Old Mollusc looks from one of us to the other, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

“I should think that if Lady Kraken were to sack someone,” I say quite loudly now, so that everyone in the Reception lobby can hear, “it would be someone who’d done a really bad thing like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Very well, very well.” Mollusc waves his hands to shush me. “Very well, Lemon. Carry on as you were. No need to make a fuss.”

“It’s Mr Lemon, actually,” I say, and he gives me a look of desperate fury.

“Mr Lemon. Quite so.”

And with that, the hotel manager walks away, slightly wobbly, and locks himself in the lavatory.

In my cellar we stoke up the fire and settle down to wait for night. But no-time-at-all later, Violet looks out of the window and announces that night is already here.

WILL-O’-THE-SEA-WISP

“MAYBE WE SHOULD TELL SOMEONE what we’re planning to do,” I say.

“Maybe,” Vi replies. “But who would we tell? Who can we trust?”

“Jenny Hanniver,” I say. “I trust Jenny. And I think Dr Thalassi’s all right really.”

Violet looks at me.

“And what if they try to stop us? If they do, Eels could get the egg. What then?”

I don’t have an answer to that.

Violet climbs back into her coat, warm now, and then pulls on her mother’s boots. I go through some of the baskets of loose lost stuff and pull out two hefty torches. Batteries are a bit harder to find, but I get both torches going in the end.

As soon as we think they’re hot enough, we take a couple of pebbles each from the top of the wood burner, one for each pocket. We scoff the remainder of my leftovers sandwiches.

“We’ll both leave by this way,” I say then, opening the cellar window into the night. “It will be better if everyone in the hotel thinks we’re still down here.”

And with that, we climb out.

It’s as cold as ever in the old seaside town. A wind like the breath of ice dragons hits us as we cross the snowy cobbles to the sea wall. In the darkness the pier is nothing but a series of small swaying lights leading to the snug, inviting glow of Seegol’s Diner, above which, in light-bulb letters, the words EERIE-on-SEA fizz and flicker in the frigid air. But we aren’t going to the pier. When we look down over the beach, we can see next to nothing.

“Tide’s already out,” says Violet, leading the way down the worn stone steps to the sand.