“No, I can’t,” Rachel said as Peri dropped her head and tried to hide her face. “The line is just a skeleton.” She hesitated, then blurted, “Jenks? Maybe. He could at least tell me if there are mystics.”

This is getting better and better, Peri thought as she stood, wanting to stop this. One of the managers of a nearby store was at the entrance to his shop, a phone to his ear as he called them in, probably. Mall security was tight and unforgiving, especially at night.

Rachel was holding out her hands as if in supplication, and, embarrassed, Peri reached for her shoulder, fully intending to yank Rachel to her feet and out of here. A quick 911 to Bill, and someone would be out here in five minutes. Problem solved.

But when her hand landed on Rachel’s shoulder, Peri froze, her vision wavering with a rainbow of red and blue. Hazed in the thick of it was a man sitting cross-legged opposite Rachel. He had wide shoulders and was wearing a vintage Victorian-green velvet suit, lace at his neck and wrists. Peri’s pulse raced as his eyes met hers and widened in surprise. They were red, the pupils slit like a goat’s. “Y-you’re . . .” Peri stammered, not sure if he was real or not. It felt as if she were rewriting time, but there was only one timeline playing out in her head. Only one.

The man’s cupped hands were extended, Rachel’s hands wrapping around them. “Curious,” he said, his cultured British voice echoing in Peri’s head as his thin lips moved, and then he faded away.

Peri let go and backed up, shocked when Rachel brought her cupped hands to her middle, her head down as she opened them up and whispered, “Jenks?”

Leaning forward, Peri saw a crumpled mass of gauze and glimmer. And then it moved.

“Holy pixy piss,” a tiny voice said as the glow faded into a four-inch man. “I feel worse than the time I tried to fly coach in a 747.”

Peri dropped to her knees beside Rachel, unable to look away from his sharply angled, tiny face, his tousled yellow curly hair, and his perfectly proportioned body dressed in a multicolored, tight-fitting body stocking. But that was nothing to her shock at his dragonfly wings carefully folded against Rachel’s cupped hands. “How did you do that?” Peri whispered, and the small winged man stood, wobbly on Rachel’s hands.

“I’m magic, babe,” he said, cocky as he stretched his wings. “I could fly through a keyhole backward, and that’s kind of what I feel like I did.” He cocked his head and frowned at Rachel’s huge smile. “I can’t smell anyone. You’re right. It’s all humans.”