Joe nodded. “Heavy on the small. I want to know where she is.”

“So,” I said, “even if the fairies get the bogans to talk, it won’t help, will it?”

“Not to find Jilly,” Joe said. “But what about the other girl? Nobody put any kind of a mojo on her, did they?”

He looked at Walker. When the cerva shook his head, Joe turned to me.

“Let’s see her room,” he said.

As soon as we walked in, Joe and Walker obviously got something.

“Well, they sure as hell grabbed her,” Joe said.

Walker nodded. “I’ve been where they’ve taken her. That’s an old, almost impassable wood with a few inhabitable glades. But I don’t sense that she’s there anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

I wondered how they could do that, just stand here, looking into the air, and know what was going on a world away. But it wasn’t the time for questions like that.

“Maybe we’ll get a better take when we’re there,” Walker said.

Those crazy eyes of Joe’s went dark with a feral humour.

“Yeah,” he said. “And maybe there’ll still be a few bogans hanging around that we can convince to tell us more.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said before they could leave.

Joe looked from me to Cassie. “Someone needs to stay here in case something comes up while we’re gone. And no offense, but I don’t think your friends downstairs could necessarily handle what might be coming down.”

I knew what he was thinking. What did I have to offer? Cassie was the one with the mojo.

But Cassie weighed in on my side.

“I’ll stay,” she said. “Geordie needs to be doing something more useful than waiting around.”

I guess Joe didn’t want to waste time arguing the point because he just nodded, gave Cassie a quick kiss, then turned to me.

“Stay close,” he said.

He started to cross over, and I hurried to where he was already vanishing from the room as though stepping through an invisible door. He was gone by the time I got there. But Walker put his hand on my shoulder.

“Come on,” he said.

And the hotel room dissolved into a forest glade with tall trees rising up all around us.

I got a little lurch in my stomach from the crossing over, but not like I had when I’d first done it a couple of years ago. I still had a sour taste in my mouth, though, and my heart was beating way too fast.