Stumbling into the living room, I looked for the phone. There was only one place he’d go: the Were who had despelled my stuff last fall. I had to talk to Jenks. I had to tell him I was sorry. That I had been an ass. That I should have trusted him. That he was right to be angry with me and that I was sorry.

But Keasley intercepted my reach, and I drew back at his old hand. I stared at him, cold in the thin protection the blanket had put between me and the night. “Rachel…” he said as Ceri drifted to a melancholy stop in the hall. “I think…I think you should give him a day at least.”

Ceri jerked, and she looked down the hallway. Faint on the air I heard the front door open, and the blanket moved in the shifting air currents.

“Rachel?” came Ivy’s voice. “Where’s Jenks? And why is there a Home Depot truck unloading sheet plywood in our drive?”

I sank down onto a chair before I fell over. My elbows went on my knees, and my head dropped into my hands. The Brimstone and bane still warred within me, making me shaky and weak. Damn. What was I going to tell Ivy?

Twenty

The coffee in my oversized mug was cold, but I wasn’t going to go into the kitchen for more. Ivy was banging around there, baking more of her vile cookies despite us having already gone over that I wasn’t going to eat them and was madder than a troll with a hangover that she’d been slipping me Brimstone.

The clatter of my pain amulet against the complexion charm hiding my bruised eye intruded as I set my mug aside and reached for the desk lamp. It had gotten dusky while Ceri tried to teach me how to store line energy. Cheery yellow light spilled over the plants strewn on my desk, the glow just reaching Ceri sitting on a cushion she had brought over from Keasley’s. We could have done this in the more comfortable living room, but Ceri had insisted on hallowed ground despite the sun being up. And it was quiet in the sanctuary. Depressingly so.