Blood Trade

And I heard Bobby’s breath hitch just before the smell hit me. Werewolf. Grindylow. And no Rick or Soul with them.

All in one motion I rose and set Charly on Bobby’s lap. Turned and faced the door to the house. The wolf and his rider stood on the stoop, the wolf’s hackles raised, his head and ears low. “Stay put. Keep Charly here. Don’t move,” I said.

It wasn’t smart to challenge a ticked-off werewolf, but it was certain from his body language that he wasn’t gonna back off, and the wolf and I needed to get a few things straight. I stepped away from my charges, meeting and holding his gaze in challenge. The wolf had crystalline eyes that sometimes looked blue and sometimes looked gray, but always looked threatening. Or had since I coldcocked him and broke his jaw the first time I laid eyes on him in human form. I let a taunting grin spread over my face. “You here to even the score, Dog Boy?” I asked.

He growled and rushed me. Beast rose in me and took over.

Everything happened in a single breath. I inhaled and ground the balls of my feet into the grass. As the chilled air flowed into me, the two-hundred-plus pound wolf roared and leaped. Cold air flowed through his white hair, rippling. His mouth opened, lips drawing back to expose killing teeth. I braced, fisted, punched, all my body weight torqueing into the blow.

My fist hit the wolf’s snout in midair. The roar turned to a squealing yelp as I spun to the side and the wolf shot past me to crash into a tree. He fell and lay at the base of the old live oak, leaving the leaves shivering. I exhaled and shook out my fist.

The grindy held on through the leap and the hard stop and turned to me, chittering. I could have sworn it sounded like gratitude. Mighta been. The grindy seemed partial to the wolf, and if he’d bitten me, the grindy would have had no choice but to kill him for transferring the were taint. And then maybe kill me too if I didn’t get to a mercy blade in time for healing. I cocked my head in acknowledgment. All that occurred in a matter of two seconds as the tree still quivered.

Then the pain hit. I shook out my fist and said, “Awwwweeee. That hurt,” like I’d punched a brick wall, not a snout. From the house, I heard laughter.

I looked up and met Rick’s eyes. His laughter died away, but his smile stayed put. “You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to do that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Once, he got pissed at me and peed on my laptop.”

“Ick.” I looked at the unconscious wolf. “I don’t guess this makes us even?”

The smile slid away. “It . . . could be a start.”

I nodded once, a short jut of my chin. “Let me know who else to sock.”

The smile curled back up a bit, and Rick went into the house. The door closing sounded less judgmental than it might have.

“Are you gonna kiss him?” Charly asked.

My mouth opened wide before I closed it in shock. Bobby answered. “They already did. I can tell.”

“How?” Charly asked.

“By the magic that bounces off them.”

Slowly I turned, careful to keep my reactions—all of them—off my face. “You can see emotion, Bobby?”

“Nope. Just magic.” When I looked perplexed, his face scrunched up and he said, “Love is magic. It looks just the same.”

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” I breathed. This explained . . . This explained everything.

I lifted Charly from Bobby’s lap and we followed Rick back into the house. At the door to the breakfast room, everyone stopped talking, leading me to believe that they had been talking about me, but I no longer cared. “Bobby, come here,” I said. “Tell me what Rick looks like.”

Bobby slid into the room, his back against the wall, and studied Rick. “He looks mad at you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I mean, tell me about his magic.” I rocked my body and Charly back and forth, holding her close. She felt cold to me as her arms tightened around my neck.

“He’s all blue with red sparkles,” Bobby said.

I started to smile. Even I couldn’t see much of Rick’s magic except when the full moon pulled at him. “How about Soul? The pretty woman?” I pointed with my chin.

“She’s all black and silver and kinda sparkly.”

“And me?” I asked.

“You’re all yellow and silver and sparkly black.”

“And the humans?” I asked.

Bobby shrugged, lifting his shoulders up to his ears, then dropping them. “They look like me. Normal. No magic.”

My grin spread wide. “Once you see a person’s magic, can you always see it? Can you tell where it is?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. My spirits plummeted. “Not always. But sometimes.”

“Dowsing rod,” I said, my smile drawing back up. Bobby could help us with this case. I pulled him to a chair. “Bobby. It’s a gift. Some people are just too stupid to see gifts like this.”

“Stupider than me?”

“You are not stupid,” I said. “You are gifted.”

He looked at me. “That’s what Misha called it. My gift. She said it made me special in good ways, not bad, retarded ways.”

“That’s a bad word,” Charly whispered into the crook of my neck.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

Soul asked Bobby, “Did your friend Misha have you searching for something? Something magical?”

Bobby’s face scrunched up, his thinking face, remembered from childhood, and I felt my expression soften. “She had me looking for all sorts of things. She said she was training me to use my gift.”

“I’m tired,” Charly breathed against me.

I could smell her exhaustion, feel it in the droop and weight of her limbs. “I’m taking Charly upstairs to rest.”

“It’s time for her pain medicine,” Bobby said. “I’ll get it.”

I went up the stairs, Charly drooping into sleep and barely able to keep her eyes open long enough to take her medicine and eat the saltine crackers Bobby brought with the drugs.

When he felt she was deeply asleep, Bobby went to his room to watch cartoons, and I covered her up with the blanket, pressing it close like swaddling, before I returned to the grown-ups. The men were gone, and Soul was alone in the breakfast room. I didn’t really want to be in the same room with her, but I figured she had heard me coming down the stairs, so I stepped inside and took my usual chair. Soul was studying a series of the Kid’s printouts, while a video ran, over and over, on a laptop screen. It was turned away from my chair, but I could see enough to tell it was a low-light video of vamps running in a group, and they were all like the ones in the woods— insectoid and utterly alien. The creatures were green on a dark background, and they raced like centipedes across the ground, feathery limbs and oddly jointed bodies. I wanted to kill them all.

CHAPTER 10 I Want You to Chill, Babe

Without looking up at me, Soul spoke, and I jumped a little. “Thank you for breaking the wolf’s nose. He’ll heal, but he will surely remember his lesson.”

“You’re welcome. I think.”

Soul smiled, still without looking up. I didn’t want to like her, but she had a really sweet smile, one I didn’t think could be faked. “I’m not sleeping with Rick,” she said, and shifted papers to uncover a buried pile.

“Yeah.” I said shortly. When she didn’t say more I added, “That’s a good way to go furry.”

“We also are not romantically involved.”