What if he’d insisted? Phil and I would have stumbled out of the Summer Door, and we wouldn’t be here now, at her house, with her mother, because all there would have been was a car we couldn’t unlock because the keys were in Finn’s pocket in another universe.
Who would have fainted first? Her or me? How far would we have made it? Who would have found us? Julian? Tam? Fairies?
I can feel their fingers around my neck. I can feel them squeeze, feel myself crushed beneath them, feel –
‘Pearl,’ Matilda says, grabbing my chin and forcing me to look at her, ‘stop panicking.’
I can’t get any words out. They’re choking me.
‘You’re all right. You’ve done a great thing tonight, a brave thing, and you need to be brave a little while longer.’
I swallow. ‘I’m all right,’ I repeat. ‘I’m all right.’
‘You’re going to get in your car,’ she says. ‘You’re going to take Phil with you. You’re going to drive her to your house. If anyone asks you where you’ve been tonight, that’s where. There, together, alone. You’re going to clean her up and put her to bed. You’re going to clean yourself up and go to bed too, but not before you lock every window and every door. You’re going to wear all the iron you have, save the pieces you put on her. And whatever you do, don’t let that fairy boyfriend of yours inside the house.’
‘I couldn’t even if I wanted to.’
‘What?’
‘He’s gone,’ I say. ‘They took him.’
‘The Riders took him?’
‘The Seelie. His brother. The Crown Prince. He –’ I set the glass down before I drop it and it smashes everywhere. ‘He gave me a choice. Finn, Phil, or my sister. Not Disey, I mean – my twin. The one they took when they swapped Finn and Tam.’
‘Pearl, look at me.’
I do.
‘Are you telling me,’ she says, her eyes dark and serious, ‘that in the space of one night, you’ve broken apart the Riders and sent the Valentine – that changeling prince who’s brought all of this down on our heads – back to where he belongs?’
‘Finn doesn’t belong there. And none of this is his fault.’
But I don’t think she’s listening to me, because she laughs. ‘Whoever told you not to listen when someone said something is impossible did a wonderful job.’
‘Stop laughing. Please.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I shouldn’t laugh, I know, not here, not in a place like this. But I don’t think you understand the magnitude of what you’ve done.’
Oh God, what have I done?
I don’t know if Matilda had some kind of contingency plan for what would happen if I got pulled over by the cops driving back to my place or if she was just so certain we wouldn’t that it changed the universe, but we make it home. I have a death-grip on the steering wheel with my one good hand, and the only reason I don’t crash the car is because Matilda told me that I wouldn’t.
My house looks the same as it always does as I ease into Disey’s usual parking spot. It should feel comforting, but it feels wrong, because how can things be the same when Finn is gone, and I have a twin, and Tam might have killed Holly, and Julian might have killed Cardy, and what if Emily got loose? And the Riders tore Phil’s mother apart, and there was so much blood, and – keep it together, Linford, keep it together.
My hand makes a ripping sound as I peel it off the steering wheel, the sound you get when you sit on a leather couch with bare legs in summer and stand up too fast. ‘Come on, Phil.’
She doesn’t answer. Her head is leaning against the passenger-side window, fingers curled loosely around her seatbelt. There’s nothing in her eyes, a deep, horrible nothing, and I worry for a second that she’s gone into total shutdown like she did after that night at Miller’s Creek, when she was catatonic in hospital for a week.
The night she woke up screaming. Screaming when she saw my face, because of what I’d done.
I get out, slamming the door hard. There’s a squawk and the sound of flapping wings in the trees and I brace myself for the tearing claws of Unseelie birds, furious that I thwarted their big plan to kill Finn, but they don’t come.
If there are Unseelie birds, I tell myself, they wouldn’t be frightened by a little thing like a car door.
It says a lot that in this particular moment the thought is comforting.
‘Out,’ I say to Phil, pulling her door open.
She doesn’t move.
I pull down the neck of my shirt and show her the seeping red stain on the bandages on my shoulder. ‘See this? I got stabbed tonight. I’ve lost so much blood that I don’t know how I’ve got any left to lose. Everything hurts. But if I have to, I will drag you bodily out of the car. Now come on.’
‘Take it off.’
‘What?’
‘That shirt.’
‘You want me to take off my shirt?’
‘It’s not yours!’ she screams. ‘Take it off!’
I look down. The shirt Matilda put on me is one of Mrs Kostakidis’s work blouses.
‘I’ll make you a deal,’ I say. ‘You get out of the car and come with me into the house, and I’ll take this shirt off.’
Phil fumbles with her seatbelt and then lunges towards me so violently she nearly knocks me over. I manage to stagger out of the way, and she falls to her hands and knees. ‘Take it off!’ she yells.
I back towards the verandah. She scrambles to her feet. She catches me just as I unlock the door and we tumble inside together, her on top of me. Her hand hits my injured shoulder and the noise that’s ripped out of my throat is inhuman, the pain like a sonic boom through my whole body, but it gives me the rush I need to kick her off me.
I tear the shirt over my head with my good hand and throw it as far away from me as I can. ‘There. It’s off. Are you happy?’
She doesn’t answer me, just scrambles towards it.
I exhale through pursed lips. I’m annoyed, I realise. Her mother is dead – torn to pieces like a piece of meat – and I’m annoyed at her. That’s awesome. I’m awesome.
But at least annoyance is not grief, and it gives me something to cling to, a life raft in an ocean of exhaustion.
I force myself up. I lock the front door. I check all the windows, close all the curtains. I find new clothes for me and Phil and lay them out on my bed, turning them inside out. God help me, I put the kettle on.
Phil just sits on the floor of the living room, the same floor we’ve sat on together a thousand times talking and laughing about school or friends or TV or a million pointless things.
But she’s not talking now. She’s gone silent again, clutching her mother’s blouse to her chest.
‘Do you want some tea?’ I ask.
I don’t expect an answer, but she says ‘yes’ quietly.
‘I’ll make some. But let’s get you into the shower first.’
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ I insist. ‘Come on, Phil.’
I have to undress her like a child, pulling her clothes over her head one-handed. She’s wearing a dress, and this strikes me as weirdly funny, the way little things become intensely hilarious when you’ve pulled an all-nighter and are sustained by caffeine alone. A group of horrifying monsters wanted to rip her heart out while she was wearing a sleeveless summer dress with little flamingos on it.