Ignoring him, I shivered as the leaves shifted in a gust. It looked about nine. We didn’t have much time, and I was almost naked in the woods, miles from Cincinnati and no transportation back. “Jenks, do you know if Trent filed a police report?” I asked, anxious to find out what had happened while I’d been … preoccupied.

Jenks’s grin eased my worry. “Nope. He doesn’t want anyone to know he lost it, which puts you in twice the danger since Trent is going to take care of you himself. There’s a message on the church phone to call him, which I think is funny. He’s increased his security by the looks of it. You’ll never get close enough to him without a disguise.”

A disguise that I didn’t have time to make and couldn’t buy because I was shunned. “Good,” I said, very relieved. Maybe the hoof pick had been enough to get him to trust me to give it back. If Trent had filed a report, then there was no chance this was going to work.

His wings dusting an odd shiny purple, Jenks hovered before me. Angular features creased, he said, “I don’t know. How are we going to do this? Ivy’s out of the picture and you’re in the middle of the woods in a blanket. Bis is asleep, and I can carry only so much.”

Smiling, I looked at Pierce—who was grinning. “Pierce can jump the lines.”

Jenks’s wings stopped for a second, and he quickly caught himself. “Not without Bis,” he shot back, “and he’s asleep.”

Pierce took my fingers carefully, as if he wasn’t sure where we stood. Something in me jumped, and I squeezed his fingers. I wasn’t embarrassed about last night, but I wasn’t an idiot to think that this was going to be easy. Eventually he was going back to Al—unless I remained just stupid enough to require a babysitter. Maybe we could do this …

“He can’t jump without Bis,” Jenks insisted.

“Thank you for not leaving me last night,” I said, my thoughts returning to my terror.

“Never, Rachel,” he said, a new, soft expression on his face. “Besides, Al would have skinned me like a cat.”

Jenks darted up between us, his hand on his sword hilt and his wings clattering. “What the fairy farts is going on? You’d better start talking, or I’m going to pix someone!”

I dropped back, putting space between us. “Pierce can jump lines without Bis,” I told Jenks. “He needed Bis only when he didn’t know what line the coven summoned me through.”

The pitch of Jenks’s wings shifted. “Oooo,” he said. “You can jump to the church.”

Pierce was nodding, running his hand over his hair, stiff and untidy from the river. “What do you want me to bring back?”