“Which emancipation clause did you use? This one, right?”

I leaned over to look at the curse he was pointing to, and though it was in a different book, I could tell it was the same. “That looks like it.”

Al smiled, and seeing it, a knot of worry eased. For the first time, that awful smile of his made me feel…good. “Trent is bound to come to your aid when you ask. Did you know that?” Al snapped the book shut and shelved it beside the one I’d just placed there. “I think that puts him in a slightly higher standing, thus freeing you from responsibility for his actions.”

“Really?” I said, willing to give Trent the high ground if he’d get in trouble, not me.

His pace a jaunty limp, Al crossed his kitchen, kicking bits of rock and wood out of his way. “I do believe your do-gooder tendencies have finally come home to save you,” he said as he pulled a chest from the wreckage, opened it, and fingered through whatever was inside. “Trent’s in trouble, not you. Go back to your little scavenger hunt.”

“It’s not a scavenger hunt,” I said indignantly. “I’m trying to clear my name.”

“Whatever.” Al dramatically waved a silver amulet. “You’re taking the runt with you.”

“Pierce?” I came up from the floor with another book in my hand, the image of him standing over Al, ready to kill him, sifting through my mind. “He just tried to kill you!”

“Yes, but for all his anger, he still thinks he loves you.” Al squinted at the black jewel centered in the amulet, muttering a word of Latin to make the stone glow a brilliant silver, and then darken. “You’re going to need protection if Ku’Sox is free to come and go. A demon killer is just the thing to keep you safe. I’d do it myself, but I don’t want any taint of interference to mar our agreement that if you can’t get your shunning removed, you abandon reality.”

“Al,” I protested, thinking my strolling into the coven meeting with a witch they’d buried alive for black magic wasn’t going to look good. “He’s going to get me labeled a black witch.”

Al looked at me over his glasses, almost pouting. “You’re going to be labeled a black witch anyway, love.” He smiled, snapping the chest closed and dropping it down the stairway to his herb cellar, to shatter by the sound of it.

Remembering the look of fury on Pierce’s face, directed at me, I shook my head, reaching for books as fast as I could place them, as if helping Al clean up might win me some favor. “I do not want Pierce tagging along on this magic carpet ride.” But just yesterday, I had.

“Which is why this is so perfect.” Smug, Al dramatically snapped his fingers, cocky again. In a soft pop of displaced air, Pierce flashed into existence, his clothes disheveled and his hair everywhere. Immediately his confused look turned to one of anger—deepening when his gaze landed on me.