“No!” His wings clattered as he understood what I was saying. “It’s hours until sunset. Don’t ask me to leave you!”

I dropped down to grab Ivy’s elbow to help her stand up. “I’m sorry, Ivy. You have to help me get you to the line.”

“But she can hardly walk!”

“Which means she still can!” I shouted, and Ivy clutched at me, halfway to a stand and heavy in my grip. “Jenks, please,” I said softly, and he hovered, helpless and angry, before us. “I can’t jump on my own and Bis can’t find me. You have to tell him where we are.”

Slowly his expression shifted from anger to a frustrated understanding. “Keep her alive,” he said, and I nodded, again making promises I couldn’t keep.

Scared, I turned to the vampires watching suspiciously. Behind them, Cincinnati drowsed in the late afternoon sun. Al could have jumped us right to Trent’s, or the hospital, or the church. But I wasn’t one of them any longer. The break with the demons had been clean—even if the jagged edges of it still dug into my soul in the quiet parts of the night.

Breath held against the pain, Ivy got her weight over her feet and wavered to a rise. I felt her clench in agony as she fought to keep from coughing, her grip on me hurting. She took one breath, then another. Head up, she stared at the men ringing us. At the bridge, the woman finally got out of the water, dripping and bleeding from scratches and with a malevolent gleam in her eye. Five now.

I sucked in the line energy, feeling it hiccup and stutter. Does Al know I’m using his line? I wondered, feeling Al’s utter abandonment of me again—jealousy, heartache, and hatred too much for him to forgive.

“Let me go, Ivy. I have to fight,” I whispered, and after the briefest of hesitations, she did, her eyes closing as she uncrimped her fingers from around my arm. I could tell it had taken all her resolve, and she swallowed her saliva back, refusing to give in to her instincts—but instincts die last and hard.

“I like it when you say my name,” she said as her eyes opened. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Shit. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. “I’m glad,” I whispered, wishing my knees weren’t shaking. “I’m going to have to kick some ass. Can you get to the statue on your own? Maybe critique me when it’s over?”

“Over a beer,” she said. Her hand wasn’t so tight against her middle. I didn’t know a charm for this. I had nothing.

Ivy slowly lost her balance and leaned into me again, unable to stand on her own. She wasn’t going to make it, no matter what happened, and I shoved my panic down deep. “Thank you, Jenks,” I whispered.

His wings clattered, and he wouldn’t look at me, that same black dust sifting from him and making my skin tingle. I held Ivy close, the chill of her pressing into me as her head hung down and her breathing grew shallow. She was close to passing out. Slowly I lifted my chin and found the eyes of the waiting vampire.