My attention darted to my thigh. It was throbbing like the devil, but at least the bleeding had stopped. “Where’s Ivy? Nina?”

“About five minutes ahead of us,” Trent said as he looked at Jenks sitting on my palm, trembling from the cold and shock.

“Lucy?” I asked as he stood.

“With Ellasbeth,” he said shortly as he lifted me to my feet.

The blood rushed from my head and I stood for a moment, wavering. I could hear noise in the street. The lines were gone. Magic was dead. We’d be lucky to get out of Cincinnati before midnight. “You think giving her to Ellasbeth was a good idea?”

Trent tucked a shoulder under mine. “I think you were right about her and I was wrong. Can you walk?”

Jaw clenched, I took a hobbling step to the door. “I might have broke something.”

“I think so, too. We should get out of here.”

Nauseated and holding Jenks close, I limped to the door. The demons were safe, but I’d killed the source of magic to do it. That probably wasn’t going to go over very well.

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

I leaned hard against Trent as the elevator lurched and settled. My leg throbbed, and I cupped a depressed pixy tight to me. I knew Jenks was thinking about his kids, scattered over the city, and Jumoke and Izzy at Trent’s estate. If he couldn’t fly, then they couldn’t either. There were no predators in Trent’s gardens, but that wasn’t what Jenks would be worried about. It was the natural magic from free-ranging mystics that gave pixies flight, and there wasn’t enough of them around anymore. The Goddess was pissed, having gathered her untold thousands of eyes to her and gone brooding somewhere, plotting to kill me.

Or at least most of them, I thought as a tingle passed between Trent and me as the ornate doors slid apart. Noise spilled in, and what little zest I had left for the day vanished as I saw the FIB hats and I.S. vests in the lobby. “What happened?” I asked as Jenks perked up, a faint dust hazing him.

“Looks like someone made a call.” Trent scooped me up and carried me out when I balked. There were too many people, and I was sure more than one of them wanted to talk to me in ugly, accusing voices. My bleeding leg was obvious, and Trent started for the front desk. Both an I.S. and an FIB cop were interviewing a tearful hotel employee, and the restaurant to the left was full of sullen Weres. One of them caught sight of me, jiggling his buddy’s elbow before grinning and giving me a bunny-eared kiss-kiss.