For one fraction of a second, a beat in time, Katie Hunt thought she saw a body, a substance, a moving entity reflected in the end panel of glass. A ridiculous illusion. It was the fragmented image of something horrible, something dark and fluid and insubstantial, that seemed to have nothing but jaws and teeth … and …

A woman in a dark coat stepped out from behind the far end of the case. Katie blinked at her, dazed by her foolish misinterpretation of the play of light and shadow, in this cluttered reflective balcony.

The blonde woman seemed unaware of Katie’s fright, and flashed her a smile as she carried on slowly down the case, hands in pockets, looking at the Kinchuinick religious artefacts.

Katie walked away from the balcony and stood where she could see the whole length of the case from the front. The blonde woman turned round and smiled again, looking Katie quickly up and down with two pale ice-blue eyes.

‘Good display, huh?’

Katie’s mouth was still dry from her fright. She moistened it. ‘Thanks. It needs some attention though.’

The blonde woman, tall and pretty, took her hand out of her pockets and crossed them in front of her. ‘Well then! You work here?’

‘Yeah. I’m the curator. Glad you’re enjoying it.’

The woman turned back to the case and pointed, tapping the glass. ‘This is great. These things are really old.’

Katie took the cue and walked over to join her customer, looking into the case where she pointed; medicine bundles, animal bone amulets and some sacred hides painted with the symbols of animal and bird spirits from an eighteenth-century sweat-lodge.

‘They are. Most are Kinchuinick, but a couple of the bone amulets are Cree and Assiniboine. Much, much older.’

‘How’d you get ’em?’

Katie laughed, relaxing now, and enjoying the interest of a visitor as she always did. ‘With great difficulty. I negotiated with a Kinchuinick elder for months to get a lot of this. It was just rotting away in a rug chest in the guy’s cabin. When he finally agreed we brought him here and he blessed the display with some prayers. It was neat.’

The woman still smiling, shook her head and said, ‘A wonderful thing, faith.’

Katie smiled warmly, gazing into the case. ‘Yeah. It is, isn’t it?’

‘Are you the Indian specialist here then?’

Katie laughed again. ‘Kind of. Take my job so seriously I married one.’

There was a subtle and sudden change of air pressure around Katie, that movement of oxygen that can be felt when you stand inside a building beside a revolving door. Not enough to ruffle the hair or lift the corner of a stray newspaper, but enough to caress your cheek with its progress. Katie noted it and ignored it. It was gone as swiftly as it came.