A Perfect Blood by Kim Harrison Page B

genetic comparisons, which were now barely legal.
    “Besides,” Glenn added, his voice a dark mutter, “I don’t think they’ll tell us immediately when they find the latest base of operations.”
    Ivy had sat down kitty-corner to him, angling her chair so that her back wasn’t to me. “You think the I.S. will keep information from you now that you’ve got jurisdiction?” she said, her voice mocking and high. “Glenn, we’re all in this together.” Leaning over the pizza on her lap, she patted him on the cheek a little too hard.
    Jenks and I exchanged a look, and his wings hummed nervously. I set the spring water to boil, hoping I wasn’t going to have to watch them flirt all night.
    “You know I won’t withhold information,” Glenn said, a smidgen of his usual business attitude showing. “I don’t like that they managed to keep three HAPA crimes quiet for almost two weeks.” Glenn’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, and his pizza dangled, forgotten, from his thick hands. “That’s almost too hard to believe.”
    I tended to agree with him. Memory charms. I was starting to have a real problem with them. My motions to grind the seeds up grew rougher, and I leaned into the job, taking my anger out on the dandelion fluff, tick seed, and sticktights. “They thought I was the one doing it,” I said when I backed off to add the corn pollen.
    Glenn looked first at me, then Ivy to see if I was joking. His expression was a mix of amazement and anger. “You?” he almost barked when she nodded.
    Seeing that Ivy had quit tweaking the man’s libido, Jenks darted to the open pizza box. “Rache set them straight,” he said proudly as he hovered over the crust. “In loud words,” he added, using a pair of chopsticks from his back pocket to help himself to the sauce.
    “I’ll bet.” Glenn set his pizza down, reaching for the paper towels we kept out and tearing one off. “I’m sorry, Rachel. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have been so nice to them.”
    I shrugged, then cracked an egg, shifting the yolk from eggshell to eggshell to separate it from the white. Not many earth charms used eggs, but this one did to bind the dry ingredients to the wet. “I’m getting used to it,” I said sourly, hoping we’d seen the last of Nina. “At least I got my license back and my car registered in my name.” Until they wiped my memory. Damn it, those things were illegal for a reason! I knew the demons had a curse that would block memory charms, but that was out. Maybe the elves had one. Trent could make a Pandora charm, which was basically a spell that repaired the damage from one. I simply wanted to prevent it.
    Frustrated, I promised myself I’d call Trent as soon as I had ten minutes to myself. He’d sounded mad at me, but that was all the more reason to talk to him. I wasn’t going to let misunderstandings fester anymore, especially with Trent. The man was starting to scare me.
    “Jenks, you want this?” I asked the pixy as I held up the yolk still in the shell half, and he shook his head. Eggs gave me migraines, so I dumped it down the sink, dusting my hands as I turned around. Almost done.
    Glenn finished his first piece of pizza, and after a longing look at the rest of the pie, he moved his plate to the center counter. “ ’Scuse me,” he said as he reached across Ivy for one of her maps, intentionally brushing her. Ivy almost hit his jaw as she went for a pencil next to her keyboard, and I looked away when they put their heads together and began talking of walking speeds and the problems inherent in analyzing rapid transit.
    Jenks took one look at them and flew back to me in disgust. “Jealous?” he asked me as he landed on the open spell book, and I frowned.
    “No. Get off the spell book.”
    He was laughing as I shooed him away, landing on Glenn’s plate instead, just about the only place I’d let him alight at this point. The water was boiling, and after checking the recipe, I carefully brushed