I glanced uneasily between them while Jenks fought to hide an unknown emotion. I hadn’t known how long elves lived, and while I watched Ceri weave my hair into an elaborate chain that looped back into itself, I wondered how old Trent’s parents had been when they had him. A witch was fertile for about a hundred years, with a twenty-year lag on one end and forty at the tail end. I hadn’t had a period in two years, since things pretty much shut down unless there was a suitable candidate to stir things up. And as much as I liked Kisten, he wasn’t a witch to click the right hormones on. Seeing that elves had their origins in the ever-after, like witches, I was willing to bet their physiologies were closer to witch than human.

As if feeling Jenks’s distress, Matalina flitted in trailing three of their daughters and an unsteady toddler. “Jenks, dear,” she said, giving me an apologetic look. “The rain has slacked. I’m going to move everyone out so Rachel and Ivy can have some peace.”

Jenks’s hand dropped to his sword hilt. “I want to do a room-by-room check first.”

“No.” She flitted close and gave him a hovering kiss on the cheek. She looked happy and content, and I loved seeing her like that. “You stay here. The seals weren’t tampered with.”

My lower lip curled in to catch between my teeth. Jenks wasn’t going to like my next move. “Actually, Matalina, I’d like you to stay, if you could.”

Jenks jerked upward, a sudden wariness in him as he joined her, their wings somehow not tangling though they hovered side by side. “Why,” he said flatly.

“Ah …” I glanced at Ceri, who was muttering Latin and making gestures over my ring of hair at the center of a plate-sized pentacle she had sifted onto the counter with salt. I stifled a feeling of worry; knotting your hair made an unbreakable link to the donor. The ring of twisted hair vanished with a pop, replaced with a pile of ash. Apparently this was okay, since she smiled and carefully brushed it and the salt into the shot-glass-sized spell pot.

“Rachel …” Jenks prompted, and I tore my gaze from Ceri; she had tapped a line, and her hair was drifting in an unfelt breeze.

“She might want a say in this next spell,” I said. Nervous, I pulled the demon book closer and opened it to a page marked with the silk bookmark Ivy had gotten on sale last week.

Jenks hovered a good inch above the text, and Matalina gave a set of intent instructions to her daughters. With a whining toddler in tow, they darted out of the kitchen.

“Ceri,” I prompted cautiously, not wanting to interrupt her. “Is this one okay to do?”