Ivy’s eyes met mine, her breathing hesitating a bare second as she realized that I’d finally figured it out. “Where’s Jenks?” she asked, turning to her screen as if nothing had happened.

I exhaled slowly, coming to grips with my new outlook. I could leave and fight off every lustful vamp I ran into, or I could stay under Ivy’s mantle, trusting I’d never have to fight her off instead. As my dad was fond of saying, a known danger was far better than an unknown one.

“At Trent’s helping Glenn,” I said, my fingers trembling as I reached for another cookie. I’d stay. We had an understanding. Or was Nick right, in that I really did want her to bite me but couldn’t accept that my “preferences” had slid a little? Surely the former. “I’m off the case. I found a body and word got out a witch was helping the FIB.”

Her eyes met mine over the screen between us, her thin eyebrows high. “You found a body? At Trent’s compound? You’re kidding.”

I nodded, slumping with my elbows on the table, unwilling to delve any deeper into my psyche right now. I was too tired. “I’m pretty sure it’s Dan Smather’s, but it doesn’t matter. Glenn is more uptight than a pixy in a room full of frogs, but Trent’s going to walk.” My thoughts shifted from what I was going to do about Ivy to the memory of Dan’s mutilated body strapped to the chair. “Trent is too smart to leave anything to connect him to the body,” I said. “I don’t understand why it was on his property to begin with.”

She nodded, her attention going back to her screen. “Maybe he put it there.”

A wry grimace crossed me. “That’s what Glenn thinks. That Trent is the murderer but wanted us to find it, knowing we couldn’t link it to him, and therefore making it twice as hard to catch him if he makes a mistake later on. It fits with Sara Jane’s reaction. She doesn’t know Dan Smather better than her UPS man, but something…” I hesitated, trying to put my feeling into words. “Something isn’t right.” I thought back to the picture she’d given me. It had been the same photo as the one on his TV. I should’ve known then that their courtship was contrived.