I missed what was said, but Jenks returned looking satisfied, the bottle of maple syrup gone. “What?” I said as he waited for me to fall into step with him.

“They’ll put the cameras on loop for us when we leave the building,” he said, not taking my arm as Kisten or Nick might, but walking beside me with an odd closeness. The shops lining the thoroughfare were closed, but the theater had a small crowd of what were clearly locals, to judge by the amount of noisy banter. The movie showing had been out for three weeks in Cincy, but there must not be a lot to do up here.

We neared the ticket booth and my pulse quickened. “They’ll loop the cameras for a bottle of maple syrup?” I asked, voice hushed.

Jenks shrugged, glancing at the marquee. “Sure. That stuff is liquid gold.”

I dug in my bag for a twenty as I took that in. Maybe I could make more pimping maple syrup to pixies than running? We bought two tickets to the SF film, and after getting Jenks a bag of popcorn, we headed into the theater, immediately going out the emergency exit.

My eyes went to the cameras atop the building, catching the faintest glint of streetlight on pixy wings. Maybe it was a little overkill, but being placed at the theater if The Butterfly Shack’s alarms went off might be the difference between keeping my feet on the street and cooling them on a jail cot.

Together we made our way from the service entrances in back to the front, Jenks shedding clothes and handing them to me to stuff in my bag every few yards. It was terribly distracting, but I managed to avoid running into the Dumpsters and recycling bins. Upon reaching the shuttered tourist area, he was in his soft-soled boots and his skintight outfit. We had come out a few blocks from the theater, and it was creepy being on the street at night with everything closed, reminding me how far from home and out of my element I was. The Butterfly Shack was tucked into the end of a cul-de-sac, and we headed for it, feet silent on the cement.

“Watch my back,” Jenks whispered, leaving me in a shadow while he twirled the long tool in his fingers into a blur, crouching to put his eyes even with the lock.

I gave him long glance, then turned to watch the empty foot street. No prob, Jenks, I thought. Sure, he was married, but I could look. “People,” I breathed, but he had heard and was already behind the scrawny bushes beside the door. They were butterfly bushes, if I guessed right, and scraggly. Any other business would have torn them out.

Shrinking into my shadow, I held my breath until the couple passed, the woman’s heels fast and the man griping they were going to miss the previews. Five seconds later Jenks was back at the door. A moment of tinkering, and he stood to carefully try the latch. It clicked open, a nice cheery green light blinking a welcome from the lock pad.