Seeing Jenks hovering over his shoulder, I was struck by how they managed to look as if they went together though they were nothing alike. “There isn’t much here for pixies unless there’s a tour coming through,” Jenks said, his face glowing from the dust. “They remember you being here yesterday, and a bunch of demons before that, but not one on his own like Ku’Sox. We did a quick survey, and we’re good for at least a quarter mile unless you count the raccoons.”

I squinted at the line. “Okay. I’m going to take a look-see—”

“You’re not getting in that line!” Jenks shouted, and Bis’s red eyes widened in alarm.

“I’m not getting in the line,” I said, glancing at Trent to see him watching me with the same intensity as Jenks. “You think I’m out here sniffing fairy farts? Bis knows what some of the lines are supposed to sound like, and by comparing that to what they sound like now, maybe we can find the imbalance, bubble it, and move it out . . .”

My words trailed off when Trent tilted his head. “That wasn’t our original idea.”

Jenks hovered right before my nose, wings clattering belligerently. “Yeah? Then what?”

I winced. “Maybe if I move it out, it might just get sucked back into place?”

Bis was making this weird noise, and we all turned to him. I think it was his version of clearing his throat, but it sounded like rocks in a garbage disposal. “Ah, bubbled imbalance won’t get sucked anywhere,” he said apologetically. “But if you tune the bubble holding it to the same vibration as its parent line . . .” His words trailed off and his wings shifted.

Trent’s exhale was long and slow. It wasn’t the immediate no I had expected, and seeing him consider it, Jenks seemed to become even more frustrated.

“Tink’s little pink rosebuds,” he grumbled, landing next to Bis and checking the sharpness of his sword. “Now I’ve got two of them to watch. Whose idea was this?” He looked up at Bis. “Yours?”

I waited nervously as Trent thought it over, his boots scuffing the gravel. “Tuning your aura to a line pulls you into it, so tuning a bubble, which is basically an aura-tainted field of force, will pull whatever is in the bubble to the line? It’s worth a look, since we have the rings as a safety net.” He turned to Jenks. “Jenks, what do you think?”

My eyebrows rose. Asking Jenks for his opinion? Maybe the time they’d worked together had made an impact after all.