“Guilt?” the voice asked. “To show off how important you are?”

“I don’t have the need to feel one or do the other.”

“Whatever. I’m curious, though. How do you keep your images from showing up on the security cameras?”

“The same way you become invisible: magic.”

“Oh, I’m not magic,” the voice said. “I’m just a shadow.”

And then there she was, lounging on the back of the bison, a small woman in her twenties with curly dark red hair and glittering eyes, dressed in a sweater the colour of Old World heather and a pair of faded blue jeans.

“I didn’t think to look for you between,” Galfreya said.

Between was the border country separating this world from the spiritworld. Standing in it, you could look out on either, but not be seen if you so chose.

“Being a shadow,” she added, “still makes you more than human.”

“Some would say less than human, considering I’m made up of all the bits of a person that they didn’t want and threw away.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t,” the stranger said. “You’re a good fairy. So very Seelie Court and all.”

“I’ve seen you before,” Galfreya said. “But not here.”

“I don’t exactly haunt the malls, looking for a bargain.”

“I meant in this world.” She studied the stranger for a moment, then nodded. “It was at some of the parties in Hinterdale. You’re one of Maxie Rose’s friends.”

The stranger smiled. “You see? I have a claim to fame as well.”

“I don’t claim any fame.”

“Whatever.”

The stranger slid down from the back of the bison, her walking boots making a soft thump when she landed on the fake ground of the display.

“So what’s with all the dead cousins?” she asked, running her hand along the bison’s flank before she stepped down onto the marble floor of the courtyard.

Galfreya shrugged. “The mall just does this kind of thing. One week it’s an antique show, the next it’s a display of power boats. I think it’s supposed to be educational.”

“It gives me the creeps.”

“Me, too,” Galfreya said.

The red-haired stranger frowned at her.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she said. “That’s twice you’ve tried to get chummy with me and find some kind of common ground. Just be yourself.”

Galfreya knew that danger came in all sizes, so the fact that she topped the stranger by at least a head meant little, but the red-haired woman’s attitude was starting to seriously annoy her.

“What is your problem?” she asked, not even pretending to be friendly any more.

“You,” the stranger said. “At least, it starts with you. I mean look at yourself. You’ve got to be a couple hundred years old—”

“Give or take a thousand.”