Eyebrows rising, I watched Jenks tug his green silk gardening jacket down. “You think I’m going to take a spell without knowing what’s in it?” he said.

“Jenks helped you make it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter who makes it, as long as you kindle it.” Pale face smiling tiredly, she nodded to the potion and finger stick.

Moving slowly, I rose and went to Jenks’s spell. The crack of the safety seal on the finger stick breaking was loud.

“Use your Jupiter finger,” Ceri advised. “It will add the strength of your will to it.”

It made a difference? I wondered, feeling ill from more than lack of sleep as I pricked my finger for three drops of blood. Kisten stirred in the living room when they went plopping into the spell pot and the scent of burnt amber rose. Jenks’s wings blurred to motion, and I held my breath, waiting for something to happen. Nothing. But I had to say the “magic words” first.

“Done,” Ceri said, slumping where she sat.

My eyes went to Kisten’s lanky form when he strode into the kitchen, barefoot and rumpled. “Afternoon, ladies,” he said, pulling the pizza box closer and dropping the last stiff slice on a plate. He wasn’t the first guy to have a toothbrush at my sink, but he was the only one to have kept it there this long, and I felt good seeing him here in his disheveled, untucked-shirt state, content and comfortable.

“Coffee?” I asked, and he nodded, clearly not functioning on all levels yet as he dragged the plate from the table and headed into the hall, scratching the bristles on his jawline.

I jumped when Kisten pounded on Ivy’s door and shouted, “Ivy! Get up! Here’s your breakfast. Rachel is leaving, and you’d better hurry if you want to see Jenks change.”

So much for coffee, toast, juice, and a flower, I thought, hearing Ivy’s voice rise in disgust before Kisten shut her door and cut off her complaints. Ceri looked mystified, and I shook my head to tell her it wasn’t worth explaining. I went to clean the coffeemaker, turning the water to a trickle when Kisten thunked my bathroom door shut and my shower started.

“So, we going to do this, Jenks?” I prompted while I swirled the water around.

His wings shading to blue, Jenks landed by the shot-glass-sized cup of brew. “I drink it?”

Ceri nodded. “Once it’s in you, Rachel will invoke it. Nothing will happen until then.”

“All of it?” I asked, eyes widening. “It’s like, what, a gallon in pixy terms?”

Jenks shrugged. “I drink that much sugar water for breakfast,” he said, and my brow furrowed. If he drank like that, we might be stopping every hour anyway.