Katherine was watching wide-eyed after making her exclamation, which meant she got an even better look at the thing that whipped out onto the wrist of the second women. It seemed familiar, in a way — not something she'd ever personally encountered, but something that she'd heard stories about, maybe. Something that she ought to recognize, growing up primarily in Morocco.

Whatever it was, the stunning spell that someone sent its way didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on the black thing — but it did knock some of the other silks out of the way to give them all a better look at it. It looked just like another piece of fabric, except that it was moving. If it hadn't gone and latched onto someone, Kate might have thought it was a stray cloak that had been misplaced from the showroom floor.

"Oh," she said, something making a connection in her head. She did know what these were. They were a problem in Northern Africa — more so, she imagined, than they were in England, since no one else seemed to know how to react to them. She'd been warned about them the same way that she was warned about fairies or doxy bites. Creatures that looked like black cloaks and snuck into children's rooms at night — what were they called? And what was one supposed to do about them?