A Perfect Blood

looking cocky as he dropped back a few steps to watch. Nervous, I lined up an easy angle shot to a far corner pocket with the ten. I always had trouble with the ten ball. I didn’t know why. Sure enough, I hit it wrong, and the ball bounced off the tip of the pocket and rolled to the rail. “The Turn take it,” I swore softly, frowning as I held the stick out. I was going to get in three shots this game, max.
    Wayde ignored the stick, instead moving both the ten and the cue ball back to their original places. “Try it again,” he said as the light over the table glistened like gold in his stubbly beard when he pulled back and smiled. “And angle it a little more.”
    My eyes narrowed at the show of chivalry. “I don’t need your pity handicap,” I said, and Jenks flew to Ivy, his wings clattering loudly.
    “This isn’t pity,” Wayde said as Ivy rattled a page to cover Jenks’s badly whispered comment. “You’re a good shot. You just need to slow down, pay attention.”
    My hand closed around the cue ball, and I set it down hard where it had come to rest earlier. “Your turn.”
    “Hey! Watch the slate!” Ivy exclaimed, and the slant to my shoulders shifted.
    “Sorry,” I said, then turned to tell Wayde to take the stick before I jammed it somewhere, but my jaw dropped when I realized he had moved the cue ball again. “I said, it’s your turn!”
    “Line it up.” Wayde’s eyes were on the table, not me. “Exhale on the down stroke.”
    “Yeah, stroke it, baby!” Jenks said, his hips gyrating as he hovered over Ivy.
    “Oh my God,” I muttered, but then, because I really should have made that shot, I tugged down my T-shirt and bent over the table. I exhaled, sending all the tension out of me, my thoughts about Kisten, my anger at HAPA, my worry over Winona—my new doubt that Trent was simply trying to get me to work for him . . . With a smooth motion, I hit the ball. It hummed over the felt as if pulling my aura with it, barely tapping the ten, shifting the momentum to it and sending it into the pocket with a satisfying little thump.
    Pleasure sifted through me as I straightened and smiled while I handed the cue stick to him. “Nice, but it’s your turn,” he said, even as he took it.
    “Nah, you gave me that one,” I said, appreciating the gesture. “Your go.”
    Wayde nodded. Moving gracefully around the table, he lined up a shot that should have been easy—until he muffed it, sending the cue ball bouncing around to miss everything and come to a halt inches from where it had started.
    Jenks whistled, impressed. I was, too, even if my smile had gone a little dry. He’d done it intentionally, but what could I do? Cry foul and not play anymore? “That was tighter than Tink’s . . . ah, he’s good,” Jenks said to Ivy, then darted up to rescue the chalk from where his kids had snatched it again.
    I held my hand up, and the chalk dropped into it. He is good, I thought as I chalked my cue. Maybe a little too good. Feeling centered, I lined up the thirteen and easily tapped it in.
    Wayde’s teeth showed and he ran a hand over his beard. “Anyone want some chips?” he asked as he headed for the kitchen, mistakenly thinking I would sink a few more before it was his turn again. Yeah, that was likely.
    Ivy winced when Jenks’s kids began a high-pitched, shrilling demand. I knew they were speaking English, but it was so fast I couldn’t keep up. Wayde, too, looked pained, and in a noisy cloud of blue-faced pixies, they vanished into the hallway, Jenks trailing along behind. There was a crash from the hanging rack, and Wayde yelled that nothing broke.
    I sighed, leaning on the stick as I looked over the sunlit table. From behind me came Ivy’s somewhat threatening “They’re going to get grease on everything.”
    I sashayed to the table, deciding to try the trickier bank shot if Wayde wasn’t here to tell me how to do it. “You weren’t worried about it last week.”
    “Last week, it was a crappy table.”
    Her magazine rustled, and I took my shot and missed. Standing, I looked over the table again, deciding to take another. It wasn’t a serious game, and if he said anything, I’d just play stupid. My lips curled up in a smile as I bent over the table.
    “Jenks tells me the charms on the counter are Trent’s,” Ivy said, her tone rising in question. I could understand why. I hadn’t touched them: him making me a macaroni statue would have been better. If I used them,