A Perfect Blood

small lie that the public could touch, sit in, and connect with on a physical level than a harsh truth behind glass that would divorce them from experiencing anything,” Mr. Calaway said, the rims of his ears red. “You’ll see.”
    Glenn shifted from foot to foot and faced the front. “It can’t be that bad.”
    Something was crawling up my back, and I turned to see that it was Nina’s attention.
    “You are such a delight to watch,” she murmured, but everyone in the elevator could hear the seduction the dead vampire was putting into Nina’s voice. “Every thought you have passes over your face.”
    “Y-yeah . . .” I drawled, trying to remember who had told me that before.
    “Do you always fight crime in dirty shoes?” she asked, and Glenn, in the back of the elevator, cleared his throat.
    “Give me a break,” I said, trying to hide the wrinkles in my shirt. “I was having coffee with my bodyguard. I didn’t expect to be hunting bad guys until later. Leather before sundown is tacky.”
    “Besides,” Mr. Calaway muttered, “if we had the pen upstairs, it would fall apart in twenty years. We have it in the biggest temperature-controlled room in an eight-hundred-mile area,” he said proudly. “That’s why the museum was set here in the first place. It was originally university property.”
    My eyebrows went high. Do tell?
    Oblivious to my sudden interest, Mr. Calaway said, “Some of their machines are still down here, and we let university people in occasionally to use them. The room has its own heating and cooling system, and battery backup in case the electricity goes down.”
    Machines? I thought, forcing myself to be still, but inside I was fidgeting. “Mr. Calaway? Just what kind of machines do you have here?”
    The man’s enthusiasm vanished, and he winced. “Uh, they tell me they’re used to identify genetic markers,” he said, and Glenn grunted. “It’s all perfectly legal,” Mr. Calaway said as the doors opened to show a hallway almost identical to the one above, with the exception of a huge double door facing us from across a wide hallway. “Nothing unsavory,” the curator insisted. “We use it occasionally to find out who used an artifact, owner or slave. It’s old technology, and they need the cooler room to run it in.”
    Airtight room. Black magic. Genetic, borderline technology. I wasn’t liking what this was adding up to, and I followed Glenn to the locked door. My amulet was a bright green. Clearly this was it, and the tension grew.
    “There, huh?” Mr. Calaway said, disappointed as he glanced at the amulet and then his massive key ring. The first key he tried didn’t work, and Glenn became impatient. The second one didn’t, either, and when he tried the first one again, Glenn just about lost it.
    “Open the door,” he demanded. “Or I’ll call in for a warrant and sit here until it arrives. Rachel, go stand over there.”
    “I’m trying!” the curator insisted as I obediently moved to where Glenn wanted me, knowing it was going to be an empty room but wanting to prove that I could be a team player as well as the next person. “My key isn’t working,” he said, bringing the key right up to his nose and squinting at it. “Either the key has been changed or the lock has.”
    Glenn squatted before it, breathing gently on the lock with his hands unmoving before him as he looked it over. “It’s the lock,” he said softly as he stood. “You can see the new scratches in the paint. We need to get a team down here for fingerprints.”
    “They can’t do that!” Mr. Calaway exclaimed, affronted. “I’m the curator!”
    “I don’t have time for this,” Nina said impatiently. “Excuse me.”
    She moved vampire fast, and both Glenn and Mr. Calaway backed up when she grasped the knob and simply yanked the mechanism out of the door. It gave way with a terrible shriek of twisted metal and, looking satisfied, Nina threw it into the open elevator.
    “Shall we?” she said as she tugged down the hint of lace at the hem of her sleeves.
    Glenn was outraged, sputtering at the loss of fingerprints. Mr. Calaway looked at the waiting vampire, then the broken lock in the elevator, and finally the door. “Sure,” he said weakly. I think he’d only just realized she was a vampire.
    My skin prickled as Glenn pushed the door open, tense and straining for sound as he slipped into the darkness past the threshold. Nina was next, straight and upright as she