“I’m really not in the least freaking bit okay with it. Lara told me, but believe me, knowing and seeing aren’t at all the same thing. But we had to get out of there. I couldn’t exactly stop to have a fit. I still can’t. I’ll fall apart later.”

“You didn’t stop to think about the trouble we’re gonna be in?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with thinking!” Kelly slammed the heel of her hand into the car horn, its pathetic beep doing less to shatter the tension than Lara thought it might. “I was just trying to make sure we all survived!”

“What about Reg?”

“We couldn’t help him!” Kelly yanked the blinker indicator up so hard Lara was surprised it didn’t break, and cut off traffic as she jerked the car toward the sidewalk. “You want to get out? Fine, get out! I don’t care!”

“Just lend me the car,” Lara whispered. “I can get us out of the city. You two don’t need to be any more involved in this.”

“Oh like hell.” Kelly threw the emergency brake on and her seat belt off, twisting around. “No, Lara, look, at the very least you need somebody with a driver’s license at the wheel if you run into any cops—”

“You let me drive your car without a license before,” Lara objected quietly.

Kelly glared at her. “I know you can drive, Lara, that’s not the problem. There weren’t likely to be police looking for you before. And I know you haven’t gotten a new license, so you need a driver, and he,” she said, jabbing a finger at Dafydd, “can’t drive right now. More to the point, you need somebody who can tell lies if it’s necessary. David’s in no shape to talk and you, well.” She snorted, making a mockery of the anger and fear in her eyes. “This is the most universally fucked-up situation I’ve ever been in, but I’m right. We couldn’t do anything for Reg, so the best I can do is protect you. You’re my best friend,” she said more softly. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“Maybe choose me over them?” The accusation had gone from Dickon’s voice, leaving him defeated as he unbuckled his seat belt, too.

Fresh tears tracked down Kelly’s cheeks, but resolution tightened her jaw. “I’m sorry, Dickon. I didn’t know getting David out of there meant I was making a choice between you and them. I thought I was choosing all of us, to get out of a situation we were never gonna be able to explain. But if it’s one or the other, I’m sorry. Right now it’s them.”

“You’re going to get arrested,” Dickon said quietly. “We’re all going to get arrested.”

“No,” Kelly said, clarion horns in the single word. “Worst-case scenario, three of us are going to get arrested. But first we’re going to get David to safety, because otherwise he’s going to die. And, Dickon, I love you, I really do, but I’m not going to let somebody die just because he’s not exactly human.”

Dafydd, unexpectedly, let go another soft chuckle. “Not human at all, but I play one on TV. Dickon”—he rolled his head back, tilting his sunglasses so his amber eyes were revealed—“a useless confession, my friend: I was going to tell you. This morning, in fact, I thought, ‘he should know.’ I’m sorry I was too late. Secrecy is an old habit to break.”

Dickon’s gaze skittered to Lara. “Is he telling the truth?”

“He is.”

“Hnh.” Dickon rolled his jaw, then jerked his head at Kelly. “Let me out.”

“Dickon—”

“No, you know what, Kel? Just let me out. I’m going to the hospital. I gotta see if Reg is okay.”

“But what about—”

“I don’t know, Kelly. I don’t know. Maybe if I’d had a week to get used to this, but I don’t know. You … you go do your thing, this thing, whatever it is. Save the freak. Call me when it’s over, maybe. I don’t know.”

Kelly, hollow-eyed, opened her door and stepped out of the car without saying anything else. Dafydd, though, spoke into her silence. “A week ago,” he murmured, “a week ago you were my champion, Dickon, and Kelly was my doubter.”

“I know, man.” Dickon pushed the Nissan’s seat forward, shouldering out. “A lot’s changed since then.”

Everything, Lara thought. Everything had changed since then. Kelly got back in, rebuckled her seat belt, and pulled back into traffic, all of them trying not to look at Dickon’s reflection receding in the mirrors.

“Maybe it’s a good thing. They’re looking for two women and two men in a Nissan, not two women and a man in a Toyota.” Kelly, still driving, turned the radio off with a resounding click, her jaw still set. According to local news, an unnamed detective had been rushed to the hospital and police were looking for four suspects to question. Lara’s stomach turned to lead as their names and physical descriptions were announced, along with Dafydd’s recent jail time and her peculiar disappearance.

“Maybe it’s good,” she echoed, dissonance running over her skin. It wasn’t a lie, but she didn’t believe it any more than Kelly had.

They’d stopped at Kelly’s bank less than five minutes after Dickon left them, and Kelly had withdrawn most of her savings. “Eight and a half thousand,” she’d said when she got back in the car. “I left about forty dollars in the bank. This is all we’re going to be able to get, unless you’ve got accounts in other names.” The last was directed at Dafydd, who nodded vaguely, as if he hadn’t understood the implied question.

The Seelie were, by Lara’s estimation, a fragile-looking people to begin with, but even so, Dafydd’s weakness frightened her. His bones seemed to shine through parchment-fine skin, as if he faded before their eyes. He’d burned up too much power: the truth of that rang through her in ceaseless waves, like water at the shoreline. Whether he could recover with time and rest, she didn’t know. It seemed all too likely that, cut off from the Barrow-lands, he would never regain his strength.

He’d given them the address of his storage unit in Peabody, and at Lara’s urging, the combination to its lock, before fading into a restless drowse he hadn’t fully woken from. The car they’d found there was new enough to be unremarkable, but old enough to lack the global positioning system that most new vehicles were automatically fitted with. With luck it wouldn’t matter; with luck no one would trace their change of vehicles and be looking for a mid-range blue four-door Corolla. Lara glanced behind her to where Dafydd sprawled gracelessly across the seat as he dozed, and said “With any luck” aloud.

“I’m not going to assume luck is on our side. Lara, look, not like any of this was planned, but do you have any kind of … plan?” Kelly’s fingertips tapped the wheel, quick nervous rhythm. “I’m running on adrenaline and spy movies here. I know about not using credit cards and sticking to blue roads instead of interstates, but beyond getting us out of the greater Boston metropolitan area, I don’t know what to do.”

Lara pressed her temple against the window, watching the roadside scenery turn to a blur of green. “I keep thinking we need to go to Wales.”

“Wales? What, like in Britain? Not a chance, sister. I don’t think eighty-five hundred dollars is enough to buy us fake passports, even if I had any idea where to go to try to get that kind of thing. Wales? Are you serious? Why?”

“Because it’s where Dafydd said he was from. That the Barrow-lands are close to it, in terms of how his world and this one map to each other. Ioan said something about how once upon a time people from this world were able to cross to the Barrow-lands through underground paths.”

“Long ago,” Dafydd murmured from the backseat. “Long ago. Even in Oisín’s time it took royal blood casting the worldwalking spell, and that was a long time ago.”

Lara twisted around, hooking her arm over the back of the seat. “Hey, you’re awake. How do you feel?”

Dafydd took a breath, held it, and on the exhalation admitted, “Terrible.”

“You look awful.” Lara wrinkled her nose at the raw truth, but it got a chuckle from Dafydd. She smiled wanly in return, then found herself echoing his deep breath and long exhalation. “Have you ever heard of a worldbreaking weapon? Not me, but something that might have been used to destroy Unseelie territory?”