“Oh, you did it now!” Newt crowed, kicking that gun under the amp and almost dancing as she lurched to me and hauled me to my feet. Everyone in the square was picking themselves up. It was so quiet you could hear individual people and the whine of a siren.

“Mystics?” Al said, again at my elbow, but he wasn’t talking to me, and Newt nodded.

My heart seemed to both sink and expand. Mystics. I couldn’t hear them, but clearly they were here with me. And if they had found me, then so would ... the Goddess.

“Oh no,” I whispered, scrambling to hide, to run, but Newt held my arm, forcing me to stay still and face the crowd.

“Just ... let me,” she almost snarled, her lips inches away as she pinched my arm. “Let me in, Rachel.”

And panicked, I did, wiggling as I felt her siphon off some of the energy in my chi to shift my aura to hide me for a few moments more. As soon as the Goddess figured out she could find me by the mystics circling me, I was a goner.

“Bloody Band-Aid,” Newt said, eyeing the dispersing crowd. “I feel better already. Al?”

Someone in an FIB hat was beckoning us to the stairway. Numb, I shuffled that way. The crowd was scattering now as the cops started arresting them en masse, cuffing everyone and making them kneel in rows.

“Well, I’m not going to say this is a good thing,” Al grumped, and I gasped when Newt clenched my arm.

“Not good!” she snapped. “The lines are broken and you’re still going to hold to outdated beliefs based on a war that not even you remember the cause of?”

“It’s elven magic,” he whined, looking pathetic.

“Both of you shut up,” I said as I saw Trent. Oh God, he had Jenks with him, and I almost fell off the stage trying to get to them. The crowd was dispersing. They even had an ambulance, and I felt sick as I realized the medical people were clustered about that man who’d been shot. Another, very loud group of FIB agents was reading the rights to the man who’d shot him, his broken hand bound before him, bleeding and ugly. Maybe the shot man was still alive.

“Trent!” I called, and he reached out. I fell into his arms, burrowing my head against his shoulder as I shook. “They were going to kill me!” I sobbed as Jenks’s wings clattered. “What is wrong with them!”

“Shhh, you’re okay,” he soothed, and I pulled my head up, sniffing and sniveling as Al stiffly handed me a cloth handkerchief. “Next time, can we stop the lynch mob some other way?”

“Jenks, you’re flying,” I said, and the satisfied pixy landed on Newt’s shoulder.