A Perfect Blood

along with a complexion charm. Trent would remember them from our cross-country excursion, but it still threw me. My clothes from yesterday were laid out, cleaned and pressed. The bullet hole in my leather pants had been mended so well I couldn’t see the patch unless I ran my hand over it, but there was no way I’d be able to wear them—not with my leg swollen like it was. Beside them was a robe and a pair of black sweats. The robe wasn’t happening, but the sweats I could manage, and I sat on the dressing couch and carefully put myself back together as if I was getting dressed for battle, somehow managing even the socks.
    Finally I stood before the mirror, my pulse a little fast, my body a little dehydrated, and I tried to smile. Immediately my lips turned down and my shoulders slumped. Today was going to be long and hard. Wayde was never going to let me live it down that I got hurt. But I was alive. I had survived. I was going to take the damned bracelet off, and I was scared to death. “There must be an easier way to grow up,” I said with a breathy exhalation as I turned to the door.
    Winona wasn’t there when I came out, but I gratefully took the single crutch propped up against the wall by the door, hobbling to the main room. The door was open, and Jenks was talking to Ceri. Lucy, too, was noisy, and I hesitated at the threshold, taking in the changes that I’d missed on my way up here, doped up on whatever magic pill Trent had had me on.
    The room was bright with light being piped in from who knew where and emerging from big skylights. The small open kitchen was to my right, the suite’s common room to my left. A wide stairway leading from Trent’s private quarters to his more public house was beyond that. The huge window/video screen showed the woods, gray and bare for the coming winter. The common room itself had a lot less bachelor and a lot more kid, toys and books scattered everywhere. The big wide-screen TV was still there, but the leather couch in the sunken area had been exchanged for something lower to the floor, the top of the back almost even with the floor in the upper level.
    Ceri glanced at me from where she was sitting on the floor in front of the low couch with her two girls, only one of whom was truly hers. The petite, fair-haired woman smiled, then looked back at Winona, as if chatting with a malformed woman who looked like a monster was a common event. But for the ex-demon familiar, it might be.
    Jenks was on her shoulder, a wash of golden sunbeam dust heavy on her white dress. He’d seen me, too, but he was having too much fun teasing Lucy to move. I swear, if the little girl got her chubby hands on him and ripped his wings off, he deserved it.
    Winona sat on the floor next to Ceri, looking both embarrassed and grateful—as if she was ready to cry—and I wondered if Ceri was on the floor because Winona couldn’t manage the couch easily. I think their easy acceptance meant a huge amount to the traumatized woman. The girls weren’t afraid of her, and Lucy sat up by herself and babbled, determined to keep up. Ray, still too young to sit unaided, was cradled in Ceri’s arms, watching with big, wide green eyes.
    The two girls were being raised as sisters though they shared not a single drop of blood. Lucy had the fair hair and complexion of Trent and Ellasbeth, but Ray had Quen’s darker hair, completely overpowering Ceri’s light wisps. Ray’s complexion, too, was darker, in sharp contrast to her older sister. But both of them had tiny, pointy ears, the first elves to keep their ears undocked in almost two thousand years. I thought they looked sweet.
    I smiled, and at my sniff, Ceri tickled Lucy’s chin, saying, “Your aunt Rachel is awake.”
    “Aunt Rachel?” Jenks said dryly, and Winona raised a single eyebrow.
    “You’d rather she be the demon godmother?” Ceri said, and Winona’s smile faded.
    “I like Aunt Rachel,” I said as I leaned heavily on the crutch and hobbled for the steps down into the sunken living room.
    Lucy, busy with her one-sided conversation, kept babbling, patting at the bright squares in the book before her, but I would swear that Ray’s green eyes searched the room until they found me, the little girl kicking at her blanket until Ceri tucked it back.
    “Hello, my little ladies,” I said as I hobbled down the shallow steps and just about collapsed into the soft leather. I didn’t care that I wouldn’t be able to find my feet again