It doesn’t matter. At the moment, the most important thing is that we get away from here. I don’t know exactly where we are, but I do know it belongs to the blind man. His smell is all over it.

Because he smells fishy to you, Lizzie thought, and that’s what it smells like here, what it always smells like around the ocean. But she was as ready as Timony to leave the place. It was depressing and just didn’t feel right.

“So, what do I do?” she asked.

Concentrate on a safe place, Timony said. On safety. I’ll do the rest.

Safety, Lizzie thought. So far the hotel hadn’t exactly proved to be a safe place, between Siobhan getting pushed down the stairs and her being kidnapped.

What was safety?

She thought of Siobhan and the other band members. Andy and Con were great guys. She liked them both, and she knew if it came to it, they’d try to protect her, but they weren’t exactly bruisers. And then there was Siobhan with her arm in a sling, already hurt because of all of this.

If only they knew more about the bogans and the blind man—what they wanted, what their weaknesses might be.

That made her think of Geordie, but more of Jilly. Yes, she was in a wheelchair, but she still exuded this air of calm efficiency and knowledge. And courage. Just knowing what Jilly had gone through in the past couple of years . . . if it had happened to her, Lizzie thought, she’d have curled up in her hospital bed and just waited for the world to go away instead of facing it head-on the way that Jilly did. And Jilly certainly seemed to know all about fairies.

I don’t think we have much time, Timony said.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “I’ve got it.”

She focused on the hotel, but only because that was the last place she’d seen Jilly, gaily waving goodnight to them all in the bar while Geordie helped her up to their room.

Hold it firm in your mind, the doonie told her.

“I am.”

Jilly. That great welcoming grin of hers and those startling eyes, the blue of sapphires.

I can feel it, Timony said. Hold on. Here we go.

Lizzie grabbed his mane with both hands and the world dissolved around them. As it did, the nausea rose up her throat once more.

Grey