Blood Magic (25 page)

We collapsed at the kitchen table, box and spell book between us. My messenger bag swung from the back of my chair.

After a moment, Reese abruptly stood again and went to the counter. I just closed my eyes and didn’t open them until I
heard the
thunk
of a mug hitting the table. I smelled coffee. “Oh, God.” Wrapping my sore hands around the hot drink, I inhaled.

Reese pulled out the chair next to mine and held his coffee in his lap.

“Reese,” I began. He flicked his eyes at me. Unconcerned. “I’ve always known about the magic.”

He just freaking blinked. Then some tiny change in expression darkened his whole face. Kind of like one of my dad’s non-reactions.

“My mom did it, and taught some of it to me when I was a kid.”

His jaw muscles tightened and then released. I think he relaxed them deliberately. Setting his coffee down, he splayed his hands on the table and slid them toward me. Glaring. “Your mom did it.”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously.”

“Yeah.”

“And you just … pretended not to know.”

“It was the safest thing to do.”

He leaned forward, the chair creaking under him like an echoed threat. Before he opened his mouth again, I said, “Look, it was my decision not to say anything, and I’m not going to feel guilty about it, so get over it.”

“Does Silla know?” His voice was so low.

“Yes. She just found out. And she told me about your parents and—and everything.” I wanted to add something about
getting what it felt like, but was pretty damn sure Reese wasn’t feeling the bonding.

“Okay.” He sat back, letting breath hiss out through his teeth. “Apparently, we all have a lot to talk about.”

“I’ll, uh, go get Silla.” I forced myself not to move too quickly, but yeah, I was totally fleeing. I couldn’t tell if he was relaxing for real or just biding his time until he could punch me. Whichever, I wanted Silla there as a witness.

“Whew! Wasn’t that exciting?” Judy buzzed into the bathroom and jerked open the mirrored cabinet. Her hands flapped around like if she was still she’d pass out. “Crazy birds! Must be a storm coming, or maybe there was a slight earthquake or something that we couldn’t even feel. Birds are sensitive to those kinds of harmonies, you know.”

I plunked down on the toilet seat, holding my hands out. The tiny scrapes glistened. Judy crouched in front of me with a cardboard box of Band-Aids, a washcloth, cotton balls, and the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She wet the washcloth in the sink, and wiped at my neck. I winced, though it didn’t really hurt. “Yeah. Crazy birds,” I whispered.

“You okay, honey?” Gram Judy paused.

“No.” I stared down at her face. What did I know about her? Only what she’d told me. Like I’d said to Nick, she could have always been another person. She showed up right after Mom and Dad died, and we only vaguely remembered her. Not enough to know if her personality had changed.

My stomach flipped, and I slid off the toilet in case I needed to use it.

“There, there, honey.” Judy rubbed her hand in circles on my back. “There, there. Did something else happen? What’s wrong?”

Pressing my forehead into the cold porcelain of the toilet lid, I just shook my head. But I couldn’t let this beat me. I wouldn’t be able to function if everybody was the bad guy. It couldn’t be Gram. Why would she have bided her time like this? She could have murdered us in our sleep anytime she’d wanted to.

The thought was oddly comforting. I sighed and twisted so that I was curled on the tile floor between the toilet and the sink. I offered Judy my hands, and she began washing them with her cloth, eyes lowered. The pinch of her lips let me know she wasn’t going to give up.

I bit my lip against the sting of peroxide when she began dabbing it on the cuts with a cotton ball. Like cold water, it woke me up enough that I asked, “Judy, do you remember anything else about Nick’s mom? Anything … weird?”

Sitting back on her heels, Judy kept my hands folded in hers and cocked her head thoughtfully. Her silver hair was bound up in a single braid, and it swung heavily, the tip just brushing the tiles. “It was, God”—Judy frowned and glanced up at the ceiling—“a year, maybe, since I’d married Douglas. His mama, what was her name? Daisy?”

“Donna,” I whispered.

“Yes, that’s right. She and Robbie had been going out for a while before I arrived, but they broke it off rather suddenly at
the beginning of their senior year. Doug and I were a little worried, because Robbie had gotten much quieter and some of his tastes had changed, you know, like he quit the football team and spent more time studying. It wasn’t as though he didn’t study at all before that, but it was strange how suddenly it happened. But then, he was growing up, and getting prepared to go up to St. Louis for college.” Judy reached up and tugged at a piece of hair that had escaped its braid. Her French manicure looked dull in the bathroom light.

“What happened, Judy?” I wrapped my wounded hands together and pressed them gently against my swirling stomach.

“I woke up one night. I’d had a headache all day, and went downstairs to get some milk. I heard voices outside, and it was so late. Two in the morning or so. I peered outside. Donna was there, crouched by the front porch. She was doing something to the ground at the bottom of the stairs. I opened the front door to invite her in. I thought maybe she couldn’t sleep, either, and came here for—for, I don’t know. To be closer to Robbie. They’d only been apart a week or so, and I remembered what it was like when you were first in love.” Judy smiled tightly, and her fingers twitched away from her hair. She folded her hands together. “Be that as it may, I went out and she ran. I looked at what she’d been doing, and there was something half buried. I lifted it out of the dirt. It was a little pouch made of thin leather, like an Indian medicine bag.” Judy held her fingers up to indicate the size. “Robbie came out. He asked, ‘What’s wrong, Judy?’ I showed him the bag and told him what I’d seen. I remember how he frowned and stared out into the darkness after Donna. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he said. I gave him the bag and
told him it would be okay. That she’d forgive him. He didn’t seem to believe me. The next afternoon I asked him what it had been. He shrugged it off, said it was a folk charm. Nothing to worry over.”

A tiny movement in the corner of my eye made me look at the bathroom door. Nick stood there, one hand against the doorjamb, fingers clutching it tightly as if he needed it to stand up.

“Nick,” I whispered, using the toilet to push myself up. I went to him, touched his chest.

“I, uh, came up to see how you’re doing.” He didn’t look at me, though. He was staring at Judy.

She stood, too, and with all three of us in the bathroom it was pretty crowded. “Let me patch up your hands, Nick,” she said, bringing her handfuls of home nursing supplies with her. She dumped them into the sink.

I got out of the way, and Nick just stood there, watching Judy’s fingers move. His shoulders were stiff, and I wanted to press up against him, to kiss his neck and rub my hands over the tight muscles. Help him calm down.

Casually, Gram Judy said, “Donna left before graduation, I recall. Mr. and Mrs. Harleigh said she was going up north to stay with an aunt.”

Nick’s head jerked up, and he met Judy’s eyes in the mirror. “She was institutionalized. It happened on and off for my whole life. She was nuts. Is nuts.”

Judy nodded sympathetically, then patted his hand.

I stepped forward and put my hands on Nick’s waist. But
since Judy was there, I left a lot of air between us. “Did you really think she was doing magic?” I asked Judy.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She scooted Nick back and began putting away the Band-Aids and other things. Nick took one of my hands, and we stood side by side while we listened. I wished I could still see his face without it being obvious.

Judy closed the cabinet with a snap. “I suppose that’s what she thought. At the time, I wasn’t very interested in that sort of thing. But I spent several years in Hungary, you know, after Doug and I divorced, and I learned quite a bit about folk beliefs. There were these two ladies I stayed with who never left the house without money tucked in their left shoe to prevent being cursed. And I swear one of them cured a little baby of a fever just by bathing her in a bowl of milk and singing a little song.” She smiled. “I prefer Tylenol, of course, but it’s not my place to judge. And I’d never dismiss the power of prayer.”

“We think someone is trying to use magic to hurt us, Gram,” I said, diving straight into the deep end, so that the truth would drown us all. “The same person who killed Mom and Dad.”

“What? Oh, no, dear, that’s not possible. You can’t really hurt people with folk magic. Especially not somebody like your dad, with his head screwed on so tight.”

I squeezed Nick’s hand. “Do you really believe Dad, the Robbie you knew, would kill Mom? He didn’t just go crazy like everybody said.”

Judy slowly shook her head. “Oh, Silla, now, I don’t know. I’m not sure we can know.”

“We can.” Taking a deep breath, I nodded once. Determined. “Come back downstairs and I’ll show you.”

Silla led me downstairs and sat me at the kitchen table, like I was brain damaged. Maybe I was. I kept thinking about my mom, about her being my age and desperate for something, and then I shied away because I didn’t want to think about her at all.
The sick-sweet smell of puke, and Mom bent over the toilet, yacking on herself. Me, slamming the bathroom door and hiding in my room, thinking of the needle rolling across the bathroom tiles
.

I watched as Silla grabbed a dried-out flower from the vase in the hallway and put it on the table before Judy. Silla pricked her finger and whispered in Latin to make the shriveled yellow petals brighten and stretch out. Judy gasped, but I didn’t feel the wonder this time. My brain felt like cheese.

“Oh.” Judy blinked and reached out to poke at the flower with her bony old finger.

“Don’t even need salt anymore,” Silla whispered, leaning back into her chair.

As Judy lifted the flower and inspected it, clearly needing a moment for the reality of the magic to sink in, Reese took turns glaring at me and Silla, presumably because she’d spilled the beans to Judy without asking him. I tried to take some comfort in his irritation, but only kept thinking about Mom. Trying to plant magic at Silla’s house. Being in love with Silla’s dad.

“We need a plan,” Reese said. “Silla, tell us what happened.”

Silla gripped her coffee mug and told them about Josephine and Wendy at school. She didn’t mention my suspicions
about Lilith. When she finished, she ducked her head for a gulp of coffee, and Judy shook her head. “Doesn’t that just beat all? I am particularly keen to meet that old bag and give her a slap or ten.”

Reese opened the spell book flat on the table, holding the corners down with his spread hands. “Here’s what sounds like the best protection charm. We need something silver to hold it in, like actual silver charms, unless somebody wants to skin a cat and tan the hide for leather.”

Silla pressed her lips together. I winced. Judy said, “Oh my God!”

“I didn’t think so.” Reese cracked a humorless smile. “In that case, it’s more complicated, because we have to make a potion and soak the silver in it. And the potion requires some things we don’t have. Rue, agrimony, and motherwort, the first of which I ordered online but won’t be here until Wednesday. Large feather from wild bird, a black candle—I got a bunch of those yesterday—salt, of course, blood, of course, fresh running water we can get from Meroon’s stream, and focus stones, whatever the hell that means. Thanks for that ambiguity, Dad.”

“I have agrimony and motherwort,” I said, unlatching the lacquered box slowly. My hands still felt like lead. I needed to get over this already. I flipped the lid open, and Reese and Judy leaned around to peer inside.

“Damn,” Reese said. “This was your mom’s?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s … tons. This is excellent. A turkey feather?” He ran his finger along the blood-letter quill.

“That’s a blood-letter. Not an ingredient.”

“There are crow feathers all over the cemetery,” Silla said.

“Okay,” Reese muttered, totally distracted as he lifted out bottles, read the labels, and slid them back in. He held out a triangular vial filled with tiny silver beads, and smoothed a thumb over the lettering. His dad’s writing. The vial slammed back into its slot a little too hard.

“So that’s everything, right?” Silla chewed on her bottom lip. “Except silver and focus stones.”

I nodded.

“Nick and I should run out to the mall in Cape Girardeau for charms. It’s open until nine. We’ll look for stones, too. Or something.”

“I’ll get the feather and spring water, and start cooking up the potion. It’s supposed to soak in the moonlight overnight. Moon’s just past full, but hopefully there will be enough … oh, shit … it isn’t—” Reese looked at the window.

“Bright and sunny,” Gram Judy said breathlessly. “And we’re due for a starry night.”

Reese blew out a sigh. “Great. So.”

The four of us stared at each other. It was intensely surreal. Four people in a country kitchen, plotting bloody magic. With a psycho, body-snatching murderer stalking us through flocks of birds.

Silla broke the silence. “Before we go, we need a password, so that we can know we’re all really—really ourselves.”

Reese looked grim. “Good idea, bumblebee.”

We were all silent again. But instead of it being weird, I suddenly felt like we’d been waiting for this exact moment.
Everything since I moved here had built up to this. Everything since before I was born, maybe. Who knew how far back this went?

One of the lightbulbs in the brass chandelier flickered, breaking the moment.

Silla whispered, “I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

Reese rolled his eyes. “Something we can all remember?”

“You can’t remember
Macbeth
, you heathen?” A ghostly smile caught the corner of her lips.

“Out, out, damn spot?”