Frustrated, I backed up a step, wanting to look at Trent but not daring to take my eyes off Cormel. “Did you not hear Felix?” I said, looking from him to the scared vampires behind him. “Your own people have doubts, enough that an entire camarilla stood up to you to stop me from even trying. The elves think you can’t survive with your souls either. That’s why they taught me the charm to fix a soul to an unwilling body in the first place. They want you to kill yourselves so they can step into the vacuum of power you will leave behind.”

Cormel’s eyes flicked behind me, and I heard Trent sigh.

“It wasn’t Trent who told me the charm, it was Landon,” I griped. “Cormel, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but listen to me,” I pleaded, but Cormel turned to look behind him at his people. “We can’t always have what we want. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

He sniffed, unable to believe I might know what I was talking about. “You gained this knowledge of fixing souls from the dewar?”

I hesitated, wondering if it had been a mistake bringing up the elves, but if Cormel had followed me here, then he knew who’d been going in and out of my church. I nodded, heart pounding. He was making a decision. I could tell. And I probably wasn’t going to like it.

“Prove to me that a soul of the undead can again be fixed. Do that, and I will call the debt you and Ivy have accumulated null.”

I shivered at his expression, both riven with a coming pain and hopeful that I might be lying. “It will send Felix into the sun,” I breathed, and those in the front whispered my words in a rising wave to those in the back, gaining strength and fear as it went.

Cormel dropped his head. His eyes were a normal brown when they met mine again. “He’s halfway there already,” he said in regret. “We will do this at my house.”

Trent scuffed forward with Nina, but I didn’t move. I was not going to go under the ground with him. I might never come back up. “No,” I said, and Cormel jerked to a halt.

“Are you suggesting we fix his soul here?” he said bitterly, indicating the cold darkness. “I won’t do this here, nor at your church, nor at any elf holding,” he finished, grimacing at Trent.

We needed a neutral place, and unfortunately one was staring at me just across the open grass. “Luke and Marsha’s,” I suggested, and I swear I heard Jenks dart off to check it out.

Cormel grimaced, but it was nearby, and I might even be able to sit down. “Neither one of them is my child.”