But the chance to walk away from the ever-after was irresistible.

Shifting my weight to my other foot, I cocked my hip, heart pounding. “You want me to get rid of Ku’Sox? Just what are you willing to give—Ollie? Or maybe I should say whom?”

Oliver’s eyes widened. “Me?” he stammered, and I almost laughed.

“You?” I said derisively as Vivian steeled her expression back to neutrality. “You’re not good for anything but bussing tables. What I want is all charges on me and my team dropped, every hint of my shunning exonerated, and I want you to publicly apologize to me and my family while standing in Fountain Square,” I said, looking straight at Oliver. “I want what you promised me last year, and I want you to kiss my lily. White. Ass.”

“Never,” he whispered, and the slump of cloth in the shadows scrambled to life.

“Give her what she wants!” Leon shrieked, launching himself at Oliver. “You promised it would be okay!” As they went down, Leon straddled him and his hands thumped Oliver’s head into the stage floor. “You said to vote with you, and it would be okay, and now Wyatt and Amanda are dead! They are dead, Oliver! He ate them!”

“Leon! Stop!” Vivian cried, grabbing the hysterical man and pulling him away. Oliver’s foot hit the circle, and it fell with a tingling wash. Immediately I stepped over the line, back and away from them and into the shadows. No one but Pierce saw. Everyone else was focused on Oliver, who was getting to his feet and holding his face where Leon had hit his head on the floor, his eyes dark and venomous.

“You promised!” Leon raged, huddled again and looking like a feral beast. “I trusted you. We all trusted you. And now we’re all dead!”

In the distance, the sound of falling rock grew and died, and the earth trembled.

“Where’s my team?” I asked, missing Jenks’s wiseass comments and Ivy’s steady support. “But most of all,” I said, free of the circle, “where is Trent Kalamack?”

Oliver blanched, his next words choked back when he realized I was free. “You want him? You want us to give him to you? My God, you are a demon.”

Pierce bowed his head, but I didn’t care what he thought. I didn’t want Trent for a familiar, I wanted five minutes alone with him to find out what I’d done wrong with that curse…or punch him in the mouth. It depended on what came out of it when I saw him. Give Ku’Sox the curse, he says. You’re the only one who can, he says. Stupid elf.

Oliver started in on his overdone theatrics—something about getting me in a circle or they would all die—and Vivian left Leon looking at his blood-caked fingernails and mumbling to himself to argue with Oliver about morality and reality. I didn’t see what the big deal was if I was in a circle or not. They were probably all going to die if Ku’Sox was eating witches. That was just nasty.