“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.”