A Perfect Blood

small city park. The music hall was across the street, but that wasn’t where the cluster of vehicles was. I didn’t see anyone among the trees and benches, but it was a six-acre park.

“Look, Ivy’s car,” I said, turning in to park beside her. I’d been hoping that she’d get here before me, wherever here was. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the hour and a half it had taken to get my license and registration had been an excuse to keep me away until the real work was done.

Deep in thought, I put the car into park and pulled my bag onto my lap. The charmed silver around my wrist thumped down. I missed the protection that being able to set a circle had given me, and I didn’t like crime scenes to begin with. Everyone made me feel stupid, and I always seemed to do something wrong. But I’d stand beside Ivy with my hands in my pockets and watch her work. She was great at crime scenes. She’d been the I.S.’s darling before she bought out her contract to go independent with me. I think it had saved her sanity. My thoughts darted to Nina, and I hoped that core of self she had would survive now that her master knew she was alive.

Wayde didn’t move as I opened my door. The cool air rushing in smelled faintly like garbage. I looked into the park and saw nothing but trees and the top of a large gazebo in the distance. “There’s no FIB here,” I said softly, still inside the car. Unusual. Nina had said that they’d been working on this for a couple of weeks. Perhaps the crime had been labeled as strictly Inderlander, no human involvement.

Wayde stretched out as much as a Were could stretch out in a compact car. “You need me, just whistle,” he said as he arranged his ball cap over his eyes against the sun leaking through the frost-emptied branches.

After weeks of him accompanying me and my hating it, I hesitated. “You’re not coming?”

Lifting the brim of his cap, he eyed me. “You want me to?” he asked blandly.

“Not really, no.”

He dropped the brim and laced his hands over his middle. “Then why are you bitching? It’s a crime scene, not a grocery store. No one’s going to bother you, and they won’t let me in.”

There was that. Nodding, I got out, hitched my bag back up on my shoulder, slammed the door shut, and started up the sidewalk snaking into the park, hearing the radio chatter coming from the gazebo. My boot heels clicked, and I hesitated at a confident hail from the open I.S. van as I passed it. There wasn’t any tape strung up, but with all the official vehicles, it was obvious the park might be closed.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” It came again, and I turned back around, fluffing my hair and smiling. I had a bent and dilapidated FIB sign under my car seat that I could put in the window when I was at crime scenes, but that wouldn’t help me today. At least I had my license.

“Hi!” I said brightly, waiting until he asked for it before I dug it out. “I’m Rachel Morgan. From Vampiric Charms? Nina, uh, one of your bosses, told me to come out and take a look.” I had stopped in a spot of light, and squinting at the thin, overly aggressive witch in an I.S. uniform coming toward me, I tucked my hair back. “I should be on the list.”

“Identification?” he said, the word nasty and sharp. He was ticked that he’d been relegated to the parking lot when he wanted to be at the scene. I knew how he felt.

“Sure.” I handed it to him, my cold fingers fumbling. “I’m with Ivy Tamwood and the pixy?” God! What was it with me making everything a question? I’d been asked here.

The man’s confusion cleared, but he didn’t hand me my license back, looking down at it with mistrust. “Oh! You’re the, uh . . .”

My eyes narrowed at the derision that had crept into his voice. “Demon,” I finished for him, snatching my license. “Yes, that’s me.” My charmed silver felt cold as I shoved my licenese away. Sure, be mean to the demon when she’s got no magic. “They’re over there, huh?”

I turned away, teeth clenching when he called after me, “Ma’am, if you could wait a moment? You need an escort.”

Since when? I thought, my heels clumping to a stop. Behind him, at my car, Wayde made a bunny-eared kiss-kiss at me and went back to sleep. Irate, I leaned against a tree growing into the sidewalk. The trunk was still wet from last night’s rain, and I crossed my arms and gestured to the cop that I wouldn’t go anywhere.

He gave me a warning look and actually touched his wand, but when I pushed myself away from the tree, he turned and paced quickly to the van. Satisfied, I slumped back. Stupid ass. Now my mood was thoroughly ruined.

Sighing, I strained to hear the radio chatter, but it was too far for anything but background gibberish. Jenks would have been able to hear it from here. Ivy, too. My gaze went to the nearby music hall, and I shivered. The building had gorgeous architecture, but there was something wrong with it. Even the gargoyles avoided it.

A faint, familiar voice pricked at my awareness, and my face, screwed up in a squint from the sun, slowly became a frown as I turned to the park. The masculine sound rose and fell in a politically practiced wave designed to soothe, assure, and convince. It brushed against me with the warmth the November breeze lacked, and my pulse jumped. Trent? What was he doing out here?

The sidewalk was still empty, and I pushed away from the tree again, concerned as I remembered his missed call an hour and a half ago. If it had been important, wouldn’t he have called Ivy or Jenks? But they were already out here. Damn it, I’d missing something, and I took a step forward when he and Nina came around a bend, their pace holding a businesslike quickness.

Jerking to a halt, I hesitated. Nina looked about the same. By all appearances she was channeling that undead vampire as she slapped Trent on the shoulder and pulled them to a stop when she noticed me waiting. They were too far away to hear what they were saying, but it was obvious that Trent wasn’t happy.

I hadn’t seen him in months, apart from visiting Ceri when her little girl, Ray, had been born. He looked good, if a bit preoccupied with hiding his anger behind a pleasant, fake smile—better than good, actually, and I fidgeted, remembering the passionate kiss that I’d promised to forget. His fair hair moving in the breeze caught the light, and I could tell the movement bothered him when he tucked it behind his ear. He was clean shaven, ready for the office as he stood in a patch of sun in his thousand-dollar shoes and a wool overcoat that came down to his knees. It hid his athletic physique, but I’d had a pretty good idea of what was under it—every wonderfully toned, tan inch of him—thanks to having burst in on him in the shower once. Oh my God, seeing him with a towel around his shower-wet hips had been worth the entire twenty-three hundred miles stuck in a Buick with a carsick pixy.

He was about my age, my height, and way out of my tax bracket, even if he had given up on his bid for mayor and was no longer even a city council member. The illegal bio-drug lord, murderer, and real-time businessman blamed it on wanting to devote time to his new family, but I knew that coming out of the closet as an elf had hurt him politically. I felt no sympathy.

The thought of his silky hair in my fingertips as my lips moved against his rose through me, and I looked away as he and Nina clasped hands. The woman shook like a man, firm and aggressive, with a men’s club air about her. Why is Trent out here? I probably should’ve used that hour and a half and called him, but I’d been afraid of what he wanted.

My eyes were squinting again when I looked up. Nina was bent over Trent’s hand, probably commenting on the missing digits. Al, the demon I was hiding from, had taken them. He’d been well on his way to killing Trent at the time until Pierce had taken the blame for my being brain dead—which I hadn’t been. My soul had just been trapped in a bottle until my aura could heal.

Cold, I tugged my coat closer as Trent jerked his hand back and said something terse. I left wreckage like a hurricane among those I knew. No wonder I didn’t have very many friends. His pace fast and angry, Trent strode across the grass and to the nearby curb, clearly avoiding me. It was unusual that he wouldn’t try to hide his anger, but what was the point if you were talking to a vampire older than the Constitution who could read your emotions on the wind?

“Trent!” I called out, hating the snubbed feeling creeping into me.

He tilted his head to acknowledge my presence without slowing, and my next words died at the look of what might be betrayal in the slant of his lips. “Next time, answer your phone,” he said curtly from almost twenty yards away, his beautiful voice a study in contrasts. “I don’t call unless it’s important.”

“I’m not on your payroll.” Realizing how bitchy that had sounded, I took my hands out of my pockets. “I was in a meeting, sorry.”

Frowning, he looked away, his back hunched slightly and his shoulders about his ears as he went to a small black sports car and slipped behind the wheel with notable grace. The door shut with a soft thump. If taste and sophistication had a sound, that was it, and I dropped back to the tree and watched him check behind, then drive