“Do you have your caps?” her father shouted after her.

“Yes!” she called back, her voice faint.

“Take some of those necklaces off, young lady!” he added, but the door slammed. The quiet was a relief, and I met Ivy’s smile with bemused wonder. Erica could really fill a room.

Ivy’s father put his glass down. His face seemed to take on more wrinkles, and I could see the strain his body was enduring to supply the blood his undead wife needed to stay sane.

I watched Ivy shift her fingers on her glass to spin it where it sat. Slowly her smile faded. “Has she been to see Piscary?” she asked softly, the sudden worry in her voice drawing my attention. This was why Ivy had come to talk to her dad, and as I thought of Erica’s carefree, wild innocence in Piscary’s manipulative embrace, I worried, too.

Ivy’s dad, though, didn’t seem to have a problem with it, taking a slow sip of juice before answering, “Yes. She visits him every two weeks. As is respectful.” My brow pinched at the implied question, and I wasn’t surprised when he followed up with, “Have you?”

Ivy stilled the fingers encircling her glass. Uncomfortable, I looked for a way to excuse myself and go hide in the car. Ivy glanced at me, then her father. He leaned back, waiting. From outside came the rumble of Erica’s car, fading to leave the hum of the clock on the oven the only sound. Ivy took a breath. “Dad, I made a mistake.”

I felt Ivy’s dad’s eyes land on me, even though I was staring out the window trying to divorce myself from the conversation. “We should talk about this when your mother is available,” he said, and I took a quick breath.

“You know,” I said as I got up, “I think I’ll go wait in the car.”

“I don’t want to talk about it with Mom, I want to talk about it with you,” Ivy said crossly. “And there’s no reason Rachel can’t hear this.”

The hidden request in Ivy’s voice stopped me short. I sank back down, ignoring the obvious disapproval from her dad. This wasn’t going to be fun. Maybe she wanted my opinion of the conversation to balance out her own. I could do that for her.

“I made a mistake,” Ivy said softly. “I don’t want to be Piscary’s scion.”

“Ivy …” There was a tired weariness in that one word. “It’s time to start taking on your responsibilities. Your mother was his scion before she died. The benefits—”

“I don’t want them!” Ivy said, and I watched her eyes closely, wondering if the ring of brown about her pupil was shrinking. “Maybe if he wasn’t in my head all the time,” she added, moving her juice away. “But I can’t take it anymore. He just keeps pushing.”

“He wouldn’t if you would go see him.”

Ivy sat straighter, eyes on the table. “I did go see him. I told him that I wasn’t going to be his scion and to get out of my head. He laughed at me. He said I had made a choice and now I had to live and die by it.”