Tania was still unable to wake Rathina and Connor. Their sleep was as deep as ever and nothing she did came close to rousing them. But before she set off to follow Michael’s instructions, she was determined to make sure they were as comfortable as possible.

She knelt at Rathina’s head, smoothing her hair back off her face, gazing fondly at her.

“I’m going to try and rescue Edric,” she whispered. “If it all works out the way I hope, I promise we’ll be back as soon as possible.” She paused. “If not, I hope you wake up and find your way home without me. Connor will help, I’m sure. You can keep each other company, huh?” She leaned forward and kissed her sister’s forehead.

She knelt briefly at Connor’s side, straightening his clothes a little. “You make sure you look after Rathina, hear me?” she said, her voice cracking. “She could use some of that love you’ve got bubbling away inside you.”

She stood up. “A place where twilight rules,” she murmured to herself, settling her crystal sword at her hip. She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said to no one at all. “Here goes nothing!”

As Tania walked, she began to notice that the countryside around her was no longer teeming with strangeness.

The air still had that distracting golden haze about it—but towers and palaces and gateways were no longer appearing and disappearing from the corner of her eyes, and no voices called enticingly from woods and caves. The sun was still nailed to the roof of the sky, and the circling mountains still rippled and changed when Tania wasn’t looking, but it was as if much of the magic of the place had gone to sleep. Or maybe it was that the enchantress had other things to occupy herself with now.

Edric, for instance.

Tania never saw the twilight coming. One moment she was walking along under the noonday sun, the next she was in the cool of a summer evening surrounded by drowsy shadows, the air filled with the sweet aromas of evening primrose and night scented herbs.

A high, steep sloping rampart rose almost at her feet, grass-covered and mantled with flowers of pink and white and yellow. She halted in her tracks, remembering what Michael had told her to do.

One hand gripping the hilt of her sword, she took a deep breath and called into the silent gloaming. “Ashling dar Dair, I am come for my true love! Hear me, Ashling dar Dair. I will not depart without him!”

She was aware of a faint shivering all around her, as if the land was trembling with suppressed laughter. She drew her sword, comforted by the way it sparkled in the dusky light.

The ground quivered under her feet, and a sound filled her ears like discordant music. The music reached a shrill pitch, and her sword shattered in her hand. She stumbled back, gasping for breath. The air sparked, stinging her skin. Then the rumbling beneath her grew to a roar, and the hill split open in front of her as though cloven by an invisible ax.

She stared into the dark gulf, expecting some horror to emerge. But there was nothing. The land had become still and quiet again and the music was gone.

A voice sounded from beyond the cleft. A woman’s voice, powerful and ringing with amusement. “Come, then, child. Take back your love . . . if you are able.”

No sword. No one to back her up. Nothing to cling to but courage and love.

It would have to be enough.

As Tania walked into the sinister gap, her legs trembled and her stomach was a ball of stone. Darkness wove sinister webs in her mind.

She stepped into an enclosed area as round and steep-walled as a bowl. There was grass under her feet, and ahead of her was a ring of rowan trees laden with red berries. In the center of the circle of trees the Green Lady sat on a throne made from intertwined branches and twigs.

The Green Lady leaned back, her hands resting idly on the arms of the throne, her head against the high, arched back. One leg was stretched out, a bare foot revealed beneath the hem of her long, green gown.

Edric was crouched in front of her, washing her foot with water from a wooden bowl.

The enchantress cast a languid, sleepy-eyed look at Tania and smiled—and Tania saw that she had pointed teeth, like the teeth of a lizard or a snake.

“Edric—we have a guest,” the Green Lady drawled, half lifting a limp hand.

Cradling the Green Lady’s foot in his lap, Edric turned to look at Tania. She fought to stop herself from crying out as she saw the silver sheen that coated his eyes.

“This girl has come for you,” said the Green Lady. “Would you like to go with her?”

Edric bared his teeth at Tania and snarled, then turned his face away again and continued to wash the Green Lady’s foot.

Subduing her fear, Tania walked through the trees, her head high, refusing to be daunted by the enchantress. She stood behind Edric, avoiding the Green Lady’s eyes, stooping to touch Edric’s rounded shoulder.

“Edric? Listen to me. She’s put a spell on you. I need you to stop doing that and pay attention to me.” She shook his shoulder, but he shrugged heavily, trying to dislodge her hand. Still he lifted a cloth from the bowl and continued to wash the Green Lady’s foot.

Tania knelt, bringing her hand down on his. “Look at me!”

He turned his head again, his face utterly blank, his eyes like silver moons.

“Come with me, Edric,” Tania said. All the while she was waiting for the Green Lady to do something, all the while she was bracing herself for some sorcerous attack.

“He will not go with you, child,” said the Green Lady. “He knows now the bite of a deeper, stronger love.”

Tania held Edric’s face between her two hands, looking into his eyes, trying to see the brown behind the silver. “I love you, Edric—and you love me. Can you keep that in your mind? We need to leave here now; we really do. Right now.”

She saw the lips of the enchantress moving silently, conjuring a spell that came from her mouth as a thin green vapor. Moments later Tania felt a pressure building around her—as though the air was congealing into fists of iron and closing on her head like the jaws of a vice.

She looked into Edric’s expressionless face, holding his eyes despite the feeling that her brain was about to explode. As she came to the last shred of endurance, a thread of music came gliding into her brain. Familiar music, a melody, slow and sad, but filled with a mournful hope. A music of fiddle and drum—music that she remembered from the Iron Stone Tavern. And as she thought of Michael and Rose, the pain lessened and she was almost herself again.

She heard an angry snarl. The enchantress was leaning forward on her throne, her eyes blazing, her sharp teeth bared.

“Do not seek to bring that maudlin ditty into my domain, child!” she hissed. “It will serve you nothing!”

Tania looked at her. “Is that right?” she countered. “Why does it bother you so much?”

The enchantress opened her mouth and Tania saw her tongue flickering like that of a serpent. And then a heavy green mist came spewing out of the Green Lady’s gaping mouth, and the world vanished in a flood of poisonous venom.

There was no Green Lady.

There was no land of Erin.

There was no quest and there never had been.

Tania and Edric were in Camden Market in London, standing facing each other while oblivious crowds went bustling by. All that Tania knew was that she was out enjoying some retail therapy with her best friend, Jade, and that she was finding her split life a real trial, and that her mum and dad were on her case about her badly explained three-day absence, and that Edric had just said something cruel and hurtful to her.

“I don’t like being told I’m stupid, Edric,” she snapped, glaring into his face. “I’m doing my best. You have no idea how hard this is for me.”

“And is it easy for me?” he asked. “Trapped in this benighted world, knowing that I can get back home only with your help?”

“Is that my fault?” she retorted. “If anyone deserves to be wound up here, it’s me! I never asked for you to come and totally mess up my life! I never asked for you to pretend you liked me just so you could drag me off to your own world to marry your boss!”

“I explained that to you,” snapped Edric, his eyes blazing. “I didn’t have any choice in the matter!” His face grew stiff. “Do you really think I’d have wasted all that time with you if I could have helped it?” He rolled his eyes to the sky. “Have you any idea what a self-centered, whiny little pain in the neck you can be, Tania?”

“Stop calling me that! My name’s Anita!”

“Yeah—whatever, Anita!”

“And if you detest me so much, why don’t you just get lost?” she spat. “My life was fine till you came along.”

“Oh, was it?” A sneering note came into his voice. “Kind of odd, then, that you’ve been all over me like a rash for the last couple of months, telling me how you couldn’t live without me.”

“My mistake!” hissed Tania. “I didn’t know you so well then! I thought you were different.” Her voice choked, stopping her.

“Oh, what’s this now?” Edric crowed. “Going to squirt a few tears, are you?”

Tania would not let him see her cry! She would not let him know how much pain she was in. Never!

She spun on her heel. Jade was still sitting at the wrought-iron table sucking Coke up through a straw, peering at Tania over the round blue lenses of her new sunglasses, her eyes cynical and caustic.

“Go away, Edric,” Tania said icily, not even looking back at him. “I never want to see you again.” She took a deep breath and walked to the table. She sat down and picked up her paper cup, hearing the ice rattle as she sucked at the straw.

“Problems?” asked Jade.

“Nope,” Tania said. “Not anymore.”

A wide grin spread across Jade’s face. “I see,” she drawled. “Trouble in paradise, eh? Well, if you don’t want him anymore . . . can I have him? He’s kind of cute in a dumb blond way.”

Tania shrugged. “You want him, you can have him,” she said. “I’m done with him.”

“Excellent!” said Jade, her teeth as white as pearls. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear!”