A Perfect Blood

was it using my resources to their fullest potential?
    I didn’t know anymore. But I did know that I didn’t want to be ignorant and oblivious of what happened when all was said and done. The I.S. didn’t have a problem using illegal memory charms, and I wanted to remember.
    Running a finger under the print, I whispered the words, trying to practice the cadence before I actually tapped a line and did it. I hadn’t accessed the collective since taking off the bracelet, and the last thing I needed was to do it wrong and attract attention. Certo idem sum qui semper fui. I am the same as I was before—or something like that. My Latin sucked.
    Settling myself at the center counter, I took a deep breath and tapped the line out back in the garden. I couldn’t help but close my eyes and smile as it spilled into me, seeming to bring with it the shiny, clean sensation of a thin, new ice. It was different every time, and yet the same. I let the line course through me, humming like the pulse of the universe. Thank you, Trent, I thought. Thank you for taking this away so I would know it for the gift it is.
    Slowly my pleased smile faded and my eyes opened. Faint, at the edge of my awareness, something wasn’t resonating right, not in this line, but somewhere. The tear, I thought, and my gut clenched. I’d fix it. Somehow.
    I looked back down at the words, feeling guilty not for the tear, but that this curse wouldn’t work on anyone but a demon. “Stop it,” I whispered, head bowed over the print and the energies of the line building in me, demanding action. Guilt. Was I going to feel guilty about everything? I was a demon, damn it. I wouldn’t even need this curse if I was a normal witch.
    Head up, I shoved the guilt down deep. If the I.S. wiped Jenks’s and Ivy’s memories, I’d find a way to fix them. The important thing was that someone remembered.
    “Certo idem sum qui semper fui,” I said softly, shivering as I felt a sliver of my awareness dart from me, arrowing through the theoretical collective of whispering demons’ thoughts, down to the dark annexes where no one went. I shivered, my fingers sliding over the textured paper as the sensation of my soul melting around a stored curse shook me. And then, like folding space, my splinter of awareness and my soul merged like water drops, bringing the curse within me forever.
    “I accept the cost,” I whispered, blinking fast as I felt the curse spread through me with the sensation of burning warmth, tingling through my skin and recoiling at the edges of my aura. It was done. I would never forget again.
    Maybe that’s why Newt went crazy, I thought as I severed my connection to the line with abrupt haste. Someone had felt me tapping into the collective and had come to investigate.
    The soft scuff of shoes in the hallway was like sandpaper over my awareness, and I shut the book, my fingers trembling. Nothing had changed, but I felt different. I’d used curses before, but it had always been with too much soul searching. Now . . . I just used them.
    It was Wayde, and I didn’t look up as I dropped down to shelve the demon book in with my regular cookbooks. I didn’t know if I was going to tell Ivy or Jenks about this. More choices. More guilt.
    Wayde had halted in the threshold, and I rose when he cleared his throat. He had been in a snit all afternoon up in the belfry, and I wasn’t going to feed his pity party. Yes, I’d gotten snatched, but it hadn’t been his fault. It had been mine. Sure enough, he looked irate, his stance stiff. “Done sulking?” I said as I went back to the table and the rest of my demon library.
    “It would’ve been different if I’d been with you,” he said, still in the doorway.
    “Absolutely.” I couldn’t make an antimemory charm for Trent, but I had promised to get him his fingers back. I was on a roll, baby. “You might have stopped them completely.” I looked up, seeing his surprise. “Did Ivy tell you that their security guy was across the street with a sniper rifle, ready to take out his own people if he couldn’t kill everyone holding them?”
    Wayde silently rubbed his beard. There were reasons he hadn’t been on the scene, and that was just one of them. Uncrossing his arms, he straightened to his full height. “The finding charms are gone?”
    “Mmm-hmm.” I didn’t see the need to tell him they’d been curses, and I pulled the top book onto my lap and started turning pages. A standard