Blood Magic
Authors: Tessa Gratton
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Tessa Gratton
photograph of girl © Sara Haas/Flickr/Getty Images;
photograph reference for bird silhouettes by Erik Charlton
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gratton, Tessa.
Blood magic / Tessa Gratton. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In Yaleylah, Missouri, teens Silla and Nick, drawn together by loss and a shared family history of blood magic practitioners, are plunged into a world of dark magic as they try to unravel the mystery of Silla’s parents’ apparent murder suicide.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89768-9
[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Death—Fiction. 4. Orphans—Fiction.
5. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 6. Stepmothers—Fiction. 7. Immortality—Fiction.
8. Family life—Missouri—Fiction. 9. Missouri—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G77215Blo 2011
[Fic]—dc22 2010024997
Random House Children’s Books supports the
First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
T
HUS IS THE FRUIT OF THE EARTH TAKEN, ITS FLESH TORN
.
T
HUS IS IT GIVEN OVER TO STANDING, TOWARD ROT
. I
T IS THE
PRINCIPLE OF CORRUPTION, THE DEATH OF WHAT IS,
THE BIRTH OF WHAT IS TO BE
. Y
OU ARE WINE
.
—Richard Selzer,
Mortal Lessons
I am Josephine Darly, and I intend to live forever
.
SILLAIt is impossible to know who you really are until you spend time alone in a cemetery.
The headstone was cold against my back, pressing my thin T-shirt into the sweat trickling down my skin. Dusk washed the cemetery of shadows, lending it a quality of between-ness: neither day nor night, but a gray, teary moment. I sat with my legs crossed and the book in my lap. Beneath me, scraggly grass hid my parents’ graves.
I brushed dirt off the front cover of the book. It was the size of a paperback novel, so small and insignificant-seeming between my hands. The mahogany leather cover was soft and scuffed from years of use; the color had worn off the corners. The pages used to be gilded, but that was rubbed off, too. Cracking it open, I read the inscription again, whispering it to myself, making it more real.
Notes on Transformation and Transcendence
Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw,
and resolve itself into a dew.—Shakespeare
It had been one of Dad’s favorite quotes. From
Hamlet
. Dad used to recite it whenever Reese or I stormed out of the room to pout. Said we had nothing to complain about compared to the prince of Denmark. I remembered his blue eyes narrowing at me over the rims of his glasses.
The book had arrived in the mail this afternoon, wrapped in brown paper with no return address.
DRUSILLA KENNICOT
was written in plain block letters, like a summoning. There were six stamps in the corner. It smelled like blood.
That particular raw-penny aroma stuck in the back of my throat, clinging with memory. I closed my eyes and saw a splash of blood streaked across bookshelves.
When I opened my eyes again, I was still alone in the cemetery.
Inside the front cover of the book was a note, folded in thirds and written on thick, unlined paper.
Silla
, it began. I shivered every time I saw my name written in the old cursive hand. The bottom of the
s
spiraled into oblivion.
Silla,
I feel your loss as my own, child. I have known your father for most of his life, and he was a dearest friend. I regret am unable to present myself for his memorial, though trust that his life is celebrated and his death greatly mourned.
If there can be any small consolation, I hope that this is it. There in this book are the secrets he perfected. Decades of research, a lifetime’s worth of knowledge. He was a glosiously talented magician and healer, and he was proud of you, pround of your strength.
I know he would like for you to have this record of his work now.
All my brightest hopes be with you and your brother.
It was signed only
The Deacon
. No last name or contact information.
Crows laughed, bursting up through headstones a distance away. The black cloud of them cut through the air in a flapping of wings and raucous cawing. I watched them against the gray sky as they flew west toward my house. Probably to terrorize the blue jays that lived in our front-yard maple.
Wind blew my short hair against my cheeks, and I brushed it back. I wondered who this Deacon was. He claimed friendship with my dad, but I’d never heard of him. And why he would suggest such incredible, ridiculous things: that my dad was a magician and healer, when he’d only been a high school Latin teacher. But despite that, I knew without a doubt that I was holding a book my dad had written: I recognized his fine, delicate handwriting, with its tiny loops in every capital
L
and its perfectly angled
R
s. He’d abhorred typing, and used to lecture Reese and me about learning to write longhand legibly. Reese had compromised by printing block letters, but I’d been too enamored of wild, looping cursive to worry about readability.