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Senses searching, I did a quick walk through the living room before checking out the small kitchen. Ivy was in the bedroom, and I slowed, eyes on the amulets. It was easier to hide stuff among the gleaming metal and new appliances, but if there was anything here, it’d show.
“Hey!” Ivy exclaimed, muffled from the walls. My head snapped up and I lurched to get in front of Marsha. Shit, I’d been right.
“Jenks!” Ivy shouted, exasperated this time. “Why didn’t you tell us about the dog?”
I slid to a stop, peeved as Jenks dusted an embarrassed red. Marsha had come in, eyes alight, and I waved for her to stay where she was.
“Sor-r-r-rry!” Jenks said as the jingle of a dog collar became obvious. “It’s just a dog.”
No one had been here for two days? The place smelled like candles, not dog crap.
“Buddy!” Marsha called out, exuberant as she pushed around me to drop to her knees, and I eyed the small, scruffy pound puppy that timidly walked, not trotted, into the living room. “Come here, baby! You must be starving. I thought Luke had you!”
My eyes narrowed. I’d never had a dog, but I knew they generally underwent the throes of delight when their owners came back after checking the mail, much less two days. “Ah, Marsha?” I said as the dog took a hesitant step in, his tail just hanging there.
“I think we’re good,” Ivy said as she came out of the back room. “You want to sweep it with your charms?”
“Sure,” I said slowly, something ringing false.
“Buddy?” Marsha called again, and the dog gave me a sideways look as he passed me, a mix of excitement and hesitancy I wouldn’t expect from an animal.
At my wrist, an amulet flashed red.
“Shit, it’s the dog!” I shouted.
Marsha looked up, her beautiful little mouth in an O of surprise. Her hands were outstretched and the dog was almost to her. I’d never get there in time.
“Rhombus!” I exclaimed as I pulled on the ley line, feeling it scream into me, harsh from my demand. The energy pooled and overflowed, and I shoved it out again, my word tapping into a hard-won series of mental handsprings that harnessed the energy into a molecule-thin barrier. It took the easiest form—a sphere with me in the center—and the dog predictably ran into it.
But instead of the expected yip of surprise, the energy levels spiked.
It was the only warning I got, and I cowered as a bright flash of energy exploded inside my circle, coming from the dog! The loosed power reverberated, making my circle chime like a sour bell, and I froze, skin crawling as the illegal death spell flooded over me, then fell back into the dog when it didn’t find its intended victim.
“Buddy!” Marsha screamed as Ivy shoved her into the wall, covering her with her body.
“Get her out of here!” I shouted, afraid to move. The spell had been invoked, but it hadn’t fastened on its intended victim. It was a loose cannon, and it was trapped in here with me.
“That’s my dog!” the woman protested, wild with fear as Ivy manhandled her into the hallway. “Buddy! Buddy!”
Slowly I realized I was unhurt. Buddy, though … Wincing, I looked at the dog, prostrate and beginning to shake. He wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t a dog. It was her boyfriend, Luke.
I hate vampires, I thought, realizing what had happened. Someone had turned Luke into a doppelganger of their dog and tacked a secondary spell on to him that would kill them both when Marsha touched him. Luke was halfway gone, but until the spell found Marsha, it wouldn’t invoke fully. I had a chance.
“Marsha!” I stood, carefully watching the energy flow as I broke my own circle. “Where do you keep your salt?”
“Stay put,” Ivy snarled. “Tell me.”
“In the cupboard beside the stove!” the woman sobbed from the hallway. “What happened? Buddy? Buddy!”
I ran to the kitchen and snapped on the faucet. “It’s not your dog, it’s your boyfriend.”
Maybe that had been a mistake, since the woman totally freaked out. “Luke!” she screamed. “Oh God, Luke!”
“Stay in the hall!” Ivy shouted, and the sounds of a struggle grew louder.
Salt, salt … I thought, pulse fast as I found a mixing bowl and dropped it into the sink. “Don’t let her touch him! If she touches him, they both die!”
“Luke!” the woman sobbed, and I triumphantly found the salt. I wedged a nail under the spout and ripped it right out. Hands shaking, I shook it into the mixing bowl.
“Is he going to be okay?” Jenks asked, his dust pooling on the surface and running like mercury, but I didn’t know.
“Oh God. Hurry!” Marsha begged, and I gave the salt water a quick stir, tasting it before I picked up the bowl. The woman was hovering over the dog, terrified. My heart went out to her. Vampire masters were sons of bitches. Every last one of them. “Help him!” she screamed, her perfect face twisted in terror. Ivy held her, and I moved fast, bowl of salt water before me.
“Stay back,” I warned as I stood over the little white dog and dumped it. Water splashed, and Marsha backed up, white faced and breathless. I had no idea if the entire concentration was optimum for breaking earth charms, but there’d be enough to not just turn him human, but to break the lethal charm as well.
As expected, the dog vanished behind a thick puff of brown-and-blue aura-tainted energy. “Luke!” Marsha screamed, and Jenks frowned at her. He’d seen enough spells break to know this was normal. I backed up, tense as the cloud grew to man size. Slowly the mist broke up to show a naked, bruised, and beaten man huddled on the soggy white carpet.
Luke took a sobbing gasp of air. He was going to make it—for now, and I eased back to sit on the edge of the cushy couch, elbows on my knees and head dropped into my hands. The amulets on my bracelet clinked, and I sighed. The salt water had ruined them. I’d tack it on to Marsha’s bill, but I didn’t think she had the money. Besides, she was going to be a little busy trying to survive.
“You can touch him now,” I said, realizing that Marsha was still hovering over him.
Frantic, she dropped to her knees. Water squished from the carpet, and she pulled him to her. “Oh, baby!” she gushed, oblivious that he was covered in salt water. “Did he hurt you?”
By the bruises, clearly someone—probably his own master—had, but he raised a shaky hand and brushed her cheek. “I’m okay,” he rasped, a flash of ugly memory finding me at the sight of him, his black hair plastered to his face and his eyes not quite open. It hurt like the devil to shift with earth magic, but his toned, athletic, and beaten body covered in easily hidden scars looked as if it was used to pain.
Crying, Marsha cradled his head to herself and rocked him. I wondered how many scars were hidden behind Marsha’s expensive clothes. This sucked. Vampires looked as if they had everything, but it was a lie. My eyes shifted to Ivy, seeing her inner struggle. A big fat ugly lie.
The clatter of Jenks’s wings was a short warning as he landed on my shoulder. “He looked like a dog to me,” he grumped.
“That’s because he was one.” I plucked at my wet shirt, sticking uncomfortably to me. The question wasn’t how, but why. Why had two minor vampire camarillas spent this much on a double-whammy spell like this on a simple Romeo and Juliet? It was expens-s-s-sive.
Ivy was in the hall to convince the neighbors nothing was going on. It didn’t take much. Clearly they were familiar with the situation. Not happy, Ivy shut the door and stomped into the kitchen to turn the faucet off.
“I’m sorry, Marsha,” Luke was saying, and the crying woman stretched for a blanket to cover him. “When they told me I couldn’t see you again, I went to a witch. She said she could turn me into a dog so I could be with you. No one would know it was me.”
I watched as Ivy pulled the living room blinds. Her expression was empty, hearing far past what the man was saying. Closing the last, she sat across from me in the shadow light, worried.
“I didn’t care if I was a dog,” Luke continued, his eyes still not open as his hand gripped hers. “I knew you wouldn’t leave Buddy.” His eyes opened, and I stared. They were the clearest shade of blue I’d ever seen. “I love you, Marsha. I’d do anything for you. Anything!” Crying, he pulled himself into a ball in her arms. “I’m so sorry.”
My God, they’d tricked him into buying the charm that would’ve killed them both. Ivy and I exchanged a worried look. This was bad, but we couldn’t just walk away. Jenks, too, was looking ill, and he moved to the decorative bowl of pinecones on the coffee table. He’d loved and lost more than Ivy and me combined, and this wasn’t sitting well with him either. But it wasn’t one master vampire we’d have to outwit, but two.
Ivy was still silent, and I sourly thought of my bank account. “You think we should help them?” I said softly, and Jenks’s dust shifted to a hopeful yellowish pink.
Ivy didn’t look at me. The couple on the floor was silent.
“You think we should help them,” I said again, this time making it a statement.
Ivy’s eyes flicked up. I could see her tremendous need to give, to make it right. She’d done so much wrong, and it chewed on her in the small hours. My heart ached for her skewed view of herself, and I wished she could see herself as I did. This would rub the guilt out—for a time.
“Okay, we’ll help them,” I said, and Marsha gasped, her tear-wet eyes suddenly full of hope where there’d been only despair. Jenks’s wings hummed his approval, and I sat up, gesturing weakly. “But I don’t know what we can do.”
“You can’t,” Marsha said, voice harsh as she held Luke. “They know everything.”
Unfortunately, she was right. We couldn’t simply set them up in a nice house out of state and hope that they wouldn’t be found and made into an even bigger example. Ivy had been trying to wiggle out from her master her entire life only to become more entangled, so much so that they’d ensnared me, too. Trent, maybe? I thought, but as it was, he was struggling to keep his head above the political sharks.
“Maybe,” I said as Luke sat up, muscles beginning to work again. “Changing into a dog was a great idea.” Actually, it had been a lousy idea, but unless you practiced magic, you wouldn’t know how easy it was to circumvent it. My gaze went to the soggy carpet. Obviously.
“We’ll run,” Marsha said, tensing as if ready to walk out that exact second.
Ivy shook her head. “You won’t get past the city limits.”
“Marsha, sweetheart,” Luke whispered. “You know that won’t work.”
But I’d given her hope, and the woman wouldn’t let go. “We can use the tunnels!”
Ivy looked toward the shuttered windows at the sound of a horn. “They built the tunnels.”
“I can’t live without you. I won’t!” the distressed woman cried out, and I wondered if the place had been bugged. But if it had, Jenks would have heard the electronic whine and disabled them. We had a moment to catch our breath, and then we’d have to move.
It wasn’t as if we could stake their two master vampires; there were laws against that kind of thing. Unless Marsha and Luke could come up with ironclad blackmail, they were stuck.
“Okay,” I said, feeling the need to get moving. We’d been here too long. “There might be some law or something you can tap into. Ivy’s going to need access to every document your names are on. Birth certificates, property deeds, insurance, parking tickets, tax returns, everything.”
Marsha nodded, that same glow of hope back in her eyes hurting me. This wasn’t going to work, but we had to try something.
Ivy rose to look out through a crack in the blinds. “Do either of you have a safe house?”
“None we trust anymore,” Luke said, and Ivy let the blind fall.
“I’ve got one,” Ivy said, coming back to help Luke stand. “You should be okay for a few days. Especially if you help out a little with the other guests coming in.”
Wrapped in the blanket, Luke awkwardly got to his feet, pale and shaking. “Anything. Yes. Thank you.”
Jenks took to the air, humming out under the crack in the door to check the hallway. Almost immediately he darted back in with a big thumbs-up.
“We can’t just walk out with them,” I said, and Ivy gave me a glum smile.
“They won’t try anything new until sundown,” Ivy said, catching Marsha’s arm before the woman went into the bedroom and shaking her head to leave everything. “They’ll want to be present the next time.”
God help me. I hated vampires. “Okay, let’s move out.”
“But he needs his clothes,” Marsha was saying as I collected my splat gun from the counter. Ivy was almost carrying Luke to the door, and tears began to slip again from Marsha. I totally understood. The entire place was a perfect blending of their love. It was sucky when happiness became this costly. But if they’d fought this hard for it, then it would last their entire lifetime. I just hoped that lifetime would be longer than a week.
The hallway was quiet, smelling of dust and old carpet. Eyes were watching through peepholes, and it made me edgy. Marsha took Luke’s elbow to help him shuffle down the stairs in his blanket, and Ivy dropped back to talk to me.
“Jenks, you’re going with Ivy, right?” I asked, knowing she wouldn’t tell me the address of her safe house, much less take me there. Jenks, though …
Jenks’s wings hummed into invisibility, and he rose up a hand width. “Yeah.”
“No,” Ivy said, frowning, and he made a face at her. “You’re not coming, pixy.”
“Tink’s a Disney whore, like you could stop me!” he shot back.
Smiling, I edged around Ivy to keep Marsha and Luke from heading out without us. “I’ve got my phone on,” I said, pushing them back to the mailboxes until I could look at the street.
“I’ll be fine. See you at home,” Ivy said, ignoring Jenks and his sword pointed at her nose. “Hey, you doing anything tonight?”
“Listen to me, you broken-fanged, moss-wiped excuse for a back-drafted blood bag!” Jenks said, a silver-edged red dust slipping from him.
I looked back inside from the street, thinking this had been nice, even with the near miss. I liked working with Ivy. Always had. We did well together—even when it had gone wrong. “I’m working security for Trent,” I said, lips quirking as I saw her mentally smack her forehead. “You want me to bring you back something? It’s probably going to end somewhere with food.”
“Sure. That’d be good,” she said, turning to give Marsha and Luke some last-minute instructions on how to get from here to there alive. “I’ll call if I need help.”
I touched her arm, and her eyes met mine in farewell. Smiling, I turned away remembering something Kisten had once said: I was there when she had her morning coffee, I was there when she turned out the light. I was her friend, and to Ivy, that was everything.
“Jenks, I’ve got this!” I heard, and then I shut the door, my steps light as I headed for my car. Ivy would get home okay. She was right that the masters would want to be there when they brought their children in line. Besides, everyone in Cincinnati with fangs knew Ivy Tamwood.
Head up, I stomped along, eyeing the few pedestrians. Slowly my good mood was tarnished. Love died in the shadows, and it shouldn’t cost so much to keep it in the sun. But as Trent would say, anything gotten cheap wouldn’t last, so do what you need to do to be happy and deal with the consequences. That if love was easy, everyone would find it.
I turned the corner, my head coming up at the clatter of pixy wings. “She said no, huh?” I said as Jenks landed on my shoulder, his wings tickling my neck as he settled himself.
“Tink’s little pink rosebuds,” he muttered. “She threatened to dump insecticide on my summer hut. Besides, she’s got it okay. God! Vampires in love. The only thing worse is you mooning over Trent.”
My smile widened. Maybe I’d make cookies. The man loved cookies.
He made a rude sound, his silence telling me he was unhappy. “Sorry about the dog.”
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
I didn’t answer, thinking about my date tonight with Trent. Well, not a date exactly, but I had to get dressed up as if it were one. I was still trying to decide whether to put my hair up or wear it down. Chocolate chip is his favorite.
“Oh God,” Jenks moaned. “You’re thinking about him. I can tell. Your aura shifted.”
Embarrassed, I halted at the crosswalk, waiting for the light. “It did not.”
“It did,” he complained, but I knew he crabbed because he couldn’t say he was happy for me lest he jinx it somehow. “So it’s been like what, three months? Does he still curl your toes?”
“Totally,” I said, and he made a rude noise at my blissful smile. “He’s a total toe curler.”
“Awww, this is sweeter than pixy piss,” he said with false sarcasm. “All my girls happy. I can’t tell you the last time that happened.”
My smile widened, and I pushed the walk button as if that might hurry it along. “I think it was when—”
The unmistakable sound of tires screaming on pavement iced through me. My breath caught, and I turned. Jenks was gone, his white-hot sparkles seeming to burn an airborne trail back the way we’d come. A woman screamed for help, and I jumped back when a black sedan roared past me, the front fender dented. Somehow I knew, like when a picture falls off the wall, or the clock stops ticking.
“Ivy,” I whispered, then turned and ran.
