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I’d heard in the parking lot, just before Hazel showed up. It teased me with its familiarity. I felt I knew it, but in a different setting, maybe at a quicker pace. But instead of keeping me awake, the memory of the music lulled me into a feeling of great peace and sadness, and I drifted off.

Galfreya
    It took a moment for Galfreya to realize she wasn’t alone in the central courtyard of the mall. She turned slowly to look down both of the long halls that ran east and west and south from where she stood before focusing her attention on the displays of stuffed animals that had been set up in the courtyard by the Newford Museum of Natural History. They were a sorry collection of creatures . . . wolves, bears, a bison, foxes, deer, falcons, hawks, owls, a family of raccoons . . . skin and horns, hooves and feathers commandeered to re-create a semblance of life that was betrayed by glass eyes and stances that were not quite natural. The birds fared best—at least their fur wasn’t worn in places from the touch of a thousand hands—but they were still nailed to their perches.
    The poor dead creatures were just as they’d been since the display had been installed earlier in the week. There were no additions. One or more of the dead hadn’t suddenly become animated. She could still see no one in the halls, nor outside the front doors of the mall, nor in the shop windows closest to hand. But the presence she felt was close all the same.
    “Okay,” she finally said. “You’re good. I’ll give you that. But even if I can’t see you, I still know you’re here.”
    “What, a big shot seer like you can’t find one itty-bitty me?”
    The disembodied voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. It was a woman’s voice, smoky and low, and not one Galfreya recognized.
    “I’m hardly a big shot,” she replied. “Would I be living in a shopping mall if I was?”
    “Who knows? The ways of a seer are mysterious. And you do have your own fairy court.”
    “They’re not my court. This just happens to be a handy place to hold our revels. Once the cleaning staff is gone, we have the place to ourselves. And why am I telling you all of this?” she added as an afterthought.
    “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