A Perfect Blood

there was no need to bother him. Besides, he didn’t have his winter clothes on, and it was cold. Giving Rex a scratch under her chin, I stepped over the low wall, starting through the tombstones for the distant wall. There were two bars in the rusted car gate that had been wedged apart just enough for a size eight tall to squeeze through.
    A feeling of excitement began to push out my melancholy. I hadn’t been on a run in ages. Not a run run—I ran regularly at the zoo before they opened, Wayde in tow. I meant a bad-guy run, where the adrenaline flowed and both the brain and the body got a workout. Ivy had been trying to include me in her work, but I’d not had much business since I’d been labeled a demon, and I missed it. But now, as I slunk through the graveyard, the hair on the back of my neck prickling from being in sight of Wayde’s windows, I felt a thrill down to my dew-wet toes. If he didn’t see me, then my gut feeling that he wasn’t up to this was right, and I needed to stop depending on him.
    The bus stop was about thirty yards away—and right in Wayde’s line of sight should he be looking. I thought it inexcusable that I could have gotten this far without him knowing it, and a feeling of justifiable anger suffused me.
    The choking gurgle of the bus brought my head up, and I peered down the street, heart pounding. It was early. Smiling, I ran for the fence, the bus passing me as I slipped between the rusty bars. “Wait!” I shouted, the bars leaving a long red stain on my jacket as I shoved my way through, waving my arm as I ran. Man . . . I hoped they’d pick me up. Sometimes they didn’t. You take the hair off the first three rows with a misfired charm and they never forget. “Hey! I’m running here!” I shouted, garden shoes squishing.
    I pounded after it, and the bus finally stopped. “Rachel!” I heard Wayde bellow, and I, grinning, didn’t turn. It was about time. I knew I should stop, but I was burning with the need to rub his nose in something. “Rachel! You wicked little witch! Get back here!”
    The bus’s door was open, and I grabbed the handle, swinging myself in. “Thanks,” I said breathlessly to the driver, then turned to wave at Wayde as I stood on the lowest step. He was in his boxers and a white T-shirt, standing on the porch steps with his hair wild and his beard matted. Clearly he had expected me to be a good little girl after yesterday’s show of masculine strength. He was still in his jammies.
    Wayde just about lost it, stomping down the stairs and heading across the wet grass in his bare feet. Crap, I had to get out of here.
    Skittering up the steps, I dug a couple of dollars out of my bag and dropped it into the plastic piggy bank. “Thanks again,” I said to the sour-looking man driving the bus. He frowned, which made his deeply wrinkled face even more crevassed.
    “Is he after you, miss?” he asked, and I smiled and nodded.
    “Yep. Mind making this thing move? He’s a bastard before his first cup of coffee.”
    With a tired sigh, the man closed the door and revved the engine. He put it into motion, and I swayed my way to the very back seat so I could watch Wayde skitter through the graveyard, trying not to walk on anyone’s grave. “You have to move faster than that if you want to keep up with me, wolfman,” I said under my breath, my mood much improved as I plunked myself down.
    From the other side of the bus came a soft masculine throat clearing. “Boyfriend?”
    My hand smacked into my shoulder bag and the reassuring presence of my splat gun. Startled, I turned to the other back seat and saw a young man in a short brown coat. By the tattoo peeking out of his collar, he was a Were. His tousled hair was black and wavy. A thick stubble was on his face, jet black and sexy. His smile was sly, and it went right to my gut and twisted.
    I resettled myself, glad I had my jacket even if I was right over the heater. “Boyfriend? No. But he acts like it sometimes.” I looked out the back window, seeing Wayde making his way back to the church, his head down and his arms swinging. Yeah, he was mad. “I need some time alone,” I said as the bus turned the corner and he was gone.
    “Oh, sorry,” the man said as he shifted his body angle away from me.
    “Not from everyone,” I said, realizing what I’d sounded like. “Just . . . everyone at home. You know?”
    He turned back to face me, his smile warming me through my thin jacket. “Trex,”