Part 2 of the 3-part 'The Artificial Heart.' Convinced that Tim Hunter is in love with Marya, a jealous Daniel decides to help Slaggingham's make a hell of Tim's life. And an unsuspecting Auberon wanders into Slaggingham's plans.
Auberon, king of Faerie, is bored. Leaving Titania, who doesn’t care for him any more, he leaves Faerie altogether.
Daniel decides to work for Slaggingham. The Reverend used to beat him in the old days, when Daniel was working the streets, but now they both want revenge on the business world above. Slaggingham is building a machine to use against them, which will steal the happiness of the surface world. He also has Awn the Blink and the Queen of the Buggers, figments of Tim’s imagination made real when he was a child, to help out. The unicorn, last seen appearing near BillHunter when he was a drunk, sabotages part of the machine and runs off as Slaggingham fires at it. Slaggingham blames Tim for the unicorn; Daniel blames Tim for stealing Marya.
Kara lends Tim some money for ice cream, but Nikki takes his magic stone as collateral. She explains that it is an opening stone, but since he’s an opener himself, it works too well, and he needs to learn to do magic on his own. She says she’ll give it back when he doesn’t need it. They also tell him that Nikki woke his dad up and started to heal him.
Auberon, remembering medieval England, decides to go back, but is shocked at the changes since. He happens upon Sister Staylace, who is trying to steal a man’s soul, but it looks like she’s in danger. Auberon pushes away the man. She tricks him into putting his soul into her globe, and controls him, calling him “Lovey-horns.” She plans to put him to work for Slaggingham.
Daniel and Slaggingham, who we see is a cyborg, use his technology to spy on Marya. Daniel sees her with Tim and is incensed.
Tim manages to figure out how to unfreeze the girls in time. Tim and Molly come to terms with him being her boyfriend, and him being a magician, and then Molly sees the unicorn—until Daniel, transformed by Slaggingham’s machine, almost kills it with his new soot dust power.
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