Disguise! He shook his head in astonishment. “Pin? Pin? It’s you, really? Pin basket, pin box, pin…”

“Stop it!”

The girl slapped his hand, and he recoiled, eyeing her with suspicion. She could have murdered Pin, tortured him to learn of their plan.

“Prove it!” he shouted over a peal of thunder. “Prove it!”

She held up a small photograph. “Look at this. Henry, it’s me.”

He took the photo—the same one Pin had shown him in his room, of a doll wearing a girl’s dress that was too big. You weren’t supposed to do what the doll was doing. It was supposed to be secret.

He looked back at the girl, the real girl, not this curious toy. She was biting her lip, the way Pin did when he was angry or frightened. And her voice…

It was Pin. He laughed and held the picture up in triumph, hopping up and down.

“Pin! Skin, twin—!”

“Damn it, Henry,” the girl begged, “please stop acting crazy.” She ducked behind the biggest tree, motioning him to follow.

“Do you want someone to see us?” she continued in an urgent whisper. “There are cops everywhere down there. I said I’d tell you the rest of the plan when I got here, so—stop doing that! Just listen, damn it!”

He forced himself to remain still. Stared at the doll photo so as not to gaze at her—his—that other face. Pin yet not Pin. It was hard to think of him as a boy, or a girl.

Pin took a deep breath. “Now you have to listen to me.”

He—she—told him everything.

“The She-Male!” he exclaimed. “Willhie and I saw him—he belongs in a museum!”

“He belongs in jail.”

“Where is he now? Hell Gate? Fate!”

“No. The woods—Fairyland.”

“I can pounce on him and wrestle him to the ground!”

“No.” The girl not Pin shook her, his, head emphatically. “This is the plan. I’m going down to find him in the woods. I’ll…entice him.”

“What if he tries to hurt you?”

“I have my shiv.”

“Is it poisoned?”

“No.”

“Too bad, too bad.”

She gazed at his hand, the one that didn’t have the photo. “Your knife—I told you to bring your knife.”

Without a word he pulled it from the sheath in his sock and slashed at the air. Light shone from his blade like fire, like lightning, like—

She grabbed his arm and forced it to his side. “Not now, you idiot! Wait until you follow me and he shows himself. That’s when you attack him, we both will—I have a knife, too. We’ll shout for the police, and if they don’t come, we’ll force him to go to the station house with us.”

He shrank from her touch, shuddering. But he put the knife away.