Blood Magic (19 page)

I sat in the center of the room with the spell book. It was heavy in my hands. Carefully, I flipped through. Some of the symbols looked vaguely familiar, like versions of spells I knew. Like a slightly different style, based on the same system. The ingredients were mostly the same as the ones in Mom’s lacquered box. Not that I’d really doubted, but this was definitely the same kind of magic.

Robert Kennicot
.

The name was signed at the bottom of one of the pages.

I dropped the book, and it hit the hardwood with a crack that echoed in the empty room.

“Robbie Kennicot,” Mom whispers. I lean against her knee, pressing my hands onto the floor next to her mirror. The glass distorts, and I open my mouth as Mom’s reflection disappears into gray clouds. A new face is there, a man’s. I don’t know him. He’s dorky-looking, with little round glasses. I think they’re weird because the lenses are pink. “Oh, Robbie,” Mom says. A splash of water hits the glass, and in a snap like lightning Mom’s face is back. She turns
the mirror over and touches my cheek. “My baby. We’re going to save him, aren’t we, Nicky?”

I flung myself to my feet and dashed upstairs for the lacquered box. I grabbed a handheld mirror from the bathroom, and matches. Salt from the kitchen and Lilith’s bag of tea candles from the pantry. I knew exactly what spell I was going to do, and I didn’t need the damn spell book for it. I remembered this one.

I remembered all of them.

Like something had blown open, or been torn down, I remembered the lessons from my childhood that I’d tried so freaking hard to forget. Where to buy herbs, how to dry your own, how to draw what I wanted when I couldn’t spell it. That rhyming helped focus the intention. That a drop of blood on the earth anchored you so that you wouldn’t be so slammed after the spell. Mom’s words rushed through me in a huge roar, and I couldn’t hear them all but understood them anyway.

My veins burned. The temperature of the room was a hundred degrees.

I set my spell up quickly. Salt circle, candles at the four corners. I sprinkled dried yarrow flowers into my hand from their jar and crushed them over the mirror.

With Mom’s quill, I pricked my forefinger and smeared the blood onto the face of the mirror in the appropriate rune. Underneath the hand mirror went the last postcard from Mom, which I’d tucked into the lid of the magic box when it had arrived eight months ago. Her loopy writing said,
The desert suits me, Nicky, and it’s so easy to get lost—which is nice if you’re used to being
lost. I love you. Mama
. I put the mirror flat on the floor and stared through the thin smudge of my blood. My hands pressed on either side, just as they had when I was a boy, as I crouched over it and whispered her name onto the drying rune. Like I was trying to see through one of those 3-D images, I unfocused my eyes and my own features blurred.

“Donna Harleigh,” I said. “Mom.”

A breeze brushed the hairs on my forearms. I heard wind through leaves and young laughter. In the mirror, my eyes faded out and were replaced by even darker ones, in a face older and narrower than mine. Her hair snaked over her forehead, and she reached up a hand to sweep it away. The motion pulled back her sleeve, and tiny silver scars shone against her wrist. She was smiling.

The image snapped away.

Only my own angry eyes stared back at me from the mirror.

August 23, 1905

I brought her here, to Philip. He’d gone to see her twice, pretending to bring the house more physick. Both times leaving me at home alone. He was falling in love with her, and I would make it me
.

I rang the bell to my own home and he answered, surprise written plain on his handsome face. I made her smile. “Come in, Miss Foster,” he said, stumbling a little
.

I did, offering my hand
.

“What can I do for you?” he asked
.

The awe in his eyes was so overwhelming and ridiculous I laughed. He started back, and I caught his face between my hands. “Oh, Dr. Osborn, I adore you.” And I kissed him
.

For a moment, he let me, his hands soft on my waist, welcoming my lips and the sweet smell of Miss Foster’s perfume. Then he pushed back, still gently—he never is so gentle with me!—and said, “Miss Foster, I should speak with your father.”

But before I could get a word out, he froze. “Josephine!” he hissed
.

“How did you know?” I was amazed, and danced back, laughing
.

“Your eyes.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Your eyes, Josie. How could you?”

I twisted Miss Foster’s face into a snarl. “You would marry her! You would give over everything we have for her. Because she is gentle and sweet and STUPID.”

His fingers tightened on his elbows, the knuckles whitening. “Come with me now, Josephine.”

We returned to the Foster house, and I left Miss Foster there, choking on her own fears for her health. When I opened my own eyes, Philip slapped me. “Never use her again. Never anyone else, Josephine. I did not teach you these gifts so that you might hurt others.”

“You hurt me.” I flung my arms out. “You promise me everything and then drop it the moment you see a lovely girl. Who is everything that I am NOT!”

“You cannot be her; you can only be your conniving, jealous self.”

Before furious tears betrayed me, I left him in the alley
.

I gave him several hours to cool off, and myself, as well. Then I brought him a bottle of his favorite brandy. He took it wordlessly and poured us each a glass. We sat down and were quiet for some time. My brandy was nearly gone when I finally asked, “What was in my eyes?”

“I couldn’t see my reflection in them. Sure sign of enchantment.”

I sighed. “Why do you love her?”

“I don’t.” Philip swallowed the last of his brandy, too. “I don’t love her.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, but she is lovely and is so many other things that I am not.”

“You’re a gentleman, Philip. You could marry her if you liked.”

“And what? Teach her to measure blood as you do? Besides, I am no gentleman. I was born lower than you, Josie.”

“You’ve risen above it, then, and no one would know.”

“The Deacon found me in a cemetery,” he said, his head falling
back onto the sofa. “I was running with a gang of resurrectionists, stealing corpses to sell to medical colleges. He recognized my strong blood, as I did yours, and took me away to teach me all these things. God Almighty, that was a long time ago.”

I joined him on the sofa, placing my hand on his knee. “It only seems so, Philip. You aren’t so much older than I.”

His lips turned up. “I am a hundred years old, Josephine.”

I had not thought I could still be startled by him. “How?” I whispered
.

“A charm, of course. Or a potion, truthfully. And it will not work on those without our magical blood. The Deacon has tried it on others, and always it fails.”

“What spell?” I sat up straight
.

“Carmot. He called it carmot.”

I grabbed his hands. “Show me, Philip. Show me.”

Weaving his fingers with mine, he still hesitated
.

“I swear I shall not touch her again, or anyone. I will be good, Philip. You can help me, and together we will Please.”

“We do deserve each other, do we not?” he said
.

I smiled. “I promise we do.” I took his face in my hands. “You do not need her, or anyone, Philip.” I kissed him, and he kissed me back. I want always to remember the desperate way his fingers clung to my hips
.

I slept like ass, exhausted and sweating, as if I could squeeze all my frustration out through my pores. Every time I actually fell asleep, I jerked awake again like there was this fail-safe refusing to let me dream.

What I wanted was to see Silla. To confess everything to her. I wanted to tell her that I’d known about the magic, I’d known it was possible, but that all I’d remembered before yesterday was that it hurt, that it broke my mom into a billion bloody pieces.

But I decided I needed to wait until at least lunch. Didn’t want to come on too strong and then tell her I knew about the magic and I was sorry for lying. She’d think I was psycho. If I was lucky.

So I snuck downstairs to grab a box of cereal. Back in my room, I flicked on my computer. In order to try and make sense of the jumble of memories swimming around in my skull, I laid out all the ingredients from Mom’s lacquered box and began making a list of the spells in Mr. Kennicot’s book, and a list of ingredients. I cross-referenced them with the ingredients
Mom had. The spells seemed to fit into three categories: healing, transformation, protection. Except the possession spell. I ended up putting it into the transformation category, but really, it was more offensive, wasn’t it? Closing my eyes, I tried to remember what other things Mom had done. But it had been so long ago, and the specific memories were almost impossible to access consciously. It had felt like she was mostly entertaining me, and teaching me the rules … not how to do particular things. When I’d been so young, I hadn’t thought seriously about learning it all, and by the time I was old enough, Mom had gone off the deep end and I hated the stuff.

Most of the ingredients I didn’t recognize I found in quick Internet searches. They were mostly obscure names for common plants, a couple of which were poisonous. Or had a history of being used in medieval magic for potions called things like “flying ointment” or “all-remedy.” Except for carmot. The jar in the box was nearly empty. Just a quarter inch of rusty red powder was left. The word itself didn’t explain what it was. Carmot, according to the Net, was the secret ingredient in the philosopher’s stone, that great alchemical grail that would let the alchemist live forever.

But nobody knew what it was.

Except, apparently, my mom. And she definitely hadn’t wanted to live forever.

I glanced at the computer clock. Only ten. Probably it was too early to head to Silla’s. So I reluctantly checked my email for the first time in a week. Not much there besides a few alerts from the Chicago music scene, letting me know about the bands headlining the Anthem Dog downtown and discount
tickets to Red Velvet for Dinner. There were three from Mikey, though, and one from Kate, both wanting to know what the hell I was up to and why I hadn’t called or emailed.

I fell in with some blood witches
, I thought.
Then I didn’t even think about you for a week
.

I couldn’t possibly explain Silla to them, or what it was like here in Yaleylah. But I wasted some time skimming through a handful of social networking sites I used to hang out on. I didn’t update my status or respond to notifications. It felt so distant from where I was, but when I logged in to Facebook, I had a swarm of friend requests from Yaleylah High, and I didn’t respond to those, either.

By the time my stomach let me know I’d dicked around long enough, it was almost noon.

Dropping the spell book into my messenger bag, I headed downstairs. Lilith was working on her laptop in the dining room, with a bunch of papers strewn around and marked up with purple. She glanced up, but seemed so in the zone she didn’t even recognize me. I decided to take small miracles, and built myself a sandwich in the kitchen. I had no idea where Dad was.

After stuffing the sandwich down my throat, I called, “Going out, back later!” and took off.