“Ow, ow! Don’t touch it, Pierce! You idiot!” Ivy shouted as he probed her arm. “I told you it was broken!”

Pierce pulled his hand away, glaring right back at her black-eyed stare, and I jerked when there was a scuffing of shoes on the stairs outside.

“It’s Glenn,” Jenks said, head cocked as he listened to his kids. “I think he just noticed the broken window and the open door ’cause he just un-snapped his pistol.”

“Glenn?” I questioned, my gaze going to Ivy. “Did someone call 911?”

Ivy held her arm to her middle, looking up past her hair to the open door, shrugging.

“Hello?” the big man’s voice boomed out, cautiously. “Rachel? Ivy? Everyone okay?”

Pixies flew over us in a wave, going to meet the FIB detective. I swear, the man had to have some elven blood in him the way Jenks’s kids took to him. Either that, or they liked the smell of gun oil.

“Come on in, Glenn!” I called, and the light in the foyer was eclipsed.

“Ivy?” Glenn said, his gaze going first to her, standing with Pierce’s support. He started for her, but his eyes were taking everything in, lingering on the smoldering couch and the burn ring on the pool table. I had no doubt that it had been a white spell designed to toast marshmallows, but Vivian could have set the church on fire with it.

“Rachel, what do you do? Put an ad in the paper for trouble?” Glenn asked, snapping the flap over his weapon back down as he crossed the room.

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” I shifted my weight to my other foot, knees aching. “Glenn, this is Pierce. Pierce, this is Glenn, my friend from the FIB.”

I watched Pierce closely as Glenn came forward with his usual grace and spare motion, his right hand extended even as he slipped a supporting arm under Ivy.

“It’s my arm that’s broken. I can walk,” she said irately, pulling away from both men.

Pierce shook Glenn’s hand with a firm formality, not a hint of reservation in him, even if his gaze did hesitate on his shaved head and one earring.“I’m powerfully pleased to meet you, Detective Glenn,” he said, glancing at Ivy as she sat on the couch and halfheartedly hit the smoldering leather with a magazine. “You’ve been a friend to Rachel for a good span.”

Glenn’s eyebrows rose at Pierce’s speech, but his smile was genuine. “Not for as long as I hope to,” he said. I tried to imagine his grin with sharp canines, and couldn’t.

I started hobbling to the kitchen to get another pain amulet, my grip tight on the smooth wood of the pool table. The pixies were hovering over it, heads down as they poked the burnt felt with their swords. It was totally ruined. I’d have to get it refelted. Sorry, Kisten.