Blood Magic (11 page)

The afternoon had been so mild, perfect for October, but now it was chilly and I missed having a jacket. Here I was, sitting alone feeling sorry for myself instead of going to talk to my friends and getting to know a cute guy. Pathetic. “Get up and go to the fire,” I ordered myself, and rubbed my hands together. In the chill, my rings rolled loosely on my fingers. Last semester, I’d had no trouble at all inviting people to chat, or dance. Talking to my classmates and rambling about teachers, boys, plays, and music were things I enjoyed. Now … it felt fake. Like it could fall apart at any moment. Only the blood was real.

I licked my lips. They were dry and cold.

A crack of laughter caught my attention. Erin Pills. She’d been in
Into the Woods
with me last year, and was a year younger. Surely I could think of something to say to her and the cluster of girls with her. I moved around the edge of the circle. Even
from ten feet away I could feel the warmth of the bonfire caress my arm.

Oh, and thank God, there was Wendy. “Hey,” I said.

“Silla.” Wendy grinned, and her pink lip gloss sparkled. I could never wear that glittery stuff—it felt like grit trapped against my skin.

When I nodded, she grabbed my hands and pulled me away from the crowd. Glancing all around, she asked, “What do you think my plan of attack should be? Throw him off guard? Like, just kiss him? Or be all nice?”

“Wouldn’t you being all nice throw him off as much as suddenly shoving your tongue in his mouth?”

“Hmm. Good point.”

I looked back at Eric where he stood near Nick. “I’d kiss him.” I was watching Nick’s lips, though, as he flirted with Molly.

“Yeah. You’re right. I will.” She grinned. “He is so hot with that sword—I can’t wait to see him in a kilt.”

“I think Stokes said we aren’t doing traditional garb.”

Her face fell. “Damn. Well, anyway. I like him.” Wendy paused and gave me a sidelong glance. She used to rely on me to make all her decisions. “You don’t think I should?”

“I don’t know him anymore,” I said, but I took her hand and tried to give her what she needed. “But I think if you like him, you should go for it. He was always fun. You remember.”

“He’s over there with Nick. We could”—Wendy rubbed her lips together—“double-date.”

I followed her gaze back toward the barn. The group was laughing at something Nick had said, and Nick was staring
straight at me.
Oh, God
. My protective mask melted away and he could see my gray eyes, my cold skin. I snapped my eyes back to Wendy. “I’m not sure I’m ready. You know.”

“To date?” Wendy caught herself before rolling her eyes. “But, Sil, you have to.”

“You sound like my gram.”

“I just mean, it will only get better when you let it get better.”

I bit the inside of my bottom lip. I didn’t want my parents’ deaths to get
better
.

“Come over with me,” she said, and began dragging me. I had no choice but to go with her or pull violently away.

Nick smiled when he saw us, and I felt a tingle all the way down to my toes. “Hey, Silla,” he said when we were close enough. He stood with his elbow propped on Eric’s shoulder. A plastic cup sloshed as he lifted it in greeting. “Hi, Nick.” I glanced at Eric and Molly and Kelsey and smiled.

“Hey.” Eric jerked his chin in greeting.

“Hi, Silla.” Molly nudged Kelsey with her elbow and they giggled.

“Want a drink?” Wendy said, looking only at Eric.

Shrugging out from under Nick’s elbow, Eric held out a hand to Wendy. “Sure.”

She looked back at me with a fast, bright smile. They went off, leaving me with Nick and the girls. I pursed my lips a little. “Your first Anti-Football Party, Nick. How’s it going?”

“Better now.” Nick stepped closer to me, effectively cutting Molly and Kels out of the conversation. “Want to dance?” He held out his hand.

A simple smile lifted my lips, and I met Nick’s gaze. I imagined pink sequins glittering in a swirl down my cheek. “Sure.” The music had switched to a sweet, twanging love song. I slid my hand into his, and he pulled me away from the group, closer to the bonfire.

Molly and Kels scowled my way. Delighted, I said almost merrily, “Eric sure can’t get away from me fast enough.”

“It isn’t you,” Nick said, resting his hand lightly against the small of my back. His touch was hot through my layers of T-shirt. “He thinks he’s doing me a favor.”

“Is he?” My smile widened.

Nick paused; then he raised a finger to tip the brim of his fedora lower in a bow. “You bet.” He wrapped his fingers around mine. “Christ, you’re freezing. Here,” he said as he reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a flask. “This will warm you.”

“No, thanks.”

“It’s just Jameson. Whiskey.”

I winced.

“Good for the soul?”

His hopeful expression made me laugh.

“Okay, okay!” Nick tucked the flask away. “Just dancing, then, to warm you up.” He pulled my hand, drawing me through the crowd to the bonfire. No one else was dancing. Nick spun so that his back was to the fire, and grinned. I could barely make out his features with all the orange light behind him. He leaned in, took my other hand, and brought me closer. Under the brim of his hat, his eyes were shrouded in darkness. My heart beat faster, and I had to blink away the halo
surrounding him. He was Mephistopheles, smiling and tempting me, his Dr. Faustus, to dance.

I closed my eyes and stepped in. My hands found his shoulders, and my finger bones sucked up heat from the fire. Nick was warm, too. I followed his movements, letting my feet go freely where he took me, and his hands pressed just over the belt of my low-riding jeans, guiding me, pulling me, pushing me, willing me to twirl and step and glide. His fingers dug into my hips, not painful but making me want to grip his shoulders and climb up into his arms. To forget myself in the dancing, in the flickering orange fire and black night.

The song shifted and he murmured in my ear, “It’s practically a swing beat. Can you swing?” He let go of me except for one hand on mine, and spun me under his arm. I snapped out and back in, hitting his body, but he moved with it, catching me against his chest so we sank into a shallow dip. I gasped. He swung me up and around and I couldn’t pay attention, could only close my eyes and feel the pressure of his hands pushing and pulling, his hip tapping mine, telling my body where to go, what to do. I felt my blood racing through me, powerful and strong, singing the way it did right before magic happened. But we were only dancing.

As he twisted my arms overhead and spun me again, I let my head fall back. The stars swirled and there was the moon, so full and close to us. I laughed, releasing some of the weight that had rested heavy on my shoulders for so long.

Nick tugged me sharply. My body snapped against his. His hands flattened on my back and he dipped me again, deeper this time, and held me there. I clung to his shoulders.

“I’ve got you,” he said. “No worries, Silla.”

I remembered how he’d risen from behind the grave marker last Saturday night, so at ease and belonging there with me, and I wondered if anybody’s blood would work. Could he do magic? Nicholas, my boy from the cemetery? Could I invoke that part of him that had met me the first night I bled for magic? The laughter drained out of me. I glanced away.

Slowly, he drew me upright. “Silla, what did I say?”

His chest was so warm under my palms, for a moment, I almost leaned in and rested my cheek against it, buried my face in his neck. I wanted what his hands promised. Stepping away instead, I put on a bright smile. “Nothing.”

“Silla.” His frown pulled at the shadows hiding his eyes.

“Haven’t you heard? I’m crazy.” I turned away and added, “It’s in the genes.”

She left a great black hole of cold air behind. As she moved away, she wrapped her arms around herself again. The sparkle of her rings winked back at me. “Shit,” I hissed, and jogged after her.

“Silla.” I swung around in front of her. “Wait.”

She stopped, eyes down. The light punching out of the barn hit her face. There was glitter in her eye shadow, and her lips were painted a soft maroon to match her clingy shirts. Finally she looked up. Even standing this close, I’d barely have to bend to kiss her. But she looked so tired; it was scratched into the edges of her eyelids, pressing down the corners of her
mouth. For a moment, I could see through her ivory skin to the webbing of capillaries and muscles and tendons beneath.

It hurt, I wanted to kiss her so badly.

“What?” Her fingers tightened on her elbows.

“Let me get you a drink.”

She nodded once. “There’s a water jug in the barn. Eric’s mother insists on it, because it would be tough to spike.”

“Brilliant.” I considered offering my hand but didn’t. Instead I gestured for her to go first.

A long fluorescent light glared over the wooden floor and hay bales for benches. Three mostly depleted trays of food waited on a card table, and beside it was a bench spread with two-liter soda bottles and piles of plastic cups. I grabbed two cups and followed Silla to the corner with the water cooler.

Armed with water, we found a hay bale. I straddled it and Silla sat with her knees together. The cowboy boots peeking out from under her jeans were red. And adorable. I took back every nasty thought I’d ever had about cowboy boots.

Only three other people congregated in the barn, over near the snacks. I tasted my water and watched Silla’s delicate profile. “I haven’t heard,” I said. It was a lie, of course. I’d heard plenty from Eric.

Startled out of some reverie, she said, “Heard what?”

“That you’re crazy.”

“Oh.” She dropped her eyes again. Swirled the water in her cup. “Well, you’ve only been here a week or something.”

“You should tell me.”

She laughed.

“No, really. If you tell me, your version will be the first I
hear.” I grinned and pushed my hat slightly higher on my forehead.

“You’re really something, Nick.” Silla turned and hooked her leg up on the hay bale.

“I’m not used to all this small-town, everybody-knows-everything-about-everybody business. Where I come from, gossip is just gossip, and everybody’s crazy.”

“Sounds like a castle on a cloud.” Her smile faded as she studied my face. I crossed my eyes.

“Okay, Nick.” She smiled at my expression, then gulped the rest of her water. “Here’s what happened. I came home from spending the afternoon with Wendy and Beth and Melissa. We’d been shopping, and I had a really nice new pair of jeans. I got home and Mom’s and Dad’s cars were both there, which wasn’t that weird. It was summer, so Dad didn’t have regular classes. But the front door was open, even though it was like a hundred degrees outside. I went in, dropped my bag, and smelled this awful, reeking smell.” She licked her lips and raised her chin.

Staring into my eyes, she continued, “It was blood. I found them in the study, Dad’s office. They were collapsed on top of each other. Huge holes were blown in Mom’s chest and Dad’s head. It was like someone had spilled gallons of bright red paint everywhere. The floor was sticky with it. I stopped in the doorway and just couldn’t move. It smelled, and … their arms were around each other. There was blood on the desk and bookshelves. I wish I’d thought to look for a pattern, but who’d—” She shook her head, blinking and pressing her fists into her lap. She looked away. Took a deep breath. For a moment, I thought
she was finished. Then she said softly, “Reese found me, like an hour later. I was just kneeling on the floor, staring. Blood had soaked into my jeans. He dragged me outside and left me in the sun while he called the police. I hadn’t even called the police. I found my parents dead in their own blood and I didn’t do anything.”

I didn’t say the obvious things.
What could you have done? Who could blame you?
“So that’s why people think you’re nuts?”

“No.” She smiled: a weird, twisted smile. “They think I’m crazy because the official report, or whatever, claims my dad went crazy, killed Mom, and then killed himself. And I flipped out when they told me. It got around.”

“That … seems like a pretty normal reaction to me. I’d be pretty pissed in your shoes.”

“It was the most violent crime in the history of our town, and until it happened, everybody loved my dad. He was quiet and kind and a really good teacher. But lurking inside, apparently, was a psychopathic killer.” Silla’s jaw clenched.

“And it scared people. Especially because he worked at the school, right?”

She darted a glance of surprise at me. “Yeah, exactly. They were a bunch of cowards and didn’t really believe in Dad. I mean, they should have tried to catch somebody else harder, if they really had faith in him.” Color soaked into her cheeks, blotchy and mad. With one thumb, she was rubbing the palm of her other hand in jagged little strokes.

I took her hand and started to rub the palm with both my thumbs. Her skin was warmer than I’d ever felt it. Almost hot. I looked down. In the center of her palm was a thin pink line.
Like an old wound. The edges pulled at her skin, distorting her life line a little. It could have been an accident, could have happened when she tripped and caught herself on some rock, or when she grabbed a broken plate. Anything.

But I knew it wasn’t. As sure as I knew this cowboy town wasn’t where I wanted to spend the rest of my life, I knew Silla had made this cut herself.

Silla hissed sharply, and tugged at her hand.

“Silla.” I watched her face.
Tell me about the magic
.

She didn’t meet my eyes. “I have to get out of here.”

“Let’s go.” I stood up, pulling her by the hand.

“Nick, you don’t have to—I mean, you should stay.”

“Nah. Not my thing. Honestly, and speaking of flipping out, I’m about to take an ax to those speakers.”

“Can you drive me home?”

I grimaced. “Actually, no. I don’t have my car here. It got a massive flat this morning.”

Silla hesitated, her lower lip sucked in just slightly, then she said, “Walk me, then?”

“You bet.”

We left the barn, hand in hand. I managed to catch Eric’s eye and waved. “Which way?” Several people glanced at us, noted our hands and that we were leaving together. Good.