Rachel licked her lips, clearly still amazed. “There are no vampires, witches, or even a Were here. No wonder you have to dress so extreme and be so loud. It’s the only way you can set yourself apart. Everyone is the same.”

Peri quizzically looked over the loitering teenagers in their Goth black and glow-in-the-dark hair, her gaze rising to the fast-walking people in business suits with their phones to their ears, to the strolling upper-class retirement folks with little bags, the holographic logos on them screaming out their “BUY” message. This was “the same,” according to Rachel? “The line?” Peri prompted, and Rachel seemed to bring herself back, shaken but resolute.

“I don’t know. Let’s try the center.”

Wondering if she should just call Bill to pick the woman up, Peri angled them in the right direction. Immediately she slowed as Rachel insisted on lingering at every storefront, pausing at every mule trying to get her to buy a new coat or set of heels. But eventually they reached the center, the large open space five stories tall with a glass ceiling, now dark with night. There was an enormous oak tree in the middle, carefully tended and growing right out of the concrete left over from the exodus. The mall had been repurposed around the defunct Packard car manufacturer as a reminder of how quickly Detroit had been swallowed up when everyone had left. But Peri simply liked seeing a two-story oak tree growing out of a mall.

“You have a tree growing in your mall,” Rachel said flatly, and Peri shrugged, sitting down at one of the café-like tables under it. The adjacent eatery wasn’t open, making it a somewhat private place even as people passed.

“You want something to eat?” Peri said suddenly, thinking the pale woman looked even more white. “You don’t look so good.”

Rachel didn’t sit down, turning in a slow circle with her head up and eyes vacant. Her focus was distant, as if seeing the mall as the derelict Packard factory it had started as. “There’s a line here,” she said, fingers spread wide at her side. “But it’s dead. Like the ones in Arizona.”

Peri perked up. “Where?” she asked.

“We’re standing in it,” Rachel said, hands fisting. “It’s right here!”

She’d meant where in Arizona, but Peri glanced at the passing people, their attention drawn by Rachel’s rising panic. “Maybe you can turn it on?” she suggested, and Rachel’s focus sharpened on her.