“Everybody does who’s spent any amount of time in the otherworld. I’ve got it. Jilly’s got it, though she has another kind of shine, too—like her spirit’s too big for her body, so it escapes through the pores of her skin.”

Lizzie looked across the table to where Jilly was laughing with one of the local players. I think Con told me his name was Neil.

“I don’t see anything,” she said.

“Like I said, it takes time to learn how to see it. And it’s not of much use, except to tell when some fairy or one of the animal people is wandering around in human skin.”

Her eyes got wide at that.

“Come on,” I said. “You saw it for yourself the other night when you met that deer man.”

“Except he had a deer head, so it was pretty obvious he wasn’t human.”

I nodded.

“Look,” I said. “Don’t get all caught up in trying to figure out who’s human and who’s not, or what it all means. Mostly—at least when we’re talking about the ones that interact with humans—they’re just like us. There are certainly amoral fairies out there—and I’m talking real nightmare material—but it’s not like the human race is all sunshine and light, either. Just treat whoever you meet the way you’d want them to treat you and you’ll be okay.”

“I don’t know that I want to meet any more of them.”

“Well, the bogans I can understand, but Grey sounds interesting and a deer man like Walker is just amazing.”

“I know. It was totally special meeting him. But mostly, I think that kind of thing would just complicate my life way too much.”

“I understand,” I told her. “But the trouble is, once you start interacting with the otherworld, it’s not so easy to shut it out again.”

“That’s what Grey said. And then he told me I was going to have to choose sides.”

“Choose sides?”

She nodded. “He seems to think there’s trouble coming between his people and the newer fairies—I mean the ones newer to this land.”

I thought of happy little Hazel giving the finger to some native spirits when I drove her into town the other morning, the disgust in her voice when she spoke of them. I’d never seen her like that before, but then I’d never seen her around native spirits before, either.

But all I said was, “Oh, I doubt it’ll come to that,” except I couldn’t put any real confidence in my voice.

“What are you guys talking about?” Jilly’s new friend Neil asked.

“Yeah,” Andy said. “You’ve had your heads together for ages. I hope you weren’t working up a critique of our performance tonight because I totally blew my harmonies on ‘The Flowers of Red Hill.’ ”