A Perfect Blood

almost done, yes.”
    “Then you want to know what the amulet pinged on?” I said as I pulled it from underneath my shirt. “I do.”
    Jenks’s wings hummed in anticipation as he moved to my shoulder where he could watch better, but Glenn looked betrayed. “You mean—”
    Nina put a hand on my other shoulder, and I stiffened. “There’s more, yes,” she said, her voice low, rich, and rolling with her master’s accent. Jenks had taken off when I shuddered, and I slipped out from under Nina’s grip.
    “No touching,” I said, glaring at her. “Okay? Them’s the rules.”
    Ivy, too, wasn’t happy, and Jenks was nearly beside himself, sifting a bright red dust as he hovered with his hands on his hips. Nina ignored them both, hands behind her back. “Rachel, you’ve developed your timing to the point of exquisite delayed gratification,” she said. “Use your amulet. I’m dying to know what drew us here.”
    “You mean it wasn’t the ambient residual evidence?” Glenn said, and I filed that away for future use. Ambient residual evidence. Nice.
    “No.” I frowned as I pointed at the patch of new concrete behind him. “I’ve got a bad feeling about that.”
    “That what?” Jenks asked as I went to stand over it, watching the amulet more than my feet clinging damply to my garden shoes.
    “That this,” I said flatly, pointing at the new cement.
    Glenn came over and looked down. “That what?”
    “This,” I said more stridently. “The floor. Where they poured the new concrete?”
    Glenn’s brow furrowed. “Uh, the floor looks fine to me,” the FIB detective said.
    “No friggin’ way!” I exclaimed as the last of the FIB crew left. “You can’t see the patch of new concrete? It’s right there!”
    Ivy and Nina came over and looked down, but I could tell they couldn’t see it, even when Jenks walked right over the seam, spilling a faint hint of dust. “There’s a patch of new concrete!” I said, pointing down. “Right there! It’s about three by four. You can’t see it?”
    Glenn crouched and ran a hand over the floor. “I can’t even feel it.”
    “No fairy-assed way!” Jenks strutted over the floor, looking for but not seeing what I was. Scared, I backed up. Nina was waiting for me when my head came up, and I froze at the anger in her expression.
    “Maybe Ms. Morgan can see it because she poured it?” the vampire suggested.
    Ivy’s hands clenched, and Jenks rose up, his fingers on his garden sword. “You take that back!” he shouted. “Rachel can see it because it’s a curse, and she’s in the demon collective,” he exclaimed, and I winced. I had a feeling I could see it because I wasn’t in the collective, not because I had been.
    “Will you take it easy!” I exclaimed, and Jenks zipped back to me, leaving a slowly falling cloud of silver dust. “I’ve never been down here, Nina, and you know it. You smell me down here? Huh? Do you?”
    “No,” she said, clearly reserving judgment.
    Disgusted, I turned my back on her, not wanting to know what was under the floor but knowing we’d have to find out. I didn’t like the fact that I was the only one who could see it.
    Jenks hovered close, then landed on my shoulder. “How come we can’t see it, Rache?”
    Taking a breath, I brought my head up. “I don’t know,” I lied, figuring it was a demon curse that required the collective to work. Curses stored and doled out from the collective didn’t recognize me because of my complete lack of connection to the lines, a basic, living connection to the source of all energy that even the undead and humans had. I was special, and I hated it, even if it was a good thing in this instance.
    “Maybe we should open it.” I looked up, reading worry in Ivy, doubt in Glenn, and mistrust in Nina. “I’m telling you, something is buried under the floor.”
    Glenn put one hand on his hip and stared down at the floor. “Where are the outlines?”
    My pulse hammered. I went back to my bag on the counter and dug in it until I found my magnetic chalk under my splat gun. Breath held, I carefully crouched over the floor, moving awkwardly so Jenks wouldn’t lose his balance and have to fly from my shoulder as I ran a line next to the seam.
    Nina bent over the lines when I stood, a young, manicured hand feeling the line as the old presence in her analyzed what it might mean. “I still don’t see it.” Stretching, she snagged a metal rod from a pile. There were others inside