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“—throw the switch,” I finished, because there was a switch among the neat maze of wires and batteries visible in the bag. “Is it a magnet?” I called after them, as they went striding, gray-clothed man and green-clothed boy, trailing wires down the corridor toward those faceless dark shapes, those whirling blades. The corridor was narrow, the Black Knights crowded one another, jostling, two behind two as they lifted their deadly slashing hands.

Holmes said, “Absolutely,” and lunged like d’Artagnan, thrusting the rod into the center of the metal attacker’s breastplate at the same instant that Peter thrust his. “Now!”

There was a blazing shower of white sparks, a flash of lightning when whatever was still trying to power the clockwork mechanism of the attacking knights imploded as metal fused to metal. The second pair of knights, running into the first pair, magnetized from them and also froze in a shower of blue sparks.

Peter’s eyes shone blue and wild, brighter than the lightning with delight. “Super!” he breathed.

The Black Knights completely blocked the corridor, so Peter put his shoulder to the nearest one, sending all four crashing. “That tears it,” said Holmes, kneeling to wrap up his electrical rods and batteries. “We must find Bobbie and flee, for Nightcrow will come, and he won’t make the mistake again, of using the technology of the real world in this realm.”

Peter whispered confidently, “This way.”

We found the boy Bobbie Lewensham in a stone cell, its barred door standing open to the dank blackness of the corridor. His head was pillowed on his rolled-up blue coat and his little blue cap; he was profoundly asleep. Holmes tried to wake him, and then Peter, to no avail. I stood looking down at that thin, peaky-looking little face — he was very young, no older than John Darling. What is it that you were fleeing, Bobbie, that opened your heart so fully to the realm of dreams? ‘Bobbie never visits anywhere,’ Peter had said. ‘When he’s at home, he’s alone…’

Alone with at least one person who knew or guessed about the Neverlands, and knew where to hire a kidnapper who would hide him in the other world forever.

“He’s been drugged.” Holmes scooped the boy up in his arms as if he were a kitten. “Drugged or a spell. Peter, listen. Can you keep him in the Neverlands with you for another two days? It will take me that long to find the man who hired Krähnacht — Nightcrow — and make sure he’s not in a position to make a second attempt on the boy.”

“He’ll be safe with me.” Peter inclined his head like a young king. He always liked to turn orders or suggestions around so that they were actually his idea.

And behind us, the barred door clanged.

We all whirled. And there he stood in the corridor, the nightmare wizard Nightcrow: a chubby gray-bearded man in the sort of tweeds you see hikers wear in the countryside — he had, of course, been in Yorkshire. And behind his spectacles, the coldest blue eyes I had ever seen.

“A mortal man,” he said thoughtfully, regarding Holmes with those awful eyes. “A dream-child—” He looked at me, as if I were a butterfly in a net who’d make an interesting addition to some tray in a library. “And…” He looked at Peter. “And what have we here?”

“We have here your doom, Nightcrow!” trumpeted Peter, striding to the bars. “I am Peter Pan, and I have come here armed with spells for your destruction! Holmes, play your magic flute!”

“Holmes?” Nightcrow’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows ascended; he wasn’t in the least disconcerted. “So old Wylcourt’s hired occultists have given up trying to find the Gate I opened, and he’s hired Mr. Sherlock Holmes, eh? Now, that is a piece of news.”

Holmes laid Bobbie back on the stone bench where we’d found him and said coldly, “I have nothing to say to you, Herr Krähnacht, except that I advise you to flee as fast as you can. For you are indeed doomed.” Then, when Nightcrow only folded his arms with the air of a man expecting to see an interesting show in complete safety, Holmes sat down on the edge of the bench, turned his back