"When he told me of the scout," she said, rising fast.
"Jenks!" I shouted, and even Ceri dropped her arms and looked into the trees.
For five long seconds, we listened for his wings while fear wound tighter through me. Motions rough, I got up from the picnic table, hitting it hard enough to make my leg hurt. Ceri's hushed "Go find your father" to Jenks's kids made my chest tighten.
"If you killed him, I will squish you myself," I threatened Sidereal, and he bared his teeth and hissed at me like a cat.
"Looking forward to it."
Jax was a flash of pixy dust, and he was gone, having flung himself forty feet straight up to do a rough visual.
"Where are you, Jenks?" I muttered, seeing the darting sparkles of his kids making patterns in the bright sun as they searched. There'd be no reason for him to leave unless...
My face went cold, and I looked at Ivy. "Matalina," I said breathlessly, and Ivy's face paled. I hadn't seen her since their last stand.
Shit.
Chapter Twenty-one
"I'll check the church," Ivy said, then took the steps two at a time. She was gone even before the door slammed shut. The fairies watched in satisfaction as the entire feeling in the garden turned to fear. But it wasn't until I saw Rex that my panic almost swallowed me.
The small orange cat was oblivious to the darting shapes, her ears pricked and her movements sure as she paced across the mown grass, let out when Ivy went in. With a little jump, she gained the small stone wall that separated the garden from the graveyard. Focus intent, she vanished into the taller grass.
"Pierce?" I said, glancing from where she'd disappeared. "Watch the fairies, will you?"
Nodding, he stood, face sad and head bowed.
I followed Rex through the wet grass, moving as if in a dream. My tension eased when we passed the ring of burnt ground, and I felt even better when I found Rex sitting at the edge of a small, familiar plot, her tail curled around her feet as she sat in the sun and cleaned a paw.
I knew this grave. The pixies frequently played around it despite - or maybe because - the site being snarled with the thorns of a rose gone wild. The marker itself was decorated with the statue of a childlike angel not much bigger than Rex, the chubby features somehow not destroyed by time. It was a child's grave, and innocence seemed to linger yet.
Creeping forward, I exhaled in relief when I heard Jenks. Until I realized he was singing. Tears filled my eyes and I swallowed a lump when from behind the tombstone came a mournful, stop-and-go duet with heartrending gaps. Only one voice was raised.
Dreading what I might find, I moved forward until I could see the base of the tombstone. Jenks was on the ground, his wings still and drooping as he held Matalina, cradling her, keeping her from touching the earth. Ringing them in the pressed grass were four dead fairies, their wings tattered but unburnt. Jenks's sword was in the nearest, the fairy still holding the blade as it punctured his middle. Arrows littered the ground, and the scent of broken green was strong.
He looked up at me, his voice cracking and his wings lifting slightly. Moisture shined his cheeks, turning to dust as it dried. "Rachel is here, Mattie," he said, turning back to her, and hope jumped. She was alive?
Jenks brushed her hair from her eyes, and the pixy woman took a pain-racked breath. "She can take you back to the stump in three seconds flat. And she can turn you big. Just for an hour. You can do that. Please, Mattie. No more arguments. You'll live then. The spell takes all the pain away. Makes you brand new. Please don't leave me." He was begging now, and I felt tears prick. "I can't be alone for the next twenty years."
It confirmed something I'd been suspecting for the last few months as Jenks grew faster, while Matalina declined. The curse he'd taken last summer had reset his biological clock. Excited, I dropped to my knees beside them. I'd gotten my twenty years back that my childhood illness had stolen, but what caught my breath was that Jenks wasn't going to die. Matalina either.
"Matalina," I said, bending close and making my words soft. "Ceri is here. She can make you well." They'd live forever, both of