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began to fiddle with the lacy curtains over the window.
    Time to go, Pikey thought. He vaulted over the railing and set off briskly along the side of the street.
    But he had only taken a few steps when a deep, skull-shivering shudder almost tossed him from his feet. He stumbled. The shudder grew in strength, pounding and stamping louder than all the steam engines of King’s Cross station, all going at once.
    Pikey turned. It was the house. Fissures were racing up the windows, splitting smaller and smaller. The walls shook and swelled, as if something were straining against them from inside. And then, with an almighty shriek, every window in the house burst outward. All those bright windows, exploding into the night in sprays of gold. The roof blew into the sky. Stone rained down, glass and green metal and shreds of colored silk. Pikey yelled and raced into the street, dodging the falling debris.
    An oil trolley skidded around him. Steam coaches honked, belching fumes. Men leaned out of vehicles, ready to shout at Pikey, but their words stuck in their throats. All eyes turned to Wyndhammer House.
    Piercing wails were coming from within, swooping down the winter street. There was another resounding boom . And then the house began to fall.

CHAPTER II
    Hettie in the Land of Night
    S IX days and six nights Hettie and the faery butler had walked under the leafless branches of the Old Country, and still the cottage looked no closer than when they had first laid eyes on it.
    Of course, Hettie didn’t know if it had been six nights. It always felt like night in this place, or at least a gray sort of evening. The sky was always gloomy. The moon faded and grew, but it never went away. She trudged after the wool-jacketed faery, over roots and snowdrifts, and the little stone cottage remained in the distance, unreachable. A light burned in its window. The black trees formed a small clearing around it. Sometimes Hettie thought she saw smoke rising from the chimney, but whenever she really looked, there was nothing there.
    â€œWhere are we going?” she demanded, for the hundredth time since their arrival. She made her voice hard and flat so that the faery butler wouldn’t think she was frightened. He better think she could smack him if she wanted to. He better.
    The faery ignored her. He walked on, coattails flapping in the wind.
    Hettie glared and kicked a spray of snow after him. Sometimes she wondered if he even knew. She suspected he didn’t. She suspected that behind the clockwork that encased one side of his face, behind the cogs and the green glass goggle, he was just as lost and afraid as she was. But she didn’t feel sorry for him. Stupid faery. It was his fault she was here. His fault she hadn’t jumped when her brother Bartholomew had shouted for her. She might have leaped to safety that night in Wapping, leaped back into the warehouse and England. She might have gone home.
    She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the red lines through the sleeves of her nightgown, feeling the imprints the faeries had put there so she could be a door. Home. The word made her want to cry. She pictured Mother sitting on her chair in their rooms in Old Crow Alley, head in her hands. She pictured Bartholomew, the coal scuttle, the cupboard bed. The herbs, drying above the potbellied stove. Pumpkin in her checkered dress. Stupid faeries. Stupid butler and stupid Mr. Lickerish and stupid doorways that led into other places and didn’t let you out again.
    She paused to catch her breath and noticed she had been clamping her teeth shut so hard they hurt. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and looked up.
    The cottage was still far away. The woods were very quiet. The faery butler barely made any sound at all as he walked, and when Hettie’s own loud feet had stopped, the whole snowbound world seemed utterly silent.
    She squinted, straining to make out the details of the cottage. There was something about