Humming nervously, Jenks put the jar of honey in the basket with my bandages and the rest of his groceries. He fidgeted, and my eyebrows rose. "Honey, Jenks?" I questioned.

"It's medicinal," he said, reddening and turning to stand before the array of baking supplies, feet spread wide in his Peter Pan pose. Reaching to a top shelf, he dropped a jar of yeast in with the rest. "Bee pollen," he grumbled under his breath. "Where in Tink's bordello do they keep the vitamin supplements? Can't find a bloody thing in this store. Who laid it out? Gilligan?" His head rose and he scanned the signs hanging over the aisles.

"The vitamins would be with the medicines," I said, and he jerked.

Clearly shocked, he stammered, "You heard that?" and I shrugged. "Damn," he muttered, walking away. "I didn't know you could hear that well. You never heard me before."

I trailed behind him, arms empty. Jenks insisted on carrying everything, insisted on opening every door for me, hell, he'd flush my toilet if I let him. It wasn't a macho thing, it was because he could. Automatic doors were his favorites, and though he hadn't played with one yet by getting on and off the sensor pad, I knew he wanted to.

His pace was quick, his steps silent in the new boots I had bought him all of an hour ago. He wasn't happy about me insisting we go shopping before seeing if Jax was at The Butterfly Shack, a butterfly exhibit and wildlife store, but he agreed that if Jax was there, he was hiding or he would have had the owner call us to come get him. We didn't know the situation, and if we knocked on the door and told the proprietor he had been harboring a pixy, one possibly wanted in connection with a theft, we might start a few tongues wagging.

So Jenks and I used the interim while the proprietor closed up shop and counted his money to do a little pre-break-in outfitting/shopping. I had been pleasantly surprised to find some upscale stores right beside the tourist-crap traps in an obviously new slab of light commercial buildings that had gone up in the last five years or so. The trees only had been in the ground that long. I was a witch; I could tell.

Since it was just before the tourist season, the selections were high and the prices were almost reasonable. That would change next week when school let out and the town tripled its population when the "fudgies"—tourists named after the candy Mackinaw was known for—descended on them.

Turns out, Jenks was a power shopper, which probably stemmed from his garden gathering background. In a very short time we had hit three clothes stores, a dance outlet, and a shoe mart. So now instead of a hunky young man in sweats and flip-flops, I was with a six-foot-four, athletic, angsty young man dressed in casual linen pants and matching fawn-colored shirt. Under it was a skintight two-piece suit of silk and spandex that had set us back a couple hundred dollars, but after seeing him in it, my head bobbed and my card came out. My treat.

I couldn't help but let my eyes ramble over him as he crouched before a display of vitamins and took off the shades I had bought him, not wanting a repeat of him grumbling over the sun all the way up there. Clearly bothered, he ran a hand under his cap in worry. The red leather should have clashed with what he had on, but on him? Yum.

Jenks looked really good, and I was wishing I had brought nicer clothes. And a camera. He was a hard man to keep up with once you got him out of sweats and flip-flops.

"Bee pollen," he said as he jiggled the sleeve of his new aviator jacket down and reached forward, blowing the dust from the lid of the glass jar. "This stuff tastes like it's already been through the bee," he said, rising to place it with the rest, "but seeing as the only flowers they have here are stale daisies and dehydrated roses, it will do."

His voice carried a hard derision, and I silently looked at the price. No wonder pixies spent more time in the garden than working a nine-to-five to buy their food like most people. The two bottles of maple syrup he wanted cost a whopping nine dollars. Each. And when I tried to substitute the fake stuff, he had added a third. "Let me carry something," I offered, feeling useless.

He shook his head, pace intent as he headed to the front. "If we don't go now, it will be too cold to find any pixies who might help. Besides, the owner has to be home and watching TV. It's almost nine."

I glanced at his phone clipped to his belt. "It's twenty past," I said. "Let's go."

"Past?" Jenks snickered, shifting the basket. "The sun's been down only an hour."

He skittered sideways when I snatched the phone from his belt and held it for him to see. "Nine-twenty," I said, not knowing if I should be smug or worried that his unerring time sense was off. I hoped Ceri hadn't ruined it.

For an instant Jenks looked horrified, then his mouth quirked. "We shifted latitude," he said. "I'm going to be…" He took the phone from me and peered at the clock. "…twenty minutes slow at sunset and twenty minutes fast at sunrise." Jenks chuckled. "Never thought I'd need a watch, but it would be easier than trying to switch over and then have to switch back."

I shrugged. I'd never felt the need for a watch unless I was working with Ivy and had to "synchronize" to keep her from having a fit, and then I just used Jenks. Feeling short next to his height, I steered him from the self-service line, or we would have been there all night. Jenks took charge of the basket, unloading it and leaving me to smile neutrally at the woman.

Her plucked eyebrows rose upon taking in the bee pollen, yeast, honey, maple syrup, beer, Band-Aids, and the ailing plant Jenks had rescued from the half-price rack in the tiny floral department. "Doing a little cooking?" she asked slyly, her grin thick with an amused conclusion as to what two people might be doing with a shopping list like ours. Her name tag said TERRI, and she was a comfortable twenty pounds overweight, with swollen fingers and too many rings.

Jenks's green eyes were innocently wide. "Jane, honey," he said to me. "Be a dear and run back for the instant pudding." His voice dropped, taking on a sultry depth. "Let's try butterscotch this time. I'm bored with chocolate."

Feeling wicked, I leaned against him, reaching to play with the curls about his ears. "You know Alexia is allergic to butterscotch," I said. "Besides, Tom will do a-a-a-a-anything for pistachio. And I have some of that in the fridge. Right beside the caramel drizzle and the whipped cream." I giggled, tossing my red hair. "God, I love caramel! It takes forever to lick off."

Jenks broke into a devilish grin, eyeing the woman from under his hat as he took a handful of toothbrushes from the grab rack and set them on the conveyer belt. "That's what I love so much about my Janie," he said, giving me a sideways hug that pulled me off balance and into him. "Always thinking of others. Isn't she the kindest soul you've ever met?"

The woman's face was red. Flustered, she kept trying to ring up the marked-down plant, finally giving up and putting it into a plastic bag. "Sixty-three twenty-seven," she stammered, not meeting Jenks's eyes.

Smug, Jenks pulled out the wallet he had bought all of fifteen minutes ago, shuffling to find the Vampiric Charms credit card. He carefully ran it through the machine, clearly enjoying himself as he punched the right buttons. Ivy had arranged for it ages ago, and Jenks's signature was on file as a matter of course. This was the first time he'd been able to use it, but he looked like he knew what he was doing.

The woman stared at the name of our firm when it popped up on her screen, her jaw falling to make a double chin.

Jenks signed the pad with a careful seriousness, smiling at the cashier as she extended the receipt and a strip of coupons. "Cheerio," he said, the plastic a soft rustle when he took all the bags and looped his arm through them. I glanced back when the glass doors swung apart and the night air, cold off the straits, set a few strands of hair to tickle my face. She was already gossiping with the manager, putting a hand to her mouth when she saw me look at her.