“Um,” I stammered. “I made a spell to turn myself into a mink and got put in the fights by mistake.” It wasn’t really a lie. I hadn’t planned it, so it was an accident. Really.

“You’re a witch?” he said, a smile curving over his face. “Cool. I wasn’t sure.”

A smile crossed me. I’d run into a few humans like him who thought Inderlanders were merely the other side to the humanity coin. Every time it was a surprise and a delight.

“What are those fights?” Ivy asked. “Some sort of crime clearinghouse where you can get rid of people without getting blood on your hands?”

Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so. Rachel was the first person I ran into. And I was there for three months.”

“Three months,” I said, appalled. “You were a rat for three months?”

He shifted in his chair and tightened the tie on his robe. “Yeah. I’m sure all my stuff has been sold to pay my back rent. But hey, I’ve got hands again.” He held them up, and I noticed that though thin, they were heavily callused.

I winced in sympathy. In the Hollows it was standard practice to sell your renter’s things if they disappeared. People went missing all too frequently. He didn’t have a job anymore, either, seeing as he was “fired” from his last one.

“You really live in a church?” he asked.

My gaze followed his, roving over the clearly institutional kitchen. “Yeah. Ivy and I moved in a few days ago. Don’t mind the bodies buried in the backyard.”

He smiled a charming half smile. God save me, but it made him look like a little lost boy. Ivy, at the sink again, snickered under her breath.

“Honey,” Jenks’s tiny voice moaned from the ceiling, jerking my attention upward. He peered down from the ladle, his wings blurring to nothing when he noticed Nick. Flying unsteadily, he almost fell to the table. I cringed, but Nick smiled.

“Jenks, right?” Nick asked.

“Baron,” Jenks said, stumbling as he tried to take his best Peter Pan pose. “Glad you can do something other than squeak. Gives me a headache. Squeak, squeak, squeak. That ultrasonic stuff goes right through my head.”

“It’s Nick. Nick Sparagmos.”

“So, Nick,” he said, “Rachel wants to know what it was like having balls as big as your head that drag on the floor.”

“Jenks!” I shouted. Oh, God help me. Head shaking violently in denial, I looked at Nick, but he seemed to have taken it in stride, his eyes glinting as his long face grinned.

Jenks took a hasty breath, darting out of the way as I made a snatch for him. He was rapidly regaining his balance. “Hey, that’s one bad-ass scar on your wrist,” he said quickly. “My wife—she’s a sweet girl—patches me up. She’s a wonder with her stitching.”

“Do you want something to put on your neck?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“No. It’s all right,” Nick said. He stretched out slowly, as if he were stiff, abruptly straightening when there was a soft touch on my slippered foot. I tried not to be too obvious as I looked him over. Jenks was a lot more blunt.