Glenn scratched his jawline, his short beard making a rasping sound under his nail. “You run your agency out of a house?”

I sighed at his patronizing lilt. “Sort of. Anywhere here is fine.”

He pulled to the curb at Keasley’s house, the neighborhood’s “wise old man” who had both the medical equipment and know-how of a small emergency room for those who could keep their mouths shut about it. Across the street was a small stone church, its steeple rising high above two gigantic oaks. It sat on an unreal four city lots and had come with its own graveyard.

Renting out a defunct church hadn’t been my idea but Ivy’s. Seeing tombstones out the small stained-glass window of my bedroom had taken a while to get used to, but the kitchen it came with made up for having dead humans buried in the backyard.

Glenn cut the engine, and the new silence soaked in. I scanned the surrounding yards before I got out, a habit begun during my not-so-distant death threats, which I thought prudent to continue. Old man Keasley was on his porch as usual, rocking and keeping a sharp eye on the street. I gave him a wave and got a raised hand in answer. Satisfied he would have warned me if I had needed it, I got out and opened the back door for my canister of fish.

“I’ll get it, ma’am,” Glenn said as his door thumped shut.

I gave him a tired look over the car’s roof. “Drop the ma’am, will you? I’m Rachel.”

His attention went over my shoulder and he visibly stiffened. I whipped around expecting the worst, relaxing as a cloud of pixy children descended in a high-pitched chorus of conversation too fast for me to follow. Papa Jenks had been missed—as usual. My sour mood evaporated as the darting swooping figures in pale green and gold swirled about their dad in a Disney nightmare. Glenn took his sunglasses off, his brown eyes wide and his lips parted.

Jenks made a piercing whistle with his wings, and the horde broke enough for him to hover before me. “Hey, Rache,” he said. “I’ll be out back if you want me.”

“Sure.” I glanced at Glenn and muttered, “Is Ivy here?”

The pixy followed my gaze to the human and grinned, undoubtedly imagining what Ivy would do when meeting Captain Edden’s son. Jax, Jenks’s eldest child, joined his father. “No, Ms. Morgan,” he said, pitching his preadolescent voice deeper than it normally fell. “She’s doing errands. The grocery store, the post office, the bank. She said she’d be back before five.”

The bank, I thought, wincing. She was supposed to wait until I had the rest of my rent. Jax flew three circles about my head, making me dizzy. “ ’Bye, Ms. Morgan,” he called out, zipping off to join his siblings, who were escorting their dad to the back of the church and the oak stump Jenks had moved his very large family into.