"Where is Sylvie now?"

"I don't know." Christie put his head in his hands, his voice breaking. "We were together when we stepped through. Something pulled us apart."

"You lost her."

When Christie looked up, his eyes were rimmed with red. "Where is Finn?"

"I lost her. Am I going to hear it from you? No? Good."

"Jack, what are we going to do?" Christie abruptly hunched over and was sick in the grass.

Jack glanced at the artificial dragonfly hovering in the branches above. "We're going to find Finn and Sylvie."

The sudden buzzing of cicadas made him climb to his feet. When a drop of blood fell onto his sleeve, he raised a hand to his ear, felt more blood leaking from it. He wanted to move and couldn't. "Christopher. Something-"

The buzzing faded into the sweetest sound he'd ever heard-his mother's voice singing an Irish lullaby. A languorous peace hazed over the horror of the past hour. He moved in the direction of the song- Someone shouted his name before tackling him into the grass. The warmth ran from him like blood. The world became a chilly patch of willows and water-green ivy was twisted around his wrists and legs, was creeping toward his throat. He didn't see his mother, but a woman made of ivy, one mad green eye watching him as she bared human teeth in the skull of her head.

Jack had seen some bad things on his visits to the Ghostlands, but never anything like this. One rarely saw her kind, because most were dead by the time they realized what had gotten hold of them.

Christie, who had tackled him, hurdled toward the creature, a wooden dagger in one hand. He slammed it into the green woman's skull. The creature's scream nearly deafened Jack, who pressed his hands over his ears and watched as the green woman disintegrated into a tattered drift of dead vegetation and withered ivy. Her skull fell at Christie's feet.

"Siren." Jack pulled himself up. "Ivan's lover was a bloody siren."

"You nearly got taken out by that monster's girlfriend?" Christie was still holding the wooden dagger that had cracked open the siren's skull. He began to sway a little. Jack hoped he wouldn't faint. Or vomit again. They needed to leave. What if there was a brood?

Then Jack looked at the boy, wondering. "You didn't hear it. The siren. Why didn't it affect you?"

"Don't know. I've got implants." He gathered his hair back from one ear to reveal a small metal disk. "I got them when I was a kid. Hearing impairment."

Jack said carefully, "Technology shouldn't work here, but you didn't register the siren's voice because of those. Interesting."

Christie stared down at the siren's skull and began to turn a greenish color. "What would have happened if I'd heard her, too?"

"Well." Jack sauntered to Ivan Vodyanoi's remains. "She would have wrapped us up nice and tight. She would have drained us of our bodily fluids. Within a few days, we would have been two mummified corpses."

"I wish I hadn't asked-what are you doing?"

Jack was crouched beside Vodyanoi's bits and was picking out the human teeth. "Human teeth are valuable in the Ghostlands."

"That's so horribly wrong." Christie was staring nervously at the siren's skull, as if expecting it to jump at him.

"Why don't you smash the teeth out of that?" Jack gestured to the skull.

Christie's voice was faint. "I'm not touching it."

Jack tossed the Indonesian kris to him and said, "Keep that. Try not to fall on it. Get the teeth from that skull, Christopher. We may need to bribe some people to save Finn and Sylvie."

Christie glanced down at the skull, muttered, "You really are a psychopath. I think I'm going to be sick again. That guy was going to eat me."

"Well, there's no accounting for other people's tastes."

CHRISTIE WAS IN HELL.

They were following a metal bug, which, when he stared at it long enough, seemed to become a tiny winged woman of brass and glass. He kept picturing Sylvie caught by something worse than Ivan Vodyanoi and thought of Finn stalked by that terrifying Fata man with the wolf-blue eyes. He regretted the loss of his backpack, which had had clothes, food, the useless phone, and a switchblade in it. They hadn't been able take Ivan Vodyanoi's truck because Jack said only Fatas could work vehicles here. More damn fairy magic.

"Is Tinkerbell leading us in a helpful direction?"

"Yes. What did the Black Scissors tell you?"

"The Black Scissors told Sylvie how that bastard Lot can be killed, since you can't shove him into a sacrificial green fire. He said you need to do three things: poison him, stab him, and cut off his head. Is that dragonfly a fairy?"

"You'll need to cease using that word if you appreciate breathing. It's stopped." Jack indicated the dragonfly, which had darted up into a tree and appeared to be sulking. "There now-you've insulted it with the 'f' word."

Christie wished he could stop shivering. "How can you be so calm?"

Jack turned, his eyes shadowy. "I believe this Dragonfly witch is allied with the Black Scissors. The dragonfly seems to be a popular motif with our coconspirators."

"The dragonfly key . . . the Black Scissors said it would lead us to a witch who would help us . . ." Christie went quiet, imagining Sylvie alone in this place of horrors. She'd always been a beacon of common sense to him, and she'd talked him down from some crazy things-like running away with Victoria Tudor when he was twelve years old. What if Sylvie was dead? When his mind ventured in that direction, he felt breathless and dizzy, as if the ground was moving. He groaned and sank to a crouch.

He heard Jack walking back to him, leaves crackling beneath his boots, then Jack's calm voice. "Breathe deep, head between your knees. Don't pass out. I won't be carrying you."

"Okay. Okay, I'm good. Sylvie isn't dead. And Finn is safe. How did you lose Finn?"

"Caliban took her."

"Oh God . . ."

Jack looked up at the dragonfly and snapped his fingers. "Get down here and do your job. The crom cu won't hurt her-the Wolf isn't done playing."

As the steampunk dragonfly swept onward, Christie stood. Jack said, "What else did you have to tell me?"

Christie breathed out. "Sylv has the sword the Black Scissors gave us to kill the Wolf. It's special iron sheathed in elder wood. Phouka never told you about how to kill Lot?"

Jack was grim. "No. What else?"

Christie hunched his shoulders and whispered, "The Black Scissors said Lily Rose can leave the Wolf's house, but not the Ghostlands. Something bad will happen."

"If Lily Rose is here, we're not leaving her." Jack turned away and they followed the dragonfly to a stairway of mossy, root-tangled wood that sloped up into a darker forest.

Christie tentatively asked, "So who suggested visiting this witch?"

"Leander Cyrus."

"The guy who tricked Finn's sister?"

"Cyrus was a pawn."

"And what if Caliban's delivered Finn to the Wolf? What are we going to do-"

"The Wolf doesn't have Finn. Finn is clever. She's resourceful." Jack glanced back at Christie. "And I believe in her."

JACK HALTED and watched the tinkered dragonfly glide toward a thicket of elder trees through which very little light entered. He could smell, in that gloom, the tang of baneberry and belladonna, the sharpness of crowfoot and nightshade, the earthy venom of wormwood and Death Angel mushrooms. As the metal dragonfly flickered in that darkness exuding the noxious perfume of earthborn poisons, Jack turned to Christie, who looked wretched and fragile. He sloughed his coat and tossed it to the boy. When Christie caught it, Jack said, "There's a bottle in the left pocket. You need to drink a drop of what's in it before we go near any sort of ban dorchadas."

Christie gratefully tugged on the coat and pulled out the precious bottle of elixir. "What is a ban dork-"

"A witch." Jack pointed at the bottle. "One drop."

"What'll it do?"

"It'll disguise the smell of your blood. It was meant for Finn." Jack's voice broke on her name. He hated himself for having left her for even those few minutes with Moth, and he felt a surge of the ugly violence that had ruled his life for so long.

Christie reluctantly took one drop of the elixir, froze, and appeared stunned. A hint of silver shone in his dark eyes as he gaped at Jack. "This is . . . all these colors." He turned in a circle. "I feel like I just got shot up with adrenaline. Is this what you felt as a Jack?"

"Somewhat. Only hollow and cold and without remorse."

As Jack began walking, Christie trudged after him, still gazing around in wonder. "So this witch'll find Finn and Sylv?"

"And give me something to keep Seth Lot's pack from tracking me-at the moment, my blood is like the damn aurora borealis and that elixir won't do the trick."

"Is it because of what happened to you? That whole zombie-corpse-resurrection thing?"

Jack cast him a stern look. "We need to be quiet now."

They prowled through the twisting trees, which grew so close he and Christie sometimes had to step sideways. When they came to a rusting sign that read STORYBOOKVILLE, Christie halted. Draped by kudzu and weeds, the sign was accompanied by a metal statue of a knight on a horse. The paint was peeling from the horse's panoply. The knight's lance was broken, and there was an old bird's nest on his head.

They continued on along a root-entwined path. They passed a decrepit concession stand that creaked in the occasional wind ghosting among the trees. As they drew near a pink, miniature castle stained with dead leaves, one of its towers coiled with an oak, Christie wondered out loud what kind of amusement park Storybookville had been. Jack said, "Evidently not a very popular one."

They stepped into a clearing surrounded by a garden of wild plants and found a pretty cottage painted black, its door and roof tiles scarlet. Wind chimes shaped like insects hung from crooked apple trees. Roses the same ruby hue as the apples latticed lamp-lit windows. They could hear music crackling from some archaic device within.

In fairy tales and in Jack's world, cottages were often deceptively charming domiciles that housed blood and horror. Jack didn't move as the dragonfly skirled to the door, where it dropped and hit the stone path and became a metal amulet.

As Christie studied the cottage with the appropriate apprehension, Jack moved forward and picked up the dragonfly amulet.

The red door opened.

Sylvie Whitethorn stood on the threshold.

"Sylvie!" Christie ran forward, but he was stopped by Jack's arm as Jack said quietly, "That's not Sylvie."

They drew back. The girl's gown was a silky gossamer darkness that clung to curves Sylvie Whitethorn didn't have. Her hair, a fall of licorice black, was knotted with tiny braids and talismans. When she tilted her head, her kohl-rimmed eyes were revealed to be ghost silver. The otherworldliness that breathed from her rattled Jack's nerves.

"Who are you?" The replica of Sylvie Whitethorn leaned in the doorway, her smile a shadowy thing, her voice and face so familiar, even Jack felt the deceptive comfort of trust.

"Why don't you tell us your name?" Jack smiled like the wicked thing he'd once been.

The Sylvie replica's unsettling gaze fell upon Christie and a dark power purred through her voice. "Why don't you tell me yours."

CHRISTIE'S THROAT CLOSED as the Sylvie look-alike gazed at him. "I'm not supposed to tell you my name. Miss."

She gestured. "How is it, lovely boy, that you don't have a shadow?"

He twisted around, trying to find his shadow in the dusky light.

"I'll confess I know you, Jack Daw," the witch continued.

"It's Jack Hawthorn now."

"My garden is a dangerous place for mortals, Jack Hawthorn."

"Jack." The alarm was peaking in Christie. "Why don't I have a shadow?"

"The elixir changes you, mortal boy." The witch drifted toward Christie, who took another step back as she reached out to brush short black nails across his neck, one fingertip following a scrawl of ink on his collarbone. Her face was exactly like Sylvie's, her lips red as if she'd just eaten strawberries. A necklace of green and blue beads glistened across the swell of white skin above her bodice.

"Witch." Jack's voice knocked Christie's head up. "Stop that. You can sense that he's mortal? Even with the elixir in him?"

The witch smiled sweetly at Christie. She leaned close and whispered, "You're different from most mortal boys. Do you even know what you are?" She twirled and sauntered back to the cottage, her gown's hem drifting around her bare feet. "You may enter if you can guess my true name."

Christie looked at Jack. "Do we want to-"

"Tarbh-naith irach," Jack said. "Dragonfly."

She shook her head and paused before her door. "You'll never get what you need from me with that lack of imagination. My garden is hungry, so you'd best move quickly."

Christie gazed around at the statues tangled in vines and shady-looking plants. A marble girl reaching for an apple had lost her arm. A stone man crouched in a cave of briars, his broken hands outstretched. As the leaves rustled, sounding like the voices of lost souls, Christie swallowed. "Were these peop-"

"You were meant to be a changeling," Jack said to the witch, not seeming at all concerned by the growing sentience of the vegetation around them, "to replace a girl named Sylvie Whitethorn. Only something in the true world prevented that, so you survived betwixt and between."

"She was going to replace Sylvie?" Christie now had his back against an apple tree.

"Do you know her?" The witch's smile vanished. "My original?"

Christie, staring at her, whispered words that came to him like a protective prayer, "She never walks, but glides. A shadow of blue and green. A lovely flicker to the eye. And, in her heart, a queen."

The witch's eyes went from unholy silver to a delighted sapphire blue and she tilted her head to one side and said, "Drat. You gave me that poem. I shall have to give you something in return. Come on then. You may call me Sylph."

She turned and moved into the cottage.

Christie, who hadn't meant the poem as a gift, who barely understood why he'd spoken it, glanced at Jack, who strode toward the cottage. Realizing he'd be left alone in the whispering garden, Christie hurried after him.

THE HOME OF SYLPH DRAGONFLY wasn't what Christie had expected. A fire crackled in a brick hearth. The two large rooms were cozy and cluttered with fantastically shaped bottles, trinkets, fossils, weird dolls, and plants grown wild on the sills of the latticed windows. There was an old-fashioned Sears sewing machine in one corner and a battered record player of Barbie-pink plastic on a corner table surrounded by vinyl albums. The forest-green walls were covered with photographs of people who didn't look quite human. Christie peered at a sepia-tinted picture of a young man with pale, tangled hair. The youth was smiling, one hand resting on the shoulder of the girl who was now humming softly as she opened cabinets in the kitchen.

Christie turned to Jack, who was examining a bowl of apples. "Is that Moth in this pic-"

An invisible force slammed Christie against the wall.

Jack shouted. Christie shook his head and staggered upright, staring at Sylph Dragonfly, who pointed at the photograph and hissed, "How do you know him?"

Jack stepped between Christie and the witch and said, "We call him Moth. Please don't swat the boy again-he's very fragile."