I tucked a strand of blowing hair behind my ear and warily checked behind me. I’d only had my car a couple of months, and already the entire fleet of I.S. flunkies doing street duty knew me by sight, taking every opportunity to help me rack up points on my license. And it wasn’t fair! The red light I ran a month ago was for a darn good reason—and at five in the morning, no one had even been at the intersection but the cop. I still don’t know where he had come from—my trunk maybe? And I’d been late for an appointment the time I got pulled over for speeding on 75. I hadn’t been going that much faster than everyone else.

“Stupid car,” I muttered fondly, though I wouldn’t trade my little red ticket magnet for anything. It wasn’t its fault the I.S. took every chance they could to make my life miserable.

But “Walkie Talkie Man” was cranked, Steriogram singing so fast only a vamp could keep up, and it wasn’t long before the little white hand crept up to eighty again, pulling my mood along with it. I even found a cute-looking guy on a cycle to flirt with while I made my way to Edgemont where Jenks had his run.

The cessation of wind as I came off the interstate was almost an assault, and when a rumble of real thunder rolled over me, I pulled to the side of the road to put the top up. My head jerked up when the guy on the cycle whizzed past, his hand raised in salute. My faint smile lingered for a moment, then vanished.

If I couldn’t get Jenks to talk to me, I was going to kill the little twit.

Taking a deep breath, I turned my phone to vibrate, snapped off the music, and pulled into traffic. I jostled over a railroad track, peering into the coming dusk and noting that the pace of the pedestrian and bike traffic had changed from casual to intense as the threat of rain increased. It was a business district, one of the old industrial areas that the city had thrown a lot of money at to turn it into a themed mall and parks to attract the usual outlying shops and apartments. It reminded me of “Mrs. Bryant’s flat,” and I frowned.

I drove past the address to evaluate the multistoried sprawling building. By the art deco and the mailbox drive-through, it looked like a manufacturing complex turned into a mix of light commercial and upscale apartments. I hadn’t seen Jenks, but that wouldn’t be unusual if he was tailing someone. Matalina said he was on a smut run to build up money to buy an airline ticket.

My brow was furrowed in worry when I turned the corner and got a lucky spot at the curb in front of a coffeehouse, jerking the parking break up and shifting the stick to neutral. Pixies couldn’t fly commercially—the shifting air pressures wreaked havoc with them. Jenks wasn’t thinking straight anymore. No wonder Matalina had come to me.