Andy was staring hard at Hazel and Edgan, the one like a piece of a forest come to life with a body made out of twigs and leaves and moss, the other like an animated cartoon with his spark-plug nose and a computer mother-board for a torso.

“So Lizzie wasn’t shitting us,” he said. He wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, just thinking aloud. “You guys are for real, just like the bogans that attacked her.”

“Bogans attacked a friend of yours?”

“A couple of nights ago,” I said. “We think they came back last night and grabbed her and Jilly. Why was Edgan following bogans?”

“They were acting suspicious: wandering outside our territories, having clandestine meetings with one of the native spirits of this land.” She smiled. “You know me, I like to stay informed.”

“So you had them followed.”

She nodded.

“Did Edgan see those bogans take our friends?” I asked.

“No. It must have happened after he came back to report to me.”

“I don’t understand,” Siobhan said. “Why would they want to push me down the stairs, or kidnap Lizzie and Jilly? What did we ever do to them?”

Galfreya sat on the other bed, the treekin scrambling up to perch behind her. That left only me standing, so I sat beside Andy.

“You need to tell me what’s been happening,” Galfreya said.

So we did. Not as clearly, or in as linear a fashion as maybe Christy would have, but Galfreya was patient and we got the story out. Then she told us what she knew. After she had Edgan play back the conversation he’d recorded last night, he turned on one of the PDAs that was attached to his torso to show us a picture he’d snapped of this Odawa that the bogans were with.

It was a side-shot, not particularly clear. The small size of the PDA’s screen didn’t help, either. But looking at it, I remembered the tall man I’d seen at the back of the bar last night, staring at Lizzie.

“I think he was at the show last night,” I said. “I saw a man in sunglasses at the back of the room during the last set who seemed awfully interested in Lizzie, but when I went to point him out to her, he’d already done a fade.”

“But what does he want with her?” Galfreya said.

“I don’t think he wants Lizzie at all,” Siobhan said. “She only just met this Grey guy so she hardly knows him. They’re talking about someone who’s his girlfriend.”

Galfreya nodded. “Except they think she is.”

“Bogan logic,” Hazel said, then snickered. “As if they had any.”

“What did you see last night?” I asked Edgan.