“I thought you didn’t like the bugger.”

“I don’t. I’m merely showing you how it might seem from their perspective.”

“Who gives a flying shite about their perspective?”

“Point taken.”

They fell silent for a moment, and it was so quiet Edgan could hear the harsh breathing of the bogans.

“Take me to her,” Odawa said then.

“They’re in Sweetwater and that’s a ways, ‘less we step between.”

What a strange comment, Edgan thought. Why should stepping between matter to a green-bree? The between and otherworld were as free for them to use as for any spirit. Walking to Sweetwater would take them a few hours, unlike travelling through the between where they could be there in a fraction of the time. So why did the green-bree feel he needed to avoid the between?

“We have time,” Odawa said. “And it’s such a fine night for a stroll, don’t you think?”

Which didn’t answer Edgan’s curiosity. But it didn’t seem to mean anything to the bogans, one way or another.

“You know best,” Big Dan said.

“ ‘Course he does,” a bogan close to where Edgan hid whispered to his companion. “Isn’t he supposed to know everything?”

They both snickered, and Edgan filed away that comment with the few other bare bones of information he’d managed to glean concerning this spirit.

When they set off, he shut off his PDA and stopped recording. He gave the group a few moments head start before he followed after them, pausing when the protection of the trees ended and there was only the open field in front of him. The others were already halfway across, making for the highway.

What now? Edgan wondered. Follow them to Sweetwater, or take what he already had to Mother Crone?

“How curious,” Mother Crone said after she’d had Edgan play back the conversation for a third time. “You said he was blind?”

Edgan nodded. He turned off his PDA.

“I didn’t get much more than a glimpse,” he said, “but he was certainly blind and definitely—”

He almost said “a green-bree,” but caught himself in time. Mother Crone didn’t feel the same animosity toward the native spirits that so many fairies did, nor did she approve of negative references to them.

“—one of the spirits native to this land,” he finished. “And an old and powerful one, too. I didn’t dare chance taking a photo, but I dearly wanted to.”

“No point in showing your hand,” Mother Crone agreed.

“But maybe you would have recognized him. There’s no reference in the database.”

Mother Crone nodded. “It’s a big land, this Turtle Island, filled with spirits and more emigrating to it every day. It would have been more surprising if you had found a reference.”