Pierce stiffened. My pulse hammered, and I looked at my hands, in my lap. Nick had hung around long enough to see the curses flowing out of the church. Damn it, why was it he could make me feel ashamed for something I hadn’t even done?

“So,” Nick said tightly as we went through the intersection, “you know where we stand?”

Stand? We don’t stand anywhere. “I don’t trust you, and you don’t trust me?” I guessed.

Nick’s long expression was hurt. “I told you we were even.”

A sarcastic noise slipped from me. “So that makes it all better?” He wanted a clean slate. Right. After selling secrets about me to demons? Not likely.

Scowling, Nick made a sharp left into a closed gas station that looked like a chop shop, pulling directly into one of the open bays. Seeing people inside, I looked in my bag for my disguise amulet.

“You won’t need that here,” Nick said, sounding insulted. “No one will squeal on you.”

I hesitated before I let it drop back in my bag, not because I trusted Nick, but because I might need it later to slip out. Nick seemed mollified, but Pierce cleared his throat in an understandable warning—which ticked Nick off all the more.

Jax was hovering outside the closed window, and when Nick put his car in park, someone pulled the garage door down, cutting off the light and making me feel trapped. “Wait here,” Nick said stiffly, taking the bag from the coffeehouse with him as he got out. His door slamming shut was loud, and he went to greet the man who had closed us in, doing a complicated handshake thingy. I could see Pierce memorizing it. As a ley-line witch, he probably had it down with one look.

Nick laughed, fitting in perfectly with the rough men around us, thin from Brimstone and too hard a life. Jax was on his shoulder, clearly familiar by their casual acceptance. I sat nervously and watched as Nick and the guy talked, both of them looking at the car. At us.

“I’d allow that Nick’s car has a lot more levers than yours,” Pierce said, eying the dash.

“Nick’s car goes faster than my mother’s,” I said, sitting sideways so I didn’t have to take my eyes off Nick. “Don’t touch anything. It might go boom.”

It wouldn’t, but Pierce drew his hand away. “I don’t trust him.”

“Neither do I.” Nick took a metal cutter from a nearby bench, and I fingered my zip strip, eager to get it off.

“If you’re not of a mind to trust him, then why are we still here? This is vexing, sitting like a fence post.”