Often over the past two years she had wondered about where he was. Lilou could offer no clue as to what the fairy’s Folded Land might look like. All she said was that it was her own world. Angela had glimpsed the place, but at the time she’d been fighting for her own life and Sammi’s, and had not had a chance to take it in. It had looked like a valley—possibly a little like this place before the dam was built and the reservoir grew to wash it away—but any more than that was subject only to her imagination.

The fairy Grace was a creature beyond her level of understanding. She remembered her as a victim of Mary Rock, trapped and tortured. No one—not Lilou or Mallian, or any other Kin she’d questioned about it—could guess how Mary Rock had managed to capture and imprison such a powerful Kin. Perhaps the fairy had grown weary of hiding, and become careless. Perhaps Mary Rock had tricked her into believing that she had some benign aim in mind, rather than the terrible tortures she’d put the fairy through. She and her sick clients had been trying to eat her. Her deep age had already set Grace apart, but Mary Rock’s treatment might have driven her mad. And in madness, what worlds might she conjure?

Perhaps the Fold looked much like this place, a blasted and bland landscape where life was forced to struggle and scratch its existence from the ashes, mud and bare sun-bleached rock. Maybe it was a lush place, a forest or jungle with exotic wildlife singing a constant natural jazz, day and night filled with different sights, sounds and smells. Vince might spend his time hiding from the cruel sun and struggling to keep warm at night, or he could pass every hour avoiding inimical wildlife intent on stinging, biting or poisoning him.

A flooded world, a parched place, a landscape of sharp rock or smothering trees. He could be anywhere like that, or nowhere at all, and sometimes what she imagined for him made her feel sick.

Was he missing her? Did he remember her at all? Was he alive or dead? He was so far away in space, time and understanding that sometimes these distinctions didn’t seem to matter. Like Schrödinger’s cat he could remain alive and dead in her mind forever, because he was so unreachable that she would never know otherwise.

That didn’t stop her from talking to him, in her mind and sometimes out loud.

“There’s something wrong with this place,” she muttered, and she closed her hand by her side, imagining Vince’s fingers entwined in hers.

“You feel it too,” Sammi said.