Eclipse nudges me gently, her face apprehensive, which seems somehow out of character for her- even though I've only known her for maybe an hour. She's nervously fiddling with her moon necklace again. "Are you all right?"

I blink. "Um, yeah. Sorry. It's just... It's a lot to take in."

"Yeah," she replies softly. "I know. Listen, we'll explain everything once we get inside. We'll help you understand."

I swallow, closing my eyes shakily. Then I blink them open again to look at Eclipse.

"Am I crazy?" I whisper.

She looks at me. Her eyes linger on my bright blue fringe, and the corner of her mouth quirks upwards in a little smile.

"Maybe," she replies quietly. "But all the best people are."

I nod, and we start to walk towards the house in front of us. It sits sprawled at the top of a little hill, surrounded on three sides by forest. The other side falls away sharply to nothing, with the sky stretching far beyond endlessly, tinged with orange and pink. The house lies on the edge of a cliff. Which is very reassuring.

The sun is rising shyly behind it, casting the dusty bricks into golden light, making the stone glow gently.The place is huge and old-fashioned, its roof starting to fall away into pieces, the red walls cracked and crumbling, the yellow paint peeling away from the window frames. In fact, the whole manor is dilapidated, as though it fell apart into a million pieces and was then clumsily stitched back together. But the place is warm and cosy-looking; I've never seen a place that looks more like home. It practically radiates happiness and welcome, which seems crazy in the middle of a forest of monsters, with the sea raging mercilessly below it. It's like a single bright candle at the centre of a world of darkness.

"Welcome home," Teddy says next to me. His eyes are shining. I wonder who he's talking to; me or the kids or his friends. His face is far away as he gazes up at the house, as though he's seeing something that nobody else can. Maybe he's talking to himself. Already, I can see how much this broken old house means to him, means to all three of them, as though the bricks are woven with pure gold instead of cement and tangled ivy. Even Jude manages a small smile as he looks at it.

"Come on," he says, striding up the slope. "We'd better get the kids some food before they leave."

This brings me a rush of hope that makes me lightheaded. That means that there must be a way back from this place. That means there's still a way to save Jamie and Marty.

The rest of us scramble after him through the overgrown grass that scratches at our ankles. I notice a white line of paint snaking through the tall green strands, drawing a huge circle that seems to loop around the whole house, out of sight.

"What's that for?" the oldest girl asks, looking bolder now we're away from the castle of the Feallan.

"Protection," Eclipse tells her. "It keeps us safe from the monsters. Everything inside the circle is unreachable, to them. It's like a wall."

The little boy presses against me more tightly. We step easily over the force field and reach the front door, its yellow paint chipped and cracked. Jude shoves it open, and the whole lot of us pour inside, crowding the narrow little hallway. The wallpaper is pale lilac and peeling away. What I can see of it anyway; the walls are so packed with crooked wooden frames that there's not much of the wall to be seen. I look at the one closest to me- I have to squint because the corridor is so small and full that the glass is barely an inch from my nose- to see a crumpled drawing that is displayed proudly on the wall like a priceless work of art. In bright pink crayon is a drawing of several smiling stick figures. Each person is labelled, and I notice 'Eclips' clumsily written over one of the taller figures, although I don't see Jude. At the top of the page is written 'OUR FAMILY' in wobbly letters, and under that is 'by Teddy, age 4'.

I smile sadly- the picture reminds me of Jamie- then frown. Something doesn't make sense, but my mind is racing too fast to work out what.

Jude leads us down the hallway, and I look at all the other frames as I walk past them. I notice more drawings, and photographs. Some look like they were made here, but some look like they're from the family's lives in the past, before they came here. My gaze lingers on a black-and-white photograph of Eclipse, who looks about eight, and someone who must be her father. They have the same warm, open features and easy smiles. The two of them are perched on a wall with their arms wrapped around each other, laughing.

How did they manage to bring personal items to this place? Does this mean they came here willingly? And where did they even get things like paper and crayons and frames and cameras from here, anyway?

There are several unfamiliar faces smiling over at me, too. They must be the others that Eclipse told me about. I notice something else, too. Although I can see Jude in a few photographs and drawings standing with Eclipse and Teddy and the others (maybe even smiling slightly), there aren't any photos of him in his life before he came here. There's nothing to betray any information about him at all; no photographs of parents or friends or a younger version of him playing in the park. Maybe he, like me, didn't have a chance to bring anything?

The walls are as easy to read as a book; the stories of the people here are plastered over the old wallpaper for anyone to see. Nothing hidden, nothing to hide. But no matter how hard I try to decipher it, instead of answers, I just have more questions. Nothing makes sense.

"Hey," Eclipse pokes her head out of a small door down the hallway, and I jump as I realise that everyone else has gone. "Come on!"

I follow her through the door. The room beyond is so different from the hallway that I stop in the doorway, blinking. The mismatched furniture is well-worn and comfy-looking, and the kids are draped over the overstuffed sofas and armchairs, still looking pale and frightened. A couple of them are lolling against the cushions, fast asleep. The carpet is worn so thin that you can see the floorboards under it. The walls are painted with blindingly bright psychedelic stripes, which gives me a bittersweet rush of nostalgia as I remember the Lost and Found charity shop. It's hard to believe that it was only yesterday that I went there. There's a huge, floor-to-ceiling, honey-coloured bookcase crammed with books of all shapes and sizes, so many that sneaky little piles of them are starting to take over the floor, too. Nearby is an ancient-looking TV, which Jude switches on, and the kids start to relax a little, their eyes on the screen. There's a bay window on the opposite wall, letting the strengthening rays of sunlight brighten the room, and through it I can see right over the cliff into the colossal dome of the sky above and the raging cerulean ocean stretching away into the horizon.

Hung on the wall next to me, however, are countless bizarre-looking weapons, as clear as though they were made of glass. I see several knives and swords like the ones Teddy and Jude brought to the Feallan castle, and a few bows and sheaths of arrows mounted at the centre. The weapons may only be for stunning, but they somehow manage to look positively deadly against the rainbow stripes on the wall. But my eyes are drawn to the small ukulele leaning against the wall below them, covered in smiley face stickers, so out of place against the wall of weapons that it makes me grin.

"It's Teddy's." Eclipse explains resignedly from the window seat, following my eyes.

"And he can't play it to save his life," chips in Jude unexpectedly, rolling his eyes.

"Hey!" Teddy says indignantly from behind me. I turn around to see him standing in the doorway, carrying a tray laden with mismatched mugs of hot chocolate piled with whipped cream and a plate of cookies. He moves into the room, handing out mugs to all of us and placing the plate onto a round wooden coffee table at the centre of the room. "I happen to think I'm a natural at the ukulele, actually."

A small smirks curls across Jude's lips. Somehow, sipping from a mug of hot chocolate and getting whipped cream smeared across his nose, he doesn't look nearly as intimidating. "Sure you are, Ted. Sure you are."

Teddy sticks his tongue out at him, sitting down on the arm of his chair. I sit cross-legged on the window seat next to Eclipse, cradling my polka-dotted mug.

"Where are the others?" Eclipse furrows her brow. "It's a little early for them to be out, isn't it?"

"There was an emergency," Teddy clears his throat, looking uncomfortably from Jude to me. I blink at him, but Jude seems to understand. He touches Teddy's shoulder slightly, and Teddy seems to collect himself.

"With the Neroes," he says in a low voice, and Eclipse nods.

I remember how much I don't understand, how much I have to learn. I take a breath to clear my head, then look from Eclipse to Teddy and Jude. The others are still immersed in the television.

"So," I begin. "Can you tell me more about this place? I don't know anything about anything here."

Teddy fidgets awkwardly with the handle of his mug, blushing slightly. "Um. Are you sure you don't want to wait a while? We could wait until after we send the kids home. I mean, this must be really weird for you. Your brain must be exploding. Maybe you should just take a little bit of time to take everything in? Do you want marshmallows with your hot chocolate?"

I shake my head. "I... I think I need to know it now. Not understanding is driving me even more crazy. Maybe you can help me make sense of it all?"

"It'll be okay, Teddy," Eclipse says. Teddy swallows and leans against the back of the chair, chewing his lip.

I cough uncertainly, suddenly not knowing where to begin. "Well... This place. Time is frozen here, right? While the rest of the world is normal?"

Eclipse leans against the window, straightening up. "Sort of. You see, every time a new person comes here, whatever time they come from, time freezes in their world, too. But not in the same way it's frozen here. Here, the days still go by as normal, but we don't age. It's like Neverland, if you still read Peter Pan in your time."

"They still have Peter Pan, Eclipse," Jude says, rolling his eyes again. "They have a Peter Pan film too."

"I know, dummy, it was released in the 1950s," Eclipse says, rolling her eyes. "Well anyway, in your world, everything literally freezes: everything stays exactly as it is. If you leave your world when your father starts drinking coffee, for example, he'll still be drinking it when you get back. And it'll still be hot. But- tell me if this stops making sense- it doesn't stay like this forever. Only a month. So when you come here, you have a month to leave before time starts moving again, back in the world. And once it does... Well, there's no way back there. You have to stay here."

My mouth drops and panic seizes me. My mind starts spinning again, and my hands shake so badly that my mug drops to the floor, spilling hot chocolate across the thin carpet in a dark stain. Eclipse picks up the mug, touching my arm and telling me something comforting, but I can hardly hear her.

"A-Are you saying..." I stutter. "Th-That I only have a... A month to get them out? Are you serious? Wh-What if..."

"We can do this, Maya," Jude says, firmly. "Trust us. We'll get them out in time."

I swallow, nodding, waiting for my breathing to slow. The kids are staring nervously at me, and I wait for them to turn their attention back to the TV before I speak.

"Is that what happened to you? You ran out of time to get back home, so you stayed here and helped to stop the demons?"

Eclipse glances at Teddy and Jude. "A couple of us. But that doesn't often happen. It's very rare that we miss a deadline. Most of us chose to stay here, to help defeat the demons. Or because... Well, because there was nothing left in the other world that was worth going back to."

"What about the kids?" I ask quietly. "A-Are... Are they trapped here, now?"

Eclipse shakes her head. "Don't worry. They came here at the same time as you, Marty and Jamie, otherwise they wouldn't have been in those cages. They would've... Well. Anyway, they'll be okay. We'll get them out of here as soon as we can."

I open my mouth to ask how people escape this place, or what the Feallan want with my brothers, but then something that's been bugging me ever since I saw Teddy's drawing hits me.

"If time's frozen here," I ask slowly, looking at him. "How come there's a drawing you drew of Eclipse and everyone else here when you were only four?"

Teddy bites his lip again, blushing even redder. Eclipse starts to speak, but Teddy shakes his head at her. "It's okay, I'll... Okay. It's because... Well, time isn't frozen for me here, because I don't come from your world. I'm... Well. Um. I'm... I'm a demon. Or, well, my parents are demons. So... Yeah, I suppose that makes me one too, doesn't it?" He looks at me, looking suddenly afraid. "Please... Please don't think differently about me. I won't hurt you, I promise. I'm not like the rest of them. I-I'm not-"

Jude touches Teddy's arm again, his own awkward way of being comforting. Teddy swallows, looking out of the window with his eyes suddenly shining. I feel a lump in my throat as I remember how he healed my wound with a single touch, looking at the boy opposite me who plays a smiley-patterned ukulele. When I look at him, I notice something different, though: a sort of humming, silent energy that seems to radiate from him. It feels wrong, how easily it was for him to assume that I would hate him for that.

And I wonder, for the first time, how much pain lies below the surface of this family, of these people who dedicate their lives to saving people from demons, the family I don't understand.

I wonder, for the first time, if their pain mirrors mine.