I step back, look up the hill to the north, towards the isthmus, then back at the crowd waiting for the next ferry, a sort of manic disbelief zapping through them. ‘I mean, what are they gonna do if we go now?’ I say. ‘Not let us look for him?’

Peyton turns back. ‘Liam,’ she calls, ‘I’m going with her.’

Liam recoils. ‘Well, what? You think you’re gonna go be heroes without me?’

A few more Seasonals join our quest and then we’re a small, strange army, eight or nine or us, and I’m leading the pack, leaving a trail of saltwater like a slug. I recognize Liam’s room-mate, the kid from the Indigo, the butterfly house girl from the first night. No, not a real army. But more legs. More eyes. Anything.

There’s so much water clinging to my clothes that I feel like I’m carrying around an extra one of me. The place is deserted and it’s creeping me out. The sky is still the wrong sort of colour, and the beam from the lighthouse seems not to cut through but to haze over it, everything yellow and glowing.

We make it to the woods in about fifteen minutes. I’m still sopping wet by the time I find the cluster of police cars at the entrance of the No-Names, most of them mainland police, surrounded by the community. I spot Lenore, Mary Anne, the woman from the florist’s; on the whole, a disturbing lack of faces.

Of course. Who’s going to look for the cursed boy in a hurricane?

Well, us, that’s who. The good guys. I try to tame my anger.

Booker notices me first and looks at me like I’m an idiot or a gift and I can’t decide which; maybe it’s neither. Takes us all in. ‘Christ,’ he says. Everyone already there is looking at us now. ‘Well, you’re here, I guess. Can someone get her a change of clothes, please?’

The single female officer mercifully has a clean T-shirt and shorts in her trunk. I hang the sopping remnants on a branch. My shoes, unable to be replaced now, are still soaking and horribly uncomfortable; the skin in between my toes is pinching.