A Perfect Blood

so great that I’d let the warrior dryad redecorate any time she wanted.
    Seeing that I had a can of pop beside me, Wayde went back into the kitchen. Ivy was already in there, Daryl was on the far end of the couch with me, and Jenks was buzzing about, waiting for the vegetarian pizza to come out since too much animal fat gave him the Hershey squirts. His words, not mine. Glenn was fiddling with the TV, jumping among stations to find the evening news and the official explanation of what had happened at the library. So far it had been sports scores, pig prices, and the latest Cincy scandal. I’d been sitting here with my foot up for almost two hours while Glenn and Ivy made the pizza and decompressed. I wanted to get up, but I didn’t think I could, the couch was so plush and I’d had enough time to stiffen up. Besides, my ribs hurt, and it was easier to do nothing.
    The soft hum of Jenks’s wings brought my attention up from the TV, and I took the napkin he held. “Here, Rache,” he said, landing on the arm of the opulent couch. “Big FIB detective had a royal hissy fit last time he found pizza sauce on his leather.”
    “Hey, that wasn’t me,” I said, turning to Glenn.
    “You were the one in the chair,” Glenn said as he stood and ambled into the kitchen. Ivy was just taking the veggie pizza out, setting the hot pizza stone on a thick pad stuffed with thyme, and it smelled wonderful.
    Plate on my lap, I tried to lever myself up with my good hand and shift my back to the arm of the couch so I didn’t have to twist so much to see the kitchen. It was harder than it should have been, but I managed. “It was game night,” I said, catching my pizza before it slid off the plate. “It could have been anyone.”
    Glenn didn’t say anything, and I watched the play of emotions as Ivy took a slice of vegetarian pizza and left the kitchen, her napkin dramatically waving as she handed the plate to Daryl, sitting on the edge of the couch, before going to her own chair and waiting pizza. We’d been coming over for game night for a few weeks now as Ivy and Glenn tried to get Daryl more socialized. The woman wasn’t healthy, and even the excitement of Jenga could set off her asthma. My thoughts went to her, Ivy, and Glenn, and then I wished they hadn’t. I wanted them to be okay, but still . . . there was a new space that hadn’t been there before.
    Most of Daryl’s species had been wiped out in the industrial revolution, though there were some signs that they were coming back in the mountains—now that we weren’t cutting down hundred-year-old trees anymore. Frail, pale, and sensitive to pollution, the woman didn’t get out much. She was a warrior, though, and for all her delicate beauty and flowing clothes, I’d seen her pin Glenn with a cheese knife to his throat when she thought he was cheating.
    My eyes went to the ozonator Glenn had put in last month, the machine purifying the air and leaving it with the smell of a thunderstorm. It seemed to help, and now that I noticed, all the new furnishings were eco oriented, with no petroleum or synthetic anything to make her condition worse. Method to her redecorating madness, perhaps?
    Jenks spilled a silver dust and rose an inch before dropping back down. “Daryl, turn it up!” he exclaimed as BRIMSTONE BUST AT LIBRARY flashed up on the screen and the lady announcer in her lavender suit began talking. The pretty, petite warrior woman licked her fingers and snatched up the remote, knowing how to work it as if she’d been born with one in her hand. Magic, technology—sometimes I failed to see the difference.
    The announcer’s voice became loud and I leaned forward, straining over the hum of Jenks’s wings. “If you tried to use the downtown branch of the library this afternoon, chances are good that you were turned away as the FIB and the I.S. took part in a rare combined effort to catch one of the country’s slipperiest Brimstone distributors.”
    “Brimstone?” Jenks shouted, and I shushed him.
    “In a late hour of action, officials stormed the lower levels of the downtown branch of the Cincinnati library. The chase ultimately covered almost two city blocks through some of Cincinnati’s old bioshelters, created during the Turn, until Eloy Orin was apprehended trying to emerge from Central Ave.’s access doors.” The woman turned to the attractive, gray-tinged man sitting beside her and smiled. “Brimstone in the library? It gives new meaning