While Jenks pretended interest in his sea monkeys, I put my knotted hair on a saucer and set the burning gray candle to it. The ring of hair flared up, curled in on itself, and died. Feeling safer, I blew the candle out, then maneuvered around Jenks to wash the ash down the sink. I wanted all evidence of this gone as fast as possible.

“Sorry for waking you up,” I said. Reaching for the salt, I rubbed the blood symbol off the table with a paste of it.

Jenks straightened from where he’d been leaning over his pets. His eyes were worried. “Did you know you look really scary when you do ley line magic?”

A sliver of fear took me. “How?” I asked, conscious of my two demon marks, weighing heavily on my wrist and the underside of my foot.

Dropping his eyes, Jenks shrugged. “You look tired, older. Like you’ve done it so many times that you don’t care anymore. It’s almost as if you have a second aura, and when you do ley line magic, it becomes dominant.”

My lips curved down and I went to wash my fingers. “A second aura?” That sounded absolutely fabulous. Maybe it was because I was my own familiar?

He nodded. “Pixies are sensitive to auras. You really damaged yours with that last curse.” Jenks took a breath. “I hate Nick. You’re hurting yourself to help him, and he doesn’t even care. He sold you out. Rache, if he ever hurts you again—”

“Jenks, I…” I fumbled. I put a hand on his shoulder, and this time he didn’t flinch. “If I’m going to be able to walk away from this, I have to do it. This is for me, not him.”

Jenks pulled back, looking over the empty room. “Yeah, I know.”

I felt odd as he went to the table and looked at the remnants of the demon curse. “That’s the real one?” he said, not touching it.

Pushing myself into motion, I picked up the totem. It felt heavier, though I knew it was an illusion. “Matalina is going to love it,” I said, handing it to him. “Thanks for letting me borrow it. I don’t need it anymore.”

Jenks’s eyes widened as it settled into his grip. “You want me to hold the real one?”

“He’s going to try to steal it,” I said, thinking I’d been stupid to trust Nick in the first place. “If you have it, he’ll get the wrong one.”

Depressed, I hefted the old statue. It felt dead inside, like a chunk of plastic. “I’ll keep this one with me along with the wolf statue,” I said, dropping the statue into my bag.

The front door opened, spilling light over the unmade beds. Jenks turned smoothly to the door, but I jumped when Nick came in, dirty and smelling of grease. Jax was on his shoulders, immediately abandoning him to see how his new pets were doing.

My hand slid across the table, brushing the salt circle into my hand and dropping it into the sink. I wondered how bad it smelled of extinguished candle, burned hair, and burnt amber.