Mika hadn’t been what he’d expected. He’d expected the dewy, glittery, otherworldly sprite from the video, but the woman who had walked into the kitchen had been entirely ordinary. She’d been unmistakably recognisable, with the same tousled dark hair, sunny smile, and long-lashed brown eyes he’d remembered, but there’d been no dew, no glitter, and no soft, soothing chatter about moonlight. She’d been wearing a very ordinary pair of jeans and a very ordinary yellow jumper with a frayed cuff that she’d repeatedly picked at. Really, it had all been so ordinary it had taken Jamie too long to clock the fact that it had been aggressively ordinary. So uncompromisingly ordinary that the truth had to be anything but.

Then Ian had blurted out their story and Altamira had set the tree house ladder on fire and the illusion had shattered. In her surprise, Mika had inadvertently given them a glimpse at a braver, more powerful, and less certain version of herself. He still didn’t want her in their lives, no matter what Ian said, but that had been the moment he’d admitted (silently, and only to himself) that maybe, just maybe, they needed her.

“It’s complicated,” he said out loud.

Terracotta wrinkled her nose. “Grown-ups never say that about good things.”

Well, she wasn’t exactly wrong.

“Here’s something I do know,” Jamie said. “She’s coming here to help you, Rosetta, and Altamira, and she’s risking just as much in doing that as we are in letting her into our lives. And she’s gaining far less than we will. So we don’t have to trust her, but I reckon we owe her the benefit of the doubt.”

“I’m not making any promises,” came the ominous reply.

CHAPTER FIVE

Friday morning saw Mika driving right past the warded gates of Nowhere House once more. Backtracking, she wondered if this was going to happen every time.

She guided the Broomstick up the pebbled driveway. This time, she drove past Ian and Ken’s cottage, past the barn, and stopped at the bottom of the little path in front of the actual house. Circe, who had spent most of the trip blissfully asleep on the back seat, now stuck her head between the two front seats, licked Mika’s ear, and proceeded to give the ivy and gables of Nowhere House a thorough once-over.

“What d’you reckon?” Mika asked her softly. “Does it seem like an okay place to live for a couple of months?”

And after that, she’d do what she always did. She’d go somewhere else, and then somewhere else, and then somewhere else after that.