“I was mad,” Nick continued. “I thought . . .” He hesitated as my teeth clenched. “I was trying to get back at you, okay? It went too far.”

My eyes flicked to his, holding. Jenks’s wings clattered, and he rose. “Too far?” he said. “Destroying the ever-after and magic to tell your old girlfriend—who doesn’t even like you—that you were mad at her was ‘too far’?”

I didn’t have to say a word. Jenks was doing all my yelling for me. I appreciated it. It freed me up for more important things, like watching the latest insurance commercial. But even so, my anger grew. Because of him, Ray would never know her mother.

“I was wrong,” Nick said staring down at the table, his hands in his lap. “You were right.”

At that, I couldn’t help myself. “I’m the better bet now, huh?”

Relief slipped into his expression as I finally talked to him. “I’m trying to survive.”

“Rachel doesn’t owe you crap, you lying sack of toad shit,” Jenks said.

I put the arches of my feet on the edge of the coffee table. “I don’t owe you crap, you lying sack of toad shit.” That one, I wanted to say.

Nick pressed his thin lips together, his stubble showing strong when he flushed. “Fine. I’ll leave.”

He shifted forward to stand, getting no more than three inches before Ivy stood, the pointy part of her sword touching his chest. Looking at it, he sank back down. The tension was getting thick. I didn’t have a clue what to do with him, much less what I was going to wear tomorrow. “Let him go, Ivy,” Jenks said bitterly. “We don’t need him.”

“He can’t go,” I said as three of Jax’s sisters brought the miserable pixy a blanket. Damn it, he was crying silver tears. I was going to smack Nick into the next dimension for having misled Jax so badly. “He’ll run back to Ku’Sox and tell him how I’m going to smear him into demon pâté.”

“Is that what you think I’d do?” Nick said, his words clipped. “Go back to Ku’Sox?”

I leaned over the table. “If the crap stinks, wipe your ass.”

“I made a mistake!” Nick’s gaze was fixed on mine, and his words were precise. “Throw me a goddamned life preserver, will you?”

My eyes went to the low ceiling, remembering thinking that myself so many times before. His mistake had cost Ray her mother. Lucy, too. “Nick? Shut up.”