They found a booth in a not unbearable pizza joint in the mall, where the background noise loaned them a veneer of privacy, and Miriam wolfed down a weird Californian pizza with a topping of chicken tikka on a honeyed sourdough base. Between bites, she gave Paulette a brief run-down. “They kidnapped me right out of my house after you left, a whole damn SWAT team. But then they put me up in this stately house, a palace really, and introduced me to a real honest-to-god duke. You know the medieval shit I came back with? It’s real. What I didn’t figure on was that my family, my real family, I mean, are, like, the aristocracy who run it.”

“They rule it.” Paulette’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. “You’re not shitting me. I mean, they’re kings and stuff?”

“No, they’re just an extended trading Clan that happens to be an umbrella for about a third of the nobility that runs the eastern seaboard—the nouveau riche crowd, not long established and deeply paranoid. They’re like the Medicis. There are several countries over there, squabbling feudal kingdoms. The one hereabouts is called the Gruinmarkt, and they don’t speak English—or rather, the ruling class do, the way the nobles in England spoke French during the middle ages. But anyway. The high king rules the Gruinmarkt, but the Clan—the Clan of the families who can walk between worlds—they own everything. I mean, the king wants to marry one of his sons into the Clan to tighten his grip on power.”

Miriam paused to finish her pizza, aware that Paulette was staring at her thoughtfully.

“Where do you fit in all this?” she asked.

“Oh.” Miriam put her fork down. “I’m the long-lost daughter of a noblewoman whose coach was ambushed by bandits. Or assassins—there was a war on at the time, between branches of the Clan. She escaped, ran away to our world, but died before she could get help.” Miriam looked Paulette in the eye. “When you were a kid, did you ever fantasize about maybe you were switched with another baby in the hospital, and your real parents were rich and powerful, or something?”

“Why?” Paulette asked brightly. “Isn’t that every little girl’s daydream? Didn’t Mattel build a whole multinational on top of it?”

“Well, when you’re thirty-two and divorced and have a life, and long-lost relatives from your newly discovered family show up and tell you that actually you’re a countess, it might put a bit of a different spin on things, huh?”

Paulette looked slightly puzzled. “How do you mean—”