I rest my head back on the seat and close my eyes. So there’s no way Other Sylvie can get her power back, because Mum and I are here and Eunice is … goddess knows where.

I wake in our van, and the bright sky outside the small window tells me the sun’s been up for a while. Someone – it sounds like Walid – whistles as they walk past the van, and Mum calls a cheery hello. There’s the hum of a generator and a few barks from the dogs. I let the familiar sounds of the circus wash over me. I’m home.

I look out the open door of the van and see Mum sitting on a milk crate in shorts and a T-shirt, eating a mango. She beckons me over.

‘Are you feeling okay?’ I ask her. ‘I thought you were … going to die.’ The horror of that moment wells up in me again, and for a moment I can’t speak. It will be hard to forget the sight of her waxen, lifeless body.

‘I knew it would be dangerous to travel home when I was so low on energy,’ says Mum. ‘But it was that or stay there. And I was fine in the end, wasn’t I?’

‘Only because of what Sylvie did, though.’

She frowns and wipes mango juice from her mouth. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She gave up her magic forever, to save you.’

She stares at me, her face blank with shock. ‘I had no idea.’

‘I said I’d do it but she wouldn’t let me.’

Mum puts down her mango and gives a shaky sigh.

Oh, Mum. Thank you, I hear my mum say, but in my head.

‘Mum, is there such a thing as hearing other people’s thoughts?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I reckon I just heard your thought. Did you say to yourself, “Oh Mum, thank you”?’

She’s very still. ‘Have you heard thoughts before?’

I nod. ‘A few times.’

‘Well … yes, I did just think that.’ She gives me a small, strange smile. ‘I better be careful, huh?’

Her phone dings. She glances at it. ‘Peter Potts is coming in half an hour, to talk about a loan.’

‘Wasn’t he getting on a plane to China last night?’

‘We phoned him on the way home from the hospital and he said he’d extend the deadline until this afternoon. He didn’t know I’d accidentally disappeared myself.’

‘We just said you were away.’

‘You could have told him. He knows a fair bit about magic.’ She glances at me. ‘Like Kit.’

I find Kit in our favourite camphor laurel. He’s squatting on the lowest branch, like a bird on a twig.

‘Welcome back!’ he calls as he swings down. ‘I dropped in to see you this morning, but you were asleep. I knew you’d bring her back. I knew it. What was it like?’