A Perfect Blood

the sloping ceiling like a weird bat. “You startled me!”
    The small teenager grinned to show his black teeth, his red eyes glowing slightly in the dim light of the stairway. He had lightened his pebble-gray skin to match the raw wood brown of the walls, and his clawed hands and feet dug in as he wheezed/laughed at me. As I watched, his skin shifted color again, and he swished his lionlike tail. It even had a tuft on the end that matched the long hair on his ears. It helped him balance in flight, apparently.
    “Sorry,” he said, his pushed-in, almost ugly face turned up in a smile. Leathery wings spread, he jumped to my shoulder and wrapped his warm tail around my neck. I braced for the sensory overload that never came . . . and sighed. Before my bracelet, his touch had sent every ley line in Cincinnati singing in my mind. Now there was nothing, and I breathed in his odd scent, a mix of old iron and feathers from the pigeons he ate.
    “I don’t think you’re sorry at all,” I said mildly as I started back up, and his tail tightened. Immediately, I forgave him. Bis was a good kid. He’d been living in the belfry for almost a year now, having been kicked off the basilica for spitting on people. Jenks thought that was just fine, and Bis paid his rent by watching the church and grounds the four hours around midnight that Jenks liked to sleep. Where else was the little guy going to go?
    “Wayde is decent, right?” I asked, again hearing the faint tap, tap, tap come again.
    “Decent?”
    I could understand Bis’s confusion. He usually didn’t wear clothes—they interfered with his ability to go chameleon.
    “Uh, maybe you could just warn him that I’m coming?” I said, slowing as I neared the top, the steady glow of light coming through the wide crack under the door.
    But then Wayde’s easygoing voice echoed down. “I’m decent. Come on in.”
    The tap, tap, tap started again, and I continued up the stairs, trying to decide how I was going to do this without hurting his feelings. Wayde had been fixing up the belfry—he liked the space better than camping out in the back living room. I hadn’t been up there yet to see what he’d done. There’d been lumber deliveries and several furniture vans, and I was curious. Last time I’d seen it, the room had been an empty hexagon with the church’s bell hanging over it and no insulation. It had been a nice place to sit and watch the rain, but not to live in.
    “Wait until you see,” Bis said proudly. “Wayde made a shelf for me in the steeple.”
    I smiled as I ascended the last of the stairs. “I didn’t know you wanted one. Sorry, Bis.”
    Again his tail tightened, and I almost choked. “It just kind of happened,” he said, and I could breathe again. “You know, extra wood and stuff.”
    Electric light? I thought, looking at the slice of warm yellow glow coming through the crack under the door as I neared the last steps.
    Bis jumped from my shoulder and my hair flew as he landed on the door to swing it open. Another wing pulse, and he was in the air again, darting up past the huge bell making a false ceiling. Light had spilled out, and I heard the thump of a hammer being set down. “Come on in. What do you think?”
    Head swiveling, I came in as Wayde turned from the window he’d been working on. The old slatted frame was out, propped up against the wall beside him, and the dark square of the rainy night was beyond him. A new, stickered window was next to him, ready to go in. His shirt was off and his lightly tanned skin glistened from either sweat or the mist coming in off the roof. I blinked, taking in his tattoos. I’d seen only a fraction before, but the man was covered in them. They moved as his muscles did, and he had a lot of those, too. He looked good over there with his tools and stuff. Really good.
    “Nice,” I said softly, and Wayde ducked his head, smiling slightly.
    “I meant, what do you think of the room?”
    I stood in the doorway and eyed him. “What did you think I was commenting on?” But when I actually looked at the room, my lips parted. It was nice. The original oak floor still needed to be finished, but a large circular rug added softness and warmth. Wallboard had gone up, already mudded and with insulation behind it, I was sure, from the rolls I’d seen in the sanctuary last week. The cathedral ceiling around the bell was finished, but the original heavy beams still showed. The metal rings that held the rope to