At the mention of the Magruwen Orchidspike’s fingers fumbled but she caught her stitch and kept knitting, eyes alert, and Talon’s jaw dropped open. “The Magruwen?” He gaped. “You’ve seen the Magruwen?”

“Aye.”

Talon stammered, “B-but how . . . ? Where? What . . . what was he like?”

“Mean! Sure he couldn’t care a twitch what happens to faeries or anything else. Calypso was right: he’s through with the world.”

Silence fell, broken only by the clicking of knitting needles.

After a moment, Magpie said with a sigh, “Well, he might be through with it, but I’m not. I’m going to catch the Blackbringer with or without his help.”

“That’s right, Mags!” chirped Pup. “Ye can do anything!”

“How . . . ?” asked Talon. “How do you catch a shadow? It sounds impossible—”

“So ready to cry impossible?” Magpie snapped. “And leave that beast to eat the rest of your kin?” As soon as she said the words she wanted to bite them back. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Talon’s face grew hot.

“Lass, lad . . . ,” said Orchidspike in a soothing voice.

“Neh, she’s right, what do I know of impossible?” Talon said in a wretched voice.

Magpie slouched and said miserably, “Neh, I’m sorry. I’m a brute. I just can’t seem to hold it all in my head, what I know of him, what I don’t know . . . what he is, and how to catch him. . . .”

“Now ‘Pie,” Calypso encouraged, “ye’ll catch him, sure. Come now, what do we know of the beast?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to calm herself. “He’s the Blackbringer,” she said slowly, “and sure faeries only remember him as a nursery story but that’s our own doom, to forget. He was the worst devil there ever was. He was the dark come to life. A contagion of darkness, the hungry one . . . beast of night with flesh of smoke, wearing darkness like a cloak . . .”

Talon had a sudden clear and piercing thought. His eyes flew open.

“He called himself . . .” Magpie thought back. “The heavens with the stars ripped out . . . but ach, that’s just poetry, neh?”

Talon spoke up. “What if he’s wearing a skin?”

Magpie looked skeptical. “A skin?” she repeated.

“What you said about wearing darkness like a cloak, it made me think of a skin,” he said.

“Usually I can spot a skin.”

“Don’t I know!”

“And made of what? The dark?”

Talon shrugged. “The legends say the Djinn wove light, neh? Why not dark?”

“A skin . . . I don’t know. When I was inside it,” Magpie said, “it wasn’t just a little patch of shadow. It was . . . I don’t know, endless, empty . . . infinite.” The word leapt like a spark in her mind, and she felt the rush of an idea forming. It danced just out of reach.

Calypso asked, “But why would the Djinn make something so nasty?”