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But that night it was all hard-driving reels, and we didn’t come up for air until just before the end of our first set. I took the momentary respite to kill the volume on my guitar and give it a proper retuning, not really listening to what Miki was telling the audience. But I did note that they all had the same, slightly stunned expression that I was sure I was wearing.Miki in full tear on her box could do it to anyone, and even playing onstage with her, I wasn’t immune.

I got the last string in tune, then suddenly realized what Miki was telling the audience.

“. . . have to ask yourselves, why these stories persist,” she was saying. “We’ve always had them, and we still do. I mean, alien abductions—that’s just a new twist on the old tale of people getting taken away by the faeries, isn’t it? Now I don’t want to go all woo-woo on you here, but tonight’s one of the two nights of the year that these little buggers are given complete free rein to cause what havoc they can for us mortals. The other’s on Halloween.

“Anyway,” she went on, smiling brightly at the audience in that way she had that immediately made you have to smile back, “whether you believe or not, it can’t hurt to wish a bit of good luck our way, right? So while we’re playing this next tune, I want you to think about how everybody here should be kept safe from the influence and malice of these so-called Good Neighbors.What do you think?”

She cocked her head and gave them a goofy look, which got her a round of laughter and applause.

“Key of D,” she told me, and launched into “The Faeries’ Hornpipe.”

“Remember,” she said over the opening bars, directing her attention back to the audience. “Faeries bad. Us good.”

I looked out at the crowd as I backed Miki up. People were still smiling, some of them clapping along to the simple rhythm of the tune. And I’d bet more than half of them were doing what she’d said, thinking protective thoughts for everybody inside the pub.

This was Miki’s big plan? I found myself thinking.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciated whatever effort she might have made to solve my problem, but this didn’t seem like it would be all that effectual. And I sure didn’t see the connection to that old ballad, “Tam Lin.”

But then I realized that the Native women I’d noted earlier were all standing up, backs against the various walls. One after the other, they lit smudgesticks and soon that pungent scent of herbs and twigs was drifting through the pub, only this time, except for me, nobody seemed to notice.

And then I realized something else. While the audience continued to clap and stomp away to the music, while I could still hear the music, I wasn’t playing my guitar anymore. I looked over at Miki and there seemed to be two of her, superimposed over each other. One still playing away on that old box of hers—she’d switched to a tune that I recognized as “The Faerie Reel”; the other regarding me with a serious expression in her eyes.

The sound of her playing and the crowd was muted. Actually,my sight felt muted, too, like there was a thin gauze hanging in front of my eyes.

“It’s up to you now,” the Miki who wasn’t playing said. “Go outside and deal with him.”

“What . . . where are we?”

“In between. Not quite in the world, not quite in the otherworld, where the spirits are stronger.”

“I don’t understand. How did you bring us here?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “They did.”

I didn’t have to ask who she meant. It was the Native women, with their smudgesticks and something else. I heard a low, rhythmical drumming, under the music, under the noise of the crowd. Mixed with it were the sounds of rattles and flutes, keeping time to Miki’s tune, but following their own rhythm at the same time. I couldn’t see the players.

More spirits, I guessed. But Native ones.

“And I’m not really with you,”Miki added. “You’re on your own.”

“I don’t understand—” I began, but she cut me off.

“There’s not a big window of time here, Conn. Get a move on. And remember what I told you.”

“I know. Think of the ballad. Why can’t you just tell me