“No light there,” Jenks slurred. “Broke ’em.” He blinked, struggling to focus. “Sorry.”

Worried, I cupped my hand over him, ignoring his muffled protests. “Jax,” I said, “get your mom.” He grabbed his father’s sword and darted out just below the ceiling. “Ivy?” I called as I edged my way through the dark hall. “What do you know about pixies?”

“Apparently not enough,” she said from right behind me, and I jumped.

I elbowed the light switch as I entered the kitchen. Nothing. The lights were busted.

“Wait,” Ivy said. “There’s glass all over the floor.”

“How can you tell?” I said in disbelief, but I hesitated, not willing to chance my bare feet in the dark. Ivy brushed past me in a whisper of black, and I shuddered as the breeze of her passage chilled me. She was going vampy. There was the crunch of glass, and the fluorescent bulb over the oven flickered into life, illuminating the kitchen in an uncomfortable glow.

Thin, fluorescent lightbulb glass littered the floor. There was a pungent haze in the air. My eyebrows rose as I realized it was a cloud of fairy dust. It caught in my throat, and I put Jenks on the counter before I sneezed and accidentally dropped him.

Breath held, I picked my way to the window to open it farther. Mr. Fish was laying helpless in the sink, his bowl shattered. I gingerly plucked him from between the thick shards, filling a plastic cup and plunking him in. Mr. Fish wiggled, shuddered, and sank to the bottom. Slowly his gills moved back and forth. He was okay.

“Jenks?” I said, turning to find him standing where I had left him. “What happened?”

“We got ’em,” he said, barely audible, listing to the side.

Ivy took the broom from the pantry and began sweeping the glass into a pile.

“They thought I didn’t know they were there,” Jenks continued as I rummaged for some tape, starting as I found a severed fairy wing. It looked like a Luna moth’s wing rather than a dragonfly’s. The scales rubbed off on my fingers, staining them green and purple. I carefully set the wing aside. There were several very complicated spells that called for fairy dust.

Jeez, I thought, turning away. I was going to be sick. Someone had died, and I was considering using part of him to spell.

“Little Jacey spotted them first,” Jenks said, his voice falling into an eerie cadence. “On the far side of the human graves. Pink wings in the lowering moon as the earth slipped ’round her silver light. They reached our wall. Our lines were strung. We held our land. What’s said is done.”

Bewildered, I looked at Ivy standing silent with her unmoving broom. Her eyes were wide. This was weird. Jenks wasn’t swearing; he sounded poetic. And he wasn’t done.

“The first went down beneath the oak, stung by the taste of steel in his blood. The second on holy ground did fall, stained with the cries of his folly. The third in the dust and salt did fail, sent back to his master, a silent warning given.” Jenks looked up, clearly not seeing me. “This ground is ours. So it is said with broken wing, poisoned blood, and our unburied dead.”