"I can see that for myself!" The Lord of the Gourd rose to her feet and flicked at Pumpkinhead until he returned to his mortar and pestle. Then she turned to her guests. "You're not dead anymore then," she said to Flower in a much more normal tone of voice.

Flower made a graceful bow. The Tormentor ran a hand through her hair and looked at Nikifor. He gave a thin smile.

"Madam, it is an honour to meet you. I thank you for taking us in, for if you had not I surely would be dead," Flower said.

The Tormentor's eyes never left Nikifor. His shadowy hands closed around her throat. Flower didn't appear to feel a thing.

"Yes." The Lord of the Gourd seemed very satisfied with this speech. "It is an honour to meet me."

"Will you allow me to deliver news from Shadow City?" Flower asked.

"Go on then." The Lord of the Gourd gave an airy wave of the hand.

"She's a traitor," the Tormentor said in a low voice. "You know she is boy, she told you so herself. She agreed to work with the enemy of your king. She must die."

Nikifor took a single step backward and gave a minute shake of the head. He would not fall apart, not here, not now. He felt Fitz's eyes on him like coals. He would ignore the Tormentor. The shadow could do nothing.

Flower moved closer to the Lord of the Gourd. "It is my grave duty to report Shadow City is in the grip of some unknown tyrant," she said. "Fairies from many tribes are missing. Nikifor and I are the only muses I know of who are not missing."

The Lord of the Gourd shrugged as though the muses mattered little to her. "Nobody from our village is missing."

"Kill her," the Tormentor whispered over Flower's head. His eyes, even in shadow, bored into Nikifor's mind with a force he could hardly bear.

"I believe you may nevertheless be in grave danger," Flower said. "The Guild is searching for your village. They close in every day."

"That's what he said." The Lord of the Gourd scowled at Fitz and drummed her fingers on her chair.

"And he was right." Flower gestured around her. "If they find you, there will be no escape. Please, Madam, take your tribe and flee this place before they get here."

The Tormentor ran his hand over Flower's chest in the most intimate and insulting gesture Nikifor had ever seen. His face burned. His hands began to shake.

"If we did that, we'd be missing too," The Lord of the Gourd said. "Then you'd have to find us as well and that'd make your job doubly hard."

Flower paused, apparently bamboozled by this reply. Nikifor could almost see her determine to keep pushing to get her way, even as the Tormentor wound a hand into her hair and yanked.

Flower stumbled. She glanced about, frowned, then righted herself. "Madam, please listen to me and save the lives of all your people. The Guild will be here any day. You must leave. You must let Fitz take you to a safe place!"

"I'll ask the Gourd." The Lord of the Gourd leaned over the shrivelled gourd sitting on the table in front of her, stared at it for two seconds, then sat back again. "Gourd says no."

"But you must listen!" Flower cried. "How can you possibly survive a Moon Trooper attack? What will you do when the fetches come?"

The Lord of the Gourd rose up. She stood on her chair, swathed in blankets, and scowled at Flower, who was now on eye level with her. "We'renotleaving!"

There was a shocked silence in the room. The echoes of the yell died away.

The Tormentor drew a long, thin dagger and raised it over Flower's back.

"No you mustn't!" Nikifor leaped at Flower.

Fitz caught Nikifor by the shoulders and steered him back. "There's nothing there, friend," he said in a calm, even tone. He looked over his shoulder. "Madam, please excuse us, we've taken enough of your precious time."

"Go away then," The Lord of the Gourd said. "You're very irritating." She disappeared into the blankets.

Nikifor did not take his eyes off the Tormentor, but he allowed Fitz to steer him outside.

Flower followed them, her fists clenched, her cheeks bright red. "Well, of all the impossible, ridiculous, obstinate fairies I ever met!" she exploded, the moment they were outside. "Fitz Falls did you know she was going to react like that? And what is going on with you two?"

"The Tormentor," Nikifor said, unable to take his eyes off the shadow. "He's trying to kill her."

"Are you sure?" Fitz stayed between Nikifor and Flower. He spun Nikifor in the direction of his pumpkin house and steered him there. "Because it looked to me like you were about to do her some harm."

"No!" Nikifor tried to see over his shoulder, but Fitz wouldn't let him turn to look at Flower. "The Tormentor, he said she was a traitor. He had a dagger!"

"And how do you expect an immaterial being to use a dagger?"

They ducked through the doorway while Nikifor tried to puzzle that one out. Fitz pushed him straight into the circle of salt he'd made last night.

Flower entered after them and looked from one to the other with concern. "What's going on?"

"You. Stand there." Fitz pointed to the outside of the circle.

"Why?"

"Just do it!" Fitz's tone brooked no argument.

Nikifor paid attention only to the Tormentor, who ran the tip of that dagger down Flower's face, along the line of her neck and rested the point at her pulse.

Flower stared at him across the line of salt. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Nikifor drew a shallow breath. "You stumbled in front of the Lord of the Gourd."

"So? I lost my balance."

"You never lose your balance. He had his hand in your hair. He pulled on it."

She folded her arms. "Rubbish."

Fitz squatted on the floor just outside the circle. His voice was calm and measured. "It's not rubbish."

Flower flinched. "Will one of you please tell me what's going on?"

"The man that Nikifor sees is real," Fitz said. "Somehow he is sending what we call a shade to torment Nikifor. Right now he is threatening you, Flower. Is that correct, Nikifor?"

Nikifor nodded.

The shadow behind Flower reached out for him, but snatched his hand back from the air above the salt. He sneered. "Amateur sorcery? Really, boy, that won't keep me out."

"How can he threaten me?" Flower's voice was less certain than usual.

"He is linked to you both. We need to figure out how and break his hold." Fitz shifted position so he was half in the circle, half out. "Flower, you must remain perfectly still. Nikifor, you must fight him."

"How?" Nikifor trembled. The Tormentor laid long, knotted fingers across Flower's face.

Flower shuddered.

"Stay still Flower," Fitz repeated. "Nikifor, focus on the Tormentor. Only on him. Push back. He is attacking you through your mind, your dreams, the qualities that make you a muse. The same skills that allow you to inspire humans. You must be a mirror that reflects the attack back at him."

It was not difficult to focus only on the Tormentor. The shadow always took up every inch of space, sucked the life out of the whole room. Nikifor focused all of his attention on the space where the Tormentor's eyes must be.

"Forget your fear," Fitz whispered. "It is his weapon against you. Find another emotion."

That was when Nikifor realised he was so angry his fists were clenched and his whole body trembled.

"Nikifor you're scaring me," Flower hissed.

"Quiet," Fitz snapped. "Push into what you see, Nikifor."

Nikifor straightened to his full height. Tension seized every muscle in his body. He fixed his eyes on that darkness and let the anger seize him.

Then something happened. It was very like the moment between waking and sleep, when he used to slip from Shadow into Dream and visit his writer. He hadn't done that since he threw away his key; instead he'd drifted every night in a disturbed, formless void. But this was different. This time he was in a room cluttered with vials and metal instruments and books. There was a skull on a table in front of him, and two shiny glass balls with a blue current of electricity running between them. A single scalpel lay discarded, stained dark red with old blood.

All of this, however, was eclipsed by a massive machine cobbled together from rusty horns, giant springs, old carriage wheels and any number of other odd things. Liquid quicksilver poured from a pipe in the roof into a huge funnel, and sparks flickered and jumped from end to end. The cogs made a rickety thumping noise as they ground across the greatest horror of all: hundreds and hundreds of keys welded into the body of the beast. Keys that should have been hanging at the necks of all the missing muses.

A footstep. A choked exclamation.

He turned slowly to face a tall man in a purple and green coat, a shadow, a spectre, the creature who had haunted and hunted him for so long made flesh, even if this was a dream or a vision. Long dark hair streaked white from temple to tip framed a face so frozen with rage he might have been a monster fresh out of a nightmare.

The man stared at him. "What are you doing here? How did you do that?" He picked up a glass vial and ditched it at Nikifor's head.

The glass shattered on his skin, bounced, tiny gleaming shards arcing into thin air. Nikifor felt like he'd slammed into a wall. He slid, fell into empty darkness that blinded him, deafened him to everything but that sensation of looking into the heart of evil.

Then he felt the dirt floor beneath his hands, smelled the faint sweet odour of pumpkin shells and mud. He opened his eyes to a line of salt, a forest man who knew more than he was saying, a white-lipped Flower. The Tormentor was gone.

"Flower you can go now," Fitz said.

For once, she didn't argue or question. She got to her feet and left the hut as fast as she could.

Nikifor collapsed inside the circle, breathing hard. His senses crept back, one by one, until he felt quite normal again. He pushed limp strands of hair from his face.

"What happened?" Fitz asked after a few minutes of silence.

"I saw him," Nikifor said. The words hardly seemed adequate.

"Did you recognise him?"

He shook his head. "There was a machine. A huge machine, with quicksilver pouring into it. It was wired together withwith" he swallowed, hardly able to go on. "With keys. Thousands of them."

"All the missing muses' keys," Fitz finished.

Nikifor nodded. He still trembled.

"What does the machine do?"

"I don't know." Nikifor met the other man's eyes over the circle and saw the same terrible fears reflected in them.

"He wants yours and Flower's keys," Fitz finally said.

"I threw my key into the ocean." Nikifor pushed a trembling hand through his limp, knotted hair. Everything was suddenly so clear. "He wantshe wants to find Flower!"

"Then he must not. Under any circumstances."

Fitz's words had barely left his mouth when an unearthly scream pierced the village.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Flower was only too glad to get away from Fitz and Nikifor. Honestly, the pair of them were freaking her out. She wasn't entirely sure what she'd just participated in around that salt circle, but she hadn't liked it one bit, not when the room went icy cold, not when Nikifor looked at someone, something right behind her as though he wanted to kill it, and definitely not when he'd gone blank and not been there at all. She had no idea when Nikifor had gone from being a messed up drug addict to someone who fought ghosts and shades, but she found the whole thing frankly frightening and she wanted no part of it. She patted down her hair and tried to shrug off the memory of invisible fingers yanking on it earlier. Had Nikifor said nothing, she could have believed it was her imagination.

But it wasn't. And that changed everything.

Flower stopped in the middle of the village and glanced over her shoulder at Fitz's pumpkin house. Who did he think he was, marching in and taking over and making Nikifor into someone who frightened her? She looked around for Mudface. She needed a distraction. Anything to bring the world back to normal.

It was far too early for the cooking fires, but the smell of smoke in the air intensified. Flower put a hand over her nose and mouth to block the overpowering stench. Really it was awful, something had to be on fire, but she couldn't see even a wisp of- An explosion of black smoke out of nothing knocked her to the ground.

When the smoke cleared, a young woman crouched in front of her. She had dirty blonde hair and wore a long grey coat. She pushed herself up on her hands and gave Flower a slow, triumphant smile. "Found you."

"You!" Flower lunged for her, only too glad to have something to take her frustration out on.

The girl dodged away.

"You're a false muse!" Flower sprang to her feet and stalked her in a tight circle.

The girl backed away with every step, her grin getting bigger and bigger. "I'm a real muse," she said. "I'm one of the new muses. You're the fake now. You've been fired. You're obsolete. You're an anachronism!"

"I'm going to beat the smoke out of you!" Flower yanked a pitchfork out of the ground and swung it at her. "Clear off! You come near these fairies and I'll teach you the meaning of anachronism!"

"Am I supposed to be scared?" The girl danced away from the pitchfork. "Since you mention it, I'm only here because someone wants a serious talk with you."

"Who?" Flower shook the pitchfork at her.

"Tut, tut, tut." The girl shook her finger. "As if you didn't know. Fairies, you say? How convenient for me. I think I might call in some friends." She opened her mouth wide and uttered a long, shrill, unearthly scream.

Flower dropped the pitchfork and clapped her hands over her ears. The sound seemed to go on forever. It drew the fairies out of the crops and the pumpkin houses to gather around and stare. Fitz and Nikifor came running.