“Oh God,” Jenks moaned. “You’re thinking about him. I can tell. Your aura shifted.”

Embarrassed, I halted at the crosswalk, waiting for the light. “It did not.”

“It did,” he complained, but I knew he crabbed because he couldn’t say he was happy for me lest he jinx it somehow. “So it’s been like what, three months? Does he still curl your toes?”

“Totally,” I said, and he made a rude noise at my blissful smile. “He’s a total toe curler.”

“Awww, this is sweeter than pixy piss,” he said with false sarcasm. “All my girls happy. I can’t tell you the last time that happened.”

My smile widened, and I pushed the walk button as if that might hurry it along. “I think it was when—”

The unmistakable sound of tires screaming on pavement iced through me. My breath caught, and I turned. Jenks was gone, his white-hot sparkles seeming to burn an airborne trail back the way we’d come. A woman screamed for help, and I jumped back when a black sedan roared past me, the front fender dented. Somehow I knew, like when a picture falls off the wall, or the clock stops ticking.

“Ivy,” I whispered, then turned and ran.

Chapter 2

The thumps of my feet on the pavement jarred up my spine. Dodging people turning to look, I followed Jenks’s fading dust. My heart seemed to stop when I turned the corner and saw Ivy crumpled in the street. Marsha and Luke were standing looking down at her, dazed. A car stopped even as I watched, and a man got out, white faced, his phone in hand.

“Call 911!” I shouted as I slid to the pavement beside Ivy. Shit. Ivy. She had to be alive. I shouldn’t have left you.

Jenks was a frantic, darting shape as he dusted the blood from a scalp wound. She’d hit her head. Her chest moved shallowly, and her legs were twisted. I was afraid to touch her, and my hands hovered over her, reminding me of Marsha standing over Luke.

Pain charm! I thought frantically as I searched my bag. Fingers fumbling, I dropped the charm over her head. I was putting a Band-Aid on a concussion, when she took a clean breath.

“Did you call 911?” I exclaimed as a pair of Meris dress shoes scuffed before us.

“No hospital.”

Her voice was soft, almost not there, and both Jenks and I looked at Ivy. She was pale, and pain pinched her still-closed eyes. That was good, right? She wasn’t unconscious, even if her eyes were closed. Damn it, I should have learned how to make a healing curse! But Al was gone and it was too late.

“Ivy.” I brushed her hair back, my fingers trembling. They came away warm and red, and my fear redoubled. She’d hit her head badly enough that Jenks’s dust wasn’t stopping it. “Ivy!” I called when her eyes didn’t open. More people were ringing us. “Look at me, damn it! Look at me! Can you move your fingers and toes?”