“Did they tell you who sent them?” Trent prompted, and I tightened my robe again.

“Not yet.” Turning to them, I smiled. “Who wants to go first?”

No one said anything. Big surprise. I flicked a glance at Trent. It was a no-win situation. If I was tough, he’d think I was a thug. If I was too nice, I’d be a pushover. Why I even cared what he thought was beyond me.

Jenks dropped down to the man. “Who sent you?” he barked, sword angled at the man’s eye.

Jack remained silent, and Jenks’s wings began slipping an eerie black dust. In a whisper of sound, Jenks darted close and then away. The intruding elf yelped, his hand smacking his head where Jenks had been. I frowned when I saw the wad of hair in Jenks’s grip. I didn’t like this. Jenks was usually easygoing, more inclined to plant seeds in the ground than people, but his land had been violated, and that brought out the worst in him.

“Ease up, Jenks,” Ivy said as she came forward to touch Jill’s face. “You need more finesse with the big ones.” She made a little trill of sound as the woman drew back in fear, and I sighed as Ivy started to vamp out.

Think, Rachel, I mused silently. Don’t just react, think. “Guys,” I said, conscious of Trent watching. “We need to find out what’s going on without leaving any traces.”

“I won’t leave a mark,” Ivy whispered, and Jill paled. “Not where you can find one.”

“They might be a test from the coven,” I said, and Ivy’s finger, tracing the woman’s jawline, curled under and she straightened in disappointment.

“We can’t simply let them go,” Ivy said. “Even if it wasn’t much of an attack.”

I winced. “Maybe we should call the I.S.?”

Jenks snorted, and from the overhead rack came a peal of high-pitched laughter. Yeah, bad idea.

“Mind if I hurry this along? I have an idea.”

It had been Trent, and, as one, we all turned to look at him.

“You have an idea?” Jenks said sarcastically, hovering before him in his best Peter Pan pose, his hands on his hips and his red bandanna tucked into his waistband. “The day you have a good idea will be the day I eat fairy toe jam.”

“He said it was an idea. He never said it was a good one,” I scoffed. But my lips parted at the sudden prickling of magic. Like a blanket rubbing the wrong way, wild, elven magic scraped across my aura, both an irritant and an enticement, pulling at my pores as if trying to draw my soul from my body.

“Hey!” I shouted, knowing it was Trent. Elves were the only species that dared to use wild magic. Even demons shunned the art. It had a horrible unpredictability along with the horrible power. It couldn’t be the two elves on the floor. They had zip strips on. “Trent, no!” I did not have a clue as to what he was doing, and with a satisfied glint in his eyes, he clapped his hands.