Ivy and I stared at each other through the ugly light. “What the hell?” Ivy whispered, and Jenks’s eyes cleared. He turned to us, touched his head in salute, and slowly collapsed.

“Jenks!” Ivy and I cried, jolted into motion. Ivy got there first. She cupped Jenks into her hands and turned to me with a panicked look. “What do I do?” she cried.

“How should I know?” I shouted back. “Is he breathing?”

There was a sound of jangling wind chimes, and Jenks’s wife darted into the room, trailing a wake of at least a dozen pixy children. “Your living room is clean,” she said brusquely, her silk fog-colored cloak billowing to a stop around her. “No charms. Take him there. Jhem, go turn the light on ahead of Ms. Ivy, then help Jinni fetch my kit here. Jax, take the rest of this lot through the church. Start in the belfry. Don’t miss a crack. The walls, the pipes, the cable and phone lines. Watch the owls, and mind you check that priest hole. You even think you smell a spell or one of those fairies, you sing out. Clear? Now go.”

The pixy children scattered. Ivy, too, obediently followed the tiny woman’s order and hotfooted it into the living room. I would have thought it amusing but for Jenks unmoving on her palm. Limping, I followed them.

“No, love,” the tiny woman directed as Ivy went to set Jenks on a cushion. “The end table, please. I need a hard surface to cut against.”

Cut against? I thought, moving Ivy’s magazines off the table and onto the floor to make room. I sat down on the closest chair and tilted the lamp shade. My adrenaline was fading, leaving me light-headed and cold in my flannel pajamas. What if Jenks was really hurt? I was shocked he had actually killed two fairies. He had killed them. I had put people in the hospital before, sure, but kill someone? I thought back to my fear as I huddled in the dark next to a tense vampire and wondered if I could do the same.

Ivy set Jenks down as if he were made of tissue paper, then backed to the door. Her tall stance hunched, making her look nervous and out of place. “I’ll check outside,” she said.

Mrs. Jenks smiled, showing an ageless warmth in her smooth, youthful features. “No, love,” she said. “It’s safe now. We have at least a full day before the I.S. can find another fairy clan willing to breach our lines. And there’s not enough money to get pixies to invade other pixies’ gardens. It just proves fairies are uncouth barbarians. But you go search if you like. The youngest bairn could dance among the flowers this morning.”

Ivy opened her mouth as if to protest, then realizing the pixy was entirely serious, she dropped her eyes and slipped out the back door.

“Did Jenks say anything before he passed out?” Mrs. Jenks asked as she arranged him so his wings were awkwardly splayed. He looked like a pinned bug on display, and I felt ill.