Blood Magic (22 page)

Wendy’s body stilled. She stared at me, unblinking. I could see nothing in her eyes. No spark, no personality. They were flat like a dead thing’s eyes. “What book?” She enunciated like a vocal coach. Sharp
t
, sharper
k
.

I didn’t answer right away. Part of me wanted to leap at her, disregarding the danger to Wendy. I drew myself up. I had power, too, since I had what she wanted. “Trade. Answer for answer.” I found a mask for courage: a red dragon face, long and snarling.

“I have your friend’s life in my hands, girl. And if I kill her, you’ll be blamed.” The smile snaking across Wendy’s face made my stomach roll over.

“Just tell me your name, and I’ll tell you the book’s name.”

Wendy’s fingernails drummed once on the back of her chair. “You do have guts. I like that. Josephine. My name is Josephine Darly.”

Imagining the words hissing through razor teeth, I said,
“Notes on Transformation and Transcendence.”

“Oh, that sounds just like him!” Wendy laughed. “What is it?”

“Why do you want it?”

“No, I know what it is. His spell book. That old thing he was always putting his finished spells into. I thought it died in the fire.”

I didn’t let myself ask about the fire. I couldn’t waste a question. “It’s filled with spells. Powerful spells. Why do you want it? Clearly you can—you can use the spells already.” I needed a weapon. Stokes’s desk had some heavy books on it,
but they were too far away. All I had in front of me were slips of loose-leaf paper. My pocketknife was barred from school grounds.

“Silla.” She pressed the point in again, puckering Wendy’s skin. “Don’t be coy.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and stared at the thin trickle of blood slipping down Wendy’s neck. “I don’t have it.”

“Who does?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Where did you hide it? I searched your house before I killed them, and it was not there.”

An image of my dad’s body, possessed, lurching around our house, digging through our things, with this monster’s soul looking out through his eyes, broke something in me. “I will
not
tell you!” I yelled, and jerked forward, grabbing at the letter opener and knocking both of us to the floor. The desks crashed down around us, and Wendy’s head smacked back. She yelped. I seized her wrist with both hands, forcing the blade back with all my weight. “Leave her alone!”

“Tell me where—the spell book—is,” Wendy ground out, teeth clenched as she fought me for the letter opener.

“No.”

She relaxed suddenly, and I tumbled forward with a little shriek. The letter opener hit the floor with a clang, and Wendy crawled away from me, scuttling back on her hands and feet. I sat on the floor cradling the blade and panting.

Silence reigned in Stokes’s classroom. My head ached again, like the pain had only been waiting for a moment of weakness to come roaring back.

“Silla,” Wendy finally said, “help me, and I’ll teach you to live forever.”

Here was what I’d wanted most the past week: someone to teach me. Someone to answer my questions and show me the depths and heights of the magic. I imagined sitting across the kitchen table from her, poring over the spell book, excitement and wonder electric between us. But she was the one person in all the world I could never, ever accept. “Why did you kill my dad?”

“More quid pro quo?” She brushed hair back from Wendy’s face and met my eyes. “He made me his enemy, Silla. Don’t think for a moment he was a good person. He killed and he lied. He lied a lot.”

“No.”

Wendy’s hand reached out. “Come with me. I’ll teach you to be everything you have the potential to be, Silla. Think of the power, the magic.”

I swallowed. My fist tightened around the letter opener.

She smiled, and still there was nothing behind Wendy’s eyes. “I can teach you to live forever. With your father’s bones—”

“His
bones
!” That was why she wanted the grave. I got to my feet, brandishing the letter opener like a sword.

“Essential ingredients, my darling.”

“You can’t have them.”

“Why protect him? It is because of him that your mother is dead,” she sneered.

“You killed my mother. Not Dad.” My voice lowered. The urge to fling myself at her, to attack, made my bones shake.
“You did. Get away, go away. Leave. Us. Alone.” I stood over Wendy, the letter opener shining in the afternoon light.

“Give me the spell book, and I’ll consider it.”

“No.” The letter opener shook in my hand as Wendy climbed to her feet and offered me a wide grin.

“I can take more away from you, Silla, dearest.”

I didn’t—couldn’t—say anything. I’d find a way to protect Reese and Judy. And everyone.

Her grin slowly fell away. “I bet … I bet your boyfriend knows.”

Before I could react, she leapt up and bowled into me. Her shoulder hit me, and I went down, crashing back into a desk. I slammed into the floor, cracking my tailbone and the back of my ribs against the edge of the desk. For a moment, I sat there, barely breathing as my vision blackened and then returned and my brain wailed at all the jarring.

Josephine was gone, along with Wendy’s body. Where did she go?

I threw myself to my feet. Whirled around the empty room.

Nick. She’d gone after Nick.

June 13, 1937

So many years since I left Boston, where this old book slept in the library amongst tomes of forgotten lore and poetry of the last century
.

Does it matter what I have done, and where I have lived between then and now?

Philip would say that it does. That I should remember, though I say to myself
, How could I ever forget?

It was the Great War that drew us away from Boston
.

The aftermath, the devastation in Europe called to my Prospero like a haunting ghost, keeping him from sleep until I agreed to cross the ocean with him
.

Once there, I found solace in society, while Philip preferred the low streets, the towns and villages devastated. In the cities, where many had nothing, a few had enough to drown their sorrows in dancing and drink. We moved through London and Edinburgh, and on into France, where I found my home in Paris
.

Oh, how I remember the nights I have made Philip forget—with dancing and theater and the company of the finest in Europe. I excel at gathering a crowd to me, and Philip is so quiet, so handsome and gentle, that it is impossible not to adore him. He found joy in running off
to meetings on science and philosophy, while I held delightful séances to entertain those more interested in the esoteric realms of nature. We came back to each other in whatever flat or house I’d bought with transmuted gold, and he regaled me with all the ideas battering his head—I listened, and loved him all the more for the passionate glow in his cheeks, for the way knowledge lights up in him. All night we might spend talking of theories and imagining the great potential of our blood. Philip sees it still as a privilege, a responsibility, while I view it as a gift. It makes us stronger, better, capable of anything. Most often our arguing transmutes into laughter or love as readily as granite into gold
.

How happy I am! When he calls my name, it thrills me, and our charms are never as keen as when we create them together, blood with blood. The only shadow falling over my joy is that he refuses to wed me, after all these years. It is the one thing he is more than willing to lie about, and when I ask again why, with all his morality and strict ethical views, he does not care that we live as husband and wife but are not so
.

“Josephine,” he invariably says, “one day you will tire of me, and if I marry you, you will be trapped.”

“That is the thing for which divorces were made, darling,” I reply, though only because he does not believe any protestations of mine that I shall never tire of him in a thousand years
.

“You know the power of rituals. They are not so easy to undo with pen and paper and a legion of lawyers.”

“But I love you.”

He kisses me. “And I love you.”

I believe him, and that is why tomorrow we leave Boston again in our new Tin Lizzie and travel west into the state of Kansas, where the
Deacon has carved himself land among the flint hills. He sent word to Philip that he wishes, finally, to meet me and to share with Philip some new method of cooking medicine. Kansas! I do not have high hopes for the society there, and wonder why the Deacon chose it
.

My time in Europe seems but a dream now, perhaps because I did not take my book, and did not write things as they happened. I will tuck this into my bag, for all those years ago my Philip was correct: to write memory is the only sure way to preserve it
.

I caught myself whistling as I slathered paint onto a circular-cut piece of plywood. The paint was purple, and I had no clue what it was eventually going to be. But I didn’t care. The late afternoon was warm, and starting to get that weird golden glow we totally lacked in Chicago. I didn’t know if it was about different pollution or the lack of reflective steel skyscrapers, but I kind of liked it. It made the leaves thicker and puffier as they changed for the autumn, instead of just brown and dead. Leaning back on my heels, I contemplated the ridge of trees and the way the sky behind them was so pale a blue it was almost silver. Had I ever noticed that kind of thing before?

A few yards off, the other crew guys hammered away at what I think was going to be a platform, and I was glad to be on my own. Wind blew over the trees, and the leaves moved in a long wave like dorks at a football game. And that’s when I realized I was whistling.

It wasn’t any tune in particular, and probably pretty off pitch. But that didn’t change the fact that my lips were pursed and noise was coming out of them. I stopped. In the silence
around me, I heard the laughter of the rest of the crew swell, and the roar of a car engine. Over on the soccer field, the football team was grunting in a weird staccato pattern. Probably beating each other up.

And I was whistling.

Because of Silla.

As soon as she got here, I’d tell her about my mom, about the lacquered box, the magic I used to do—I’d show her something beautiful, and watch her face light up. I’d kiss her, and we’d go home to make the amulets with her brother, and then for a long walk. Something really romantic, like girls wanted. Out to the meadow behind my house, the one next to the cemetery wall. I’d spread out a blanket. Steal a bottle of wine from Lilith, if I could convince Silla to drink it. Grab some dark chocolate and we’d have a real picnic, alone out here. All night, if I could help it.

I needed to write that one down, despite the lack of rhyming. Turning around, I saw my messenger bag lying wide open in the grass. I stood and walked toward it. A crow cawed behind me, landing in one of the trees so hard it startled a flock of little birds up into the sky, where they flew around like crazy confetti. My neck tingled with that you’re-being-watched sensation. Glancing back at the school, I realized Lilith’s Jeep was still lording it over the parking lot. What the hell was she still
doing around? I sighed in disgust just as the rear doors of the building flew open and Wendy, Silla’s friend, came running out toward me. “Nick!”

Straightening, I frowned. She pelted toward me as if her life depended on it.

Silla. There had to be something wrong with—

I ran. “Where’s Silla?”

“Do you have the book?”

“The book? The …” I slowed my pace as I approached her. “Where’s Silla?”

“She’s inside.” Wendy panted, but managed a fast smile. Her hair was all over the place. “She’s fine. Just wants me to bring her the spell book.”

“Why?”

The rear doors slammed open again, and Silla came running, too. Desperation in every step. I looked back at Wendy. Her expression hardly moved. But her lips tightened.