“What time is it?” I asked, squinting in the stiffer breeze and looking for the car. People bothered at our slow pace hustled past us, but I was enjoying the wind and the view of the straits.

Jenks snickered, clearly guessing where my thoughts were. He had slammed his twenty-ounce Dew and shook for a good thirty seconds, jittery and bright eyed, making me wonder which one of us was the better bet to drive home. Juggling his bags, he checked his wrist, beaming. “Four forty-six,” he said. “Only a minute off that time.”

“By the time you get acclimated, we’ll be heading home,” I said, then pushed into motion. “When did you get a watch?”

“Yesterday with Jax,” he said, stretching to see the parking lot over the heads of the surrounding people. “I got you a camera too, and my knife. I don’t like being this big.”

I wasn’t going to tell him it was illegal to carry a concealed knife. Besides, he was a pixy. The law didn’t apply to him. I smiled at the way the sunlight glittered on his hair, even if it was black. “Big bad wolfs,” I said, then sucked down another swig of pop, stumbling on the curb as we found the street. “We’re going to blow their damned house down.”

His motions seamless, Jenks took my drink away and dropped it into the nearest trash container. “You okay?”

“Oh yeah,” I said enthusiastically. I handed him the last of my burger, which he threw away for me too. “You ought to know. You’re the one who keeps spiking my food.”

Giving me a wry look, Jenks gallantly took my arm. A giggle slipped from me at the show of support, appalling me. Damn it, this wasn’t fair. If they got me hooked on Brimstone, I was going to be majorly pissed—if I could remember why I was mad at them, that is.

Still laughing, I pulled my head up, going cold with a pulse of fear. Leaning against Kisten’s Corvette were Brett and Walter Vincent, the first one scanning the faces of the people leaving the mall, the second doing the same but with a murderous intensity. Immediately I realized what had happened, and I thanked God we weren’t at the motel, trapped in a little box of a room. Jenks and I were under a disguise, and though they hadn’t known about Kisten’s car, it probably smelled like the pixy, seeing as he drove it yesterday. They had found us.

“Oh, fudge,” I whispered, leaning heavily on Jenks’s arm. Just that fast, I had gone from exuberant to panic, the Brimstone taking over my moods. “You got anything more lethal than that knife on you?” I asked.

“No. Why?” His forward momentum barely hesitated as he looked up from watching my feet. “Oh,” he said softly, his fingers tightening on my arm for an instant. “Okay.”

I wasn’t surprised when he did an abrupt turn-about and wheeled us back into the mall. Bending close, Jenks sent the aroma of dry meadow over me. “Your disguises are working,” he whispered. “Pretend we just forgot something and have to go pick it up.”