A Perfect Blood

a line was out, given my bracelet. Fortunately most earth magic was simply putting things into a pot, mixing, heating, and adding three drops of blood to kindle it, and then invoking it—and a knot of tension eased when I decided that I could do the scattershot charm. It called for a circle, but only as a precaution to keep undesirables out of the pot. I’d risk it.
    Nodding sharply, I started moving from drawer to cupboard looking for my empty amulets, tick seeds, sticktights, and fairy-wing scales. The last made me flush, and I hoped Belle wasn’t around. The de-winged fairy had moved in with the pixies, physically unable to hibernate or fly anymore to escape the cold.
    “Jenks?” I shouted, knowing that if he didn’t hear me, one of his kids would relay the message. “Do you have any sticktights and tick seed in that stash of yours?”
    “Tink’s tampons, Rache!” he called back, sounding like he was in the back living room. “It’s raining!”
    “Really? I hadn’t noticed. Where else am I going to get them? Wally World?”
    There was a small thump, and I smirked at Ivy in the following silence. He’d probably gone out the fireplace’s flue. Bis, our resident gargoyle, kept it clean, claiming that the creosote tasted like burnt caramel. I wasn’t going to question the teenager on his dietary needs, and he was cheaper than a chimney sweep.
    “You’re making a locator charm?” Ivy said as she went back to her Web search. “I didn’t think you could invoke those.”
    “I can’t,” I said as I got out one of her bottled spring waters from the fridge. “I’m going to make a scattershot detection charm since the I.S.’s regular detection charms aren’t turning up anything. Looking for scattered evidence of the man in the park might get better results.” I cracked the bottle’s cap and nuked it for a minute to take off the chill. Chances were good I might spend all night on these only to find I couldn’t kindle them and I’d have to find a witch to invoke them for me. It wasn’t as if I had many witch friends . . . anymore.
    The microwave dinged and I took out the water, suddenly melancholy. Not that I’d ever had many species-specific friends. I’d always thought it was my personality, but now I was wondering if my “fellow” witches had known I was different on some basic level and had kept their distance, like chickens pecking the unhealthy bird to death.
    I set the warmed water next to the tiny clip of hair that Jenks had swiped from the corpse before we’d left the park. I didn’t like having to prep this without a protection circle, but I didn’t have much choice.
    A ping of guilt hit me as I shook the blood-caked hair out of the fold of paper I’d stored it in. How do you explain to the next of kin that your loved one had been tortured and drained for someone’s political message? That HAPA was involved was still being kept out of the papers, but the FIB had released the information that a body with demonic symbols had been found in the park. They were hoping it would slow the perpetrators down, but I knew HAPA was on a schedule that couldn’t be tweaked. Days. We had days. I wanted to believe that the I.S. and the FIB could work together on this, but I knew the reality was going to be difficult, if not impossible.
    I heard Jenks before I saw him, his wings a harsh clatter, getting rid of the rain as he flew into the kitchen shedding water drops everywhere. I dove for the assembled ingredients, waving my hands to keep him back. “Watch it, Jenks!” I exclaimed. “I’m working without a circle!”
    “All right, all right!” he crabbed at me, landing on the far side of the island. “I got your tick seed and sticktights. Tink loves a duck!” he exclaimed as he tried to open his jacket only to find that the prickly seeds had caught on the natural fibers. “Look at me! I hope you’re happy, Rache. It’s going to take me hours to get all this unhooked. Couldn’t you have done this before it started to rain?”
    “Thanks, Jenks,” I said as I turned the oven on to give him a place to warm up, and three giggling pixy kids came in to play in the updraft. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said sourly, clearly pleased as he plucked one of the seeds from his chest with a sudden pull of motion. “I’ll leave them here for you. Jrixibell! Get the Turn out of the oven! What if someone shut you in there!”
    Her eyes on her monitor,