I rubbed my finger over Ivy’s dented signature, feeling the past. She had been innocent once. So had I. So Trent can tell me what the hell his dad did to me? Because I need him to say that I’m not a demon? So he can find a way to reverse it? “Because if I don’t,” I said softly, “everyone will think that I bought my freedom with his life.” Jenks snorted, and my blood pressure rose. “Because I promised I’d get him home,” I said more forcefully. “I’m not going to let him rot there.”

“Rachel…,” Jenks cajoled.

From her computer, Ivy glowered at him. “She promised to get him home if he paid for her way there and back. I don’t like it any more than you do, but you’re going to shut up and listen. If we can find a way, we’ll do it.”

“But he didn’t get her home,” Jenks protested. “She did that herself. And who cares if he rots in the ever-after?”

Ivy stiffened, and Ceri silently watched, evaluating.

“I care,” I said, pushing the crackers away and trying to get the cheese out of my teeth.

“Yeah, but Rache—”

“He’s not home!” I shouted, ticked. “That was the deal!”

Jenks’s feet hit the table, and he turned his back on me. Wings still, he bowed his head.

Ceri eased into the chair beside me and set an open spell book on the table. There was a pair of glasses perched on her nose and a pencil between her teeth. The pixies had braided her hair while I had cried in the shower, and she looked decidedly studious. She had reddened when I noticed her new glasses, but I hadn’t said anything. I think she was proud that she was aging again and needed them.

Frankly, I was surprised Ivy was siding with me. I’d like to think that it was because she considered holding to one’s word important, or because she thought Trent was worth going back for on his own merits, but the truth was Trent’s absence would cause big problems in Cincy’s underground power balance. Rynn Cormel flexing his muscles and reasserting control was something she wasn’t looking forward to. It’s harder to fall in love with a man when he’s killing people.

Glancing up, I blinked at the odd figure Ceri was idly tracing over and over on the yellow legal pad she had on the open spell book. I was sure the glyph was from a demon curse; there was a faint haze of black emanating from it. I caught her gaze, and she winced, drawing a circle around it to contain whatever force she had drawn into existence before crumpling the paper up, dropping it into her empty teacup, and setting fire to it with a ley line charm.