At the end of the tune, I stepped closer to Lizzie.

“Is that your friend Grey?” I asked. “Standing over there by the door—the tall guy with the sunglasses.”

She looked for herself.

“I don’t see anybody,” she said.

She was right. The tall man was gone, though a hint of his presence remained in the room, like an afterimage in your eyes when you’re momentarily blinded by a car’s headlights.

“What made you—” Lizzie began.

But Andy was already counting us into our last set for the night, and there was no time to talk again until much later. We finished the set, did a couple of encores. The band signed their CDs and chatted with their fans. I started taking down the gear, putting away instruments and mikes, coiling cables. I was almost done before any of the others could join me to help finish up. Then we commandeered a couple of tables near the stage: the band, Jilly and me, Eddie, and a few hangers-on—local musicians that the band had met over the weekend.

The others were having a rousing discussion about the merits of various single malts when Lizzie pulled a chair over to sit beside me.

“What made you think you saw Grey earlier?” she asked, finally getting to finish the question she’d started earlier.

I shrugged. “I didn’t know it was him, exactly, just that it was somebody who walks between the worlds. I guess I assumed it was him because of the way he was watching you play—if anybody from the otherworld was going to be that interested in you, he seemed the best bet.”

“How could you tell that’s where he was from?”

“You learn to recognize it after awhile. They carry a shimmer—like there’s a heat mirage pushing up against the edges of where they interact with the world.”

“Is that like an aura?”

“I suppose, only without the colour. It’s not something that’s very obvious, unless you know to look for it.”

“How did you learn?” she asked.

“Nobody taught me. It’s just something I picked up. I’ve spent a lot of time in a fairy court over the past couple of years.”

“What’s that like? God, I’m so full of questions, aren’t I? I must be driving you crazy.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“So what is it like?”

I smiled. “The music’s better on a regular basis and people generally look different. Sometimes so different, they’re not even people.”

“I still can’t believe all these stories my grandfather told Siobhan and me are actually true.”

I gave her another smile. “Well, like my brother says, ‘Just because one impossible thing is true, doesn’t mean they all are.’ ”

She gave me a slow nod. “So they all have this . . . shimmer about them?”