Not knowing why he trusted Vincet, Jenks gestured for his children to relax, and they began shoving one another. The earth’s chill soaked into Jenks now that he wasn’t moving, and he wished he’d started a fire.

“I heard you investigate things,” Vincet blurted, his wings lifting slightly as the kids ringing him drifted a few paces back. “I’m not poaching! I need your help.”

“You want Rachel or Ivy.” Jenks rose up to show him the way into the church. “Rachel is out,” he said, glad now he hadn’t accompanied her on her shopping trip as she searched for some obscure text her demonic teacher wanted. She’d be in the ever-after tomorrow for her weekly teaching stint with the demon, and of course she’d waited until the last moment to find the book. “But Ivy is here.”

“No!” Vincet exclaimed, his wings blurring but his feet solidly on the poker-chip floor, rightfully worried about Jenks’s kids. “I want your help, not some lunker’s. I don’t have anything they’d want, and I pay my debts. They’ll tell me to move. And I can’t. I want you.”

His kids stopped their incessant shoving, and Jenks’s feet touched the cold floor. A job? he thought, excitement zinging through him. For me? Alone?

“Will you help me?” Vincet asked, the dust from him turning a clear silver as he regained his courage and his wings shivered to try and warm himself. “My newlings are in danger. My wife. My three children. I don’t dare move now. It’s too late. We’ll lose the newlings. Maybe the children, too. There’s nowhere to go!”

Newlings, Jenks thought, his focus blurring. A newborn pixy’s life was so chancy that they weren’t given names or considered children until they proved able to survive.