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Holmes whispered, “Good girl, Mary,” as he slipped through, and shut the gate behind us. He stood for a moment looking down at me — he stood many inches taller than even my adult, real-world self — and though the fog made it too dark to see more than his outline against the dim reflection from his dark-lantern, when he spoke again I could hear the concern in his voice. “Can you find your way back to your home without Peter?” he asked quietly. “You know that you are not dreaming now—”

“I know.” I reached out, took his hand — cold, the way they always were, even through his gloves — and pinched his wrist with my fingernails, hard. His hand jerked back and I grinned up at him, then sobered again, when I saw that in my swift smile he almost recognized me. “But I’m not really real, either — or perhaps I’m more real than I’ve been in many years. And I know the danger is real. If something happens to me…”

I hesitated, not knowing what would become of me — where my self, my true self, whatever that true self was, would go.

“Peter,” I went on hesitantly, “doesn’t understand. He’s never really lived in this world, not since he was a tiny baby…”

I glanced back toward the house, invisible in the absolute blackness, save for the swift-moving foxfire glow that was Peter Pan, scouting every window, chimney, and door for signs of occupancy.

Then I went on, “But we can’t let the King of Dreams… It isn’t just about finding Bobbie Lewensham, you know, though of course he must be rescued. But if indeed some mage in this world has found the way through to the world of dreams — or even through to the borderlands that lie between them — he must be stopped. Even for the good mages of this world to go tampering on its borders is … dangerous. Too many of us need the Neverlands, to let the King of Dreams close its gates.”

Holmes whispered, “Yes.” I thought he would say something else, but after an intake of breath, he was after all silent.

Peter came whipping back in a shower of brightness that lit up the fog around him like diamonds. “Cravens! The house is deserted!”

“Excellent.” Holmes picked up his carpetbag. “Krähnacht is presumably still back in Yorkshire, in whatever place he breached through to the Nightmare Castle when he ambushed our young Viscount upon his emergence from the Neverlands. Whatever that entrance is — almost certainly close by the stone-circle — the Fairies’ Dance — where you first met Bobbie Lewensham, Peter — it will be heavily guarded. But Krähnacht has been in and out of the Neverlands before.”

“The Wizard Nightcrow!” I cried excitedly. And when Peter looked blank, I said, “Krähnacht is German for…”

“I knew that,” said Peter loftily. “I’d just forgot.”

Holmes gave me the lantern to carry (of course Peter sees like a cat in the dark), and, when we drew near the house, the carpetbag as well. “It’s very heavy,” he warned, uncoiling from it a good twenty-five feet of insulated wire, at the end of which was rigged what I recognized as a crude electromagnetic coil. “But whoever doesn’t carry it has to get near them, and I’d rather that were me.”

“Get near who?” I asked, hoisting the unwieldy burden and staggering under its weight.

“The Black Knights,” Holmes said, “of course.”

Ten Stars — who was tremendously helpful and obliging (unlike some other fairies I could name) — lit on the corner of the bag like a butterfly, and smeared it with fairy-dust, which made carrying it much easier, although it did develop a tendency to want to travel in its own direction and had to be pulled fairly firmly. Still, that was better than carrying fifteen or twenty pounds of electrical batteries all by myself.

Jakob Krähnacht had his laboratories on the ground floor, strange rooms filled with crystals and mirrors, and a workshop with a small forge. There was a conservatory creeping with foul-smelling plants, and all the carpets and wallpaper stank of smoke and worse things. Much worse things. Ten Stars refused to go in, when