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Aoife, the changeling girl, has escaped from the fairy world for ordinary human life. She faces new challenges – otherworldly powers, a sister who shouldn’t exist, family and friends who had believed her dead for months.

Shay, love of her life, is her only constant. But when he tells her they can’t be together, her world collapses.

And dark forces are on the move. Shay is now in danger, trapped in his own web of desire. To save her beloved, Aoife must go back to the land of nightmare, magic and adventure . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HELEN FALCONER was a journalist on the Guardian before becoming a full-time writer.

Helen was educated at Dartington and Oxford. She lives in north Mayo, Ireland, with her husband and has four children.

RHCP Digital is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

A story dedicated to Alana Quinn

9th March 2001–6th July 2005

Grá: The Irish word for love, with

connotations of hunger and desire.

A grá is no ordinary, comfortable, fireside

sort of a love. It is a mad love, a wild love,

a hunger, a longing, a terrible insatiable

desire that cannot be turned aside.

John McCarthy of Kilduff

CHAPTER ONE

Was he lying awake and thinking of her at this moment, just as she was thinking of him?

She imagined the quiet farmer’s son stretched out on his bed in the house out on the bog, staring out of the window at the same full moon. Kept awake by the same thoughts (he’d finally said, ‘I love you, Aoife O’Connor’). On impulse, she turned over in the bed and reached for her phone to text him, even though it was the middle of the night. But then she remembered that her phone was lost on a beach in the otherworld, and Shay Foley’s phone was at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Outside the window, the moon was sinking lower and larger and more golden over the Mayo mountains, pouring into her bedroom through the bare, black branches of the ash tree. Strange – and rather sad – how the leaves were already flown. When she had left this world, it had been May: the hawthorn out, fields green and flowering. And now, after less than two days away, it was October.

No, that was wrong – it might feel to her as if she had been away for less than two days, but in this world she and Shay had been missing for five months, and everyone had thought they were dead.

And that, Aoife realized suddenly, was the real reason why she couldn’t sleep – it wasn’t the brightness of the sinking moon; it was because even though everything in this room belonged to her, it wasn’t her bedroom any more – it was her shrine.

On the chest of drawers was an embarrassingly huge silver-framed portrait of herself – last year’s school photo blown up to poster-size, smiling fakely, her long red-gold hair brushed and tied too neatly back; the collar of her polo shirt clean, white and ironed. Candles were grouped around the portrait (when she’d arrived home earlier that evening, they’d all been burning in her memory), and there was a small jade vase of autumn roses, two plaster angels, a crucifix and a lot of Mass cards.

It didn’t stop there. Everywhere on the walls were more photos of herself – hundreds of which she didn’t even remember having been taken: childhood holidays that were only a blur in her mind. It was lovely to find her whole life had been recorded by her parents with such love, but . . .

She turned on the bedside light and got out of bed in her T-shirt. She was back from the dead, and she was here to stay, and she needed to make this room fit for a living teenage girl.

The first thing she did was take down the framed portrait and stick it under the bed. There was an unnerving amount of space under there – the years of clutter had been cleaned away: old sweet wrappers, dead make-up, shoes and bras too small. Next, she swept the candles and Mass cards into the top drawer of the press, where she found all her tops had been neatly folded instead of crammed in as usual. She unpinned half the photos from the wall, leaving only the ones of herself and Carla and a few other friends – the way it had used to be before.

She checked the result. It was better, but still wrong. Her books were arranged too neatly on the shelves, all the spines turned out. There were no clothes or copy books on the carpet. The badly ripped music posters had been laminated. Even her guitar had been scrubbed – scrubbed! – and a silver ribbon tied around its neck. The things that parents do when they think their child is dead.

She untied the ribbon, and sat down on the bed with the battered old instrument in her arms. The familiar shape and weight made her feel more like herself. She ran her fingertips gently over the strings. If it hadn’t been the middle of the night, she would have struck a few chords. A lyric surfaced in her mind:

Lonely in my grave tonight,

I dream of you, I dream of flight . . .

Outside in the night, a stick snapped and footsteps padded down the side of the house. Hastily setting aside the guitar, Aoife went to stand to one side of the window, so she could see out without being seen. A badger emerged from round the corner, plodded slowly across the garden, heaved its bulk over the wall and lumbered up the faint track that bisected the steep and stony field. Many years ago, she and Carla, in sparkly dresses with stiff wings, had pretended that very track was a fairy road. So strange how, years later, the road had turned out to be real. If she followed it now, all the way, it would take her straight across the fields as far as Lois Munnelly’s bungalow – which had been built across it five years ago – then up into the mountains, across the bog, and straight to that black pool beneath the hawthorns. And then . . .

For a long, nauseous moment she remembered how she had felt beside him at the altar, when he had pressed her fist into the empty hole behind his ribs. No heart.

She was safely home, and Dorocha the Beloved was far behind her – raging coldly beneath the Connacht earth. He had wanted to marry her, but Shay’s love had protected her like a shield.

The badger’s waddling form disappeared over the ditch at the top of the field. Fiercely shaking off the night, Aoife turned back into the room. Back into her life.

Beside the window stood her ancient PC, polished clean. She sat down on the swivel chair at the desk and touched the keyboard. It didn’t respond. She sat swinging slowly from side to side, staring at the black screen. Thinking.

Her mother had strongly advised Aoife not to look at her tribute page – according to Maeve, it was ‘morbid and depressing and a bit silly’. Yet now, wide awake and restless in the middle of the night, it was beyond tempting to find out what her friends had said about her when they’d thought she was dead. After all, how many teenage girls got the chance to be at their own funeral? Making up her mind, she crouched to turn the computer on under the desk, then sat back on the chair.

The ageing PC took a while to wake – its wheezing and whirring loud in the utter silence of the small stone house – but at last the screen crawled to life. She logged on to her Facebook page, and found the link – RIP Aoife O’Connor – which had been added to her wall five months ago, in May. There was also another link – RIP Shay Foley. She clicked on Shay’s link first, with a sudden urge to see his face. A black-rimmed page came up, with plenty of kind and regretful messages from Gaelic football coaches and fellow players, including players from other teams:

Such great potential.

Fast, accurate, unbeatable on the ball.

His contribution will be sorely missed.

In his tribute picture, he was on the GAA field, and had clearly just scored a point. The ball was sailing between the posts, and everyone else had their hands in the air. He himself was already in the act of turning away, long legs bent at the knee, one shoulder lowered – revealing the strong curve of his neck, the sloping line of his jaw. The silver earring, high in his ear. His black, cropped hair.

With a warm rush of loneliness for him in her heart, she checked her own tribute page.

Sweetest Aoife, RIP.

To our darling friend Aoife O’Connor from all your friends. We love you so much. You are in our prayers and in our hearts.

Thankfully, her tribute picture was much more flattering than the framed school photograph on the dresser – in it, she was wearing a dark turquoise dress which exactly matched her eyes, and her loose red-gold hair fell slightly curling around her pale oval face, as if she’d plaited it wet. A border of digital lilies surrounded the page, and a praying angel, wings slightly fluttering, knelt at the foot of it. Who had created this page? Carla?

Jessica had posted a clip that had been recorded in Jessica’s bedroom a couple of years ago, of Aoife singing one of her own songs and playing her guitar. It was nice to be ‘remembered’ that way – but a bit of a pity the video was so old, because it meant the song was embarrassingly bad.

Jessica’s best friend Aisling had put up a video of Aoife dancing like a lunatic with Carla at the last Easter disco, which was pretty hilarious.

Lois Munnelly had got in on the act, posting a photo Aoife definitely didn’t remember ever being taken – of Lois, Aoife and Sinead Ferguson in blue national school uniform, with their arms around each other, acting as if they were best friends. Aoife trawled her memory. When had the three of them ever posed for a picture together? Surely they’d hated each other even way back then, when they were . . . what? Ten?

Aoife, we miss you so much our darling friend, you should have confided in us, the three of us were so close, we would have helped you, I will never understand but I hope you and Shay experience true love in heaven, Your best friend, Sinead xxxxx

Ugh. Crap. This must be what her mother had been warning her about when she’d told her not to look. Obviously it hadn’t taken long before Sinead had started going around claiming that Aoife and Shay had jumped off the cliff together in some kind of stupid lovers’ suicide pact.

Unfortunately, it turned out that it wasn’t just Sinead – underneath were about fifty similar posts, all from school friends who should have known better. Including Jessica and Aisling. Including, in fact, pretty much the whole teenage population of Kilduff:

Aoife scrolled on down, checking anxiously for Carla’s tribute. Surely her actual best friend wouldn’t have imagined that Aoife would be so thick as to throw herself off a cliff out of love for a boy she’d only just met. Yet however far down she scrolled – and she was scanning very fast now – she couldn’t find anything from Carla, either way.

Had Carla not had one word to say about Aoife’s tragic death? Posted not one picture in her memory? Surely Carla had to have said something. Just as Aoife was starting to feel hurt as well as confused, she thought to check her private messages on her own page.

It turned out that over the last four months, Carla had written a great deal. Hundreds of messages, in fact.

Aoife I’m not posting any stupid RIP on that stupid tribute page because I know you are alive because I know YOU ARE NOT A COMPLETE IDIOT ENOUGH TO JUMP OFF A CLIFF WITH A BOY YOU’D ONLY JUST GOT TO KNOW!! Plus obviously you would have told me if you were in love with Shay. CALL ME

A counsellor came to our school and said I was in denial and I said im not and she said you are and I said stop denying im not in denial ☺ I do know this isn’t funny ☹ Aoife, if you are reading this get to a phone and CALL ME!!!!!!!!!

Aoife if you have been kidnapped by John Joe and are reading this try to get to a phone and CALL ME!!!

If you are murdered and reading this from the afterlife please give me a sign, I promise you I will avenge you

Aoife was that u moved my toothbrush to the other side of the sink??????? ☺☺☺☺ Move it again if it was you I’ve put it back now!!!

Aoife, smiling, with a lump in her throat, clicked her messages away. She had spoken to Carla on the phone as soon as she’d got back to the human world yesterday evening, and she couldn’t wait to see her best friend in the flesh. Before leaving her own page, she altered her status, to: I’m back, folks!!!!! Then checked out Carla’s page.

It was a huge shock to her, how much her best friend had changed – all the more so because it felt as if she’d last seen Carla only two days ago, rather than five months ago, in May. Back then, her best friend had been prettily plump, with soft brown hair curling to her shoulders. But in her recently updated profile picture, Carla seemed to have lost every kilo of puppy fat. She had visible cheekbones, which made her brown eyes seem huge. Her soft brown crop had grown several centimetres and had been straightened and layered, with gold and blonde highlights. Judging by another picture, where she was standing next to her mother, she had even grown a few centimetres . . .

After drinking in this transformation for a full minute, mouth open, Aoife’s eyes drifted to Carla’s profile details.

Aoife shot upright on her chair. Surely not! Yet when she clicked ‘KD’, the hyperlink took her straight to Killian Doherty’s profile. There was the notoriously unfaithful builder’s son, as handsome as ever, with his white-blond hair and silvery grey eyes, sitting on the steps of his parents’ expensive three-storey house. This was unbelievable. Never in the history of his many ‘relationships’ had Killian Doherty gone out with a girl for more than a week before dumping her by text. Yet Killian and Carla had got together before Aoife disappeared, and in the human world, that was . . . Five months ago. Unbelievable!

She glanced up from the computer: someone had just called her name – although very softly.

But it wasn’t coming from her parents’ bedroom across the landing, where the little girl, the real Eva O’Connor, lay asleep between them in the bed.

It was coming from outside the house! With a sudden leap of her heart, Aoife ran back across the room to the window and opened it, leaning out. It was still only five in the morning, and almost moonless now, but just visible in the light from the window, grinning up at her from below, was a blonde-haired, skinny girl wearing a sheep onesie and wellington boots. If Aoife hadn’t checked Facebook . . .

Dragging on trackies and a hoodie over her T-shirt, she jumped up onto the windowsill like a cat and, without thinking, and despite Carla’s startled cry of ‘Careful!’ sprang straight out of the window.

As she glided through the air, it struck her that she probably shouldn’t have done this to Carla without warning. She wasn’t flying, but the trajectory of her spring had taken her far out through the branches of the ash tree, and now she was passing right over Carla’s astonished gaze. Pointing her feet, Aoife came down rather clumsily in the flowerbed on the near side of the garden wall, picked herself up and rushed back across the grass into her best friend’s eager arms.

CHAPTER TWO

‘You nearly gave me a heart attack, ya big fool!’ Carla was laughing and crying at the same time, while hugging Aoife so tight she could hardly breathe. ‘You could have broken your leg jumping out of the window like that!’

Aoife squeezed back just as hard, pressing her nose into the familiar fluff of Carla’s threadbare sheep onesie. ‘Hey, who are you calling a fool? What about you, bicycling all this way in the middle of the night when you so totally hate the dark?’

‘I know it! It was beyond terrifying! I thought every sheep was a ghost and every cow was a monster, even though I don’t believe in ghosts or monsters one bit! But I just kept on going!’

The Facebook page had prepared Aoife to a certain extent, but it was only after she had turned on the kitchen light that she fully appreciated how much Carla had changed. It was astonishing. Even in her much-loved shabby onesie (now baggy around the middle and too short in the leg) Carla looked somehow . . . glamorous. Her hair was perfectly straight and silky and a gorgeous colour, like a sheaf of wheat. Her nails were shaped and painted. Even her dark eyebrows were elegantly shaped. ‘Carla, you look absolutely amazing!’

With a flash of smugness, Carla checked her reflection in the window over the big stone sink. ‘Thanks – it wasn’t on purpose – just, my mam kept forcing things on me to cheer me up, like making me get my nails done and my hair dyed and stuff.’

Aoife, in the middle of filling the kettle, turned to stare at her best friend again, in shock. ‘Two stone? In such a short time? Carla, that’s mad!’

Carla’s head snapped back and her cheeks went pink; she opened and closed her mouth, then said in a strangled voice, ‘What do you mean, “in such a short time”?’

Aoife winced, knocking off the tap. ‘Sorry. Totally forgot. Five months. I’m an eejit.’

‘Forgot?’ Carla’s eyes, so large in her freshly thin face, glittered. ‘Does it really seem like “such a short time” since you ran off on me without saying a word?’

‘No . . . I mean, yes, because . . . You see . . . Oh God, this is so complicated . . .’ She was desperate to tell Carla everything – but where to start? She reached up into the cupboard for a jar of drinking chocolate. ‘Look, let me make this first, and then I’ll explain.’

Carla said in the same tight, unhappy voice, ‘Explain what exactly? That you were having such fabuloso fun with Shay Foley, a whole summer flew by without you noticing?’

But Carla’s huge brown eyes were brimming with hurt and rage. ‘Because it seems like a really long time to me.’

‘Sorry?’ To Aoife’s horror, Carla burst into tears: hot, desolate weeping. ‘Do you know what I’ve been doing while you were off running around with Shay Foley in Dublin or Galway or wherever you were? I’ve been in absolute bits thinking you were dead! Why do you think I lost all this weight? I couldn’t eat! Chocolate made me sad! The taste of it reminded me of all the picnics we’d ever had and would never have again . . .’

Aoife gave up trying to make the drinks. She went to her best friend with her arms held out – ‘Oh, Carla’ – but Carla shoved her away, gulping down furious tears.

‘Don’t! Every night I’ve been crying myself to sleep and then I’d dream you were alive and I’d wake up so happy and then I’d realize it was a dream and everything was horrible again!’

‘You were missing for five whole months – and you didn’t call me one single time to let me know you weren’t dead!’

‘Don’t try to hug me! I’m too mixed up in my head and it’s all your fault! I love you to bits and I’m incredibly happy you’re alive, but I’m really angry with you too! How could you run away with Shay Foley without telling me?’

‘Not true!’ Carla smacked her fist on the wooden counter, making a couple of dirty teaspoons jump. ‘He came back with you! He called you from the pub last night to tell you he loved you! Did you think I wouldn’t hear about it? This is Kilduff, for God’s sake!’

Despite her grief for Carla, warmth rushed into Aoife’s heart at the memory of that call, with the chink of glass and cheering in the background. I love you, Aoife O’Connor. (He must have finally sorted things out in his head – must have realized how crazy it was for them to be apart.) ‘Look, you’re right, but—’

Carla clutched at her beautiful hair, despairing. ‘Then I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! I’ve always told you how stupid crazy I was for Killian! I told you everything about everything I’ve ever felt about him! Like as if you remotely care, him and me are still going out together . . .’

‘. . . but even though I love him to bits, it didn’t stop me caring about you the whole time, and driving him nuts being so miserable about you even though he’s been really nice about it, and now it turns out you were just off somewhere being all loved up with your own boyfriend and not thinking about me one bit.’

‘OK!’ After a few more wrenching sobs, Carla pulled a tissue from her onesie and blew her nose. Then rubbed the tip of her nose so hard it went bright red. Then sat down on the far side of the kitchen table and stared at Aoife with her newly enormous eyes – clearly hoping for the sort of explanation that would make things right between them. ‘Well, go on then.’

Yet after all that, Aoife didn’t know what to say. She was so longing to pour it out, but there seemed no believable way to tell her story. I’m not a human like you, I’m a fairy, and I’ve been in the otherworld all summer. Insane! For a desperate moment it struck her that it would be simpler to go along with the idea that she and Shay had spent the last five months living in Dublin or Galway, and just hope Carla forgave her anyway. But no. She couldn’t allow Carla to think she cared so little about her, to have run off for so long without a word.

‘Look, I’m going to tell you the truth, Carl, but you’re going to have to make an incredibly massive effort to believe what I’m about to tell you.’

Carla looked instantly, sweetly, relieved. ‘Of course I’ll believe you. When did I ever not believe anything you say?’

Aoife closed her eyes and opened them again. ‘OK. And by the way, before I start – about Shay. I do really care about him. But I have not been away with him for five months. It’s been, like, literally, less than two days.’

‘Yes, I absolutely swear to the truth of that and I promise I couldn’t get to a phone in that time, so that’s why I didn’t tell you about him.’

‘Yes. Now, here it is. You know how I glided over your head in the garden just now?’

After a long pause Carla said, very cautiously, ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

Aoife sighed. Clearly the gliding hadn’t looked as impressive as it had felt. ‘OK. All right. Never mind about that. Just give me a sec.’ She sat down opposite Carla, and tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the wood. Then made up her mind. ‘OK, how about this. Do you remember that gold locket I found in Declan Sweeney’s field, with the baby picture?’

Carla frowned, confused. ‘No, but it must have been – your name was on the locket. Eva O’Connor.’

The confusion increased. ‘No, but you are. Aoife is just another way of saying Eva in the west of Ireland. It’s Eva on your birth cert – you showed it to me only last year, when we joined up for the handball club.’

Aoife rested her forearms on the table and leaned forward, meeting Carla’s eyes – holding them, willing her to believe. ‘But that wasn’t my birth certificate.’

‘Carla, please don’t freak out, although I won’t blame you if you do because I know this is going to sound completely insane. The real Eva O’Connor was taken by the banshee when she was four years old, and I’m the changeling – the fairy child that got left behind in her place. My parents never told the guards, because Eva was dying when the fairies took her, and they knew that for her to be safe and cured and cared for in the Land of the Young, they had to mind me and bring me up as their own.’

There was a profound, unbreathing silence in the kitchen, during which a passing shower of rain rattled the window. Carla didn’t freak out, but she sat with her lips pressed together, and her dark brown eyes – so large now! – grew even larger, their anxiety morphing into pure alarm.

Aoife drew back in her chair, spreading out her hands. ‘You see what I mean about being insane?’

Yet when Carla finally opened her mouth and took a breath, she said, ‘I’m sorry for getting so angry with you. You should have told me sooner.’

For the second time that night, Aoife found herself utterly taken aback by the hidden side of Carla Heffernan. First her friend had proved able for Killian – and now, able for this. ‘You believe me? Carla, you’re amazing!’

Carla said earnestly, ‘And I want you to know it doesn’t make any difference to how I feel about you – you’re still the best person I know.’

‘You too, Carl!’ Beaming, Aoife jumped up to spoon the chocolate powder into mugs, then stood facing the table with her hand on the kettle, waiting for it to come to the boil. ‘I can’t tell you what a relief this is! I’ve so many things to tell you that I can’t tell Mam or Dad because it’s way too scary!’

‘Loads! I told them how the fairy world was really beautiful, but I didn’t like to tell them how dangerous it was—’

‘Yes, seriously dangerous, like life-and-death dangerous.’ A shudder ran coldly through her – Dorocha had stepped so vividly into her mind. Dark, menacing – beautiful. His midnight eyes. Her throat tight, she said, ‘There was this man . . .’

‘He was sort of in charge of the place—’ She stopped, her hand to her mouth, feeling again the Beloved’s eyes on her; made nauseous by that cold sensation of being dragged down into their empty darkness.

Carla’s voice brought her back to the cheerful kitchen, with its ancient wooden dresser and uneven floor and big stone sink. ‘In charge? Like a doctor, you mean?’

‘God, no! Nothing like that . . .’ Aoife nearly laughed – it was such an incongruous image: doctor! She made an effort to shake off the fear and smiled reassuringly at Carla, who was now looking very concerned. ‘Anyway, don’t worry about it, I’m safe home now. And I’d better make this hot chocolate before I tell you anything else.’ The kettle boiled, and she poured the water into the cups. Outside the window, the rain had gone as quickly as it had arrived and the world was turning slightly pale: the very edges of the mountains a bluish-pink. Bringing the steaming chocolate to the table, she said, ‘Just, by the way, I have absolutely sworn not to say anything to anyone about this, because Mam and Dad are worried what people will think.’

Carla nodded; she reached across and pressed Aoife’s hand. ‘Of course I won’t tell if you don’t want me too, but actually I think you’re wrong to keep it a secret, because there’s no need to be ashamed. If that’s why you’ve been away, you shouldn’t be afraid to tell people. I mean, it’s not even that bad. It’s not like believing you’re the Queen of England.’

Carla laughed a little, picking up her mug. ‘I know – crazy, right? But even Auntie Ellie is fine when she remembers to take her medication.’

A wave of frustration. ‘Oh, I see . . .’ But then Aoife remembered how she’d thought her parents might be mad when they’d told her she was a fairy; she could hardly blame Carla for thinking she’d had some sort of nervous breakdown, like Dianne Heffernan’s fragile sister. ‘Carla, I’m not like your Auntie Ellie, I promise.’

Carla said lightly, ‘I know, and thank God for that – that whole English thing is very embarrassing. Irish fairies is much better.’

‘I suppose you were found wandering around somewhere, and ended up sectioned and nobody knowing who you were? Was it Shay who rescued you?’

Carla cried fervently, ‘Oh my God, was that where he disappeared to all summer – was he searching for you? That’s so romantic, he must have such a thing for you! Oh, I’m a fool! I can’t believe I didn’t think of checking the mental hospitals myself!’

Aoife protested, almost laughing, ‘I’ve not been in mental hospital, I’ve been in the fairy world!’

Yet what exactly could she do to prove to Carla that she was a child of the Tuatha Dé Danann? She wouldn’t turn sixteen until next Easter, so her magic skills were only just emerging and she had very little control over them. In the otherworld, she could shoot bolts of violent power when she felt danger, when she had to protect someone – but here, safe at home in the human world, she could not feel that power in herself at all. She could open locks without keys . . . but so could ordinary thieves. If she made a deal with a human being, they were forced to keep it . . . but there was nothing obviously magical about having the gift of the gab. She had made fairy gold once . . . but like all her powers, that skill was also elusive. Although . . . Maybe if she concentrated hard enough?

Aoife was digging furiously around in the pockets of her hoodie – pulling out sweet wrappers and a tissue. ‘I made fairy gold before – well, fairy euros. Not that it’s much good – the old stories are true: it turns to dead leaves soon as look at it. Oh, for . . . Why does it never work when I want it to?’

Carla sat gazing at her with tender concern – tears of pity in her eyes, as if the sight of Aoife trying to prove she was a fairy was the saddest thing she’d ever seen. ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me. I’m still your best friend. But, Aoife’ – she glanced at the window and then at her phone – ‘I’m afraid I’ve really got to go. Will you be all right left here by yourself or will I call your mam?’

‘No, wait! Don’t go! I swear I can do this!’ She focused harder, squeezing her eyes tight shut, thrusting her fingers into the seams. ‘I just need to concentrate harder!’

After a long silence Carla sighed and said, ‘I’m so sorry, I love you loads and I understand now that you didn’t mean to hurt me, but I really need to be back in bed in time for Mam to wake me up for school, or she’ll take a fit and call the guards.’

Startled by Carla’s cry and the crash that accompanied it, Aoife sprang to her feet with a cry of her own. But it was only Eva, clutching a filthy toy rabbit and wearing a T-shirt of Aoife’s which came down to her knees. The little girl had just flung open the kitchen door, whacking it off the dresser, and now she marched to the table, scrambled up on a chair and announced in a high, clear, determined Dublin accent, ‘I want Coco Pops and so does Hector!’

Aoife could have kissed the little girl’s blonde curls – here was the evidence she needed, as large as life and perfectly on time. She had agreed with her parents to tell everyone that they were fostering Eva, and were in the process of adopting her. But Carla was not ‘everyone’.

‘OK, Carla, here’s exactly what’s going to prove it to you! This is the real Eva – I brought her back with me from the otherworld!’

‘See, look, she’s wearing that gold locket because it’s hers. Tell Carla who you are, honey.’

‘Ugh. OK, hang on.’ Aoife hurried to the cupboard for the chocolate cereal that her father had been sent rushing out to buy the evening before, when Eva had refused point-blank to eat spaghetti bolognese. She grabbed a blue-striped bowl from the oak dresser, and a tin spoon from the drawer. ‘Now, say your full name, honey! Tell Carla you’re the human child I got swapped out for!’

As Aoife went back for the second bowl and spoon, Carla said softly to the little girl, ‘Who are you really, baby?’

Eva took in Carla’s sheep onesie with a disgusted expression. ‘I’m not a baby, I live in Dublin. Aoife found me and brought me here on holiday. And you’re a stupid sheep.’

‘Aoife found . . . What?!’ Carla’s eyes fled to Aoife’s, dark with horror. ‘Oh my God, what did you . . . ?’

Eva was still glaring at Carla. ‘I like lambs but you’re a stupid sheep. I live in the house with the blue door next to the sweet shop.’

Aoife said hastily, setting both bowls on the table, ‘Don’t worry, she’s just a bit confused. Honey, I told you Mam and Dad moved here ages ago.’

Eva seized the cereal packet and poured a mountain of it into her own bowl, and an equal mountain into Hector’s. ‘My mam in Dublin is skinny! My da has black hair! Hector wants milk!’

‘Oh. My. God.’ Carla looked ready to be sick. ‘This is awful. Her poor parents . . .’

‘Are asleep upstairs!’ Aoife reassured her wildly. ‘She just means they look a lot older than when she last saw them because time goes a hundred times slower in the fairy world! Honey, darling . . . Please. Tell Carla—’

‘Here’s your milk!’ Feeling slightly murderous now, Aoife slammed down the carton in front of her human counterpart. ‘Tell Carla your mam and dad’s real names!’

Carla groaned, hands crushed to cheeks, ‘Can you remember where you found her? Was it outside a school? We can sort this out. We’ll explain you’re mentally ill, you won’t get into any trouble. I’ll help you. I’ll come with you, I’ll stand by you—’

‘Oh, thank God, it’s your mam . . .’ Carla turned in huge relief to the door as Maeve’s bare feet came hurrying down the stairs. ‘Of course, I’m an eejit for panicking – your mam must know what’s happening and she must have phoned the right people and they just haven’t come yet . . .’

‘Aoife? Eva?’ Maeve appeared in the doorway, looking terrified, dishevelled in her old paisley dressing gown. Seeing her girls, her soft round face lit up with joy and she rushed to kiss them both. ‘Oh, oh, oh, you’re both still here, the two of you – it wasn’t just a beautiful dream . . .’

‘Mam!’ The little girl stood up on her chair and threw herself into her mother’s arms. ‘Mam, there’s a big stupid sheep in the kitchen, and it keeps on asking who I am but I won’t tell it!’

Suddenly noticing Carla behind the packet of Coco Pops, Maeve looked completely panicked. ‘Carla, goodness . . .’

The expression on Carla’s face was wonderful to Aoife. Her best friend was staring in almost comical disbelief from her, to Maeve, to Eva, saying, ‘Oh. My. God. This is beyond . . . When Aoife told me about Eva, I just didn’t . . .’

And Maeve, totally misunderstanding the situation, lied, ‘That’s right, this is our new foster daughter and we’re hoping to adopt her! Isn’t it funny, Carla, that she’s called Eva too? It’s just as well we’ve always called Aoife “Aoife”!’

But already Carla was hugging Maeve, reassuring her. ‘You don’t need to worry – there’s no need to be ashamed of Aoife being mentally ill, my Auntie Ellie is lovely! Aoife, I have to go, but your mam will take care of you now . . . Take care of her, Maeve! And congratulations on your foster daughter!’ And Carla rushed out of the back door into the garden.

Aoife collapsed at the kitchen table, face in hands, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry.

After a while Maeve sat down next to her, with Eva on her lap, and ran her fingers lovingly through Aoife’s long red-gold hair. ‘Oh, my love . . . So you told Carla the truth and now she thinks you had a nervous breakdown, like her mother’s sister?’

Aoife groaned through her hands, ‘She was just about to believe me, but then you said about Eva being fostered!’

‘But I had to tell Carla! She thought I’d been away all summer without even letting her know where I was! Oh God . . . And now she thinks I’m completely mad.’

Aoife straightened up, staring at her mother. ‘What? Better that Carla thinks I’m mad?’

Maeve sighed, hugging Eva against her, her cheek pressed against the small girl’s softer cheek. ‘Maybe it’s for the best that Carla thinks you were in hospital without anyone knowing.’

‘Aoife, my darling . . . You have to accept, even if she believed you, no one else would.’

‘But what if she did, and told someone – anyone – about you bringing a little girl home from the fairy world?’

‘But this is way too big a story for anyone to keep to themselves. And if someone in authority – like the doctor, or the guard – got to hear it, and came round to check, and they realized Eva had no birth certificate or any kind of papers . . .’

Aoife suddenly realized the danger she had placed them in. There was a birth certificate – but it was for an Eva O’Connor born fifteen years ago. And that, as far as the world was concerned, was Aoife. ‘Oh . . . Crap. Does this mean I have to let her think I’m mad?’

‘I know it’s horrible . . . But she’ll soon see you’re just your same old self, and forget about the rest.’ Maeve had rearranged herself now, to have her arms safely round the two of her daughters. ‘A lovely normal human girl, with a lovely new little foster sister.’

CHAPTER THREE

It wasn’t as good as flying, but powering along on her old bike was definitely the next best thing. She felt light as a bird, and full of energy – on her way to meet Shay, racing up the lonely bog road, her grey hoodie and navy Canterburys thrumming in the wind as she crouched over the handlebars. A cluster of skinny sheep streamed away across the heather in bleating panic. A soft grey curtain of rain swept over the gap between the mountains, cooling her, carrying the salty smell of sea. A scrap of rainbow glittered in a patch of sky, far up and away between the rapid clouds.

(Shay had told her he would come and meet her, driving his brother’s car. She’d refused to let him. ‘You have to stop driving on the public roads! You’re only fifteen!’

‘My birthday was back in July, while we were away.’ He’d sounded strangely troubled – perhaps because of how fast time had passed in the human world while they’d been gone. If they’d spent two more days in the Land of the Young, a whole year would have passed in the human world above.

When she’d got over her surprise, Aoife said: ‘Makes no difference – you’re still a year off legal, so I’m coming out to you anyway. Stay at the farm unless you want to walk down to the coast road to meet me.’

She herself was now fifteen and half, and her fairy strength was definitely increasing as she neared her sixteenth birthday. Even though she was now bicycling steeply uphill, she was still doing a crazy speed. Sixty kilometres an hour, seventy . . . Faster! So good to be alive! The road was rising to the gap between the mountains, the wind was strong in her face, the cold sweet air pouring into her lungs. The road twisted as it crested the hill . . . She didn’t see the cream BMW until it was nearly upon her, when it swerved with a screech of tyres and shot off the road across a patch of grass.

‘Ah, crap . . .’ Fifty metres on, Aoife managed to slow enough to turn and charge back up the hill and over the top again. The driver had already backed out onto the road, and was doing a U-turn and stopping. Suddenly she recognized the car – it was the cream BMW that she’d bought with fairy gold and given to Shay’s brother, John Joe. She threw down her bike and rushed to the driver’s window. Her delight in seeing him made her briefly dizzy. She leaned her forehead against the vintage car; the cool of wet metal against her skin. ‘I thought I’d told you not to come and meet me.’

Shay was winding his window down, grinning up at her. He was wearing a dark red hoodie half zipped up over a clean white T-shirt, and his black hair looked as if he’d run the clippers over it that morning. ‘I’d have stayed at home all right, if I’d known some lunatic on a bike was going to try to kill me.’

She couldn’t stop smiling at him like an eejit. ‘How are you driving this thing anyway?’

‘John Joe took the Ford because he was picking up some tractor parts and didn’t want to get this one dirty.’

‘Oh, right . . . No, John Joe stuck one in her over the summer – found it in a breaker’s yard. Here, let me out.’

She moved aside as he climbed out, then stepped back towards him. For a long moment he remained where he was, arms by his sides, looking down at her – very still and very close. His hazel eyes drifted to her mouth. She tilted her face further up to his. But then he said, in an oddly strained voice, ‘Hop in the car, while I stick your bike in the back.’ And turned away.

Left standing, a trickle of hurt ran through her. She felt like saying, Hey, what’s the matter with you? but her throat felt tight and she was worried it would come out as a squeak. She turned to look at him. He was lifting her bike into the car, wrestling it to lie flat in the boot, leaning in over it. One of the pockets of his faded jeans hung loose, torn. He smiled at her again, over his shoulder. ‘Go on, get in, more rain’s on the way.’

She walked round the front of the car, sat in and stared out at a grey world. OK. Grand. Even though he’d admitted to loving her, he clearly hadn’t changed his mind about kissing her. Ugh. He was being so stubborn about this. Yes, his mother had been a lenanshee – a lover from the otherworld – and his besotted father had died too young: an old, old man at thirty-five. Yes, she knew Shay had inherited his mother’s nature – she had seen the evidence: caterpillars in his hands became butterflies, living out their lives too fast. Yet surely it was up to her if she thought his love was worth the risk? Enough of this wrapping her up in cotton wool . . .

The back door of car slammed and Shay fell into the driver’s seat beside her, slicking the rain from his fresh-cropped hair with both strong hands. ‘So, where do you fancy going? That café on the coast road? It’s a bit crap, but it’s the only place round here. And you must be starving after that mad bike ride.’

She looked at him as he turned the key in the ignition – the steep, sloping line of his jaw; the slight flush on his strong cheekbones; his long black lashes; the silver earring, high in his ear. She remembered old John McCarthy, telling her in the churchyard: A grá is no ordinary, comfortable, fireside sort of a love. It is a mad love, a wild love, a hunger, a longing, a terrible insatiable desire that cannot be turned aside. If Shay still had the grá for her, surely he shouldn’t be able to help himself, kissing her? And yet he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of self-control.

He smiled without comment, then put the car into gear and pulled off. The BMW purred smoothly over the high gap between the mountains, and the purple land and slate-grey, wind-ruffled Atlantic opened out beneath them. The road fell steeply to the sea. Changing into a lower gear, he left his hand on the stick, close to her knee. He was humming very quietly to himself – something by Christie Moore, she thought. Her eyes rested on his left wrist. Around the sun-browned skin was a paler line, where he had worn her (Eva’s) golden heart locket for a while. Before giving it back to her when he’d found out what he was – a dangerous lover.

A song lyric flashed into her head, setting itself to the soft tune he was humming:

Around your wrist, a narrow line

of paler skin

because you once were mine . . .

Stop. He was hers – and she was his. The love of a lenanshee was too powerful to fade overnight. Only yesterday, measured in human time, she had stood at the altar with Dorocha the Beloved, before the whole of Tír Na nÓg. And no matter how brutally Dorocha had attempted to force on the ring, he hadn’t been able to do it. She was desired by Shay. And she loved him back. Therefore no other man could steal her. That was the power of the lenanshee. This was the grá that had brought her safely home. If it wasn’t for Shay . . . A chill ran over her skin, the hairs of her arms on end. Dorocha had said, We are one, for all eternity.

She’d thought he was merely a lightweight madman, come to power in a careless world. She’d imagined that after Eva was safe, she could escape him. She’d thought she was easily strong enough for Dorocha, married to him or not. But then, at the altar, when he had pushed her fist into his heart . . .

‘Aoife? What’s up?’ Shay’s voice, bringing her back – the interior of the car, sweet-smelling leather, polished wood. Safety. She clenched her fists to stop them trembling.

‘Will who . . . ?’ Reflexively, he glanced into the mirror at the road behind.

Relaxing, he took the next steep downward bend. ‘Are you worried about that muppet? I’d say he’d have turned up by now, if he was planning to follow us.’

He glanced at her, frowning. ‘What, though? He knows he can’t have you. Even with all the druids and the dullahans and the changeling mob behind him, he couldn’t control you. What chance would he have here, in this world where everyone you love will stand for you?’

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE