Faerie Lord

Fourteen

‘What’s he mean by that?’ Nymph asked. She’d materialised in the corridor the minute Henry came out of the sickroom. Now they were seated together in an antechamber, drinking something that tasted like tamarind juice.

‘I don’t know,’ Henry admitted. ‘To be honest, I think he’s a bit – ’ He wanted to say Alzheimer’s, but didn’t think Nymph would know the term, so he circled his finger at the side of his forehead instead. But even while he was making the gesture, he wasn’t all that sure. Mr Fogarty’s talk about caterpillars sounded cuckoo, but what he said afterwards seemed sensible enough.

‘But he’s definitely going to come back with you?’ Nymph pressed. ‘Back to the Analogue World?’

‘Oh yes,’ Henry said, aware he still sounded surprised. The minute he’d repeated the suggestion, Mr Fogarty agreed like a lamb. Nymph had set arrangements in motion and now they were both going over the conversation in detail while they waited for things to happen. The trouble was the conversation didn’t make a lot of sense. What made even less sense was why Mr Fogarty had insisted on seeing Henry in the first place. If he’d decided to come home and wait for a cure, he certainly didn’t need Henry to hold his hand. It would have been easier and a whole lot safer for him to use a portal when he first became ill. And if he’d still wanted to see Henry for whatever reason, all it would have taken then was a phone call.

‘What else did he say?’ Nymph asked. ‘After the butterfly business and the bit about finding the magic?’

‘Not much,’ Henry told her. ‘He said I was the only one who could do it and I said he had to come back to the Analogue World before he had another bout of fever because another bout of fever would probably kill him and he said yes, all right. So I thought I’d better get it organised before he changed his mind.’ He grinned at her, a bit pleased with himself.

Nymph grinned back. ‘We knew you could do it, Henry. Pyrgus said you could, and I knew you could as well. Everything’s going to be all right now.’

‘Yes,’ Henry agreed. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’