Glenn’s brow rose suspiciously at the offer, but he ambled in after us. He did a good job of hiding that he knew we were trying to get rid of him, but he looked like a cop when he settled himself at the table. Telling Ivy he didn’t mind waiting for a new pot, he arched his eyebrows at me and crossed his arms over his chest—and stared. He wasn’t going to leave until he heard it all.

Jenks was hovering over my shoulder like there was a string between us. My worry crashed down as I slumped into my spot at the table and tried to decide where to start. The familiar noises of Ivy making coffee were incredibly soothing, and my eyes scanned the kitchen, marking the empty spots where I had moved spelling supplies into the belfry.

A sudden clenching of my chest took my breath away. I was a demon. Or so close to one that it didn’t matter. That I had made a human my familiar should have been the first clue. I felt filthy, like the smut on my soul was leaking off and staining everything I loved.

And as Glenn eyed the basket of cherry tomatoes with avarice and prattled on about how he liked a good strong cup of coffee while he waited for me to get on with it, I felt the bolts of my life lock the door to my past. I had only one way to go, and it was going to be hard as hell. Logic said there was no way to rescue Trent. He had accepted his failure and asked me to save his species. But I didn’t live or die by percentages, and I wouldn’t sit and accept it. It would prey on me forever.

“I…I have to talk to you,” I said, and the conversation cut off with the startling suddenness of a kite smacking headfirst into the ground.

Ivy turned from the coffeemaker, arms over her middle and her face pale. The pitch of Jenks’s wings faded to nothing as he landed on the napkin holder. Glenn’s breath slid out of him in anticipation, and I steadied myself, trying to find a way to say what I needed to without telling them what Trent’s dad had done to me.

“You didn’t get back here on your own,” Ivy guessed, and Jenks’s wings stopped. “Did you have to buy another mark?” I shook my head, and Ivy’s relief turned to a wary suspicion, then horror. “Where’s Trent?”

Oh, God, she thought I had bought my freedom with Trent. Everyone would. Vision blurring, I shook my head, my gaze on a series of lines indented into the table, realizing they were Ivy’s name in a careful, preschool print.