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After a quick glance in Fabian’s direction to make sure he was still sleeping soundly at the far end, I snicked the door shut and twisted back to Rodhi.

“Lead the way.”

He sighed as if he’d hoped I’d say no despite the slug threats, then jerked his head back toward the jungle. We followed him past the end of the Object Summoner sector, where the spiders scuttled after us, along the fern-lined floor, through branches and vines that hummed with an increasing tempo the deeper we went.

“So is this she a human or animal?” I asked finally, keeping my knives trailing through the air behind us as a precaution. I didn’t like it when Rodhi was this quiet. It felt wrong, like trees growing upside-down from the sky.

“Neither, actually.”

What? I peered sideways at him and found his jaw clenched in obvious frustration. “Do I get to know her name?”

“Agathea. But you can call her Aggie or Batshit Crazy. She’s fine with either.”

I was beginning to wonder if Rodhi was batshit crazy, especially when he began muttering under his breath. Next second, his mutters turned into a hum, and the branches before us hoisted an enormous rotten log out of our way until we passed through, then placed it back down. Like some kind of special entrance.

“Why does this Agathea want to meet me?” I asked, hurrying to keep up.

“Because I accidentally mentioned your existence, and she might be the nosiest creature on this whole damn island.” Rodhi wrinkled his nose as if he’d just swallowed a cloud of gnats. “I told her not to send the spiders after you, but she threatened to set a flock of colugos on me and—get down.”

I obeyed him instinctually. So did Felicity, the three of us crouching in the ferns while Willa hid in the curls of my hair.

The jungle before us remained the same. No armies of slugs or flocks of colugos in sight. I placed a hand on Rodhi’s elbow.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

For the first time since he’d pulled the twig from his hair, he actually grinned. “Trust me, Rayna. Any day when there’s not some horror swirling through the air in this exact spot is a good day. You see that?”

He pointed through the waxy leaves. I squinted in that direction, landing on a pair of trunks twisted together, their bases opening just enough for a few people to slip through—or two humans, a monkey, and a mouse.

“Aggie lives in there,” Rodhi said confidently.

Then he stood and strode toward the hole in the trees.

Felicity and I scrambled after him, my magics standing on end like the hairs on the back of my neck. Willa squeaked in my ear, “I don’t know about you, but mice have this thing against entering places filled with all the things that like to eat us.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I whispered back. Although I couldn’t deny it would be a great place for an owl to live. Or a snake. Or, yeah, any number of predators that liked to eat little furry mice.

Over my dead body, though.

My eyes stayed glued to Rodhi’s back until he ducked and disappeared within the hole. His spiders scuttled after him like a many-legged stream.

Against my better judgement, I followed too.

As soon as we stepped inside, pinpricks of light pop, pop, popped to life above our heads. They wavered in the air, so steady and synchronized that it took a few moments of blinking for me to realize they were fireflies. Fireflies whose tiny yellowish lanterns were just enough to illuminate the inside of the conjoined trees.

A rickety bed. A wooden counter and washing basin. A lopsided table covered in jars. Herbs hanging from hooks nailed to the inside of the tree.

And standing in the middle of it all, a woman with frazzled gray hair, loose, wrinkled skin, and a smile stretched so wide over her jowls that it looked as if her face might burst into ashes at any moment.

“Well I’ll be damned all over again,” she crooned, too-bright eyes roving over me wildly as she took a step my way. “You are real.”

Not a woman, I realized when her canines poked out from otherwise toothless gums and her frazzled hair shifted enough for me to spot pointed ears.

A faerie.

“Hello,” I said uncertainly, taking a step back before I realized how rude that probably looked. Aggie didn’t seem to mind. She merely drew closer, and I knew instantly that she didn’t belong to Jagaros’s realm. None of them could escape the Uninhabitable Zone anyway, not unless they could trick the mist like Jagaros did in his tiger form, so where had she come from? And why the hell was Rodhi hiding her in a tree?

Thankfully, Rodhi seemed to be all done harboring this newest secret. With his hands planted on his hips, he nodded from me to her.