The world seemed to collapse into me. Sound sucked inward, taking the heat of the sun and the rising damp from the plywood under my bare feet. I felt the curse take hold, and the clicking of a thousand abacuses grew as I was reduced to a thought and rebuilt from the idea of myself stored in the demon database.

I pay this cost, I thought in the perfect silence of nothing. No heartbeat, no pixy wings. Nothing. The smut from the curse coated me in a soothing layer of black, and I shuddered.

I felt the magic rise from the singular point of existence that I was, rushing through me, and I expanded. My aura rang as it adjusted, and suddenly … I was back.

Noise hit me, and I sucked in air. Jenks had gotten me here, but he was paying the price for it, sitting on a news crew antenna trying to get the sticky silk off.

“She was a pixy! You see that? She was a pixy! That’s Rachel Morgan! Get a picture!”

“Oh my God,” a feminine voice exclaimed as the crowd reacted. “She’s naked! Where did she come from? Are you getting this, Frank?”

Frank, the cameraman, was indeed getting this, and I looked for Pierce, almost panicking when I didn’t see him. I was absolutely naked and in front of rolling video cameras. I didn’t want to think about the Internet in two hours’ time. God, my mother …

Trent stared, his one look down and up making me flush. “What the devil are you doing, Rachel?” he said as I snatched his speech from the podium and tried to cover myself.

“Rachel!” I heard, and my head swung around. It was Pierce, three I.S. cops elbowing and tossing people out of their way to get to him. “Catch!”

He threw the statue over six rows of people. It glittered in the sun even as the I.S. agents fell on him. Fear and surprise rang out when Pierce vanished from right under them and they landed on nothing. My hand went up, and with a solid thump, the erotic statue hit my palm. Everyone was looking at the I.S. cops on the ground, not me. Everyone but Trent. He’d seen the statue, and he shoved the pulling hands off him, his want showing, full and hungry.

I eyed Trent, flushed with embarrassment and premature victory. Try to scare me into signing that lame-ass paper, huh? “I’m trying to return your statue, dumb ass,” I said to him over the noise. “Come talk to me in jail if you want it back.” Then louder, I wailed, “I can’t do this! I’m not a thief. I’m a good girl! I don’t care if the coven gives me a lobotomy, I’m not a thief. Take your freaky statue back, Mr. Kalamack!”