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outsiders.”
    “Come this way, Jack,” Harry said, and he led the group to a set of double doors to the right of the entrance hall. He opened one of them and gestured Jack inside.
    Jack walked through into the large, panelled drawing room, then halted, transfixed by what he saw against the far wall, even though he should have expected it.
    Weyland Orr, Asterion-reborn, standing by a wing-backed chair set by a great fireplace in which flickered a small fire. He looked just as he had when Jack had last seen him in the seventeenth century, fair hair slicked back over a strong handsome face, but clothed in a modern suave man-about-town style.
    To one side of him, and slightly distanced from the chair, stood Noah, also wearing the same face that Jack remembered. She stared at Jack with a clearly recognisable tension, her beautiful features strained and pale. She was also elegantly dressed, in a wellcut suit of pale green with matching high-heeled pumps, her dark hair carefully waved and set into a bun at the back of her neck.
    Jack realised he was staring, and tore his eyes away from Noah to the chair by which Weyland stood.
    A girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, sat there. As Jack looked the girl turned her face towards him, then as quickly looked away.
    Her face was tear-stained and contorted in agony. Some part of Jack’s brain registered that she was lovely, and that she reminded him of Cornelia when first he’d seen her, but his eyes were drawn immediately to her hands and wrists.
    They were held out before her as if tied, and to Jack’s startled gaze it appeared as if they had been bound with red-hot wire.
    “This is Grace,” said Harry quietly, “and we love her dearly, even though she is our doom.”

F OUR
Faerie Hill Manor
Saturday, 2 nd September 1939
    J ack had been looking at Grace as Harry spoke, but within the instant he was staring back at Harry. He couldn’t believe Harry had actually said that! Did he introduce Grace in that manner to everyone? Meet Grace, why don’t you? She’s such a sweet girl, but, oh, she’s our doom.
    “Jack?”
    It was Noah, and Jack forced himself to look at her. Jesus Christ, it was even more painful than he’d thought, to see her standing there with Weyland.
    “Jack,” she said. “Welcome home. It’s good to see you.”
    Jack wondered if the atmosphere could possibly get any more strained…or more surreal. Here was Noah trying to carry on a social conversation while not two paces away her daughter suffered horribly.
    He looked back at Grace, appalled by her suffering and by everyone else’s apparent disinterest, and Weyland spoke.
    “Do you know about…?” Weyland gestured down to Grace’s wrists.
    “Yes.” Jack had heard from the Lord of the Faerie how Catling—the Troy Game incarnate—had cursed Grace. These terrible fiery bracelets bound Grace to Catling. Whatever was done to Catling (to the Troy Game), would be done to Grace. Completethe Troy Game, and Grace would live (although she, as everyone else, would be under the Game’s total dominion). Destroy the Game, and Grace, and everything Grace had touched—the Faerie, London, Weyland’s Idyll, everyone who had ever held her, or cared for her—would be destroyed as well.
    An impossible and terrible situation, and one that no one—not Noah, not Weyland, not the Lord of the Faerie or all the might of the Faerie—could do anything to fix.
    “This is Catling’s welcome to you, Jack,” said Grace, and Jack’s eyes jerked back to her face, surprised that Grace had managed to speak through her pain.
    “Grace…” Noah said. She took a half step towards her daughter, and then stopped.
    There was a tension there, and Jack wondered at it. Suddenly tired of all this standing about, Jack shrugged off his greatcoat, tossed it and his cap on a nearby chair, and walked over to Grace.
    Gods, he could smell Noah’s perfume from here, could feel her warmth, could feel her every breath…
    He sank down on his