A Perfect Blood

the glass box propping up the pen, and she tapped it experimentally on the floor, her back hunched, making her look old. I retreated to stand beside Ivy as Nina continued tapping, her expression shifting when the tone changed as she worked her way off the new floor and onto the old.
    Nina looked up, her eyes fixing on mine with such ferocity I could almost see the undead vampire in them. “There is something under here,” she said, and I shivered.
    “Yeah, we know, dirt nap,” Jenks said. “Rachel already told us.”
    “Chill, Jenks,” I said, and he clattered his wings, cold when they brushed my neck.
    “Can we get a saw here?” Glenn shouted, but everyone was gone.
    “Back up,” Nina said as she took a firmer stance, feet spread wide. “It’s hollow. I’ll open it up.”
    I was getting a really bad feeling. Whatever was under the floor was close to but not quite identical to the man in the park. Ivy yanked me out of the way, and I stumbled. My eyes were fixed on the new concrete, hidden by a curse tied to the collective. Someone had made a deal with a demon. Or, even worse, they had succeeded in duplicating demon blood and twisted the curse on their own. Watching Nina lift the bar over her head, I wasn’t sure which one scared me the most.
    Nina sent the butt of the support bar crashing into the floor with a grunt. The cement cracked at the blow, and Jenks left me in excitement. Again the vampire swung. This time, the pole went right through, the resounding crack of cement seeming to shake me to my bones. Nina stumbled to catch her balance, and Glenn reached out to stop her fall before she could tread on the broken slab.
    “I can see it!” Ivy exclaimed, and I jerked my attention from Nina, staring at Glenn’s hand on her arm.
    “Well, if that doesn’t beat all creation,” Nina said, and I stiffened at the old-world phrase. I must have heard it a dozen times from Pierce, and it would make the vampire in Nina at least 150 years old.
    Cold, I leaned forward over the hole. “You must have broken the charm,” I said, not wanting to call it a curse.
    Jenks flew down to the dark hole, rising almost immediately with his hand over his face and gagging. I found out why when he brought the scent of burnt amber to me. “Tink’s titties!” he exclaimed as he landed on Ivy’s shoulder, grasping a swath of her hair and hiding his face in it. “Rache, it stinks more than you when you get back from the ever-after.”
    “Thanks,” I muttered, trying to see in as everyone else backed up. The smell didn’t bother me much—anymore.
    “That’s burnt amber,” Ivy said, her hand over her nose. Wincing, she looked over the patched floor to Nina. “Can you open it up more?”
    “What the hell is wrong with you Inderlanders!” Glenn protested. “You can’t just bust it open! Give me ten minutes, and I’ll have a saw in here!”
    But Nina was already hammering at it with the regularity of a metronome. Cement chips flew and we all backed up and let her go, dust and dirt layering her new pantsuit. Glenn looked as angry as if Nina were beating up his little sister, but finally Nina set her pole down and wiped her forehead. Rust-smeared hands on her dusty knees, she peered past the chunks of head-size concrete and dust to the small cavern below. The scent of burnt amber was obvious, thinner but somehow more pervasive as it was diluted out.
    As one, Glenn, Ivy, Jenks, and myself crept forward and peered down to the burlap bag holding a shape about the size of a large dog. It was tied with a HAPA knot.
    “You all see that, right?” I asked, and Glenn nodded, not looking up. “Better open it then,” I said as I backed up, and he reached for the blue gloves jammed in his back pocket.
    Nina fidgeted at the delay as Glenn put his gloves on again and knelt over the bag, cement chips popping under his shoes. His fingers worked the knot, and I clenched my teeth when it opened to show another mutilated body, curled up as if sleeping, under four inches of concrete. She was wrapped in a sheet. I don’t think clothes would have fit her anymore, her limbs were so twisted.
    “Please tell me she was dead before she was cemented in,” I said, seeing the hoofed feet and curly pelt.
    Dropping the sheet to the side, Glenn carefully shifted a wrist, red and swollen. “She was restrained,” he said in a flat voice.
    “For only a few hours,” Nina said, and she shrugged when she met Ivy’s gaze. “If it were