A Perfect Blood

following us.
    “Keep going,” I said loudly, seeing no change in the amulet’s glow, and Wayde nodded.
    The heat from the Lexus’s engine hit the back of my calves, and my foot rose to the rest as we accelerated. Nina was driving it. I suppose I could have done this from the comfort of her borrowed front seat instead of freezing my ass off out here behind Wayde with no real coat, no leather, and garden shoes instead of my boots, but I wasn’t willingly going to put myself alone in a car with her, even if she had been polite at the coffeehouse. It was obvious she still wasn’t happy about my forcing them to give primary jurisdiction to the FIB, even if I had agreed to see the run through. If I didn’t finish this quietly and to their satisfaction, they were going to frame me or wipe my memory, or both.
    Mental note. Call Trent about a possible elf-magic-based spell to block memory charms. There’d been nothing about one in my spell books, nothing from a quick Internet search. I was sure the demons had something, but that didn’t help me.
    Nina had shown up almost immediately after my call from Junior’s, making me wonder if she’d been waiting for it. Ivy and Jenks would join us when they could, and Glenn was probably on his way. I longingly thought of my coffee, left behind when I said I’d ride with Wayde. He’d had time to shave, but he was still in his jammies. We must look quite the pair, creeping down the service road with a Lexus twenty yards behind and two I.S. vehicles after that.
    God, he smells good, I thought as I hugged Wayde. I lied to myself that I was just trying to stay out of the wind, but the reality was, this was the closest I’d gotten to another human being in months, and I wasn’t above teasing myself. My thoughts strayed to our conversation at Junior’s, and my focus blurred. It sure had sounded like the hint of an offer to hang with him for a while. True, he was kind of straggly looking right now, but I’d seen him out of his shirt and had been duly impressed. Unfortunately, though I knew that it might start with no strings attached, it would turn into something more. I couldn’t do that, as pleasant as it sounded.
    Why again was I on this bike? Oh yeah. Avoiding Nina.
    I pulled my head up as Wayde went by the two empty stadiums. Squinting, I pushed back from him enough to look at the amulet. “Keep going!” I shouted, and he motored on.
    The wind increased as we slipped from the lee, and I hunched into him again. I was more than a little relieved that whatever my amulet had pinged on wasn’t at the stadiums. There wasn’t a game today, but I’d been banned, and if Mrs. Sarong found me poking around, it would strain our delicate relationship. Finding a mutilated body or the magic to turn a witch into a monster would have been the icing that made the camel trip . . . or whatever.
    I shivered, not knowing what we’d find, other than it probably wouldn’t be pleasant. The sites that the I.S. had found had contained little more than a heavy moulage coating, a cage, and washed-down walls.
    My eyes glanced at the amulet and my pulse quickened. It was getting fainter. “Turn around!” I said, squeezing his middle. “We passed it!”
    But what had we passed? Nothing obvious. I’d swear that the amulet was focused on something between the expressway and the river, and there wasn’t much between them. Maybe there was an entrance to the forgotten Cincy tunnels down here.
    Wayde flicked his turn signal on and made a smooth, probably illegal U-bangy and started back the other way. There were a few low buildings between us and the stadiums, and letting go of Wayde’s middle, I pointed at the buildings as we passed Nina and the two I.S. cruisers. No Glenn yet, and while Wayde took a left onto the service road, I tucked the amulet away and tried to get my phone out.
    “What are you doing?” Wayde asked as my weight shifted and the bike swerved.
    “Calling Glenn,” I said loudly as I put one arm back around his waist and punched numbers with my thumb. I could barely hear the dial tone over the wind, and I eyed the low building as we approached it. It looked like an old office complex turned museum. Museum? I didn’t like the sound of that, and my head started to hurt.
    “Rachel?” Glenn’s voice came over the phone, and I leaned into Wayde to get out of the wind. “Where are you? I’m at the coffeehouse. Are Ivy and Jenks with you?”
    I frowned. Coffeehouse? What is