Gifts of the Blood (7 page)

The scrapes along my side stung, but not as badly as the burns along my right hand and forearm. I’d purposely left the water plain, even though I had enough bath additives to stock a small store. No gardenia or jasmine salts to agitate eyes and injuries; I craved peace and quiet. The huge claw foot tub was my refuge, my equivalent of a meditation room or chapel. After last night, I desperately needed some time to get my head together before I started another whirlwind day. Cocooned in hot, silent water, I tried to set my thoughts into something resembling order.

Point one: I’d drawn one of my visions yesterday, and it began unfolding in the same day. I frowned underneath the water. I’d never drawn a person before, especially a strange one who seemed intent on becoming involved in my life. I blew more bubbles as I realized the error in my thinking. I did draw people. I’d been doing it all my life. I drew Grandmother’s accident, and the Everly’s surprise twins. The difference, I realized, was that these were all people I knew well before I drew them, and that my drawings weren’t so much of them but of events surrounding them. That was what was so shocking about Ethan’s sudden appearance in my sketchbook and then again in real life. I didn’t know him, and I had no way of knowing if my drawing foresaw his arrival in my life or pointed to some event involving him that hadn’t happened yet.

This was a good segue into point two: the strange symbols surrounding Ethan in my drawing and his ominous appearance in general. He’d been surrounded by a storm of darkness and frightening objects. He’d been furious. So if my drawing represented a forthcoming event, it was bound to be bad. For at least the fiftieth time since waking, I wished for my missing drawing so I could study it again. I ran through what I remembered, lightning fast: soaring light like doors in darkness, bloody talons, broken knife, ragged book, smashed heart. Remember it. Be ready.

Point three: My drawing was missing. Someone had sliced it neatly free from my sketchbook. Someone had stolen my property and my proof. My hands curled into fists, the injured one throbbing mildly in protest as my burning, oxygen-deprived chest matched my suddenly blazing anger. Someone had been in my house and stolen my property. I wasn’t sure which upset me more: the drawing and all it represented, or its theft and the violation of my home. I couldn’t think of a motive or a suspect. Logan hadn’t known the drawing existed, Amberlyn didn’t understand its significance, and Ethan had been with me the entire time.

Lack of oxygen finally drove me to the surface in an explosion of droplets. I flipped my hair backwards, out of my eyes, and gripped the edge of the tub. Ethan. Point four, and by far the most unsettling. I thought about the black leather jacket folded neatly across the back of my winged-back reading chair. I awoke slightly before the alarm, nestled underneath it with all my clothes on. He’d covered me with it and tucked me in. That much I remembered, along with his light piercing eyes and his promise that he’d see me again.

That, and the dreams.

I squirmed in the tub, letting the hot water swish around me in mild waves as I remembered the Ethan dreams. Storms swept across my dreamscape; I remembered a world of mist and wind, pierced occasionally by lightening. I drew with my fingers in the thick mist, shadows streaming from my fingertips in thick jagged lines. I stood on tiptoe and carved great dark rips in an otherwise hazy white world. "This is dangerous, Caspia," someone said from far away. Ethan. "It's not allowed. You'll draw their attention." But I didn't want to stop. His river-colored eyes flared slightly as he grappled with me. In my dream he held me close, around my waist.

I blushed, quite a feat when I was flushed from the hot water anyway. I had no business dreaming about a man I barely knew who had an as-yet undefined role in my life and could do things like move faster than my eyes could follow. And speak cat.

As if on cue, Abigail nudged her way into the bathroom through the connecting door to my room. She looked at me with queenly impatience. “Oh, ok already,” I grumbled, climbing out and toweling vigorously. “Breakfast in five, your highness. You have to wait like everyone else.” She flicked her tail to show her displeasure and stalked back out the door.

The black leather jacket tugged at the edges of my thoughts as I rifled quickly through my closet. I held two long-sleeved shirts up in front of my full-length, freestanding mirror. My long hair was starting to dry around the edges, framing my face with wild wispy strands. I was tall for a woman. At five foot nine, I towered over most of my female classmates, including the petite Amberlyn. I would never qualify as thin or tiny, but my tall frame and the fact that I walked almost everywhere, carrying all my belongings and purchases, kept me reasonably fit. Former boyfriends had gone so far as to describe me as "energetic" and "graceful." I twisted at the waist, my eyes lingering on the small of my back, remembering Ethan’s steadying hands on me last night. I'd been anything but graceful with him around. He’d kept me from falling. And his jacket… what was it? “For protection,” I murmured, remembering.

As I slipped the warmer of the two shirts on, I knew that, contrary to good sense and even some compelling evidence, at some point last night I’d decided to trust Ethan. It had been my own senseless, mad dash across the concrete outside Mrs. Alice’s shop that had gotten me injured. Ethan had let go immediately when he realized I was hurt. I remembered his look of horror, like he didn’t realize how fragile I was. I remembered the way he held me around the waist, as if I was breakable, and the way he’d moved me around my own room.

Because I was wobbly, for a human. And he was inhumanly fast. I sank onto the edge of my bed with a groan. “Christ, Ethan, what
are
you, and what are you doing here?” I asked his jacket. “Do I even want to know?”

“Know what?” Amberlyn’s springy curls were confined in a ponytail, but they still managed to bounce in time with her cheerful walk straight to my closet. “What to wear? Because it can’t be that hard, and breakfast is getting cold.” She turned and started rummaging. “I, for one, like my coffee hot.”

“Jesus, Amberlyn!” I shouted, grabbing the first pair of semi-clean jeans I found on the floor. “Don’t you believe in knocking?”

She turned back, arms loaded with clothes, and frowned at my wrinkled jeans. “I brought double-chocolate banana bread. Mr. Peppers just took it out of the pan. It’s still hot.” She handed me my favorite hoodie and two socks that didn't match. “I think that qualifies as grounds for a home invasion.”

I held up my as-yet unbandaged hand. “It’s a two woman job. Help me?”

“It looks better,” she finally said after snapping the last clip in place.

“It is.” In the kitchen, I reached for a stack of plates with my left hand, but Logan’s long arm shot up and restrained me. His dark green Adidas tracksuit pinned me to the sink.

“Hey, Amberlyn.” I felt the deep rumble of his voice against my back. “You giving Cas a ride?”

“You’ve got your oncologist's appointment today,” I said, dodging neatly around him to put the juice out. “You’re going to need the car.”

He nodded. His baseball cap matched his tracksuit, pulled down low enough to hide both his hollow eyes and his completely bald head. “You just always walk everywhere. Andreas is pretty close.”

“It’s finally turned cold enough that she’s consented to ride in the hippie car,” Amberlyn smirked, carving neat slices of breakfast bread so dark and moist it was more like cake.

I actually growled. “You wish it was a hippie car. I hate to break it to you, but anything built this millennia doesn’t qualify. And if you keep calling it that, I
will
walk, no matter how cold it is.”

Logan just shook his head. He was used to our bickering. He nodded at my hand. “How are you going to manage today with that?”

“School’s easy, actually.” I popped the corner of Mr. Pepper’s best-selling breakfast bread in my mouth and stifled a moan of ecstasy. “Art history is straight lecture. Then we have ceramics, and I’m so terrible in there being left-handed might actually be an improvement.” I ate more bread. “How did you get this fresh, Amberlyn? He usually sells out at dawn, or something.”

She fiddled with her coffee cup. “He held one back for you.”

I choked. “What?”

“That’s what I said.” Logan sat motionless, watching me intently. Amberlyn’s golden-green eyes pleaded with me to understand. “I think he was worried about you, after last night. It’s sweet, really,” she tried to reassure me, but I exploded out of my chair.

I mentally filled in her unspoken commentary:
He's worried because the whole town heard you had a screaming nervous breakdown and had to be carried off the square, unconscious and hurt.

“What? How the
hell
did Mr. Peppers know about that? Who else knows?” When Logan didn’t meet my eyes, I sat back down with a defeated plop. “Maybe I better rephrase that. Who else
doesn’t
know?”

“Mr. Markov called while you were in the bath,” my brother said carefully. I noticed he hadn’t touched his breakfast. Not good. “He said to call if you needed more time.”

“Oh. My. God.” I let my head flop forward into my waiting arms. “This is horrible. I’m supposed to work this afternoon. I need my job. I even like my job. Most of the time.”

“He didn’t fire you, Caspia.” Cold fingers brushed my hair back from my forehead. “He just wondered if… well.” The fingers withdrew. I sat up and stared at Logan, who looked at Amberlyn. “We were talking and we think you’ve been pushing yourself too hard. We think…
I
think you should slow down.”

“This is about last night,” I accused. No one contradicted me. I thought fast and hard. They were partially right. I had, after all, come to the same conclusion before Ethan approached me and scared the hell out of me. Yes, I had been working myself a bit too hard. So I could admit that much. But the rest of it? No way. If they already thought I was unbalanced, I could only imagine what would happen if I tried to tell them about prophetic drawings and the man who’d helped me last night who could do impossible things and had stepped out of one. I looked at their worried faces, at my brother who only toyed with a slice of something he would have eaten a whole loaf of this time last year, and made a decision.

“You’re absolutely right,” I announced, scooting back up to the table and helping myself to another slice of double-chocolate banana bread. I ignored their shocked expressions with satisfaction. “I thought about it myself. I’ve been pushing myself so hard so I won’t have time to think about… unpleasant… things.” I looked at Logan. “And that has to stop. It’s not going to change anything. It just means we have less time together.” He nodded at me in grim shock. “So I’ll talk to Markov. I don’t want to make any radical changes. It’s not a crisis situation, or anything. I’d like to finish out my schedule for the week, since it’s already made and I don’t want to mess up anyone else’s. But I will see about reducing my hours so that we can have so more time together. Since I made some extra money this month, I can afford to take some time before the holidays.” I couldn’t help myself. I threw my arms around Logan’s neck and squeezed. He squeezed back.

“We could go to the orchard together,” he said into my hair. “The Parsons opened up about a month ago.”

“And buy apples and cider, and come back here and watch scary movies all night long,” Amberlyn added, her voice tight.

“Like we do every year.” I squeezed Logan once more, tightly, before I reluctantly let him go. I tried to ignore the sensation that time was running out as we hurried through breakfast and I gathered my things for school. I was halfway down the stairs when I turned on my heel. “Hey. I forgot something. Go on ahead; I won’t be a minute.”

Logan sat on the couch, a purring Abigail in his lap. I balanced uneasily on the edge of the coffee table, facing him. “I will skip all my classes and work too if you want me to go to that appointment with you,” I said. He smiled into Abigail’s satisfied face.

“You hate doctor’s offices,” he said. “You’ve had a rough twenty four hours, Cas. You've been right beside me for this whole thing. Missing one doctor's visit isn't going to hurt.” He gave a startled little laugh when Abigail put her paws on his chest and started to give him a bath, cat style, starting with the tip of his nose. “I know you’d go, and I appreciate it. But I’d rather you have a normal day. You help me that way, by being steady and reminding me there’s a normal world that isn’t centered on me being sick.” He deflected further bathing maneuvers with one hand and took my fingers with his other. “I don’t know if I’ve ever thanked you for that, Caspia. For being steady and keeping me anchored to reality. Without you, I don’t know where I’d be.”

I swallowed hard. He was counting on
me
to keep him anchored to reality? Oh, hell. “It’s what sisters do,” I told him solemnly. “Or at least, we try,” I amended. Below us, Amberlyn honked her late-model VW Bug. “I’ll see you right after Ceramics, aka Slime-a-ramics, before work, ok?”

I left him laughing on the couch, Ethan’s jacket draped over one of my arms. “It offers some protection against the cold and… other things...” he’d said. The shiver that took me when I slipped it on had nothing to do with the chill October wind that welcomed me when my feet hit the sidewalk. Instead, I shivered as I wondered what those ‘other things’ might be, in anticipation and fear of finding out, and in stubborn rejection of that tiny voice that hadn’t left me, the one still reminding me that my brother was too fragile.
The winter will take him, the winter will take him
.

“Like hell,” I announced as I sprinted to Amberlyn’s car, pulling Ethan’s jacket closer.

***

“What are you, like, my shadow now?”

I balanced a pile of fabric, including a heavier than it looked leather jacket, an extra sweater my landlord Mr. Moore had just shoved at me, and my work apron on one forearm while I made a fist with my other hand and jammed it against my hip. I tried to look fierce as a tall, dark-clad figure uncoiled itself from the alley wall that ran perpendicular to my apartment.