“Can I get you anything else?” she asked, setting the bill between us, facedown.

Jenks clattered his wings for attention but didn’t take flight. “Would you mind if I browsed in your flowerpots? I’m just about dead on refined sugar and processed peanut butter.”

The woman’s brow pinched. “You’re welcome to what you can find, but it will be a mite thin. There’s been some singing in the rills lately. We’ve got a rove clan about somewheres. Not that they bother us big folk, but they might not take kindly to you.”

Jenks beamed. “I’ll be fine. Thanks,” he said, taking a slurp of his coffee to make his wings hum faster. “One more cup of coffee, and I could take on an entire fairy clan.”

“You just be careful,” she said as she went back to the kitchen.

The smell of my pancakes was heavenly, and shunning a knife and fork, I rolled the top one up in a tube and took a bite. Trent sighed heavily, carefully polishing his soup spoon with a paper napkin before taking a cautious taste.

His eyes blinked and started to water. “It’s hot. She gave me the spicy. This is good.” Still gasping, Trent started eating in earnest, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose on his napkin.

I doubted she gave him the hot. It was more likely that the mild was hotter than most volcanoes. The light shifted as the door opened, and I turned to see Vivian standing alone and small in the narrowing band of sun arching to nothing. Giving us a halfhearted wave, she shuffled to the bar and ordered something, putting her head down on her crossed arms when the waitress yelled back to the cook to make up a milk shake.

I chewed, looking at her slumped petite form at the bar, remembering her honesty at Loveland Castle, and then her phone call that had given me leverage with Oliver, the coven’s leader. When I’d first met her, she’d been polished and refined, wearing a cashmere coat and having a trendy bag. By the end of the week, she was begrimed, sore, and full of the knowledge that everything she’d been told had been a lie. Right now, she was somewhere in between, wearing jeans and a sweater that looked too hot. Everything was designer label, though, and her makeup, though thin, had been expertly applied.

“You mind if I ask her to join us?” I asked Trent, and he looked up, green eyes watering.

For an instant he was silent, and then his spoon clattered against the white porcelain. “Why not?” he said as he stood. “Since you’re so sure she’s not going to kill you. I’ve not yet made her acquaintance.”

“I was going to do it,” I said, but he’d already crossed the room.

“Why not?” Jenks mocked, his wings a bright red from the caffeine. “Get him away from Quen and he thinks he’s cock of the world.”

“You noticed that, too?” I said softly. “I like his new shoes.”