“Then you’d better get going,” I said, shoving him to the hallway. “Ellasbeth, where are they?”

The woman’s lips pressed together. Ivy’s eyes shifted to black, and Jenks’s wings clattered a warning. But then Lucy giggled, and Ellasbeth’s shoulders slumped. “He’s across the hall,” she said. “But you can’t stop him. He’s got like six men in there.”

Jenks snickered, and my eyes flicked to the one who had been guarding her. I was going to miss Trent’s help, but hell, I’d been doing this long before I learned he was worth my trust. And to be honest, it would be easier if I wasn’t worrying about him.

Ready, I looked at Ivy, waiting by the door. Jenks was hovering at her shoulder, and I knew we had this. “Go,” I said, and Trent shifted Lucy on his hip.

“Thank you,” he said, eyes glinting as he hesitated briefly in front of me before putting a hand on Ellasbeth’s back and hustling her out the door and down the hallway. We followed them in case there was trouble. Lucy was whispering loudly, but I didn’t think it would make it past the thick doors and soundproofed walls.

“Just like old times,” Jenks said, and I couldn’t help my smile as I checked my hopper.

“Old times,” I scoffed, relishing the adrenaline scouring through me. “We’ve only been doing this for three years.”

“Yeah, but for a pixy, that’s like a decade.”

Ivy was testing the edge of the knife Trent had given her. Her head came up and she tossed it, catching it again to hold it properly. She looked at the door and then cocked her head. “After you, Jenks?”

Jenks shrugged. “I can’t open it. It’s a manual.”

“Manual it is,” the vampire said, and with a soft grunt, she planted a side kick on the lock, exploding the door inward.

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

The thick, supposedly kick-proof door took two blows of Ivy’s boot before the lock broke free of the studs and the door slammed into the opposite wall. Men shouted, and Ivy dove in, hands in fists and screaming. Jenks was a hot sparkle of dust after her, and I followed as the thuds of fists into flesh exploded into the snap of a wrist or knee and a masculine bellow of outrage.

Yep, it was going to be one of those days.

I slid to a halt in the well-appointed, low-ceilinged, brightly lit room, half of it arranged as a dining room with a small kitchenette, the other half a comfortable living room complete with big TV and two couches. Ivy was rising from the man she’d just downed, her eyes full and black and her shirt torn. She grinned at the two men by the couch, beckoning them forward.