Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 26

Gus turned an inquiring gaze to him.

She'd done things, her look said-knowing and cool and sad. She was his. She could not be shocked.

She was his, and she should not be here, and the surest way to drive her off would be to tell her the story. And still, he could not bear for her to know it.

He buried his face in the crook of his arm. Tried to think of something else. Failed.

MAY 28.

WANING GIBBOUS.

The apartment was nearly dark, just after sunset. Nick let himself in. He stepped on something just inside the door, which crunched wetly.

"Gross," he said.

Flame kindled in the center of the room and touched the wick of a candle.

"You came back," Maksim said.

"Um. Yeah. No place else to go right now."

"But you went."

"Just ... out. Read the paper, hung out in the Market, went to a pub, that kind of thing," Nick said, wiping egg from his sandal. "Should I have left a note or something?"

"You've been fighting," Maksim said. "Show me."

Nick came and knelt by the candle, tilting his face to show the split over his cheekbone. He was reminded strongly of the night all this had begun. He trembled very slightly under the touch of Maksim's fingertip and less slightly under the rasp of Maksim's tongue.

"You must be very careful with your blood," Maksim said. "You can infect others if you are not."

"It didn't bleed much at all."

Maksim waited, sitting back on the sofa with one hand open and relaxed upon his knee and the other, the bandaged one, curled over his stomach.

"Some people in an alley," Nick said. "They were giving a hundred bucks to anyone who would challenge this one guy. He'd already taken down two other guys. He was a huge motherf.u.c.ker, so I thought he'd be interesting. You know?"

"I know."

"So I took the hundred. I think it's a frequent gig, this thing. They had tape for my hands and everything. Maybe fifty people watching. Long odds on me," Nick said, and he felt mad laughter bubbling up. He'd been small as a kid. Avoided the neighborhood bully-played soccer rather than hockey. Couldn't remember if he'd ever hit anyone in real rage in all his life before now.

Oh. Wait.

The knuckle he'd split on Jonathan's face hadn't even finished healing, and what the f.u.c.k kind of best friend could do that and then forget about it? Even for a second?

"You like it," Maksim was saying.

"No. What kind of freak likes getting off on hurting other people? I mean, I do, but I don't want to..."

"You like the life."

"My other life was full of s.h.i.+t, to be honest. I couldn't seem to get through it without a whole lot of booze."

"I still can't," Gus mumbled, rolling out of Maksim's bed and padding into the room. Her plain white tank top was twisted around her body. She sat on the floor beside Nick and drank water from a cracked cup.

"That's what I mean," Nick said. "I like being tougher and everything, but I still have to figure out what to do with myself, right?"

"If you could see yourself now," Maksim said, reaching out and touching Nick's cheek again and a lock of his hair. "You are like an angel."

Nick lurched back. "I don't want that."

"It is not that," Maksim said. "It is as if I gave you wings of wax. The fault is mine, but you will find your way to your own ruin."

Nick had no idea what to say to that.

"Come here," Maksim said. "Sit. Lay your head down. Be still if you can."

Nick obeyed. He was still for a while, and Maksim stroked his hair, and the candle flame flickered.

Outside, someone argued in Portuguese, and someone drove by with the Gorillaz on the car stereo. Nick felt the restlessness rise in his limbs, slowly but inexorably.

"Before the new moon," Maksim said, "the witch will have to make a choice."

But he did not say what the choice was. Maksim sat, dreaming, and his hand moved more slowly until Nick could not bear it anymore and bolted up.

Gus gave him a significant look, but whatever she meant was lost on him.

In a moment, Nick got his reactions under his control again, and though he was breathing heavily, he managed to shake his hair back from his face and go to the refrigerator for a cold gla.s.s of water.

"Go," said Gus. "Here, take some money. Go pick up some more beer or something."

"Okay, I can do that," Nick said. "I'll be back. In a bit."

Nick opened the last two bottles of pilsner for them before leaving and descended the stairs while Gus sang a song about Spanish ladies.

He would come back. He wanted to come back, even. Not right away, though, and not forever.

MAY 30.

WANING GIBBOUS.

Stella danced through the pub with even more than her usual brio. Rafe watched her for a second, eyebrow up, and said to Lissa, "Like a five-year-old who's got into the jelly beans. What did you do to our kid?"

"Our kid?"

"Well, sure. You're the big sister, I'm the boss; she's our kid."

"We're getting along," Lissa said, even though she knew he hadn't been looking for a serious answer.

"You're not s.h.i.+pping her back to Daddy?"

"She told you that?"

Rafe grinned. "Let's just say you're the quiet one in the family."

"It was never up to me," Lissa said. "She's the one who decided to stay here."

"In your house."

"Well, yeah, I guess that part was up to me."

Rafe reached out and took the tip of Lissa's braid in his fingertips. "You're doing good by her. In case you wanted my opinion. Which you probably don't."

Lissa made herself look at him. "She's your kid too, right? Someone's got to make sure I don't mess her up."

Rafe seemed to think she was joking. He laughed and tugged her hair and leaned across the bar to kiss her cheek. "Want to get brunch tomorrow? It'll be breakfast for me, but you're probably a disgusting early-morning person, right? We could meet up at that place on College at noon."

"Sure," Lissa said, dazed. Another date. Where were all these people coming from? People in her life, making plans with her, making jokes-had they all been waiting somewhere until Baba was gone?

She had one more drop-off for the church ladies tonight, and she wouldn't mind sleeping late herself. She pictured warm morning air, the light sheet covering her, sun slanting at the window-the antic.i.p.ation of brunch at the patio on College-and what if it was more than a brunch date later? Would she someday ask Rafe to sleep over? Would they wake side by side in the big bed, tangled in sheets, hands touching?

Lissa felt heat wash over her face, and she gripped her hands together under the bar, arms tight to her sides. Rafe wasn't looking at her; he'd gone to take someone's order at the other end of the bar. She was not allowed to have these thoughts. She was not permitted. What would Baba think?

She slipped off the stool and slung her bag over her shoulder. One pint and look where her mind had gone. There was work to do, and she had to call and check up on Maksim.

She didn't cancel the date, though. She only mouthed, "See you tomorrow," to Rafe and waved to Stella, and then she was outside in summer heat, and it seemed as if, all the way home, everyone she saw was holding hands.

Nine.

JUNE 1.

LAST QUARTER.

Nick knocked too hard on the witch's door and split his knuckle again.

"c.r.a.p," he said, and he sucked the blood away. It tasted faintly like Maksim's blood. He wondered when he had stopped finding this creepy.

A wad of Band-Aids bulged in his pocket. Maksim and Gus between them had told him twenty times already that he needed to be careful not to contaminate anyone else. He peeled one and covered the cut and, for good measure, smeared the door clean with his fingertip and licked that too.

Then he knocked again, more decorously.

The sister opened the door. Nick was the luckiest son of a b.i.t.c.h ever. Stella was just as tall and peach-skinned as he remembered from the other day, and she smiled at Nick in a hesitant way that made him wonder how old she was.

"Hi," he said. "Remember me? Nick Kaisaris." He held out his unbloodied hand. He knew he was rumpled from living out of his backpack; he had not shaved today and maybe not the day before, and he smiled at her with all his usual ease. Somehow in the last few weeks, he'd lost the need to excuse himself for anything.

"I remember. We weren't properly introduced, though. Stella Moore." G.o.d, that cla.s.sy English voice, and her hand felt clean and warm.

"I had a question for your sister, but I'm glad to find you instead."

"She's not in," said Stella, angling her torso to block the doorway. She didn't look like her sister at all, except for the body language. That much was the same.

"I'll wait," said Nick, showing her his open hands. He wasn't the kind of person who'd knock a girl aside to get into her house, not like Gus.

"I can't let you in," said Stella. "But I'll wait outside with you, if you want. She shouldn't be long. I suppose I shouldn't offer you a beer."

Nick didn't ask why he didn't rate a beer. He sat down cross-legged on the porch boards and leaned back on the cool yellow brick. After a minute, Stella came outside, handed him a gla.s.s of lemonade, and arranged herself just beyond his reach.

"What were you going to ask my sister?" she said.

"Witch things," Nick said and laughed. He wondered if he laughed too much these days, with nothing exactly funny but everything so marvelously strange.

"Eggs? I can do that. Which ones did you get the other day? The sleep ones?"

"Not for me," Nick said. "I tried one. I don't need it; I can handle myself." The egg had felt like quicksand, he thought; he'd been hoping for a pleasant, lazy high, like a Vicodin or something. But it wasn't at all similar. He didn't know how Maksim could stand it.

"For Maksim?" Stella asked. "Is he okay?" She leaned forward so that Nick caught the scent of her hair.

He swayed closer himself, entranced. "He's not so good. He doesn't eat. He doesn't even drink water unless you remind him."