Blood Magic (34 page)

The world around me blurred, and through my tears I couldn’t see where the birds had gone.

I made my way back to the porch and pulled on my sneakers. The tears coating my eyes were like shellac, like a hard, crystallized film over my eyeballs that I couldn’t get to go away. I hated it, and I rubbed at them. But something inside me was broken.

The chilly air pecked at my cheeks and bare arms. I bounced back and forth on my toes. The gravel crunched.

Reese had been a runner, and that’s all I wanted to do. Run. Escape. I took off down the road, jogging at first to warm up my muscles, and then stretching my legs farther and farther until I sprinted full out. The gravel slid beneath me, and I panted. When my chest ached, I pushed on and didn’t let myself stop. The pain cut more sharply than any knife, and my breath puffed out in front of me. In and out, in and out, harsh and smooth and then harsh again. My feet pounded, jarring my knees and my hips until the muscles loosened.

My vision swam in the darkness, and the nausea cooled down. The wind dried out my eyes.

I lost time and space for a brief moment: I was free.

Then I stumbled.

I slowed, caught myself, and then collapsed onto the gravel road, panting and heaving with effort. I rolled onto my back.
The tiny rocks poked into my shoulder blades, my hips, my calves. I spread out my arms and stared up at the sky. All I could hear was my raging breath. High overhead, the stars glittered at me.

Had it only been four days since I sat on the porch with his shoulder against mine, looking up at the constellations? Oh, God, it hurt. It was impossible that he was gone. Not him, too.

I began to hear the wind through the trees and singing crickets.

Sweat cooled on my forehead.

But my breath did not calm, or my blood stop racing. It built harder and faster, until I wanted to explode the way Reese had in July, after Mom and Dad died, when he’d punched a hole through the bedroom wall. My fists ached to do the same.

“Reese,” I whispered. Then again, louder: “Reese.”

Why had he left me?

“Reese!” I screamed.

Silence.

At ten the morning after, my cell rang. I was wound so tight I almost fell off my bed.

Her name blinked on the screen. And I hesitated. I didn’t know what to say.

I thought of the sheriff and Judy finding us in the middle of the cemetery, my arms around Silla, but not to comfort her, to pin her there, to keep her back from Reese. Her staring, comatose eyes. I thought of Reese’s body, his blood everywhere and making me gag. His eyes half-open, his mouth slack.

I didn’t know what to say to Silla, but I had to say something. So I flipped open the phone and walked to the window. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Her voice was soft, barely there.

Silence fell between us, and I pressed my bandaged hand to the cold glass. Under the bandage, stitches held together the gash I’d made on the cemetery wall. It throbbed, and the cold helped. I stared out past my fingers.

The woods looked so normal in the morning light. Not like the place the sheriff had tracked Josephine’s blood trail to, not
like the place they’d lost her. They’d searched Ms. Tripp’s house and found several fake IDs—and not the kind you use to sneak into a club when you’re sixteen. They were birth certificates and driver’s licenses with her picture but different names. So they put out a statewide APB or whatever. Sheriff Todd didn’t want to think she was coming back but had promised my dad there’d be regular deputies driving by our place and Silla’s. Bullshit. They wanted her to be gone.

I looked past the forest to the cemetery.

It hadn’t been hard for me and Gram Judy to convince everybody Ms. Tripp had been obsessed with the old stories, that it had made her crazy. If they suspected we’d done magic, too, they weren’t saying anything to me about it. Maybe because everybody knew the rumors but nobody wanted to open a real investigation, real death, up to that kind of speculation. They were happier thinking Tripp had been behind it all. I noticed everybody around here liked to keep things working the way they wanted them to work. They didn’t ask questions that might have knocked our delicately constructed story to the ground.

Except Dad and Lilith. I could feel them wondering. Right now they were downstairs, working together. They’d been remarkably quiet, both of them, all morning, mostly leaving me alone. Dad hadn’t left for his usual four-day business trip, but hadn’t pushed any kind of father-son bonding on me, either. Or said he told me so. It was like he was saying instead,
Son, I’m here if you need me
. I hadn’t managed to find a way to let him know I knew what he was doing, and appreciated it, even if I didn’t really want to talk to him at all.

And Lilith was acting like a human being. Breakfast had sucked, but not for the usual reasons. Dad and Lilith had kept up senseless chatter and passed me French toast and hash browns without forcing me to talk. I’d only sat there, chewing on a couple of forkfuls of potatoes that made me slightly nauseated, and feeling guilty for not talking. Then Lilith’s elbow bumped into Dad as he was reaching for another helping of scrambled eggs, and her grape juice splashed onto the tablecloth. It wasn’t even close to the right color, but I threw myself backward, my chair crashing to the floor. I covered my face with my hands and breathed and breathed and breathed.

All I saw was blood.

It had been Lilith who said, “Jer, take him into the kitchen for some cool water. I’ll clean this up.”

I didn’t want her kindness. But I took it.

Cold leached into my head from the window, and finally I said the stupidest thing to Silla: “How are you?”

“Okay.”

From the stereo behind me, Weezer was complaining about the girl you can’t resist because she’s only in your dreams.

She pulled a long, slow breath, then said, “I need to see you.”

“Sure,” I answered immediately. I wanted to kiss her, to remember she was still alive. To remind her that she was, too.

“Come to Dairy Queen.”

“The … Dairy Queen?”

“Please.”

We hung up. I grabbed a sweatshirt and slipped outside.

Gram Judy sent me to get napkins.

It was the most inane thing, but she said I needed something to do. Since the funeral was tomorrow and we’d have a wake at our house afterward, we needed napkins.

I drove Reese’s truck. The whole cab smelled like oil and hay and sweat. When I turned the ignition, Bruce Springsteen exploded out of the CD player. I hated the upbeat rock and extended guitar solos, but couldn’t bring myself to turn it off.

My hands curled around the wheel, and I thought of Reese’s hands. Of his sixteenth birthday, when he’d finally bought the truck. He’d wanted to go out with friends, but Mom made him stay in. It was a weeknight, and she said he could go out Friday. I helped her make fried chicken. Reese was being such an asshole, saying if he had to stay home he’d stay in his room—only he was cussing, and Mom was trying so hard not to cry. Dad came home, and when he found out Reese was pouting in his room, he told Mom and me to go ahead and set the table. I don’t know what Dad said, but they both came down about fifteen minutes later, and Reese apologized to Mom. We ate dinner, and Reese opened his presents. I gave him some game for his PlayStation that he’d been really wanting, and Mom gave him a sweater and a credit for three hundred dollars off the price of his truck. He’d been saving up to buy it for a year, and that put him over the top. Dad told him that the truck was waiting at Mr. Johnston’s, getting new tires, which were from Dad. Dad also gave him the bracelet with the tiger’s-eye stone in it. We had ice cream and butterscotch cupcakes, which were Reese’s favorite.

Maybe at the grocery store I’d buy a box of cupcakes to go with my napkins.

After I pulled into the parking lot at Mercer’s Grocer, I had to rub at my sticky cheeks. I had that drowning feeling, like the memories and thoughts were a rushing river, surrounding me and pulling me under, and all I could do was fight for air. It left me shaking.

I climbed out of the truck and into the sun. Five other cars filled the lot, and I recognized them all. God, I hoped everyone would just let me go about my business. Maybe looking like a wreck would actually help with that. Gripping my purse, I tried to walk like I was fine, eyes on the asphalt before me.

Mr. Emory held the door open for me. “Hey, Silla girl, you’re doing okay?” Wrinkles hid the corners of his mouth. I nodded, glancing briefly at his eyes.

A trick of the sun made their regular brown suddenly black and cold.

I jerked away, slamming my back into the edge of the door.

“Silla?” He cocked his head and light flooded into his eyes, reflecting normally.

“Um.” I shook my head. “Sorry, Mr. Emory. I’m fine. Thanks,” I whispered.

Lips pursed irritably, he nodded and backed away. Slowly, I confronted the inside of the grocery store.

Josephine could be anywhere.

Pressing into the glass storefront, I scanned the aisles of food. Two cashiers waited: Beth and Erica Ellis in blue aprons, sisters who’d worked as baggers forever until being promoted last year. Mrs. Anthony and her son Pete were in the canned
fruit row. Pete was kicking his chubby legs from the kid seat in the cart. There was Mrs. Morris deciding between Cheerios and Frosted Flakes. Mr. Mercer, the owner, was back by the tiny butcher station talking to Jim, the butcher.

Any of them. All of them. I hadn’t seen where Josephine’s crows had flown off to. Maybe she was waiting for me to let my guard down. My heartbeat filled my ears as I walked steadily toward the paper goods. Everyone glanced at me. Watching. Just like the crows had. It was just like that awful day at school after Wendy’d been possessed. I saw enemies everywhere. And today, I knew kindergarten tactics like drawing runes over my heart were useless.

Even little Pete stopped kicking his legs as I passed.

I grabbed a bag of cheap paper napkins and barely restrained myself from running to the checkout line.

Erica Ellis smiled sympathetically. “Did you find what you needed?” she asked, like she always did.

I laughed, and it sounded hysterical even to me.

She paused, glancing over at her sister with raised eyebrows. But what I needed was
not
in a freaking grocery store.

When she took my five-dollar bill, there was a new wariness there, like I might be contagious. She frowned at the cuts on my hands. I wanted to pull down my sweatshirt to display the long, jagged pink scar across my collarbone.

But behind her, I caught the hostile look on Beth’s face. They could all so easily be enemies. Be Josephine.

So I said nothing, just grabbed my change and napkins and left.

The Yaleylah Dairy Queen was a small concrete building next to the grocery store where I’d gotten coffee with Eric, with giant, dirty windows for a front and a huge white and red sign. I could see the peeling plastic of the booths and the tired-looking kid slouched behind the counter before I was twenty feet away.