‘Who. Are. You?’ growled Ahab. ‘A DNA test will prove you’re an imposter.’

‘No it won’t,’ said the boy with an uneasy smile. ‘Forest was adopted.’

Ahab dropped him.

‘Keegan, sic.’

Keegan snarled and leapt forward, keeping the boy backed against the wall.

Slowly, Ahab lit a cigarette and walked out on the balcony to smoke it. Stupid. How could he have been so stupid?

This changed everything. Everything.

It wasn’t even Forest Dempsey!

Eventually he turned back and stepped inside. The boy still stood against the wall, frozen. Keegan, still snarling, was close enough to chomp the boy’s fingers off if he moved.

The boy didn’t look so assured now. He looked up at Ahab. Ahab said nothing.

‘Keegan, calm.’

Keegan changed instantly, returning to his bed.

Forest let out a huge breath.

‘Forest wasn’t adopted,’ said Ahab.

‘You mean Jesse never told you? I thought you were close.’ There was no mistaking the salt in the boy’s voice. ‘Forest knew, you know? His mother told him.’

‘You’re lying.’

The boy smiled. ‘Guess you’ll never know, will you? Without a DNA test you can’t prove anything, and, well, everyone already believes I’m Forest, don’t they?’

The boy who Ahab had seen below the ocean, enamoured by the weedy seadragon, was nowhere in those cold, calculating eyes.

Ahab parked out the front of Ivy’s house. He walked the boy up to the door, dragging Zeus behind. He and the boy said not a word to each other and, once he let go of him, the boy walked inside without a backwards glance.

Fake Forest wasn’t Ahab’s problem. He turned to leave, all the while thinking, Except that he might be the only leverage we have against Blackbeard, who wants him alive for some reason. Does Blackbeard know he’s a fake? Or does Blackbeard think he’s the real Forest?

All his plans were falling apart. They were no closer to working out who Blackbeard was.

He sighed angrily, spun back towards the door. He set his jaw.

Then he shook his head and turned again to leave.

I need space to think.

That’s when he saw Ivy, sitting in the shade under an archway of trailing greenery. She had knitting on her lap, bees buzzing around her feet, her fox-like eyes on him.

‘You look like you’re trying to make a decision, Ahab,’ she said.

‘I brought the boy back like you wanted. I have nothing to say to you,’ he said. He stomped past her, trying to work out what to do.

‘Such grief. I haven’t seen you this sad since Miriam’s funeral. Did the boy tell you Jesse was dead?’

‘No,’ snarled Ahab. ‘He didn’t.’

‘Ah, so the boy told you something else,’ she said pointedly. ‘That he’s not the real Forest, perhaps?’

He froze. ‘What?’