The Witch With No Name. Ким Харрисон

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.”