I went to the window to look. Across the park, the eldritch equivalent of a rugby scrum was headed our way—fairies, bogles, hobgoblins, and pixies, scrimmaging in a tangle of tattered wings and long, thorny limbs, all of them quarreling and shrieking at a decibel level barely within my range of hearing.

Leaving Mogwai behind, I clattered down the stairs just in time to see a trio of hobgoblins blocking like linebackers—okay, I’m mixing my sports metaphors, sue me—freeing a fourth to race free of the pack.

“Tuggle?” I peered at him as he gained the alley. Behind him, the scrum broke apart in disappointment. One lucky tourist snapped frantic photos before the disentangled fey winked out of visibility and the park abruptly sprouted a number of new shrubs and bushes, not to mention a pretty ring of poisonous mushrooms. “Is that you?”

The hobgoblin’s beady eyes gleamed. “The sister is back!” he announced triumphantly. “That makes us even for the sunglasses, right? I get a clean slate in your ledger?”

“Right,” I said. “So where is she now?”

Tuggle’s hooked nose twitched. “What do you mean now? She drove into town in a car like before. You said the first to tell you when,” he said in an accusatory tone. “You didn’t say to tell you where.”

“I thought it was—” I abandoned the thought in midsentence. “Never mind. Can you find out where she is now? Then I’ll owe you.”

“Ha!” a familiar voice shrilled. Jojo popped into view, hovering, green arms no bigger around than pipe cleaners folded over her slight bosom. “The sorceress has purchased residence in the same inn she frequented prior,” she informed me. “I thought to keep watch there. And now thy debt to me is increased yet again.”

Echoing her stance, I folded my arms. “My offer was to Tuggle, not you.”

Her wings beat at an agitated pace and her luminous lavender eyes narrowed. “I assumed—”

I interrupted her. “You know what they say—”

Jojo hissed at me. In the window upstairs, Mogwai hissed back. Tuggle scowled and fingered his nose.

“Okay, okay!” I sighed. “Jojo, just keep an eye on her and stay out of sight. Let me know if she makes a move to go anywhere. For Sinclair’s sake. Do that and I’ll owe you. Deal?”

The fairy sniffed. “Thou hast a deal, scullion.”

Great.

Upstairs, I petted Mogwai until he calmed down. First, I called the chief to let him know everything was under control, and then I called Sinclair to set the coven’s phone tree in motion.

And then I changed my clothes and went to pay a call on dear Emmy herself.