“There must be someone who can help you,” I said. “All the places you’ve been, all the contacts you’ve made . . .”

“The price they’d ask would be worse than the affliction,” said Molly.

“Then, someone in the family,” I said. “We just need to stop or slow the changes till after the war. Till we can really go to work on it.”

“Who could we ask?” said Molly. “Who could we trust with a secret like this?”

“The Armourer,” I said. “Uncle Jack would understand. We had to kill his brother James, and he understood about that.”

“That was to save the family,” said Molly. “And I am becoming a real and present danger to the family. Who else is there?”

“I don’t know! How about the Blue Fairy? He owes me. Maybe he could fish for a cure. He found one for himself.”

“We can’t trust him. All elves have an agenda.”

“Well . . . maybe Giles could take you with him, back to his future,” I said desperately. “Who knows what kind of cures and medical technology they have then?”

“You heard the man,” Molly said sadly. “His is a strictly scientific future. His people probably wouldn’t even be able to recognise what was wrong with me. And anyway, we can’t unleash the Loathly Ones and the Hungry Gods on the future. They have to be stopped, here and now.”

I had to smile. “Am I hearing this right? The infamous Molly Metcalf, developing scruples and morality at this late stage?”

She turned around and managed a small smile for me. “Everyone has to grow up eventually. All it took for me was an other-dimensional parasite infecting my body and eating my soul.”

I sat up on the bed and looked at her thoughtfully. “Now you’re one of them . . . Are you part of their hive mind yet? Can you hear them? Can you listen in on the Loathly Ones’ communications?”

Molly frowned, concentrating. “There is something . . . on the edge of my thoughts. Far away, a background sound. But it’s just babble, a meaningless gabble of noise. Not human . . . alien. Perhaps I’ll come to understand it, as I become . . . more like them. Will my thoughts come to sound like that? So alien, so intrinsically other . . . as to be beyond human comprehension?” She looked at me intently. “We have to stop them, Eddie. While I’m still me. Maybe . . . if we drive them all back out of our reality, the infection will go with them.”

“Yes,” I said kindly. “Maybe.”

“I’m scared, Eddie. Scared of becoming less and less me, and becoming something that won’t even care what it’s lost. I won’t even care that I don’t love you anymore . . . If there is no cure, if there is no hope left, kill me, Eddie, while I still know who you are. If you love me, kill me.”

“Yes,” I said. “I can do that.”