His eyes rose from my burned hand, and he unexpectedly tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, shocking me. “You were the one who taught me any chance is viable. If I didn’t believe that, I would be a total wreck. I know how it hurts. Forgive me for my choices, maybe?”

Was he going to try to kiss me? I didn’t know how I felt about that anymore. “I did that a long time ago.”

Eyes holding an unreadable emotion, he hesitated, his attention running over my snarly hair. “Down, I think,” he whispered, and making a sharp nod, he turned away.

I backed up, shoulder knocking the door frame as I misjudged and stumbled inside. Embarrassed, I shut the door before he found the sidewalk, but I watched him get into his car from one of the sanctuary’s windows, his form blurry and wavy. Jenks’s wings were a familiar brush of sound as he landed on my shoulder, and together we watched Trent’s car lights flicker to life.

“What did he mean by that?” I said, feeling alone even as I could still smell him in my church.

Jenks’s wings shifted fitfully. “I don’t know.”

Trent drove away, and I tried to look at Jenks on my shoulder, failing. “You called him,” I accused. “You asked him to come over.”

Red dust pooled down my front. “He was coming in to Cincy to talk to his lawyer,” the pixy hedged. “I called him, yeah. I thought he might be able to help. It worked, didn’t it? You’re thinking again, right?”

I turned back to the window, staring out at the night-emptied street. “Uh-huh.”

“With Ivy gone, you needed someone to ground you, Rache, and I’m not big enough to slap you.”

I thought back to my frantic, useless state. He was right. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Feel better?”

I put my burned hand on the window, the cool blood-red glass soothing my fingertips. Slowly I nodded. Trent had grounded me. How about that?

“The hot chocolate and doughnuts were his idea, though,” Jenks said, then darted off to tend his children.

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

The faint ringing of the phone vibrated against the inside of my skull, and though I tried to incorporate the sound into my dreams of tiny purple hallways and black doors the size of acorns, it pushed itself into my conscious thought, shoving me awake.

The phone is ringing.

Eyes open, I stared at my clock glowing a steady 7:47. “Are you kidding me?” I whispered, and I rolled over on my stomach and put the pillow over my head. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours and wasn’t planning on getting up until noon.