – like, I don’t mean this in a clichéd way, she’s so beautiful it causes me actual physical pain – but it’s a pain I can deal with.

‘Hi,’ I say.

She looks at me intently. Don’t wobble Pearl don’t stumble stay still stay still even if it burns burns burns. ‘You think to speak to me?’

‘Well, you summoned me, so I didn’t think you wanted me as decoration.’

She laughs, and her laugh sounds like wedding bells. Or maybe funeral bells. ‘No one would want you as decoration, disappointment.’

Weirdly, this insult makes me more confident. I’m a teenage girl. I know what it means when other people tell you you’re ugly. And I’m on the debating team – I know you only jump to the old ad hominem argument when you’re out of ammo.

She wants something from me. She needs something from me. And I’m not dead yet.

I’m valuable.

‘Well, you went to all the trouble of kidnapping me,’ I say. She fixes me with her stare again. Her eyes are grey, and even though she’s not at the height of her pretty powers, it’s like two stars are focusing all their light just on me. ‘What I want is to kill you.’

But you can’t, I cling to. You need something. I mean something. I’m too important to kill.

‘But I am Seelie, and we made a promise to the Valentine not to harm you.’

Saved. By Finn. Again.

He’s getting better at this. He doesn’t even have to be here to save me now.

I don’t know what I expected. What other value would I have to a bunch of fairies? They can’t lie. When they call me disappointment, they mean it.

‘He did not say, however, that we could not harm your friends,’ the fairy girl says. ‘Or your family.’

I become aware that I’m shaking. My hands feel like I’ve stuck them in buckets of ice. But there’s that same feeling in me that I got that day on television, the feeling that I’m being filled up with lava.

‘Let’s not be hasty,’ I say, trying to sound calm and conciliatory without being, like, totally submissive. ‘You haven’t even told me why you summoned me out here yet.’

If she came anywhere near my family, I would . . .

I try and splay my fingers apart, making the ribbons cut into them even more.

‘I bring an invitation for you of which you are not worthy,’ she says.

I let the insult slide. ‘All right.’

‘This invitation comes from the Crown Prince of the Summerland, lord over all who are Seelie.’

The ultimate Seelie bigwig knows who I am. Wow. I guess it’s not surprising, given that I was one of the four kids they thought could potentially be their long-lost changeling, but still, it’s like finding out that Taylor Swift knows who you are or something.

‘He invites you to dwell in the Summerland, so that his brother may return.’

It takes me a second to put together what she’s said. ‘Finn?’ I say. ‘Finn is the Crown Prince’s brother?’

‘He is the Valentine. Most treasured of us all, bar the Prince himself, and so he was hidden.’

I have made so many throwaway jokes about Finn being a fairytale Prince Charming. So many. But he is an actual prince.

He wasn’t exactly pleased to find out that he was a long-lost magical fairy changeling. I can only imagine how he’s going to react to the news that he’s the Prince Harry of fairyland.

Fairyland – oh hell no.

‘What do you mean the Crown Prince wants me to dwell in the Summerland?’ I demand.

‘This is not a complex offer, disappointment. And we do not make offers such as these easily or often.’

‘You want me to move to fairyland,’ I say disbelievingly. ‘You want me to move to fairyland . . . so Finn will?’

I would think I was dreaming, but I know well enough that the only things in my dreams these days are fairy music and the memory of teeth in my skin. Not offers to move to another – world? plane? dimension?

‘It is a great honour for a mortal to be chosen to dwell among us. The offer is extended to few.’

‘I – no!’ I splutter. ‘I can’t just up and leave and go and live in some magical kingdom far far away! I have a life! I have a family! I have friends!’

Well, I don’t really have friends any more, not after Miller’s Creek, and definitely not after the murderer rumours, but unlike the fairies, I can lie.

‘Think carefully before you decline,’ the fairy girl says. ‘Your life, your family, your friends? These things will pass and turn into dust and there will be nothing left of them. And this is the fate that awaits you here. But in the Summerland, you will live forever.’

‘Doing what? Being Mrs Finn Blacklin?’

‘Oh, you would not be his wife,’ she says coolly. ‘He is promised to me. I am written in his bones. But you would be there. Near him. With him. And that would be enough.’

I’m so angry the world is swimming in front of my eyes. ‘Enough for who? Me? Him? You don’t know anything about either of us!’

Holly is making frantic shut-it-down gestures behind the fairy girl’s back, but I am done listening and being nice. I am done. ‘No,’ I say. ‘You can take your offer and shove it. I am not going anywhere. And neither is he.’

The fairy girl stands and walks towards me. It’s like being approached by a rushing river or an avalanche, but I’m too angry to do anything but raise my chin and stand firm.

I expect her to shout, to yell, to rage, but she doesn’t. Instead, she just takes one of my hands and studies it. Her fingers stroke over my swollen skin and it’s somehow hard to form words or remember my own name or think of anything but that sensation. ‘In the Summerland, you may hear our music whenever you like,’ she says softly. ‘And we will teach you to play it.’

My breathing is very shallow. When did that happen? The bush is silent around me, but it’s loud inside my head, so loud, because it’s full of music.

The song roars to life in my blood. The song I can’t catch. The song I know I will never be able to catch.

I would do a hell of a lot for that tune.

‘No,’ I say, but I can barely hear my own voice above the pulsing music in my veins. ‘I can’t.’

She shrugs. She drops my hand and the world crashes in on me, huge and dark, and I’m suddenly a tiny speck in a vast universe, a universe that used to be focused just on me, and I’m alone in the blackness of the bush.

I don’t know how long I stumble around in the dark. Time seems to speed up and slow down all at once. Every second is an hour, every hour a day, but it’s like a train, a train you can’t stop, a train you’ll never catch up to no matter how fast you run away from it.

I tell myself that Disey and Shad are safe, but I can’t make myself believe it.

You’re supposed to be safe in your own house from fairies. They can’t come in unless you invite them. But how does that matter when they can just possess people to do things to you?

Does Finn know Holly’s possessed? Is Holly possessed? Julian looked like a zombie but she was in there, she was Holly still, somehow. She said this has been going on forever for her – does she know about him? Has she known all this time?

‘Who’s there?’ someone says, and I’m blinded momentarily as the flashlight from a phone shines right into my eyes.

It drops almost immediately. ‘Pearl?’

‘Julian,’ I say. ‘Um . . . hi.’

‘What are you doing out here?’

Well, this is just perfect. Not only has Finn’s magical fairy-princess bride zombified Julian, she didn’t even bother to take him home once she’d finished with him. ‘Just . . . walking,’ I improvise. ‘I like to walk at night. The air. The stars.’

His face is dimly lit by the light coming from his phone, but I don’t need any light to know what the expression on his face says. ‘There’s reception out here,’ he says. ‘I can call the cops.’

‘Oh, that’s right. I’m out here late at night because I’m a murderer and these are my primo murdering hours. In fact, you’re my next chosen victim. Is that what you want to hear?’

And then, to make matters worse, that’s the exact moment Finn chooses to come jogging out of the trees. ‘Linford,’ he says, a little out of breath. ‘I’m so glad I found –’

‘You’re both here?!’ Julian says.

Here is a piece of knowledge: it is surprisingly difficult to convince someone that you’re not a murderer, even when you’re standing there actively not murdering them.

‘You’re both here, and I’m here, and I don’t remember how I got here,’ he says. He looks from me to Finn and back again, and I can see him putting puzzle pieces together in his mind.

‘But you’re alive and walking around and threatening to call the cops, which means that if we brought you out here to murder you we’d be pretty incompetent murderers,’ I say.

‘Phil knows,’ he snarls. ‘She knows it was you.’

‘Julian,’ Finn says, and there’s an edge in his voice, a note, like a ray of starlight. ‘Go home. You never saw us.’

Julian’s eyes go blank again. He nods, turns, and walks away.

The night is dark so I can’t see much, but I watch him all the way until he disappears before I speak. ‘Did you . . .’

‘Yes,’ Finn says. ‘I know you don’t like me doing stuff to people’s minds, Linford, but –’

‘It’s okay. I mean . . . what else were we going to do?’

‘I’m sorry anyway.’

A silence. I clench and unclench my fingers. ‘How did you know I was out here?’

‘Holly.’

That one stops me short. ‘Holly?’

‘She called me. Said you were – said that –’ He sighs. ‘It’s complicated with Holly. I don’t know what’s going on with her. She acts like she doesn’t even know me during the day, but then she’ll call me, crying, and I know Emily is in her head but I don’t know how to get her out, and I don’t know how to help her, and I don’t know if Holly even knows what she’s doing, and –’

‘Emily?’ I interrupt.

‘I think you just met her.’

‘The scary fairy redhead in the woods? Yeah, I met her. You know about her?’

‘Well, yeah.’ He scuffs the ground with his toe.

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

‘How was I supposed to?’

‘I don’t know, using words?’

‘You’ve been through so much,’ he says. ‘All because of this ridiculous fairy business. I didn’t want to put you through any more.’

‘Because I’m just so helpless and ridiculous and need protection.’

‘No, I just –’ he rakes his hand through his hair. ‘It’s my problem, not yours. You deserve normal, Pearl.’

‘What I deserve is for you not to make my decisions for me!’

‘How was this your decision? It’s my decision.’

‘So she asked you to move back to fairyland with her, then?’

‘Yes, but – Linford, slow down.’

‘No.’

He catches my arm. For a second, everything in my head is quiet. The music vanishes. My mind, which has felt so crowded and full, suddenly feels luxuriously empty, like I could stretch out in it and still have more room to think.

His hand on my arm. Of course. His stupid healing hands.

I pull my arm away. ‘Don’t touch me,’ I say tightly, as the ocean of music crashes in on me again.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, Pearl. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But . . . I just needed some time. To work things out.’

I fold my arms, hugging myself, pressing my fingers into my own ribs, trying to stay upright against the tide of music. Maybe I could reach out and touch him. He’d let me. He’d like it. I could reach out and put my hand on his hand and everything would be quiet, and it would just be him and me.

And his fairy princess bride.

‘So tell me,’ I say. ‘About the scary fairy redhead.’

He sighs. ‘Emily.’

‘Emily.’

‘Well – I don’t think that’s her real name, but I couldn’t just call her “hey you”, so . . . I remembered that time at school when I – when you – when we –’

Oh, you can bet I remember that time at school, Finn. It’s not every day that you make out with an actual fairy prince in a cupboard and he turns you into his magical girlfriend so people can’t tell he’s making out with you.

‘And I remember that you told Ms Rao your name was Emily,’ he finishes. ‘So . . . Emily.’

‘I hear she’s written on your bones.’

‘So she keeps telling me.’

‘Sounds painful.’

‘I honestly can’t work out what she means by it,’ he says. ‘Like – she’s the same as me and can’t lie, right? So does she mean that her name is literally written on my bones? If I broke my arm or something – well, it would heal if I did that, but say it didn’t and someone X-rayed me – would they be able to read her name, like someone had tattooed it there? But I know that can’t be right, because how would that even happen? They sent me away from their fairytale kingdom when I was a baby, so that doesn’t seem to be enough time to conduct major bone-writing surgery. And I asked about what would have happened if you’d been the Valentine, would she still have been written on your bones, and she said yes, so I guess that –’

‘Finn,’ I say, ‘how long has this been going on?’

‘How long has what been going on?’

‘Emily. How long have you been talking to her? How long you have you known about her? How long has she been trying to get you to move back to magic sparkly fancypants land with her?’

‘Since the night after the creek,’ he says.

Weeks. He’s been sitting on this for weeks.

When we first figured out Finn was a fairy, he needed me. Sure, he was the one with the powers and suchlike, but he had no idea what he was doing. We were a team. We worked things out together. And sure, maybe we weren’t that good at it, but we tried. Together.

And then Miller’s Creek happened. He saved me. And ever since, I’ve been fading into the background.

Even for him.

‘I thought the fairies were supposed to be hotshot negotiators,’ I say, although it’s the least of the many, many things I actually want to say. ‘Like lawyers. Super lawyers. On crack. They can’t be that good at arguing if they’ve been trying to get you to go back to fairyland with them for weeks and you’re still here.’

‘They’ve offered me things,’ Finn says. ‘A lot of things.’

‘So why don’t you go then?’

‘Are you kidding? Would you throw your entire life away to live in some strange magic kingdom? Your family? Your friends?’

Family. Friends. All the people that Emily might kill if I don’t convince Finn to do what she wants, if I don’t sacrifice my life to go and be his – his side chick in a castle in the clouds.

That should be the first thing I think. But it isn’t.

In the Summerland, you may hear our music whenever you like, she whispers in my mind. And we will teach you to play it.

I clench my fists, squeezing tight, trying to give myself something – anything – to focus on that isn’t the music, that isn’t about fairies, that isn’t this boy, this fairytale prince standing in front of me, that isn’t this knot of wanting that’s sitting in my throat, choking me.

Unfortunately, Finn sees the gesture. ‘Holy hell, Linford, your hands!’

‘It’s nothing.’

But he’s already grabbed them both, and I’m not strong enough to resist the lure of silence a second time. ‘Did Emily do this to you?’

‘It’s not important.’

I try to will my muscles to pull away, but they won’t do it. Even my own body doesn’t think that what I want matters any more.

‘Like hell it isn’t,’ he says.

Slowly, carefully, he unties the ribbons around my fingers. I wince as he undoes the one on my left hand, the one that was cutting off my circulation, and he runs the pad of his thumb over the mark that the ribbon left, and my knees nearly buckle.

The slide of the ribbon and the feel of his skin on mine as he strokes his fingers carefully across my palm just – just – just does something to me. There’s nothing in the world except that sensation, and I am a girl made out of snow, and I’m melting, melting, melting . . .

‘There you go,’ he says.

And my hands are no longer swollen and bruised and bleeding at the fingernails, but perfect.

Like, I mean perfect. I’m not a girl who takes particularly good care of her nails, but I look like I’ve spent three hours getting them done. And the scar I got from burning myself during an ill-fated baking experiment when I was thirteen has completely vanished.

They’re not my hands.

‘What did you do?!’

I yank my hands out from his. The music floods my system again, but it’s not as loud as before, like someone has turned the volume down and reduced it to ambient level. It’s probably because he’s left, like, residual skin particles on me. Literal fairy dust. Uggggggggghhhh.

‘What, you really had a burning desire to go around with enormous purple hands? Who hurt you? Who did this to you? Is this why you’ve been running away every time you see me in the distance? Because you can tell me these things, Linford. If someone’s been hurting you, then –’

‘No one’s hurt me,’ I say. ‘I’ve just been playing piano a lot, that’s all.’

‘By “playing piano”, do you mean “dropping pianos on your hands”? Because that’s kind of what it looked like.’

‘That’s not the point!’ I explode. ‘How am I supposed to explain this? What are my brother and sister going to say when I come home with miraculously healed hands?’

‘Well, what did they say about the enormous purple ones?’

‘I let them think I fell over.’

‘What, like, fifty-seven times?’

‘I don’t need your help, Finn!’

Even over the music in my head, I can tell that this sounds startlingly loud.

‘And it sure looks like you don’t need mine,’ I add tightly, and then stalk off into the bush.

He follows me home. Of course he follows me home. Even if I couldn’t hear him pushing through bushes and occasionally swearing when something smacks him twenty paces behind me, I would know he was following me home. I know Finn Blacklin, down to his written-on bones, and he wouldn’t leave me alone to fend for myself when a creepy fairy might jump out at me at any second.

Protected. I have to be protected. I’m the kind of girl that needs to be protected and saved and looked out for now.

I used to think I was strong, but I’m not. I’m a weak spot. I’m the soft underbelly. I’m a liability.