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“Just go with it, mate. I think you’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

I patted Ted’s arm. “Don’t worry. I don’t believe everything I see on the news. I’m sure you’re not a terrible criminal mastermind.”

He gave me an incredulous stare. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You’re very welcome!” I grinned.

“Do you understand sarcasm, by any chance?”

I tilted my head. “What do you mean?”

Ryan came up behind me and patted me on the arse. “He doesn’t mean anything at all, love. He’s just an arsehole.”

I gasped. “Don’t call your friend an arsehole.”

“Friend?” Ted repeated, like that was the word he took exception to.

Ryan got on the other side of Ted and hooked him around the neck. “You got any other people you’re hiding out from a manhunt with, Teddy? I think that makes us BFFs.”

“Cute!” I exclaimed.

“I should have let myself get arrested,” Ted grumbled as we crossed the threshold to the dining room.

Bronwyn floated through the wall in the next second and Ted jolted, trying to pull back. “Ryan, there’s a ghost!”

“Well spotted.”

“Why the fuck is there a ghost? You’ve been here for weeks!”

Harri and Larri chose that moment to pop their heads through the ceiling. “Who’s this, then?”

And then Barth swept in, tricorn hat blowing in the imaginary breeze. “Is it time for a show? Argh! No one informed me. How is a pirate to work under such conditions?”

Ted’s head was swivelling all over trying to keep up, his eyes getting wider and wider with every spectral form.

And Popty, bless his heart, choose that moment to melt into the human shape he had been practising and duck out from the corner he’d been hiding in. Ted’s gaze found him. I felt him tense and my heart stuttered in fear.

If he screamed or said something mean, I wasn’t sure Popty would ever recover.

But Ted was quiet as Popty shyly approached—whether that was from fear or not I didn’t know.

Popty was holding a single white snowdrop that he’d clearly snagged from outside and I watched him close his eyes and offer it to Ted with a quiet ping.

“That sound…” Ted said, almost inaudibly.

“Ted, meet Popty. That’s how he talks,” I explained.

Ted whipped his head around. “So all that time the pinging I was hearing was talking?”

I nodded encouragingly. “Popty’s really nice.”

Ted turned back to face him, eyes moving over Popty’s shape. The edges of him weren’t quite stable, swaying like a candle. He still had his eyes squeezed shut, hand trembling.

Ted swallowed and slowly, carefully plucked the flower out of his hand like he didn’t know what else to do.

Popty’s eyes opened wide. His hands turned into tendrils, and he brought them up to his face before fleeing the room, the happiest ping I had ever heard reverberating through the entire house.

It was possibly the most adorable thing I had ever borne witness to.