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I learned ventriloquism.”
    I ignored her, as any effective voice of reason should. “This goes beyond the parameters of our job, doesn’t it? We were just supposed to talk to the shifters. We talked. If Pamela’s human, that’s the agents’ job.”
    She swung a sharp u-turn when Vivian gave us the address, taking us back toward Truckee. “You’re making assumptions. We don’t know what she is. And I didn’t notice you questioning our parameters at the lake.”
    “Well, that was different. Will was pissing me off, and I wanted to prove him wrong. Totally professional, obviously.”
    “Obviously.” She nodded soberly and continued to drive at an extremely unlawful speed toward Pamela’s house.
    “So, what exactly do we hope to learn from this girl, Simon? Did you get anything other than her name?”
    Simon smiled, a smug, close-lipped smile. “You can learn whatever you want, though based on your collective interviewing prowess, I will manage my expectations in that regard. Just keep her distracted for a few minutes, please.”
    Pamela’s family lived just northeast of town, not far from the Nevada border. Their home was the sort of oversized, under-designed monstrosity I was used to seeing in planned suburban developments, where it made a strange sort of sense. Here, it stood out from the smaller wooden homes, an ostentatious display of the owner’s wealth and general disregard for neighborhood harmony. The lawn was an impeccably maintained sea of green, and a Range Rover sat in the driveway. I guessed that the car hadn’t gone off road once in its pristine life.
    “Well, this will be fun,” I observed. “Who here speaks Stepford?”
    “Vivian does. She was raised in Connecticut. That’s your native tongue, right?”
    Vivian rolled her eyes at both of us and pointed wordlessly at herself. Seen through her eyes, perhaps a dreadlocked woman currently wearing steel-toed boots and a t-shirt that read “talk nerdy to me” wasn’t our most harmless-looking ambassador.
    “I’m sure they’re perfectly lovely, open-minded people. Still, you might want to stay in the car, Vivian.” I glanced at Sera, currently wearing head-to-toe black with an impressive amount of eyeliner. “Maybe you should, too.” I stepped quickly out of the car before Sera’s conjured fireball could test whether my newfound resistance to fire extended to my eyebrows. Simon hopped out in his four-footed form and took off around the side of the house.
    I strode up the path. Sera was right behind me, though Vivian remained firmly planted in the backseat. When I rang the doorbell, the chimes reminded their dog he was supposed to be on guard duty. A series of frenzied yips carried through the door, along with the exasperated tones of a woman who’d long since given up any hope of owning a quiet animal.
    At first, the woman who opened the door seemed to be about my age. Well, the age I appeared to be, at least, since that whole longevity thing really worked in our favor. She was as fit as any twenty-five-year-old, with the kind of lean muscle tone that came from hours in a Pilates studio, but a closer look revealed a few thin lines around her eyes, and she carried more knowledge in those eyes than most twenty-five-year-olds could claim. I quickly moved my estimate upward, putting her well into her forties.
    Her look was one of contrasts. Her clothes were neat and tailored, and though my interest in fashion didn’t extend far beyond jeans and various items made of cotton, she seemed to favor classic American designers, the sort that would produce commercials with young blonds frolicking in a meadow. She balanced that with heavy eye makeup and thick sand-colored hair that swirled around her shoulders, and she possessed unsettling amber eyes that didn’t seem to blink nearly enough. This had to be Pamela’s mother. A small corgi danced around her ankles, happily waiting its turn.
    “Hello,” I said, before Sera could begin her