As I tried to purge the adrenaline from me, Nick scooted his chair away, cautiously rubbing his throat. Moving a shade too fast, Ivy refilled her glass from the pitcher. “There’s only one solution,” she said, bending her straw exactly upright. “Professor here has to die.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I exclaimed, and Nick stiffened, his face red in anger. “Ivy, that’s enough.”

Jenks pulled his plate of fries closer. “Hey, I’m right there with you,” he said, his eyes roving the bar, probably for the nonexistent ketchup. “It would solve everything.” He hesitated, wiping his fingers on a napkin. “You grab him, and I’ll get your sword from the van.”

“Hey!” I shouted, angry. I knew they weren’t serious, but they were starting to tick me off. I lowered my voice when the giggling women at the bar looked at us. “Nick, relax. They aren’t going to kill you.”

Snickering, Jenks started on his fries, and Ivy took on a confident, almost seductive stance, slouching in her chair and smiling with one side of her mouth. “All right,” she said. “If you’re going to get bent out of shape about it, we won’t kill him. We’ll stage his spectacular, public death along with the destruction of that thing.”

Nick stared at Ivy’s confident figure. “I will not let you destroy it,” he said vehemently.

She arched her eyebrows. “You can’t stop me. It’s the only option we have to get those Weres off Rachel’s tail, so unless you have a suggestion, I suggest you shut up.”

Nick went still. I eyed his brow furrowed in thought, then slid my gaze to Jenks. Jenks was watching him too, his mouth full but his jaws not moving. We exchanged a knowing look. Someone who endured a week of torture wouldn’t give up that easy. Ivy didn’t seem to notice, but Ivy didn’t know Nick like I was starting to know Nick. God, why was I even trying to help him? I thought, jiggling my foot to make my flip-flops pop. Depressed, I reached for my soda.

“So you stage my death and the destruction of the focus,” the apparently subdued human said, and Jenks returned to eating, pretending ignorance. “I think they’re going to notice when the ambulance takes me to the hospital instead of the morgue.”

Ivy’s eyes tracked someone headed our way. Glass in hand, I turned to find Becky with three drinks holding umbrellas and cherries on sticks. My eyes went to the flirting women, and I cringed. Oh…how nice. They were trying to pick him up.

“I can get us a body,” Ivy said into the silence.

I choked on my drink, coughing at the string of thoughts that remark engendered, but Becky had come forward and I couldn’t say a word—even if I could catch my breath.

“Here you go, hon,” she said, smiling as she set the drinks squarely before Jenks. “From the ladies at the bar.”

“Oh, wow,” Jenks said, apparently forgetting what accepting drinks from strangers meant when one was over four inches tall. “Look, pixy swords!”