A Perfect Blood (6 page)

“I know they’re laughing at us,” Nina almost growled, but she was watching Ivy’s ass as she took the stairs, and Ivy knew it. Jenks flew in to land on Ivy’s shoulder when she reached the sidewalk. He’d probably finished his investigation a while ago and simply hadn’t wanted to get near the body again. I could understand. It was probably like being next to the rotting carcass of a blue whale.

“Can we see the previous sites?” I asked just to get the undead vampire’s eyes off Ivy.

“If you like,” Nina said, annoyed as she brought her attention back to me. “All the information you need is in the reports. There’s evidence of at least four people involved in holding the victims.” She looked at the hanging man and frowned, her fingers twitching, grasping for something unseen—a nervous tic belonging to an undead vampire. Curious.

I exhaled as I took in what Nina was saying. If they’d moved and dumped the body, then we had five days to find the next victim.
Damn it all to hell, this is ugly.
Somewhere in the city a terrified man or woman was being experimented on, turned into this . . . halfway thing.

Jenks left Ivy to make irritating yo-yo motions in front of me, his color high. “One guy and two women dumped this guy,” he said proudly, and Nina’s expression showed stark amazement. “That is, if you trust pixies,” Jenks added snidely. “They came at four thirty-five in the morning, strung the guy up, finger-painted with blood from a bag, and left in a blue car. The local pixies didn’t pay much attention to them. A guy with a dog found him thirty-seven minutes later, and the I.S. flunky responding hit him with a forget charm and sent him on his way. He’s fine, but the dog is going to need massive amounts of therapy.”

Nina looked livid, but I was delighted. It was probably the best intel we’d get, and more than the I.S. had gotten in over two weeks—if they were being honest with us, that is. Forget charms. I hated them, and I made a mental note to see if I could find anything in my earth-magic spell books that would counter one. I didn’t want to take this run only to be charmed into forgetting everything when the I.S. had what it wanted.

“Nice going, Jenks,” I said, unable to resist the dig. “We’ll give you that for free, Nina.”

The two vampires with the gurney and the folded body bag had started forward, and feeling a little better, I asked, “How long until the new tracking amulets made from the evidence here are ready?” I wanted to nail this coffin shut like yesterday.

Head down, Nina rubbed her chin. “Twelve hours,” she said sourly, looking startled when she found her skin smooth and unstubbled. “I don’t expect to get a ping from any of them. Ms. Morgan, is there a curse that you can perform to track them down faster?”

I lingered at the top of the stairs, the body hanging, ugly, behind me, the forbidding walls of the music hall peeping through the bare trees. Ivy was with one of the techs on the sidewalk, their heads close as they talked shop. Between us, radio chatter and the dull murmur of anxious cops filled the air. I’d had my look. I’d seen enough to get sick, scared, and now angry.

“Curse? No,” I said, feeling cold as I gripped my shoulder bag tighter and took the stairs. I couldn’t do a curse to save my life while wearing this band of charmed silver. “But if they’re using this man’s blood to stir spells to torture the next, you can find them with that using any old earth or ley-line charm.”

I started down, and Wayde edged toward me, that same uneasy expression on his face. “It’s a big city,” Nina said, almost under her breath as she followed me down the stairs, her steps silent in her scratched knock-off heels. “Profilers think there are at least five people involved. Witches.”

Witches killing witches? Not impossible, but something felt wrong to me. Jenks was dripping an angry red. “You can’t find five psychotic witches?” he said caustically.

“It’s a big city,” Nina said again tightly. “Do you realize how many witches are in Cincinnati?”

Wayde glanced up at the body as he joined us, sliding close as the gurney vamps brushed past. “Uh, witches didn’t do this,” he said.

I turned to him as the gurney vamps stood before the body, discussing the best way to get the body down as they put on their protective gear. “But it
is
witch magic that did this,” I said, and the pixy bobbed up and down.

“Witches did this,” Nina said, her voice iron hard. “End of story.”

Wayde’s weight landed solidly on his front foot. “Witches would not use HAPA hate knots to tie him up.”

What?

Nina spun to him, and Wayde jumped back at the snarl she wore, her pretty features drawing up into what was almost a hiss. Hunched, she glared at the nearby techs, who were suddenly white faced and apologetic, as if they were supposed to have removed the knots. Ivy was a blur between us, taking the steps two at a time to see for herself, Jenks right beside her, dropping swear words like red sparkles. I stayed where I was on the lowest step, suddenly a lot more scared as I looked at the cords and paled. Damn, he was right. I hadn’t even noticed, but the ropes holding him up and spread-eagled
were
tied with the complex knots that HAPA had been known for, used for hanging witches, tying dead vampires in the sun, and quartering Weres in the nightmare four years of the Turn.

Slowly I sat on the lowest stair again, my back to the body. HAPA: Humans Against Paranormals Association. It was the fear of being dragged out into the street and burned by your neighbors made real, an extremist hate group that had gained a brief foothold during the Turn and advocated genocide for the very same people they’d lived next to and who’d taken great personal risks to keep them alive. It was believed HAPA had vanished years ago, but perhaps that’s only what the I.S. had wanted everyone to think. By Nina’s pissed attitude, I had the ugly feeling that the I.S. not only knew HAPA was alive and well but had been covering up its activity so they could take care of them the old-fashioned way.

Sickened, I wrapped my arms around my middle. I didn’t know which was uglier: the body hanging behind me, or the I.S. hiding the crime so they could quietly murder those responsible for it. “It’s coincidence,” Nina said, but though the knot had been around for centuries, the knowledge that HAPA exclusively used it was not. After that little display of temper, I doubted very much that it was a coincidence here.

Beside me, Wayde was clearly not buying it, either. “Before I got my security license, I worked large crowds. That’s a HAPA knot. We kick two or three haters out of every show. Why are you hiding this?”

Ivy looked up from her crouch where she had been examining the knot. “Maybe it’s a copycat organization trying to blame HAPA.”

“HAPA would never use magic,” I said, agreeing with her. “Not in a million years.” Witches had suffered the most from HAPA. Weres were naturally reticent, and vampires were better at hiding. Witches, though, were easy to spot if you knew what to look for.

Jenks hovered between Ivy and me as if torn. “What better way to get rid of a group of people than to use their individual magic to sow distrust among them?”

I stood up, frustrated. “HAPA doesn’t use magic!”

Ivy’s brow furrowed. “They used to, until they decided that even magic-using humans were tainted. What has me scared is why now? Why start using magic again?”

Something evil was crawling over my shoulder, and I looked up to see that Nina’s entire posture had shifted. Anger had made her eyes hard. She wasn’t talking, but clearly Ivy was right. “HAPA has been using magic for the last two years,” Nina said, looking as if she had eaten something sour. “We think it’s because they have something they think can wipe us out once and for all. Now you know, and you have a choice,” she said as she gestured roughly and a nervous agent edged his way up the stairs and handed her an evidence bag. Smiling without mirth, she held it up so I’d be sure to see the curly red hair in it before she tucked it in an inner pocket. “You can either quietly help us find and ‘reeducate’ the people responsible for this, or you, Rachel Morgan, will take the blame for it, because as everyone knows HAPA does not use magic.”

“What the hell?” Jenks exclaimed, spilling red dust as he got between me and Nina, his sword out and pointed. Ivy was aghast, and Wayde’s hand clenched on my shoulder until I shrugged it off. Reeducate? They meant catching and killing them without a trial in a back basement somewhere. If I didn’t help the I.S., that curl of red hair was going to make me responsible for it. All they’d have to do was drop it at one of the sites, and standard magic detection would lead them right back to me.

Son of a bitch.

“I am
not
taking the blame for this,” I said hotly.

Nina tucked the bag in an inner coat pocket. “Good. I’m looking forward to seeing how you work,” she said calmly. “I want a list of the curses you can do on my desk by tomorrow night. Early.”

They thought I was going to
work
for them? Fuming, I stood on the sidewalk. Ivy’s eyes were black, and Jenks almost dripped sparks. I was not going to do this. I was not going to become one of the I.S.’s elite hit squad—as flattering as that was. “There’s always option three,” I said tightly, and Jenks hesitated. Ivy, too. They’d been sending hand signals to each other, planning something that would probably end with me in the hospital or in jail.

Nina’s benevolent smile pissed me off. “Option three?”

I sent Jenks the signal to stand down and fumbled in my bag, not taking my eyes off the woman. Behind her, I.S. agents were slowly dropping back. Finding my cell, I flipped it open and scrolled through the numbers-called list. The one I wanted was at the bottom. I hadn’t realized it had been that long. “A HAPA hate crime is the FIB’s jurisdiction, not yours,” I said as I texted
HAPA @ WASHINGTON PARK
to Glenn, thumbs moving fast, and Nina sucked in her breath, her eyes going black.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Nina said, and I fought to not back up as I hit send. “The FIB can’t find their asses in a chair! They don’t even
want
these people caught!”

“I think they do,” I said, and she stepped toward me, her hands rising in wicked claws.

Ivy shifted forward and Jenks’s wings clattered. I shut my phone, heart pounding as I took up a stance, smelling the spicy, complex scent of Were behind me. The vampire stopped, her jaw clenched as she evaluated us and her own people quietly retreating. Ivy shook her head at the incensed vampire. If the head of the I.S. had been here in person, we could be in trouble, but here, in the sun in a body he wasn’t familiar with and had a responsibility to keep unmarked, he was at a disadvantage—and we all knew it.

“Too late,” I said, and Nina’s hands shook. “I don’t like being blackmailed,” I said, not knowing how we were going to get out of here without setting her off. “Didn’t watching the coven teach you anything?”

Must be calm and controlled. Relaxed and matter of fact,
I thought as my stomach knotted. I was used to dealing with out-of-control vampires. I could do this. “Hey! Leave the body,” I said to the gurney guys still in the gazebo, trying to distract Nina by doing something not focused on her. “The FIB will want a look at it first.”

I turned to Nina. “You should stick around. I’m sure the FIB’s Inderland specialist will want to talk to you. Get your take on the situation. Detective Glenn’s a very reasonable guy.”

“Do you have any idea what you have done?” she nearly spat at me as she halted an unsafe four feet away, anger flowing from her like a wave. “Any show that HAPA is still active will increase their numbers. They’re like a pestilence. Given the right conditions, they bloom like fireweed. You’ve just destroyed the facade of decades of peace between us and them!”

Us and them?
I felt sick. I knew the unrest existed. We all did. I saw and ignored it all the time, wanting to live in a world that accepted us as we were, hoping that if I believed in it hard enough, it would happen. There was a reason most of Inderland lived in the Hollows, away from humans, and it wasn’t the lower property taxes. But the disfigured form of a tortured man hanging six feet away was too much to pretend away. “Your fake peace is making the right conditions, not me,” I said, heart pounding. “A cooperative venture between the I.S. and the FIB to take down a hate group is better than a decade of your fake peace. You should just go with it, Nina. Make lemonade.”

It wasn’t the best thing I could have said. She jerked into motion and I found myself yanked out of her reach by Wayde. I gasped as I stumbled and then found my balance, but Nina was walking away from me and back to the street, her hands clenched and her stride showing her anger.

I gave Wayde a weak smile and pulled away from him, thankful for his quick reaction. It could have been me she had been going for just as easily. Maybe he was better than I thought. Fuming, Nina stormed across the park, I.S. officers fleeing her path. “Thanks,” I whispered, and he winced.

“I should’ve kept my mouth shut,” he said, shooting a quick glance at the knots, and I shrugged. Perhaps, but there was no sense in crying over squished tomatoes.

Ivy’s steps were slow as she came down from the gazebo, the I.S. gurney guys thumping behind her. Jenks was laughing, but I was more than worried. I was still going to have to find and catch these guys, but with the FIB involved, I might survive being successful.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said to Wayde as my phone hummed and I saw it was Glenn. Smiling weakly, I showed Ivy the screen and flipped the phone open. He was either going to be really happy or really pissed. I just hoped the I.S. wouldn’t take my license away.

Chapter Four

S
omeone had left the kitchen window over the sink open a crack, and after turning the water off, I leaned over and shut the old wooden frame with a thump, sealing out the chilly, damp air. It was closing in on midnight, but the kitchen, bright with electric lights, was soothing. Turning, I dried my fingers on a dish towel as I leaned against the stainless-steel counter and listened to the sound of pixies at play in the front of the church. They’d moved in last week, shunning my old desk that held memories of their mother, and instead finding individual hidey-holes all over the church. The separation seemed to be doing them good, and I’d already noticed a marked decrease from last year in the amount of noise they made. Maybe they were simply getting older.

Smiling faintly, I draped the dish towel to dry and began wiping down the counters with a saltwater-soaked rag. I loved my kitchen with its center island, hanging rack, and two stoves so I didn’t have to cook and stir spells on the same surface. One might think that my herbs and prepped amulets, hanging in the cabinet from mug hooks, would made an odd statement given the modern feel of the rest of it, but somehow their dried simplicity blended in with the gleaming counters and shiny cooking utensils. Ivy had updated the original congregation kitchen before I’d moved in, and she had good taste and deep pockets.

Ivy was across the kitchen at the big farm table shoved up against an interior wall, the report she’d taken from Nina unstapled and set in careful piles so she could see everything at a glance. The table was Ivy’s, the rest of the kitchen was mine, and right now, I was getting ready to use every last inch of it to prep some earth-magic, scattershot detection charms. I hadn’t wanted to get involved in this, but now that I was, I’d go all out. I didn’t need to tap a line to do earth magic.

Ivy was sleek and sexy as she stood leaning over the table, her long hair, no longer in a ponytail, falling to hide her face. Rain spotted her boots, and she moved with a marked grace as she tried to piece together three weeks of shoddy investigation. The I.S. relied on scare tactics and brute strength to get things done—not like the FIB, who used data. Lots of data.

“You sure know how to attract the powerful dead, Rachel.” Taking a pencil from between her teeth, she straightened, head still angled to the table as she added, “God help me, he’s old.” Turning a photo sideways, she tilted her head to evaluate the difference.

I dropped the rag on the counter and reached for my second-to-smallest spell pot from the rack over the center island counter, setting it on the rag so it wouldn’t wobble. “Walkie-talkie man?” I asked idly since I knew she wasn’t talking about Nina. I liked it when we were both working in the kitchen, her with her computer and maps, and me with my magic. Separate but together, and Jenks’s kids as a noisy backdrop.

Giving me a coy look, Ivy said, “Mmm-hmm. Walkie-talkie man. Who do you think he really is?”

“Besides psychotic?” I lifted a shoulder and let it fall, then hesitated as I looked at my spell library on the open shelves under the counter. Locator charms were out. They worked by finding auras, which existed only on living bodies. An earth-magic detection charm was an option, but all the ones the I.S. had on the street were coming up blank. I was going to try a scattershot detection charm. They were normally used to find lost people when there wasn’t a good focusing object, pinging on minuscule bits of stuff that we left behind when we stayed somewhere, things too small to wipe down and clean out. It was a very complex spell, and I was worried it might not kindle from my blood, seeing that it contained higher than normal amounts of the demon enzyme that tended to interfere with the more complex witch charms.

“You’re not liking him, are you?” I said as I pulled one of my spell books out and dropped it on the counter.

Ivy was silent, and I looked up, blinking. “He’s going to make me take the blame for this if we can’t find them, and you like him?” I asked again, and she winced. The more dangerous a vampire was, the more Ivy liked him or her, and Nina was channeling a very old, very powerful one. “Ivy . . .” I prompted, and her sigh made my brow furrow. “I’m the one who makes bad life choices, not you.”

“No, I’m not interested,” she said as our gazes touched and she looked away. “It’s just been a while, that’s all. Nina, though . . .” Lip twitching in a rare show of unease, Ivy sat at her keyboard. “The woman is in trouble and she doesn’t know it,” Ivy said softly, her long pianist’s hands shifting papers as she concentrated. “She reminds me of Skimmer, in a lot of ways, but she’s utterly oblivious and unprepared for what he is doing to her, to her body. Helping her survive it isn’t my job. She’ll figure it out, or die trying.” Her head came up and she stared at the wall, probably remembering something she would never share with me. “But I feel bad for her. The highs let you touch the sky, and the lows give you no way out.”

Concerned, I ran my finger down the index, searching. Been a while . . . What she meant was that it had been a while since she’d been with a master vampire. Her master, Rynn Cormel, didn’t touch her. It wasn’t a matter of lack of desire, but that he’d rather his “adopted daughter” find blood with me. Yeah. Like that was
ever
going to happen . . . again.

“Why do you think they had Trent out there?” I said.
Page 442. Got it.

Ivy looked up, her pencil provocatively between her teeth. “I think they were considering him as a scapegoat in case they can’t find HAPA. You’re a better one, though.”

She was right, which didn’t bode well for me, and I began shifting pages for the correct charm. What I really wanted was some sort of spell to prevent an I.S. memory charm from making me forget that the I.S. owed me a big thank-you for taking care of their mess, because I would take care of it, and I didn’t want to find myself wandering in the park wondering what I was doing out there. Besides, it looked bad when a demon couldn’t remember who owed her what.

Trent might have one.
The thought came unbidden, and I shoved it away, not trusting his wild magic. A memory rose up to replace it, even worse: me and Trent trapped in my subconscious, baking cookies at this very counter as he tried to untwist the elven magic he’d done to save my life. Saving me had taken a kiss. A rather . . . hot and heavy one that had prompted me to slap him when I woke up.
I shouldn’t have done that. At least I apologized.
Eyes closing briefly, I quashed the memory.

The kitchen became quiet as I leafed through the spell book, knowing I wouldn’t find anything as complex as a memory-retention charm in it. Ivy typed something from her papers into a search engine and began scrolling. I had hated Trent for a long time, and letting that go made me feel good. Lately, though, he had scared the crap out of me with his dabbling in wild magic, and my gaze became distant as I recalled Trent, ashen faced and wearing a cap and a ribbon of intent as the world fell down around us. He’d been afraid, but he’d done it.
To help me?
To help himself. I should stop being stupid and just call him. He probably didn’t want to wake up not remembering this week, either.

My fingers turning pages slowed as I found the detecting charm’s recipe, and I bent my head over the book, trying to decide if I could do it or not. It wasn’t a matter of skill, but tools. Anything that required tapping a line was out, given my bracelet. Fortunately most earth magic was simply putting things into a pot, mixing, heating, and adding three drops of blood to kindle it, and then invoking it—and a knot of tension eased when I decided that I could do the scattershot charm. It called for a circle, but only as a precaution to keep undesirables out of the pot. I’d risk it.

Nodding sharply, I started moving from drawer to cupboard looking for my empty amulets, tick seeds, sticktights, and fairy-wing scales. The last made me flush, and I hoped Belle wasn’t around. The de-winged fairy had moved in with the pixies, physically unable to hibernate or fly anymore to escape the cold.

“Jenks?” I shouted, knowing that if he didn’t hear me, one of his kids would relay the message. “Do you have any sticktights and tick seed in that stash of yours?”

“Tink’s tampons, Rache!” he called back, sounding like he was in the back living room. “It’s raining!”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed. Where else am I going to get them? Wally World?”

There was a small thump, and I smirked at Ivy in the following silence. He’d probably gone out the fireplace’s flue. Bis, our resident gargoyle, kept it clean, claiming that the creosote tasted like burnt caramel. I wasn’t going to question the teenager on his dietary needs, and he was cheaper than a chimney sweep.

“You’re making a locator charm?” Ivy said as she went back to her Web search. “I didn’t think you could invoke those.”

“I can’t,” I said as I got out one of her bottled spring waters from the fridge. “I’m going to make a scattershot detection charm since the I.S.’s regular detection charms aren’t turning up anything. Looking for scattered evidence of the man in the park might get better results.” I cracked the bottle’s cap and nuked it for a minute to take off the chill. Chances were good I might spend all night on these only to find I couldn’t kindle them and I’d have to find a witch to invoke them for me. It wasn’t as if I had many witch friends . . . anymore.

The microwave dinged and I took out the water, suddenly melancholy. Not that I’d ever had many species-specific friends. I’d always thought it was my personality, but now I was wondering if my “fellow” witches had known I was different on some basic level and had kept their distance, like chickens pecking the unhealthy bird to death.

I set the warmed water next to the tiny clip of hair that Jenks had swiped from the corpse before we’d left the park. I didn’t like having to prep this without a protection circle, but I didn’t have much choice.

A ping of guilt hit me as I shook the blood-caked hair out of the fold of paper I’d stored it in. How do you explain to the next of kin that your loved one had been tortured and drained for someone’s political message? That HAPA was involved was still being kept out of the papers, but the FIB had released the information that a body with demonic symbols had been found in the park. They were hoping it would slow the perpetrators down, but I knew HAPA was on a schedule that couldn’t be tweaked.
Days.
We had days. I wanted to believe that the I.S. and the FIB could work together on this, but I knew the reality was going to be difficult, if not impossible.

I heard Jenks before I saw him, his wings a harsh clatter, getting rid of the rain as he flew into the kitchen shedding water drops everywhere. I dove for the assembled ingredients, waving my hands to keep him back. “Watch it, Jenks!” I exclaimed. “I’m working without a circle!”

“All right, all right!” he crabbed at me, landing on the far side of the island. “I got your tick seed and sticktights. Tink loves a duck!” he exclaimed as he tried to open his jacket only to find that the prickly seeds had caught on the natural fibers. “Look at me! I hope you’re happy, Rache. It’s going to take me hours to get all this unhooked. Couldn’t you have done this
before
it started to rain?”

“Thanks, Jenks,” I said as I turned the oven on to give him a place to warm up, and three giggling pixy kids came in to play in the updraft. “I couldn’t do this without you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said sourly, clearly pleased as he plucked one of the seeds from his chest with a sudden pull of motion. “I’ll leave them here for you. Jrixibell! Get the Turn out of the oven! What if someone shut you in there!”

Her eyes on her monitor, Ivy clicked a few keys with the sound of finality. “They will have switched bases before you can find them,” she predicted, then closed out her window and stood, stretching to show a glimpse of her belly-button ring. “Gone before you get there.”

I carefully measured out the right amount of water and put it in my second-to-largest spell pot. My smallest had a dent in it from who knew what. “Probably,” I said as the water went chattering in and the bowl rocked. “But I’d like to see what the FIB can pull from a crime scene that the I.S. can’t.”

Ivy smiled with her lips closed, and we watched as the three pixy kids in the kitchen rose up in a noisy swirl of silk and darted into the hall. “Me too,” she said as she began to tidy her papers. “The I.S. is way outclassed when it comes to the detective work.”

Her smile became wicked, and I wondered whom she was thinking about as my neck started to tingle, but then one of Jenks’s kids flew in with an exuberant “Detective Glenn is here!”

Jenks rose up on his dragonfly-like wings and hovered a moment in the open archway to the hall. “I’ll let him in,” he said, proud that he could work the system of pulleys to open the heavy wooden doors. The two of them buzzed out, and I heard a small uproar in the sanctuary.

Ah,
I thought as I made sure I hadn’t gotten Jenks’s sticktights on my shirt.
That’s why Ivy is tidying up her papers
. Her hearing was better than mine. She’d probably heard him drive up in that big-ass SUV he had.