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its head back, blew smoke at the sky.
    ‘Those are bad for your health,’ I said.
    It grinned. ‘Women are awful bad for yours.’
    ‘Thanks a feckin’ bunch,’ I said. ‘You tipped him off, didn’t you?’
    ‘You shouldn’t have interfered.’
    ‘Interfered with what?’
    It examined the tip of its cigarette, sucked on it again to stop it going out. ‘Stay away from my protégé.’
    ‘Oh. I see. I must say, you’re getting on fine.’
    ‘That I am, and I don’t want Griogair’s runt in the way.’
    ‘In the way?’ I was trying to be civilised, but I couldn’t stop my lip curling. ‘Listen, pal, you’re welcome to him. Feel absolutely free. I wish you joy of him.
Just keep your scrawny hands off Mila.’
    It shut one eye, tapped ash off its fag, half-smiled. ‘I’m not interested in the woman.’
    ‘That’s not what I said. Stay away from her.’
    It shrugged. ‘Don’t warn Mack about me.’
    ‘Like he’d believe me.’ I laughed. ‘Even if I wanted to warn him.’
    ‘We understand each other.’ It crushed the cigarette under one foot. ‘You’re a civilised man, Murlainn.’
    ‘One of us has to be.’ I paused as I turned on my heel. ‘A man.’
    ‘Cheeky.’ It wagged a finger. ‘Stay away.’
    ‘Same to you.’
    I turned one last time at the traffic lights, ready to shout back at it, but as hard as I stared into the copse of trees, I couldn’t see the Lammyr. Gone to its protégé.
    And I’d only just realised it had given me no promise.

PART TWO
Four Years Later

Conal always seemed to slide quite naturally into responsible jobs. I shouldn’t have been surprised, and I did eventually stop doing a double-take when I saw him in a
business suit. He was quiet, unobtrusive, devastatingly effective, and never attracted the kind of attention that would have brought the corporate knives out. If I got a proper steady job like his,
he told me (till I was sick of hearing it), instead of being little better than a mercenary in the worst trouble spots I could stick a map-pin into, he wouldn’t expect me to spend so much of
my time nursemaiding Finn.
    The child still had no friends, attracting only the worst kinds of attention, but that didn’t mean she was content to hang around Tornashee keeping her head down and learning how to be a
good full-mortal citizen. She wandered.
    Conal drew the line at the Fairy Loch: for obvious reasons it was strictly out of bounds, no questions, no deals; and because it was the only place forbidden to her, she quite reasonably stuck
to that rule. As for the rest, we kept an occasional eye on her, as far as we could. And because I couldn’t hold down a job for any length of time, I got stuck with it more often than the
people who actually cared about her.
    Conal’s theory was that I was looking after the girl. Me, I reckoned I was looking after the people she met – especially given the filthy mood she was in that autumn when she turned
sixteen. She knew something was up with Leonora, and she knew she was out of the loop, and both were guaranteed to madden her.
    I told them. So many times. There are many things that are my fault, but that isn’t one of them.
    Speaking of things that were my fault, I saw Jed again that day. Even if he’d seen me he wouldn’t have recognised me – I’d had time and leisure enough to get into that
wild mind of his and rearrange the dark fog of the Veil for my convenience – but I couldn’t help a vestige of curiosity about him. Guilt, too. Their life wasn’t what it had been
before, but then I wasn’t the one who’d signed her worldly possessions over to Mack. It gave me only a little satisfaction now to know he’d died in some fatal drunken brawl: too
drug-addled for Skinshanks to bother with any more, and swapped, presumably, for a new and more promising protégé.
    Not that that helped Mila and her sons: two of them by this time. To be honest I didn’t know how the younger one survived; the sickliest