“Yes,” I said, able to identify the hot-metal smell now. “Sun-warmed gold. And honey.”

Hands on his hips, Jenks turned to Ivy. “You told me Daryl was leaving.”

Daryl? Who in hell is Daryl?

Ivy’s expression became bothered. “She is. Soon as she finds a place.”

She?

“Like that’s ever gonna happen!” Jenks exclaimed. “The woman is sex in sandals!”

“Glenn isn’t going to kick her out!” Ivy said loudly. “She’s not well.”

“No wonder with Glenn keeping her up all night doing the nasty!”

“Hey!” Ivy exclaimed, eyes going black. “That’s uncalled for! He hasn’t touched her.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said, sneaking glances at them both. “Who is Daryl?” And why haven’t I heard about her before?

Jenks’s wings stopped moving, and I thought I saw a flash of panic in him as Ivy forced her expression to neutral. Both of them seemed to pull three steps back in their thinking, and after a moment, Ivy said, “Just a woman we met on a run when you were in the ever-after. She needed some help. A place to stay. Glenn is putting her up until she finds her feet.”

Jenks was silent as he looked at the car’s ceiling, so I turned to Ivy—waiting.

“It’s not any different from you foisting Ceri off on Keasley,” she muttered. “I couldn’t bring her to the church. Glenn is helping her out is all.”

“Helping her right out of her clothes, I bet,” Jenks said loudly, then darted to my shoulder when Ivy flicked her finger at him.

“She is not having sex with Glenn,” Ivy continued. “I’d know.”

“Yeah, you’d know because you’re dating him,” Jenks said. “Did you give him the dating guide yet?”

“Jenks!” she said, dismayed now, and he darted away from her snatch for him.

“How about kissing him? Did you at least kiss him yet?” he asked, laughing.

A low noise came from Ivy, almost a growl, and she seemed to melt into the car’s darkness. My breath slipped out, and I put my blinker on to get in the lane for the bridge traffic; someone would let me in. Yeah, she’d kissed him—within an inch of his life, I bet.

I curled in my lower lip and glanced at Jenks. The pixy gestured for me to go for it, and I did. “Have you bitten him?” I asked, needing to know. He was my friend, too.

Ivy said nothing, and Jenks hummed his wings. “Did’ja?” he needled. “Did he?”

Still she said nothing, telling me she had, and I wondered if this might be a big mistake or one of the best things in Ivy’s life. Glenn was nothing if not solid. “He doesn’t want to go vamp, does he?” I asked, half joking but afraid of her answer. I was the last person to advocate shunning vampires as friends, but if you didn’t know what you were doing, or the vampire was a real predator, you were in trouble. Glenn and Ivy were all of the above.