Slipping out of his cuffs, Jenks levered himself to sit beside me on the tailgate, a pained grunt coming from him. “You okay?” I asked, though clearly he wasn’t.

“Bruise,” he said, eyes fixed to Nick’s blue truck. With an obnoxious beeping, the wrecker backed up to it.

“Here,” I said, pulling my bag around and starting to rummage. “I’ve got an amulet. Ivy never takes any of my amulets, and I’m not used to you being big enough to use them.”

“Why aren’t you using it?” he said, stretching his shoulder with a pained look.

“I have no right to,” I said, my throat closing when I glanced at Peter. I was glad he wasn’t trying to convince me otherwise, and I hardly felt the prick of the finger stick for the blood to invoke it. Ivy shifted, telling me she had noticed the fresh blood despite the wind, but she was the last vamp I had anything to be worried about. Usually.

“Thanks,” he said as he draped it over his head in obvious relief. “I wonder if there’s any way you can make tiny amulets? I’m going to miss these.”

“It’s worth a try,” I said, thinking that unless that truck spontaneously combusted from Ivy’s glare, I’d have about a week to find out. Once the Weres realized the artifact was fake, they’d be knocking on my door. Assuming I didn’t land in jail. I felt as if we were three kids standing outside the principal’s office. Not that I had any experience in that area. Much.

Nick’s truck went atop the wrecker in a horrendous noise of whining winches and complaining hydraulic machinery. The garage guy moved slowly, his dirty blue overalls and cap pulled down low, pressing levers and buttons seemingly at random. The overzealous I.S. guy was telling him to hustle and get his vehicle out of the way before the first news van arrived.

The driver walked with a limp, almost unnoticed amid the FIB and I.S. uniforms, and I thought it rude they made the old man move faster than he comfortably could.

Someone had moved one of the massive construction lights to illuminate the area, and as the distant generators rumbled to life a quarter mile away, a soft glow swelled into a harsh glare, washing out the gray of the fading sunset. Slowly the background rumble became unnoticed. Mind whirling for an idea, I dropped the spent finger stick in my shoulder bag and sighed.

I froze, fingers brushing the familiar objects in my bag. Something was missing besides the remote. Shocked, I stared into the dark fabric bag, tilting it so the growing light would illuminate what it could. The sight of my things scattered on the grating when Nick knocked me down passed through my mind. “It’s gone,” I said, feeling unreal. I looked up, meeting first Jenks’s and then Ivy’s wondering gaze as she pulled herself away from the vehicle.

“The wolf statue is gone!” I said, trying to decide if I should laugh or curse that I had been right in not trusting Nick. “The bastard took it. He knocked me down and took it!” I had been right to leave the totem shoved between Jenks’s silk underwear and his dozen toothbrushes. Damn it, I’d have been happy to have been wrong this one time.