A Perfect Blood by Kim Harrison

done this before it started to rain?”
    “Thanks, Jenks,” I said as I turned the oven on to give him a place to warm up, and three giggling pixy kids came in to play in the updraft. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said sourly, clearly pleased as he plucked one of the seeds from his chest with a sudden pull of motion. “I’ll leave them here for you. Jrixibell! Get the Turn out of the oven! What if someone shut you in there!”
    Her eyes on her monitor, Ivy clicked a few keys with the sound of finality. “They will have switched bases before you can find them,” she predicted, then closed out her window and stood, stretching to show a glimpse of her belly-button ring. “Gone before you get there.”
    I carefully measured out the right amount of water and put it in my second-to-largest spell pot. My smallest had a dent in it from who knew what. “Probably,” I said as the water went chattering in and the bowl rocked. “But I’d like to see what the FIB can pull from a crime scene that the I.S. can’t.”
    Ivy smiled with her lips closed, and we watched as the three pixy kids in the kitchen rose up in a noisy swirl of silk and darted into the hall. “Me too,” she said as she began to tidy her papers. “The I.S. is way outclassed when it comes to the detective work.”
    Her smile became wicked, and I wondered whom she was thinking about as my neck started to tingle, but then one of Jenks’s kids flew in with an exuberant “Detective Glenn is here!”
    Jenks rose up on his dragonfly-like wings and hovered a moment in the open archway to the hall. “I’ll let him in,” he said, proud that he could work the system of pulleys to open the heavy wooden doors. The two of them buzzed out, and I heard a small uproar in the sanctuary.
    Ah, I thought as I made sure I hadn’t gotten Jenks’s sticktights on my shirt. That’s why Ivy is tidying up her papers . Her hearing was better than mine. She’d probably heard him drive up in that big-ass SUV he had.
    “About time. I’m starving,” Ivy muttered as the distant sound of the door opening filtered back, and Glenn’s cheerful “Hello in the church” came to us. I took in Ivy’s soft flush of anticipation, making me wonder if she was simply talking about the pizza he was supposed to be bringing over—or something more earthy.
    I reached for an apron as I recalled finding Glenn’s coat last spring smelling like Ivy. They’d been out on more than a few dates. Normally I’d be worried if a human tried to keep up with Ivy—she was a living vampire who’d been warped by her previous master into not being able to love without physically hurting her partner—but Ivy was learning new patterns and Glenn was not your average guy.
    Glenn was ex-military, not overly large but powerful, having the grace of a slow jazz song, the sure momentum of an ocean wave, and the need to raise a person to the best of her abilities. He was nothing if not steady, and Ivy needed steady. I thought it telling that the first time they’d met, he’d asked me why I risked living with her, calling her unreliable, dangerous, and a psychopath, none of which I had been able to deny at that point. But she was also loyal, strong, determined, and a damn good person trying to overcome her past.
    I looked up from tying on Ivy’s COOK THE STEAK, DON’T STAKE THE COOK apron as Glenn breezed into the kitchen from the dark hallway, a box of pizza in one hand, Jenks on his shoulder, and pixy kids wreathing his head, all of them talking at once. I smiled. So much for first impressions.
    “Still working?” the tidy man said as he noted Ivy’s papers and my spelling equipment. Rain spotted the short leather jacket that showed off his narrow waist and wide shoulders. He was a shade taller than Ivy, one ear having a diamond stud and his curly black hair in a flattop, making him look more military than usual.
    “You too, I see,” I said, my smile faltering as he