A smidgen of the guilt roiling around inside me eased, but what I had to say next canceled any feelings of relief. ‘‘I’m afraid that wasn’t the only problem I had in mind. Gabriel, I’m—oh, here we are.’’

The taxi pulled up outside of Drake’s house. I used the few seconds while we got out and Gabriel paid off the driver to work out what I was going to say.

‘‘Gabriel, you know that I’m a doppelganger,’’ I said once the taxi pulled off. He had tried to gently push me toward the front door, but I resisted.

‘‘That point hadn’t escaped me,’’ he said with a flash of his dimples.

‘‘I don’t know how much you know about doppelgangers—not much, I suspect, since there are only a handful of us around—but there’s more to doppelgangers than shadow walking.’’

‘‘Is there?’’

‘‘Yes. We can also enter the shadow world.’’

Gabriel’s eyebrows arched. ‘‘Shadow world?’’

‘‘That’s the doppelganger name for it. It’s a sort of separate plane that coexists with our reality, rather like an overlay. It’s hard to describe what it looks like, but things in it are slightly . . . off.’’

‘‘Ah, you’re talking about the beyond.’’ Gabriel nodded. ‘‘I thought that was the realm of elves and the fey.’’

‘‘They make up the larger population of inhabitants. As a doppelganger, I’m one of the others who can also enter it, despite the fact that I’m bound to Magoth.’’

‘‘I understand, but what does that have to do with this situation?’’

‘‘I don’t know where Cyrene is. I couldn’t hear nine-tenths of what she said, which means I’m going to have to track her down.’’

Bright man that he is, Gabriel instantly guessed where it was all going. ‘‘And you can only do so while you are in the beyond?’’

‘‘Yes. And I can’t take you with me.’’

His brows arched. ‘‘You just said others can enter the beyond.’’

‘‘Some people can, yes. Elves act as kind of a conduit— they can bring people into it, but doppelgangers . . .’’ I sighed. ‘‘We’re just shadows ourselves, really, so we can slip into and out of it easily, but we can’t take anyone with us. The best I can do is to track down Cy and call you when I’ve found her. I don’t mind saying I’d like to have you with me to deal with the blackmailer, but I’m afraid I don’t know of any other way.’’

‘‘How will you trail her?’’ he asked.

‘‘How? Oh . . . she’s an elemental being. She leaves a faint trail wherever she goes. It’s not visible in our world, but in the beyond, faint traces linger for a few hours. So I should be able to track her from here to wherever she is, so long as too much time hasn’t passed.’’