“Hi, Jax. Is your dad awake?” I asked, offering him a hand to alight upon.

“Ms. Rachel?” he said, his breath fast as he landed. “They’re waiting for you.”

My heart gave a thump. “How many? Where?”

“Three.” He was glowing pale green in excitement. “Up front. Big guys. Your size. Stink like foxes. I saw them when old man Keasley chased them off his sidewalk. I would’ve told you sooner,” he said urgently, “but they didn’t cross the street, and we already stole the rest of their splat balls. Papa said not to bother you unless someone came over the wall.”

“It’s okay. You did good.” Jax took flight as I eased into motion. “I was going to cut across the backyard and pick up the bus on the other side of the block anyway.” I squinted in the faint light, giving Jenks’s stump a soft tap. “Jenks,” I said softly, grinning at the almost subliminal roar of irritation that flowed from the old ash stump. “Let’s go to work.”

Ten

The pretty woman sitting across from me on the bus stood to get off. She paused, standing too close to me for comfort, and I looked up from Ivy’s book. “Table 6.1,” she said as I met her gaze. “It’s all you need to know.” Her eyes closed, and she shuddered as if in pleasure.

Embarrassed, I thumbed to the back. “Jiminy Cricket,” I whispered. It was a table of accessories and suggested uses. My face warmed. I wasn’t a prude, but some of it … and with a vampire? Maybe with a witch. If he was drop-dead gorgeous. Without the blood. Maybe.

I jerked as she crouched in the aisle. Leaning far too close, she dropped a black business card into the open book. “In case you want a second,” she whispered, smiling with a quick kinship I didn’t understand. “Newbies shine like stars, bringing out the best in them. I don’t mind playing second fiddle to your first night. And I could help you … afterward. Sometimes they forget.” A flash of fear crossed her, quick but very real.

Jaw hanging, I could say nothing as she stood and walked away and down the stairs.

Jenks flitted close, and I snapped the book shut. “Rache,” he said as he landed on my earring. “Whatcha reading? You’ve had your nose in it since we got on the bus.”

“Nothing,” I said, feeling my pulse hammer. “That woman. She was human, right?”

“The one talking to you? Yeah. By the smell of it, she’s a vamp flunky. Why?”

“No reason,” I said as I shoved the book to the bottom of my bag. I was never reading this thing in public again. Fortunately, my stop was next. Ignoring Jenks’s nonstop inquisition, I strode into the mall’s food court. My long coat flapped about my ankles as I immersed myself in the hustle of predawn Sunday shopping. I invoked my old lady disguise in the bathroom, hoping to throw off anyone who might have recognized me. Still, I thought it prudent to lose myself in a crowd before I headed to the I.S.: kill some time, gather my courage, pick up a hat to replace the one of Ivy’s I’d lost today—buy some soap to cover any lingering smell of her on me.