Smiling, I waited with the door open until Jenks finished lighting the stairs for the youngest. Across the street, Keasley was sitting on his porch alone to hand out candy. Ceri had left at sunset for the basilica to pray for Quen, walking the distance as if in penance. My brow pinched, and as I shut the door, I wondered if things were really that bad. Maybe I shouldn’t have refused to see him after all.

“Ivy, you want a game?” I asked, tired of hitting the same balls around. She at least could sink them.

She looked up and shook her head. There was a clipboard on her drawn-up knees as she sat with her back to the arm of the couch. A broken mug filled with colored pencils was next to her, and she was trying to force spreadsheets and flowcharts to give us the answer as to who killed Kisten. My realization that it had been a man had revitalized her, and her night investigating yesterday had turned up only that Piscary had given Kisten to someone outside the camarilla. That meant we’d be looking for Kisten’s killer outside the city, since Piscary wouldn’t have given him to a lesser, local vampire. It was only a matter of time though before we’d know who it had been. When Ivy set her sights on prey, she never let go. No matter how long it took.

I ambled over to bug Ivy, since it was her favorite part of the movie and she needed a break. “Just one game,” I prodded. “I’ll rack ’em.”

Ivy’s brown eyes were peaceful as she curled her feet under her. “I’m working. Make Jenks big and play with him.”

I lifted my eyebrows, and from behind me at the desk still blissfully empty of his kids came Jenks’s bark of rude laughter. “Make me big,” he scoffed. “No fairy-loving way.”

Ivy’s attention slid to my wrist, where Kisten’s bracelet had been for the last three months, when I handed her the cue. It immediately flicked back to me, accusing, and I tightened my jaw. “You took off Kisten’s bracelet.”

My pulse increased and I let go of the cue stick. “I took it off,” I admitted, feeling the same flash of grief that I had worked through this afternoon when I had placed it in my jewelry box and shut the lid. “I didn’t throw it away. There’s a difference. Think about it,” I finished belligerently.

From behind me came a soft “Uh, ladies?” as Jenks flitted nervously between us. He had no clue what we had talked about while shopping. All he knew was we had left tense and returned with a jar of honey for him and a roll of wax paper for the kids to slide down the steeple on. And that’s all he was going to know.