His wings hummed into motion, then settled. “It’s the damndest thing,” he said, clearly confused. “Baribas is helping the fairies find grubs and spiders to eat so they don’t have to clear-cut the garden to reach them. They’re working together.” He hesitated. “We can hold the same ground together,” he added softly, still trying to make sense of it.

I turned to Jenks, his head nearly in line with my eyes as he perched on the stone I was leaning against. “Are you trying to tell me to find a way to work with Constance?”

Jenks blinked, a flash of dust lighting him. “Tink’s titties, no!” he exclaimed, and from Hodin’s distant rock, I heard a snort. “That bitch needs to die twice.”

“Okay. Let’s forget for a moment that it’s illegal,” I said, attention dropping to my hands. Nash’s blood lingered in the creases and had turned Trent’s pearl a muddy brown. I curled my fingers under to hide it, but it was still there. “If I kill her, DC will send in someone worse. Someone even more depraved and cruel, with a better chance of killing me. And that’s if by some miracle I don’t land in jail.”

“So don’t kill her,” Jenks said, as if that was all there was to it. “You don’t have to fight all of them, just her. You best her, and everyone who looks to her will fall in line. Guaranteed.”

He was right, but it would be a constant battle. I’d have to become as savage and extreme as her to keep her playing by my rules. “We were spoiled by Piscary,” I whispered.

“Seriously?” Jenks rose up as David stood on that fifty-five-gallon drum that was now my back porch and yelled for him. “Get your head out of the wasp nest, Rache. Piscary was just as bad as Constance. He only looked less cruel because his children were conditioned to take the abuse instead of rebel at it.”

My thoughts jerked to Joni with her red-smeared smile, then to Meg, terrified and cowering because Constance had taken her necklace and was about to punish her for its lack. And finally to Ivy and Kisten. Kisten had died when he tried to be the person he wanted to be instead of the one Piscary needed. Ivy had nearly done the same. She said I’d saved her. I hadn’t been able to save Kisten, though.

“Convincing Constance to play fair might be easier if she hadn’t found my soft spot,” I whispered.

“You mean that you care about people?” Jenks rose up and down, flashing at David to wait, and the Were went inside, the temporary door thumping shut hard enough to hear out here. “That’s called being normal, Rache. All you have to do is find what’s important to her, jam your sword,” he said, pantomiming it, “and twist. She’ll come in line.”

Blackmail. My frown deepened and my focus blurred. I wasn’t against blackmail, but it was a short-term solution. I’d seen what happened when Trent’s blackmail turned and bit him on his lily-white ass. I had to find a way to get her to accept my authority, or, at the very least, our equal authority. But after meeting her, I was pretty sure that Constance wanted me dead or gone. If by some miracle she did agree to coexist, I’d find myself in a never-ending battle to control her bloodthirsty ways and keep the I.S. from hauling me in for jaywalking.

“Hey, could you excuse me for a moment?” Jenks said as a timid pixy darted up to hover at a respectful distance, clearly wanting to talk to Jenks.

I looked at Hodin in the sun, and a flicker of warning rose and fell. “Sure,” I said, missing Trent, and Jenks hummed away, his dust vanishing as the young buck spoke so fast and high it sounded like another language.

Wary, I pushed from the stone and angled over to Hodin. It was frustrating. The only people who wanted Constance in Cincy were the I.S. and her own clearly terrified camarilla. Together they were a small but powerful population of vampires who could use the borrowed teeth of the I.S. to bully the rest.

I need to talk to Constance, I thought as my thumb polished the blood from Trent’s ring. Unfortunately, all Constance had to do was sit in the safety of the I.S. tower and make my life hell one friend at a time. I couldn’t talk to her there. I needed neutral ground if I was to even have a chance.

“Rache.”

I jerked to a halt when Jenks was suddenly facing me.

“Tink loves a duck,” he muttered, brow furrowed. “These pixies are no smarter than newlings sucking on nectar. You tell me before someone gets in the church, not after.”

Boots scuffing the weeds, I sighed. “Is it the city with an eviction notice?” That would round out my day nicely.

But Jenks had lost his frown, his dust an excited silver. “No, it’s that contractor Sharron told us about. She must have cashed in all her Realtor favors to get someone to come out here.” He rose up, hands on his hips, yelling, “And they should have told me she was here before she got to the front steps!” He dropped back down. “It’s going to take me all summer to whip them into shape,” he muttered.

“Cool.” I turned to ask Hodin if he could wait, but he was gone. Disappointed, I put my hands in my pockets and began to pick my way back to the church. “I can’t wait to get that hole in the floor fixed,” I said as I stepped over the shallow wall and into the backyard/garden. The scent from the previous night’s steaks lingered, and as I rose up the makeshift steps, I realized I’d be able to see Nash’s “grave” from my bedroom window. Swell.

Jenks landed on my shoulder as we went in and the sudden noise of too many people pressed on us. I got nods and shy smiles from people I’d never seen before, and a feeling of having lost control tightened my chest. Light chatter came from my old bathroom, and steam slipped out from under Ivy’s bathroom door. Two vamps waited in the hall, towels over their arms.

“Oh, no,” I whispered as I edged around them and into the sanctuary. I hadn’t gone through the church with Nash’s body for obvious reasons, and I’d had no idea that the number of our refugees had swelled in the few hours I’d been gone. They were everywhere.

A big pot of soup was simmering on the twin burner set up on a cardboard table. The unreal-fast tink-tunk, tunk-tink of sound drew my eyes to the vamps playing Ping-Pong on Kisten’s de-felted pool table, more coolers making a significant row under it. Cots took up one corner, some of them holding shrouded bodies trying to sleep through the noise. As I watched, someone came crawling out of the hole in the floor and tossed a beer to someone else. I suppose it’s cooler under there. . . .

“Where did they all come from?” I said as I spotted a woman standing beside Ivy’s baby grand, ignoring everything as she shone her laser measuring light at the corners and made notes into her electronic clipboard.

“Edden.” Jenks laced the word with annoyance. “Every last one of them. I think Constance’s game is to kick as many people out as she can, knowing they’ll come to you for help. Sort of a nuisance attack.”