Panting, I lurched to my feet and dropped the ruined lipstick on his chest. He whimpered, his synapses singed. He wouldn’t be doing magic any time soon. Turning to the park, I pushed myself into a staggering, ugly run.

I did not like St. Louis.

Six

Rache!” Jenks shrilled, scaring the crap out of me as he darted down from the tall trees.

“God, Jenks!” I yelped, heart racing as I paused, a hand on the tree beside me. “You scared me. Where’s Trent?”

Dripping red dust, he hovered before me, taking in my haggard appearance and accepting it, knowing better than to ask what had happened. I was here, the assassin wasn’t. It was enough for Jenks, and right now, it was enough for me. “In a hole in the ground,” he said, and tension hit me. “Some kind of gardener’s bunker. It was his idea. I told him to find Ivy, but he wouldn’t listen. They’re going to find him, Rache! It’s not my fault! He wouldn’t listen!”

I panted, turning to look back the way I’d come. “Show me,” I said, and he darted away, dusting heavily so I could follow at my own limping pace. “If that man gets himself killed, I’m going to pound him!” I muttered, starting up the gentle incline.

The back of my mind registered how cool and restful it was here, the grass thick and well maintained. The trees were huge, rising high overhead like a distant ceiling. Seagulls called, swarming a crying kid with a box of animal crackers. Breathless, I caught sight of two men vanishing behind a row of tall shrubs.

Damn it, I don’t want to do this again.

My shoulder bag held tight to me, I ran after them, seeing Jenks’s faint trail leading down a damp sidewalk. Ahead of me, the two men stood at a bunkerlike door built right into a wall of earth. In the distance, one of the arch’s huge legs rose up. Oblivious to me, the men slipped inside—and the door swung shut.

I slid to a panting halt before the brown-painted steel door, listening as I struggled to catch my breath and tried the handle. Locked—and not with a spell, which I could break, but probably with a mundane dead bolt from the inside. At least Jenks was in there.

“Damn it!” I hissed, dropping back and digging my phone out of my pocket. “Answer me, Ivy,” I said as I hit the button and wrenched on the door at the same time.

“Right behind you,” came her voice, and I spun.

“Where…,” I started, then shoved the thought out of my head. “The door,” I babbled, dropping the phone into my bag. “Two of them. In there with Trent.”

Ivy motioned for me to back up, and she gave the knob a side kick, yelling for strength. I heard metal snap, and I wasn’t surprised when the knob came away in her grip as she gave it a tug and the door opened. God, I had good friends.