A Perfect Blood

transformation curse ought to do it, as it would return Trent to a pristine state, fingers and all. The question was, turn him into what? A fox, maybe?
    Clearly uncomfortable, Wayde picked up a dirty bowl. My head snapped up, and he shrugged. “I’m hungry. Mind if I clean up while you read?”
    He’s learning, I thought, smiling. Mixing food with spell prep was a bad idea. “Thanks,” I said as I shifted pages in earnest. “I’d really appreciate that.”
    “Cool.” His eyes roved over the kitchen, and I could almost see him prioritizing. He really was a smart man, good with his hands and figuring things out. Feeling guilty, he wanted to do something for me, and my expression became weary as he set the largest bowl by the sink.
    “My sister was a royal bitch if the bus’s kitchen was ever left dirty,” he said, and I flashed him another smile before he caught me thinking about him.
    Propping an elbow on the table, I dropped my head in my hand. His sister was Ripley, Takata’s drummer. I’d found that out just last month. “That must have been a fun way to grow up,” I said. “On a bus. Every day being somewhere different. All that creativity around you.”
    I looked up as the bowls clanked at the sink. “The band?” he said, his back to me as the taps started. “No, not really. It was a bitch in its own special way.”
    “How could it have been that bad?” I said, trying to imagine it, then blinking as he bent to get the soap from under the sink. Damn, he looked good in tight jeans.
    Coming up, he squirted too much soap into the pan and smacked the bottle closed. “People get careless when they lack stability,” he said as he set the bowls in the sink to fill. “If you’re somewhere new every day, you feel no accountability. You don’t care who you hurt. You do what you want and damn the rest because you won’t be there for the fallout.”
    My focus blurred as I thought of the demons. They never moved but had the same attitude. Maybe they were fleeing their past?
    “Too many drugs, too much meaningless sex.” Wayde leaned against the sink as the bubbles became mounds. “The demands of the music sort of suck everything out of a person unless he or she is tapped into something bigger.” His eyes touched on mine, and he smiled. “Like your dad. He’s like the ass end of a black hole, spewing the universe’s guts to the world.”
    I couldn’t help my chuckle. “Still,” I said, not believing that it could be all bad. “You got to see things. Be a part of something that touches people. The music alone . . .”
    Wayde turned the water off. Taking a dishcloth, he wrung it out and started wiping down the center counter. “Takata was cool,” Wayde said as he pushed everything to the floor instead of into his hand. “He treated me like a little brother. Watched out for me. Everyone knew my sister would jam her drumsticks up their, uh, noses if they messed with me. But the music?” Wayde lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Not really. The shine . . . It’s fake, you know?” He dropped back to lean against the counter as if it bothered him. “By the time it’s been corralled by mixers and synthesizers, packaged into plastic, it’s dead. The magic that Takata gave it is mostly gone, even when he’s riding the high of a thousand people. His best gigs were always when he was so stoned he forgot there was an audience and just spilled his soul out to the gods as he looked for an answer and happened to take the rest of us along.”
    Wayde turned away, his back to me as he dunked the rag in the mounds of bubbles. “But mostly it’s just a job,” he said to the evening-darkened window. “A hard job that left him emotionally and physically drained after every performance.”
    “I wonder why he didn’t quit,” I said, thinking of the years between my dad’s death and finding out just recently that Takata was my birth father. Having a second parental figure might have been nice. But then, remembering Takata’s orange jumpsuits, I questioned my own logic.
    Wayde was back at the counter, wiping it down a second time. “The money was a sure thing. Sometimes, the crowd would bring the soul back, make it alive. For a minute or two, the universe made sense. A year of hell is worth three minutes in heaven. Or so they say.”
    He smiled deviously at me from under his reddish-blond eyebrows and turned away. Rolling up his sleeves, he plunged his hands into the suds and started to