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keys out of the ashtray that was sitting on the table. Just as he shoved them into his pocket, Mrs Burke hurried downstairs. ‘What time did you say you’d meet Harry for that round of golf?’ she asked, jiggling Mr Burke.
    Mr Burke sat up with a snort. ‘Huh? Oh, golf. I said 3:30.’
    ‘You’d better hurry, then. It’s 3:15.’
    ‘Three fifteen!’ Mr Burke jumped up, grabbed his golf bag out of the corner and started for the door, glancing at the table, feeling in his pockets … ‘Um,’ he said, looking a little sheepish, ‘you wouldn’t happen to remember where I put the car keys, would you?’
    ‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Burke, ‘not again!’
    She sighed, and they started hunting. After a minute, Mr Burke frowned and hurried back to the table where the keys had been. ‘Funny,’ he muttered, moving the magazines next to the ashtray, ‘I was
sure
I’d put them …’ He went on into the kitchen.
    ‘Quick, Colin,’ said Mongan. ‘Put them back.’
    Colin plopped the keys down just before Mrs Burke got to the table herself. She clicked her tongue. ‘Here they are, dear.’
    He hurried back into the room. ‘Where were they?’
    She pointed to the ashtray. ‘Right under your nose.’
    Colin laughed as Mr Burke dashed out the door. ‘That’s what Mom says when she finds things we’ve been hunting for. But when she forgets where she’s put her glasses, we have to turn the house upside—’ He stared at Mongan. ‘Oh! Is that what happens? You guys … ?’
    ‘Strictly speaking,’ said Mongan, ‘that’s out of our realm. Now and again, of course, we filch something from somebody that’s annoyed us, which has the same effect. Most of the time, though, mortals forget things all on their own – Come.’
    He reached out a hand to each of us, and next thing we knew, we were near the centre of town, on a street that had laundromats and stores with ‘Goods Bought and Redeemed’ in their windows on one side, and garages on the other. It was OK – Mom took our car to one of the garages, and sometimes the mechanic gave us each a third of his Three Musketeers bar – but it wasn’t a place you’d want to walk without a grown-up, unless you were invisible.
    Colin glanced at three teenagers in black jackets who were leaning against a boarded-up shop and looking at the hubcaps of a parked car. ‘Why would a faery come here?’
    Mongan grinned. ‘Because this is prime territory. Here, take my hands.’
    We did, and I thought we’d start to spin again, but he was just keeping track of us as he wove his way across the street. There were a lot of cars, and of course, nobody could …
    ‘Mongan?’ I said. ‘Are you
sure
they can’t see us? The guy in that green Chevvy …’
    Mongan grinned. ‘He just feels us. Some mortals know when there are faeries around.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Colin. ‘Like at night, when you don’t hear or see anything, but you know?’
    ‘Surely,’ said Mongan. ‘Though it’s not always us. Ghosts have their rights, too – This way now.’ And he opened the door to a laundromat, letting out a smell of soap and steam.
    I wiped off my glasses and looked at the clock on the wall. It said 3:15. Of course, clocks in laundromats never work, but still … I hurried to catch up with the others.
    Mongan was opening a dryer door. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘each of you pull out a sock.’
    We each did; the socks must have been in there a long time, because they sort of snapped, and their fur stuck out. ‘These OK?’
    ‘Not them,’ said Mongan. ‘They match.’ He frowned. ‘Colin, m’lad, you’re a mathematical one, they say. What’re the odds of forgetting to put two
matching
socks in a dryer?’
    ‘That depends on how many socks were there in the first place.’
    I swapped one of the brown socks in my hand for a blue one and shut the dryer door. ‘It looks like about a week’s laundry. So say, seven pairs.’
    ‘One in thirteen,’ said Colin. ‘If each pair was a different