Pyrgus thought about it. They'd try to trace the coordinates -that would be the only thing they could do. He nodded. 'Yes.'
'We'd better keep an eye on that circle,' Fogarty muttered. He turned and strode towards the house with Pyrgus on his shoulder.
'I thought we were already keeping an eye on it,' Pyrgus protested.
'Can't watch it twenty-four hours a day,' Fogarty said. 'I'm going to rig up something that will trigger an alarm if your portal reopens.'
Henry caught a bus at the end of Mr Fogarty's road and sat near the front staring into a bleak future. He felt… peculiar. Now he was away from Pyrgus and Mr Fogarty, everything suddenly seemed unreal. There were no such things as fairies. Even though he'd just had one sitting on his shoulder… and talking to him through a microphone strapped on with rubber bands. Ha-ha, single to the Funny Farm, please!
Whatever he looked at seemed to have black edges. The business with Pyrgus had distracted him, but now everything was crashing in. He felt the bus seat was suspended in space. There were flurries of darkness beyond the window. He could hear his own breathing. Every time he moved his head he seemed to be floating. Above all, he felt sweaty and afraid.
He still didn't believe it. Mum had two children, for heaven's sake!
Henry found himself standing up and walking down the aisle of the bus. He hovered by the door, holding on, until it reached his stop. If it was his stop. He was feeling so confused he hardly knew any more. Not that it mattered. Nothing could make him feel much worse than he did already.
Stupidly he left the bus before it had quite finished moving, tripped on the kerb and ran to keep his balance. Before he could stop himself, he'd crashed into a woman climbing from a taxi.
'Sorry,' Henry said. 'So sorry. Are you – are you all right?' He felt his face flush with embarrassment, but at least he hadn't knocked her down.
'Henry?' said the woman hesitantly. She stared at him as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Neither could Henry. The woman was Anais Ward.
Everything snapped into sharp focus, but Henry, without knowing why, suddenly felt very much afraid. He stood there looking at her and all he could think was that Anais Ward just couldn't be a lesbian. She was far too feminine, too pretty.
'It's Henry, isn't it?' she said.
Henry nodded dumbly. He was still trying to figure out what he was going to say. He looked at Anais. She was younger than his mum. In fact she wasn't really that much older than Henry himself.
So what was he going to say to her? What could he possibly say to her? Keep your hands off my mother? He caught the first hint of his face flushing again and offered a silent plea to God not to let him blush. To cover his embarrassment, he came up with something really stupid. He took a deep, rattling breath and said, 'How are you?'
Anais glanced around nervously, at Henry, at the street, at the taxi driver waiting for his fare. Then she got caught up in it and said, 'Fine, Henry.' She looked almost stricken. 'How are you?
'OK,' Henry said. He blinked.
She looked terribly, terribly pretty. She was wearing a tailored suit with sheer black tights and high-heeled shoes. She had big brown eyes and long brown hair. She wore make-up, but nice make-up, not tarty or anything. She smelled good, some sort of perfume. He liked the shape of her nose. He liked the shape of her mouth. He wondered how she would look with butterfly wings.
If he was older, he could imagine falling for a girl like Anais, asking her to come to a movie or something. He could imagine his dad falling for her, although his dad was older than his mum which meant his dad was plenty older than Anais. But then older men often fancied younger women and younger women sometimes fancied older men. Except it hadn't happened that way.
'Are you having an affair with Anais, Dad?'
'I'm not having an affair with Anais,' his father had said. 'Your mother is.'
Pyrgus Malvae had to be around Henry's own age. It was hard to think of him like that, an ordinary boy like Henry doing whatever things they did in his world, but that had to be the way it was. Except he'd come through a portal and now he wasn't an ordinary boy any more. He was a grizzled skipper butterfly with a tiny human body. A cat could kill him and he didn't know how to get home. How did you help somebody like that? How did you help somebody whose wife was in love with somebody else? How did you help somebody whose mum fancied women?
Henry's eyes filled up and he began to weep.
Twelve
'There's good news,' said Grayling.
'And bad news,' put in Glanville.
Brimstone watched them, scowling. He wanted to nail them to the floor and saw their feet off, but he knew from bitter experience that nothing would divert them once they started talking. It was what made them so devastating in court. Innocent men confessed to murder when subjected to their relentless double-act. But at least they were on his side.
'The good news is, we have a case,' said Grayling, smiling.
'No doubt about it,' Glanville said.
'The boy may be our Crown Prince,' Grayling went on, 'but in the eyes of the law, he is a common felon.'
'Trespasser.'
'Cat burglar.'
'In that he burgled a cat.'
'Or, more precisely, burgled you and stole a cat.'
'The law dislikes that,' Glanville said. 'Indeed, the law will not tolerate it. We have seen the judge – '
'Indeed we have.'
'And she has ruled the boy may be seized and held awaiting trial.'
'By us or our officers, acting as your agents in your capacity as director of Chalkhill and Brimstone, the injured body corporate.'
'She has issued a warrant. I have it here.' Glanville extracted a piece of parchment from his briefcase and waved it in the air.
'How long can we hold him?' Brimstone asked.
'Oh, a very long time,' Grayling told him. 'Six months without court intervention. Then, when we bring him to trial, we may request a further six-month continuance to prepare our case. A year in all. It seemed sufficient.'
'Ample!' Brimstone exclaimed. He rubbed his hands and grinned. This was turning out to be one of his better days.
'The bad news,' said Glanville, 'is that all this good news has become quite academic.'
'Useless information. Unsupportable judgment.'
'What are you talking about?' Brimstone asked them irritably. His grin had turned to a frown.
'The warrant cannot be executed,' Glanville said. 'As matters stand it is a worthless piece of paper.'
'Worthless,' Grayling echoed.
Brimstone leaned forward. 'Why?' he growled.
Glanville put the parchment back in his briefcase and closed it with a snap. 'The boy – or defendant as we must now call him – is no longer in the jurisdiction. He has left this world.'
'He's dead?' Brimstone asked in sudden panic. It wasn't enough that Pyrgus died. He had to be sacrificed to Beleth. And by Brimstone. Nothing less would satisfy the terms of the demonic contract.
'Not to my knowledge. The Royal Household -on whom we sought to serve the warrant, you appreciate – claims he has been translated.'
'To the Analogue World,' Grayling put in helpfully.
'The Courts of Faerie have no jurisdiction in the Analogue World. While he remains there, he is beyond legal redress.'
'Are you sure that's really where he is?' Brimstone asked suspiciously.
Glanville looked shocked. 'We have a formal statement to that effect bearing the Emperor's official seal. These are Faeries of the Light. They would never put a lie in writing. I think we may safely assume that if they say he's in the Analogue World, then that is where he is.'
Brimstone glared. 'We have to get him back.'