“I’ve never met any of the more famous ones,” I said. “Or I haven’t, knowingly. They mostly go about their business just the way we do, and it’s hard to get a take on their mythic status. You just forget. Like that fellow Lucius I mentioned earlier? He’s supposedly the Raven who made the world, except you’d never know it. He never talks about it, and I don’t think about it most of the time. Whenever I do, it hits me all over again how weird and amazing the world is.”

“What I want to know,” Siobhan said, “is what can we do to make sure they don’t attack us again? Are these little charms enough? Do we just make sure we don’t badmouth them?”

“That can’t hurt,” Geordie said.

Lizzie sighed. “But it can happen again, right? They might do something else to another one of us?”

“The charms will keep them at bay,” Geordie said, trying to sound confident.

“Your problems seem to stem from having gotten on the wrong side of some pranksters,” I added, “and they’re not strong enough to overcome basic protections like rowan.”

“I’d recommend we just do the gig,” Geordie went on, “this afternoon and tonight. Tomorrow we can take a drive to the mall and see if Mother Crone can help us sort this out.”

“I’d recommend we get our heads examined,” Con said. “Or at least the lot of you.”

“Want me to call Walker or Grey?” Lizzie asked. “Maybe that’ll convince you.”

“Not a good idea,” Geordie said quickly. “When Walker gave you the gift of his name, it wasn’t to use it frivolously.”

“And from what you said about Grey,” I added, “I don’t think he’d much appreciate it, either.”

“I know,” Lizzie said. “It’s just that if they could see what I’ve seen . . .” Geordie nodded, returning his attention to Con and Andy.

“Look,” he said. “I know exactly what’s going through your heads. Like I told you earlier, I’ve been there before, and that was after I’d had the real thing rubbed in my face, and on more than one occasion. That’s one of the main protections fairy have against us: we don’t want to believe in them. And if we do interact with them, we’ll find any kind of an explanation to convince ourselves that whatever we’ve just experienced doesn’t have a magical origin.

“But that doesn’t mean that they’re not real, or that you’re not in danger. So all I ask of you today is, just wear the charms and carry on the way you would otherwise. It doesn’t hurt anybody, and well, better safe than sorry, right?”

“You see why I didn’t want to tell them?” Lizzie asked me. “I knew they’d just think I was making it up.”