Cecelia squirmed as her grandmother finished strapping her into the car.It was a warm day, the air heavy with the scent of spring, and the sky was a bright blue.Not a day six-year-olds wanted to sit in a car.She wanted to run in the garden amongst the fairies and play at being a ballerina in her pink shoes.

Her grandmother pressed a kiss against her slightly sticky cheek."Be a good girl for your mother, Lia," she told her."And remember…"

"The fairies are our secret," Lia pressed a finger to her lips with an exaggerated wink and a smile."Yes, granny."

Her grandmother straightened and put her arms around Lia's mother.Through the windscreen of the car, Lia could see her father finishing off a last-minute repair to the porch railing.His toolkit was open on the floorboards and his jeans slipped down to reveal the band of his underwear as he bent over it.She giggled.

"Remember, Clarissa…" Her grandmother said with fervency.

"Ward myself and Lia every day, I know mum, I know," Clarissa hugged her back awkwardly, her belly swollen with the baby brother or sister that was due within a few weeks."And watch out for the Wingless."

"At all times," Lia's grandmother held her by the shoulders."We are the last of our line."

"All done," Lia's father said with a grin as he joined them."Next time we come, I will get up on the roof for you, Doris, and have a look at the tiles."

"Thank you, James," Lia's grandmother replied warmly."Now off with you three.The day is getting old, and it is a long drive for Lia in a warm car."

"That house," as he reversed the car out of the driveway, Lia's father muttered to her mother, as he always did."Needs a full renovation."

"She will never do it," Lia's mummy replied through her teeth as she was smiling and waving farewell to her mother through the windscreen."That would mean having someone into the house or leaving it."

"It is just not healthy to be a shut in like she is…"

"She has her reasons."

Her grandmother did not like to leave the house because she was scared of the Wingless, Lia thought.The Wingless were the monsters of the stories that her grandmother told her sometimes as they gardened amongst the fairies.The stories were a lot more interesting than the old, smelly book that was kept in the secret tower hidden through the walk-in-wardrobe of her grandmother's bedroom.

Lia's eyes grew heavy, and she drifted off to sleep, soothed by the warmth of the car and the gentle hum of the engine.

Screams woke her, and she opened her eyes into nightmare.The front of the car had crumpled in, the windscreen shattered, and there was blood, thick and brightly red like paint, on the driver's side window.The car spun, whipping her hair over her face.Black smoke rose around them, and her father hung limply against his seatbelt, dragged forward by the motion.Her mother's scream ended abruptly as her head struck the glass on her side, leaving behind a circular pattern radiating lines and a bloody imprint.

There was smoke inside the car, and Lia could see the bright yellow and orange of flames from where the bonnet had crumpled.She screamed, her voice high and shrill in her panic.

The car stopped spinning, but the flames grew, and her parents did not move.

"Mummy," she pleaded fighting against the straps that bound her in place."Daddy?"

The smoke within the car bit at her lungs and she could not take a breath to scream without coughing.She tried to call for her parents, tears and snot streaking down her face, but they could not hear her.

"Please, mummy," she gasped out.

The car shuddered as something heavy landed on the roof, and she looked up as the metal creaked and groaned, pulling back from above her.A man leaned in through the door, a beautiful man with wings like the pictures in the book in her grandmother's secret tower.His hair was as bright as the sun around his face, and his eyes were the same colour as the sky.The feathers of his wings were white and spread wide behind him, as he leaned in.

He tore through the straps holding her and shifted position on the roof, going down on one knee, so that he could take her under the arms and lift her up.She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he held her against him, murmuring comfortingly words that she could not quite make out.