Blood Magic (36 page)

Her lips pressed together, and she looked into her lap. “Nick. I can’t do this.”

I knelt at her knees but didn’t touch her. I wanted to, but wasn’t sure she wanted me to.

“Just look at me!” She spread her hands. “I’m a mess! I can’t stop crying, and it all just hurts so much. I can’t eat—I’m nauseated all the time, and my head aches, and it’s just awful.”

“Your brother died, babe.” I said it as lightly as I could, and gently touched her knee. “And you lost your parents just a little bit ago. There’s still a crazy bitch stalking you and crows covering your roof. You aren’t supposed to be okay.”

Her jaw dropped. She stared at me. For once, I had no idea what was whirling behind her eyes. I hoped she wasn’t going to ream me, or tell me to leave. I swallowed hard, forcing my hand to stay in place on her knee.

Then suddenly she slid forward and fell down into my arms. She wrapped hers around my neck and pressed her cheek against mine. I closed my eyes. The whole length of her fit
against me as I knelt on the carpet. My arms encircled her easily, and her breasts pushed against me through her thin dress. I heard the blood roaring in my ears and held her tighter, smelling her shampoo, her delicate perfume. Tears made her cheek sticky, but I didn’t care. This was why I’d come. We needed each other.

A breeze ruffled the purple curtains at the window, letting in the muffled sound of conversations and the crunch of gravel outside. The masks on the walls ranged from happy, grinning faces to horrible demonic glares.

“What is all this stuff, anyway?” I murmured. “The masks?”

Without moving, she said, “They’re theater masks and Venetian masks. Most are from catalogs and stuff.”

“They’re watching me.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. She curled a hand up in the ends of my hair, tickling my neck. “Like guardians.”

Rubbing her back, I said, “They’re kind of creepy.”

I could feel her smile against my ear. “Yeah. I like that, too.”

I laughed a little. Of course she did. “You eaten anything today?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“I’m not ready to go downstairs again.”

“Okay, babe. I’ll go get something.”

“Will you tell Judy where I am?”

“Sure thing.”

I started to pull back, but she caught my shoulders and said, “I’m sorry for yesterday. What I said.”

I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too.”

She leaned onto her heels, looking tiny and desperate against the bed, with her feet tucked up under the pink dress and her hands limp in her lap.

“I’ll be right back,” I promised as I stood, feeling pretty damn good for a guy at a funeral.

When the only ones left were Gram Judy’s bunko buddies, Nick and I went outside. It was nearing sunset, and with the crows at our back, we followed my regular path through the forsythia. The prickly branches scratched at my hair, and I showed Nick the best way to duck and twist around the grasping thorns. On the other side, the cemetery was quiet, overgrown, as usual. Except for the backhoe hunkered down between rows of graves.

Reese’s grave was blanketed in loose sod just to the north of Mom’s and Dad’s. There was no headstone yet. That took a while—and I hadn’t picked an epitaph. Judy had put several before me, but I hadn’t been able to focus on the words.

“Why’d they leave it out here?” Nick asked, jerking his chin at the backhoe. “Eager to make another trip tomorrow?”

I just shook my head. “They probably borrowed it from Mr. Meroon. I bet the parish’s is over at the other cemetery.”

“So Meroon uses the same tractor for tilling land and burying the dead. It has a nice sort of circularity.” Nick picked up his
flask and held it out over the fresh grave. “I have tainted the inside of my flask with beer. For Reese?”

“Yes.”

He tipped the contents out, and the yellow-brown liquid cascaded briefly onto the grass. The stream caught the dying sunlight and turned into a band of gold.

Crows hid all over the cemetery. They tucked themselves into shadows, some hunkered down like feathery fluff balls, and some stood with their necks stretched and tall. A handful, a dozen, I wasn’t sure. They didn’t move toward us or cry out to one another; they just watched. Silently, unnaturally.

I leaned against Mom and Dad’s headstone, drawing runes in the dirt and then scratching them out. A crow landed about fifty feet away. Nick picked up a rock and threw it, hitting the ground near the crow’s feet. The crow flapped backward, cawing angrily.

“Thanks,” I said. I dropped the stick and put my hands in my lap. “Do you ever wonder if it says anything about our relationship that we’re always meeting up in a cemetery?”

“That we’re eternal and peaceful?”

I smiled. “That isn’t what I was thinking.”

“You’re right. You don’t make me feel peaceful.” The little smile fell off his mouth, and some intense look replaced it. We watched each other for a moment, until I had to glance away. I fiddled with Reese’s bracelet, heavy on my wrist. My rings were tucked under my pillow, strung together on a silver chain. Reese’s blood was crusted in the setting of the emerald and the iolite. I couldn’t wear them.

Nick didn’t say anything, just stared down at my wrist, too, as the tiger’s-eye caught the light of the sunset. Until a crow cried out. Nick glanced at my eyes, tossing another rock.

I nodded, gathering up sticks and crumbled headstone marble into my skirt. Together we stood, and launched a volley. We were silent, arms swinging, rocks and twigs peppering the ground with tiny thuds and crunching into headstones.

The crows yelled at us and, in unison, broke away, flying off toward the forest.

Mauve-edged clouds swept past overhead, leaving behind a darkening night sky. I walked to the nearest headstone that wasn’t my parents’—a squat, rectangular tower—and picked at the green lichen hugging one corner. I wished it was so easy to chase away the memories of Reese’s heart’s blood spilling over my hands.

Coming up behind me, Nick said, “I think the cemetery is at the center of everything.”

“Huh?” I frowned at him and shivered. With the sun set, the cardigan over my summer dress wasn’t enough.

He put his arm around me. “The cemetery. It’s connected to the magic. All the dead bodies, they’ve got to have some power. Right? That’s why Josephine wanted your dad’s bones. For the magic. Why else? She wants his bones, and it must be because whatever makes our blood special makes our dead bodies special, too. Otherwise, why not dig up any old grave?”

“Yeah.”

“And you must know they say things about this place having been cursed for generations? Your family and mine have been here, have been buried here, for that long.”

The silence stretched out, but it wasn’t tense or brittle. More like dough. Thick and sticky, settling over us like a blanket. Then a crow called, and it was echoed by another on the far side of the cemetery.

My sigh was violent enough to expel every molecule of air.

Nick pressed his forehead into mine. We just stood there, heads together, hands on each other. Breathing his air was almost as nice as kissing him.

“We’ll figure it out, babe,” Nick said.

I tilted my chin and kissed him. My fingers curled into his jacket, and I tugged him against me easily.

Nick opened his mouth, and I grabbed his head. He tasted so good. The same—exactly the same, and I knew how to kiss him: where his teeth were and how he moved his lips.

I pulled, lifting myself up, and Nick grabbed my hips to boost me onto the monument. His fingers twisted at my thin skirt as I parted my legs so that he could get closer. Wrapped around him, pressed against him, I was warm.

For whole breathless minutes, we kissed. I unbuttoned Nick’s shirt, and he jerked as my cold hands touched his skin. But he sighed back into the kiss, holding me closer with his hands fisted in my skirt. The rough scrape of his jeans on my thighs made me dig my fingers into his back, wanting him more, needing harder than I ever had in my life.

His mouth tore away from mine, and he scoured down my neck with kisses. My head lolled back and I gasped, clutching at him.

He raised his hands up from my hips, his palms hot on my
ribs even through the thin dress. I wanted out of it, I wanted everything between us gone. I tugged at the collar of my cardigan, twisting to get it off.

But Nick stopped. He caught my hands. “Silla,” he whispered.

I stared at him, but his eyes rested lower than mine, at my throat. Releasing my hands, he slowly, and very gently, unbuttoned the top button of the cardigan and unfolded it off my chest, like unwrapping a gift. His face was so open I thought that if I tried I could see into his thoughts. Wonder, fear, panic, tenderness shared space in his expression, and Nick drew one finger along the scar lining my throat, just over my collarbone. “God, Silla,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, touching his lips. “It’s okay.”

He ducked his head and pulled me close, hugging me.

I wound my arms around his neck and relaxed against him. Our breath evened out together, synchronized perfectly.

Nick said, “We should, uh, go get the spell book and all the rest of the stuff.”

“What?” I pushed away.

He scrubbed a hand down his face, then back up through his hair, leaving it mussed. “The amulets, babe. We have to finish the amulets. It’s been two whole days, and we’re just lucky she hasn’t attacked and apparently needed time to recover. There’s no way she’s really gone.”

“We can’t.”

“Why?”

“The spell book is gone.”

“What?” He grasped my hands. “What happened?”

“I buried it with Reese.”

His eyebrows lowered, and he frowned. It was fierce and angry, not confused. “Silla, we need it. How else can we stop Josephine?”

“We can’t, Nick! She’s stronger than us, and she’s killed so many people! We can’t fight her. So I buried the thing she wants so badly. Where she can’t get it.”

“You’re giving up? Just like that? What if she comes after you again? She will, for the exact same reasons as before.”