Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 25

"I don't know how they're made, actually. I was trying to prepare you for the part where I have to ... sort of pray over them."

"Seriously?"

Lissa covered her eyes. "It's kind of embarra.s.sing."

"No. No. You know what's embarra.s.sing? I didn't know you had your own money in Canada. I thought I could use regular money from home. That's embarra.s.sing. Saying magic words? That's just quaint and unusual."

Stella gamely held each egg and dabbed it with paste and then pa.s.sed it to Lissa, who muttered over it in as unintelligible a manner as she could manage.

"Dad must know you're into this, right? I mean, didn't he used to live here too? Only I don't remember him ever saying anything about witchcraft, and that's not the kind of thing you forget," Stella said as she piled Lissa's grimoires in an untidy stack at the end of the counter and swept around them with a damp cloth.

Lissa bit the inside of her lip. "He's not totally cool with it," she said.

"But it's obviously good witchcraft," Stella said.

"There's a word for it," Lissa said. "For a witch who works with eggs, I mean. We're called kolduny. It just means 'sorcerer,' basically. If you meet some of the people from church, you might hear them call me koldun'ia."

"Yeah. Maksim said that too. I remember."

"Anyway, Dad ... it wasn't his heritage, you know? Good, bad-didn't matter. He didn't want Baba teaching me. He won't like it if he knows that you're involved."

"Then we just won't tell him, will we?" Stella said brightly.

Lissa shelved the stacked grimoires in a high cupboard and turned back to Stella, who was setting the last batch of eggs carefully in their carton. "Thanks," she said. "For your help. Do you want to come with me later this week when I drop them off?"

"Gah!" said Stella, fumbling an egg.

"Okay, I guess that can wait. The church ladies will be scandalized anyway. They'll think it's all wrong that you're not my full sister."

"Look what I did," Stella said mournfully, pointing at the mess on the floor.

"Don't get that on your hand," Lissa said.

Stella jerked her hand back. "I could be fertile just by touching it? Well, I guess it makes sense, if you have to have them all the time. There's only so many fried eggs a person can eat, anyway."

"Raw," Lissa said.

Stella shuddered, gingerly wiping up broken yolk with a paper towel. "Now I get why you were laughing."

"Welcome to the glamorous world of real magic."

"Shut up, or I'll give you fertility," Stella said, brandis.h.i.+ng the paper towel. "Oh my G.o.d. I just figured out why you're so weird about dating Rafe. How do you come out as a witch?"

"I told him my hobby was Russian folklore," Lissa admitted. "You know, in case he's ever curious about my books."

"That's ... not bad. He might buy it. As long as you can persuade your freak friends not to drink blood in front of him."

"Shut up."

"Aww. You told me to shut up," Stella said, grinning. "It's like we're real sisters now."

"I don't even know what that means," Lissa said, more honestly than she'd meant.

"It means I pester you to include me in everything, and you try to get rid of me, and you can't; if anyone hurts me, you threaten them with something awful; we cry at each other's weddings; we steal each other's clothes-"

"Wait. Have you seen my blue camisole top?"

"We watch Pride and Prejudice together; we eat ice cream together when one of us has boy troubles-"

"That's like the Hallmark version of sisterhood," Lissa protested.

"Well, I've never had one, either."

"Make it up as we go along?"

"Make it up as we go along."

MAY 27.

WANING GIBBOUS.

Nick woke.

Blood-warm night air, rich with blossom scent, wafted in from the balcony. Indoors, everything smelled of Maksim. Nick wanted to run outside; he wanted to jerk himself off all over Maksim's furniture; he wanted the others to wake up and drink with him; he wanted Jonathan, all at once, very badly, and then he wanted to punch a hole in the wall.

He did that. His hand smarted, and he sucked on the knuckles. Around the fresh sc.r.a.pes were the scabs of other sc.r.a.pes, and he thought he remembered licking those clean as well.

No one woke; no one scolded him.

No one was in the apartment with him. He rolled to his feet and stood still. Maksim's bed was empty but for a twisted sheet; the sofa where Gus had been was in darkness, but Nick could tell from the lack of scent that she was not there.

Nick padded out to the balcony. Green pallor in the east told him dawn was an hour off; far down Dundas, a streetcar swam heavily away, trailing sparks.

He shut his eyes. The scent of Maksim's blood was out here too, some old and some new. And liquor sweat, though some of that was Nick's own.

And voices: hoa.r.s.e and hushed. One of them might have been saying Nick's name.

He rested his elbows on flaking iron and leaned over.

They weren't talking about him at all.

"Outside of Durban," Gus was saying. "Haven't been there in a dog's age."

"It might be best," said Maksim.

"Not until you're ready, though. Right now, you need a minder."

"I need to mind myself."

"And I'm here to make sure you do," Gus said.

"I wish you would leave."

Gus did not answer, or if she did, Nick, above, could not hear.

"Sometimes," said Maksim, "I catch myself wis.h.i.+ng for war."

Gus made a sound, a laugh or something else. Then a door, opening; a confusion of footsteps. Nick hurried to lie back down.

In the morning, when he woke again, Gus was out. Nick did not ask Maksim, and Maksim said nothing.

Maksim ate raw eggs cracked from the sh.e.l.l and went back to sleep.

Nick took a twenty from the bedside table and wandered out to Dundas Street to find a Starbucks.

He sat over his coffee like a regular person, browsing the headlines in the paper. Wis.h.i.+ng for war. He wouldn't have to look far, if war was what he wanted: Sudan, Afghanistan, Chechnya. He wondered why Maksim was here instead of out there.

Gus was into war too; Nick remembered her saying as much.

Yet here they were, both she and Maksim, f.u.c.king about in Toronto the Good, where a black eye earned stares on the street.

Crazy. Clearly someone was-and maybe, in fact, it wasn't Nick.

After his coffee, he went for a walk, which just happened to take him past the witch's house. Nick stood on the sidewalk, not quite bold enough to go closer. Were the witch and her sister at home? He thought he could smell them, a softer, sweeter scent than before, like fresh sheets or baking bread. A homelike scent. Maybe they were cooking. Maybe they were sleeping late.

He kept walking.

MAY 28.

WANING GIBBOUS.

Maksim kept returning to the pyre. The splintered planks and the reek of kerosene. The ear.

He had managed not to think about it for thirty years. Thirty years: a long time in a human life. Not long enough in Maksim's life.

The ear. The feel of it under the toe of his boot.

He did not want to be there again.

His reverie was broken by a chilly touch upon his lips. He reared away.

A spoon clattered on the floor. "d.a.m.n it, Maks," Gus said wearily.

Maksim opened his eyes. "I thought it was something dead."

"It is," she said. "Dead cow, with vegetables. I took it out of the can all by myself." She retrieved the spoon, wiped it off, and stuck it back in the bowl. "Remember what to do with this?"

Maksim took the bowl and propped it on his knee and, with his good hand, stirred the gelatinous brown mess and then lifted it to his nose. The stuff smelled chemical.

Gus read it on his face. "I can shove it down your throat," she said.

Maksim shrugged his good shoulder. "I would like an egg."

"They're not good for you." She gestured at his cast, at the cracking scabs down the right side of his body.

Maksim's last egg had been long enough ago now that the haze of it had mostly lifted, leaving physical pain and bleak confusion. He wanted to ask Gus if the witch had said anything more about the spell he needed; he could not remember for himself, although it was so important. The last few days were a series of blurry tableaus, silent film stills, nothing at all in the soundtrack.

"Stay awake for a while," Gus said. "Talk to me."

She nudged him with her hip, and he curled his body to make s.p.a.ce; he was on the sofa, though he thought he recalled putting himself to bed.

"I wish you would leave," he said.

Maybe he had said it before, for Gus sighed. "Nope."

"Then give me an egg. Do not anger me. I am afraid I will hurt you."

She snorted. "With one hand? Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely. Besides, you're not in top form just now."

"I was not then, either," Maksim said.

"When?"

He shook his head.

"When, Maks?"

"I hurt someone I did not wish to hurt."

"As is our nature to do, Maksim."

"This was worse."