Jenks’s dust shifted blue. “Keep my dust off your talismans and sit down.”

“Then do it,” she said, letting him go.

Jenks darted up to the ceiling, making a high flight to the window, where he sat on one of her plants and sulked.

Peri primly fixed her doll, blowing the last of the dust off it and turning to find Rachel behind her. One of Peri’s small copper mixing bowls was in her hand. The woman was stealthy, she’d give her that.

“I don’t know which is more impressive,” Rachel said softly. “That you caught Jenks, or that you tricked him into telling you what you forgot.”

Warming, Peri glanced at Jenks and back again. “Was it that obvious?”

Rachel shook her head, lips pressed. “No. Peri, you are the most powerful, vulnerable human I know outside of Ford. I’m glad this happened. You deserve to know the truth.”

“I do know the truth,” Peri said indignantly.

“Holy troll turds, Rache!” Jenks exclaimed, hovering before the window with his hands on his hips. “Those lights are flying machines. I thought they were fairies!”

Rachel was looking at an orb of crystal Peri had picked up in Arizona. It held the memory of one of her earlier tasks, before she’d met Jack, even. “Can I use that?” Rachel asked.

Crystals, Peri thought derisively as she nodded, but it was the tripod the crystal was sitting on that Rachel took, carefully setting the chunk of quartz down so it wouldn’t roll off the shelf.

“And this?” Rachel asked, pointing at one of Peri’s candles on the coffee table as she took off Jack’s coat and set up the tripod and mixing bowl.

“Sure.” Peri came closer, sitting across from her. “Don’t you need a spell book?”

Rachel smiled with half her face. “Usually, but I’ve gotten good at adapting spells.” She sat down, arranging the candle under the cradled pot like a little campfire.

“Yeah,” Jenks said as he came away from the window. “Remember that time you tried to adapt a charm to straighten your hair and it turned into wire?” The little man laughed, pushing himself backward in the air. “Al had to reset her to her filed DNA to fix it. She lost all her pack tattoos.”

Rachel shot him a dark look. “My mom is better at it than me, but sympathetic magic is pretty forgiving, and that’s what we’ll be using here, since the ley lines are nonfunctioning.” She resettled herself, looking odd in her sequins and falling hair. “How are the mystics, Jenks?”

He shrugged as he alighted on the table. “Collecting. Talking to each other now. Their energy is still pretty thin. It’s like trying to fly in the Rockies. They don’t like Peri much,” he said as he glanced at her. “She confuses them.”