Peri hung up, jerking back when a ball of glowing dust short-stopped two inches in front of her face. “Son of a fairy fart. How are we going to get home now?” Jenks complained, and Peri rocked back, not liking him that close. “I hope that was just nice-nice talk to get us in there.”

“It was.” Peri glanced at Rachel as she sat on the raised hearth, elbows on her knees, head in her hands. Jack’s coat hung open on her wide shoulders. “It isn’t going to be easy, though. We have to get the accelerator out of his pocket, send you home, then I have to get it back in his pocket without him knowing I had it. He won’t dare put it in his car safe, much less anywhere else off his person.”

Jenks’s wings clattered, and Rachel’s head snapped up. “Ah, the accelerator comes with us,” Rachel said as Jenks swung a low path back to her. “I thought you knew that.”

Peri’s lips parted. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. No one said anything about giving it to you. I thought you were just going to use it and I could put it back.”

“We can make a fake one to switch them out. It’s not a big deal,” Rachel said tiredly. “And before you freak out, I’m not after your precious accelerator. If I was, I wouldn’t have left it here and gone to the mall looking for a ley line. I just want to go home.”

Peri’s eyes narrowed as she thought about how Rachel had been in their apartment, waiting for them. But then there was Jenks . . . She’d seen him appear from nothing. And that man in the mall with goat-slitted eyes and wearing green velvet. She hadn’t imagined that. And she wasn’t drugged. She’d swear to it.

“Hey, you owe Rache,” Jenks said, and Peri jerked back, surprised when he darted to her. “You pulled her out of her reality. It’s up to you to get her back. Sorry if it needs a super-special magic ball.”

“Take it easy, Jenks.” Rachel stood, looking glum in her black sequins. “Peri will do the right thing.”

The pixy lost altitude, his mood easy to read. But Peri had just spent two weeks prepping for the task, risked her life, her partner’s. Bill had it. It was safe. To negate that . . . How could she?

“I can’t just give it to you,” Peri said, not liking her plaintive tone. “It belongs to Event Horizon. They invested billions developing it. That’s why Jack and I were contracted to steal it back for them.”

Rachel turned from the window, arms around her middle. “And that’s why it’s in Bill’s pocket?”