“Got it?” he asked, and I mm-hmmed. “This is what it sounds like now,” he said, and I jerked as if struck when the world seemed to hiccup. The feeling of the line I was looking at with my mind shifted slightly, and sure enough, the ragged half step was gone.

“No way,” I whispered, and my eyes opened. Trent was standing guard with his eyes on the forest line. Jenks was hovering at my eye level, his angular features pinched. Behind him, the line glowed like a deranged fair ride, dangerous and unreliable.

“Rache . . .” he warned, and I held a hand up to forestall his next words.

“Trent has me, and I’m not going to do anything Bis doesn’t want.” I reached up to touch the gargoyle’s feet. “Bis? You want me to try to find that ragged half step in the imbalance?”

Bis jumped to the ground before me. The expansive backdrop of the lines in my mindscape had vanished along with his touch, and my shoulders relaxed. Bis shifted from foot to foot as his tail whipped about until he curved it over his feet and sat like a little lion. “I’m sure this is how to fix the line,” he said, and I heard a big unsaid however.

“I’ll be careful,” I said to Jenks, then looked at Trent. “I won’t do anything until Bis tells me I can, okay?”

Jenks squinted at me, and when Trent nodded, the pixy gestured sourly to Bis to get on with it. A four-inch man ruled us all.

“Maybe you should bubble yourself first,” Trent suggested. “In case Ku’Sox shows.”

It was a good idea, but as I sketched a small, easy-to-hold bubble around Bis and myself, Jenks’s dust went an alarmed red.

“Okay! That’s it!” Jenks shouted, hovering before all of us. “I didn’t like this before, and I like it less now! Rache, there has to be another way!”

Bis met my eyes, shaking his head so narrowly it was almost no movement at all. I looked past him to Trent, his stance stiff and his expression fixed. Ku’Sox was stronger than me. If we couldn’t fix the line and prove that Ku’Sox had made it, then how would we ever get Lucy and Ceri back?

“Jenks,” I said softly, and he hummed irately at me. “It’s going to be okay. Trent will yank my butt out if I get stuck.”

“I’m going to do a perimeter,” he muttered. “You and Trent do your magic thing.”

He buzzed off into the dark, and my gaze went to Trent. I didn’t think Jenks was jealous, but it had to be hard to bear that I was putting myself in a narrow spot where anything bad could happen, and probably would.