But it’s the least of my worries. I feel like I’m in one of those spinning teacups they have at Disneyland, and in there with me is all my anxiety about Phil and all my fear about being arrested, and Finn is so far away and I promised I would get him back and how am I going to do that and who knows what Tam might do to get Emily back and I haven’t even thought about the fact that I have a twin sister and what if Finn is stuck in fairyland forever – what if what if what if – how will I get Matilda out of jail then?
‘I don’t want a wake,’ I hear Phil say.
‘We have to have a wake, Pippa, it’s tradition,’ Marcos tells her, before turning back to the funeral director. ‘Now, can we have that here, or –’
‘I don’t want one!’ she exclaims. ‘She was stabbed to death! She was torn apart! They threw her in the creek! They – who knows what the fish did to her?’
‘Philippa!’ her aunt Christina gasps.
‘Do you want to see her like that?’ Phil demands. ‘Do you want to stand by her casket and look at her like that while some priest who didn’t even know her stands there and prays?’
‘Of course, the priest knew your mother!’ Marcos snaps, at the same time as the funeral director says, ‘we don’t have to have an open casket wake.’ I think his tone is supposed to be comforting, but it feels about as real and genuine as Tam’s soothing voice.
‘I don’t want a wake at all!’
Marcos sighs. ‘Pippa, do you think Pappou could take it if we put his daughter in the ground without a proper funeral?’
‘What do you want, Phil?’ Disey asks her.
‘I want small. Quiet. Over and done with as quickly as possible, and I don’t want to have to look at her.’
But Phil gets none of these things, except the last one. Marcos and the funeral director plan a full enormous funeral over the top of her head.
‘Don’t worry, Pippa,’ Marcos says, putting a hand on her shoulder after we leave the office. ‘It’ll be closed casket. You won’t have to look at her.’
Phil shrugs his hand away.
‘And your friend will play piano,’ he goes on. ‘That classical piece your mum liked. That’ll be nice.’
Did I agree to do that? I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything, except how afraid I am about literally everything.
‘I’ll come and pick you up later tonight,’ Marcos says. ‘We’ll pack some things for you and you can come and stay with me and your cousins until your dad gets here, all right?’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘No, I don’t want to come and stay with you, Uncle Marcos.’
‘Pippa, you can’t stay in that house by yourself. Yiayia and Pappou are staying with Aunt Christina for now, and the place is still a crime scene. You need to be with the people that love you.’
‘Can I stay? Please?’ Phil asks Disey and Shad.
‘Of course you can,’ Disey tells her. ‘As long as you want.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Marcos says, looking straight past Disey and addressing himself to Shad. ‘She should be with her family.’
‘Mate, you don’t need to worry, all right?’ Shad says, taking Marcos by the shoulder and steering him away from us. ‘We’ll look after her.’
‘Thank God,’ Disey mutters under her breath.
‘I’m sorry about him,’ Phil says. ‘He’s just – you know how –’
‘Philippa Kostakidis, you don’t need to apologise about anything right now, all right?’ Disey says. ‘You can stay with us for as long as you want. There’s no point having a spare room if we don’t use it, right?’
‘Isn’t that Tam’s room?’ Phil asks.
Disey blinks. ‘Who’s Tam?’
The world slows to a standstill and speeds up so fast I’m amazed we don’t all get flung off the earth into space when she says those two words. Who’s Tam?
I have nine million thoughts in the space of a single nanosecond, but they can be boiled down to two:
1) Oh no, the fairies are still here.
2) Thank God, the fairies are still here.
If someone is going around brainwashing people into forgetting Tam ever existed (well, un-brainwashing them, because they brainwashed everyone into thinking he was my cousin in the first place) then there are Seelie fairies in this town. If it’s Emily – if she’s somehow got free – then I am so screwed, but surely the first thing she’d do if she got free would be to make me watch as she killed people I cared about, right?
You have rid me of the Riders, and now I may ride through mortal lands all I please. The Crown Prince said that to me. What if he or one of his little buddies availed themselves of that opportunity right away?
And if they’re here, I can find them.
I can follow them. All the way back to fairyland.
I can get Finn back, and he can fix –
He can’t fix this. Not the fact that Phil’s mother is dead. He might be able to heal people, but he can’t raise the dead.
But he can fix so much. Matilda. Emily. Tam.
Tam, who no longer exists.
‘Can you drop me at Finn’s on the way home?’ I ask Disey.
‘It’s been a long day, Pearlie. Don’t you want to go home and rest?’
She looks sideways at Phil, a pointed glance that delivers a long monologue on how I shouldn’t be so selfish and how I should take care of my friend.
‘I’m fine,’ Phil says hollowly.
‘Phil, no one is expecting you to be fine,’ Disey says.
‘I don’t want to be around anyone,’ she says. ‘Pearl can do whatever she wants.’
I take all my emotions, box them up tight, and shove them into a deep dark corner of my brain to deal with later. I just need to focus on breaking into fairyland and getting Finn back. If I can get him back, I can make everything all right.
‘Are you sure you want to be out tonight, Pearlie?’ Disey asks.
‘I need to see Finn.’
It’s somehow both the truest and the closest thing to a lie I’ve said to one of my siblings since I made my not-New Year’s resolution.
There are no lights on in the Blacklin house when Disey drops me off – which leads to a whole other round of ‘Come on, Pearlie, forget your boyfriend, don’t you want to be home where we can wrap you in cotton wool and hide you away from the world’ and I’m like, ‘Ugh, no, why do you have to be so unreasonably protective, I’ve only been mysteriously mixed up in multiple murders in the last six months.’ Everything about the house says that nobody’s home, but after the taillights of Disey’s car have disappeared into the distance, I knock on the door: not a gentle knock, but the kind that cops do in movies, the kind of knock that says, ‘Open up, or I’ll kick this door down’.
There’s no answer.
I knock again.
Still no answer.
I refuse to believe that Tam’s not here. He’s clearly not pretending to be my cousin anymore, and he wanted Finn’s life more than anything. Why wouldn’t he swoop right in and take it?
I knock again.