“I’m doing what seems the right thing, that’s all.” I found his scrutiny unnerving, and looked away as I unfastened the cloak. I made myself say what was necessary. “You’d better take this back. I think you should leave us, Cathal. I had hoped you might turn yourself in and offer my father some explanations. Perhaps you don’t realize how much trouble you caused by leaving so abruptly. If you won’t go back and account for yourself, you could at least offer me some explanation. You dismissed that as unimportant. It’s important to me.”

Cathal shrugged, saying nothing at all.

“Well then,” I said, disappointed even though this was more or less what I had expected, “you’d best get off Father’s land as quickly as you can.”

“You don’t want my help?” he asked, and his dark eyes were still fixed on me, assessing.

I did want it. I didn’t believe for a moment that he knew how to get into the Otherworld, but I shrank from the prospect of another day of wandering, another night in the open, this time without fire or the warmth of the cloak or companionship to stave off the myriad troubles that crowded my mind. “I think it’s best if you go,” I said.

“Best for whom?”

I could have lied, but I didn’t. “For you,” I told him. “Maybe you think you can find a portal, but in the stories people don’t do it easily. Usually these ways only open when the Fair Folk have reasons for wanting someone to go in. Sometimes people need a charm or token to let them pass one way or the other. Or they have to chance on something, a mushroom circle for instance.”

“There isn’t time to argue the point,” Cathal said. “I know Aidan and he knows me. He almost caught me yesterday. He and his men will have camped up here somewhere overnight. They’ll be out again as soon as they’ve had a hasty bite to eat. In other words, they’ll be in the forest when we are. Aidan may not want to be the one who apprehends me, but he’s Johnny’s man. If Johnny’s given him an order he’ll execute it efficiently even if it breaks his heart. For all sorts of reasons, I don’t want him to do it. That means we have to move quickly.”