I put a finger on his knee, traced a protection rune there, though it would do no good without blood. “It may help me to know why, the particulars of it. Even if you don’t wish to talk about it. And when I can remove it, you won’t need to be bound.”
“It’s cold,” he said.
“I know.”
“Have you ever—have you ever been … like this?” Lukas caught my finger and held my hand achingly tight.
My eyelashes fluttered. I didn’t like to think about having my magic bound. “I did it to myself once, after my mother died. To know what it felt like.”
“Why?”
I scraped my teeth over my bottom lip, pinched it. Thinking how to explain. “For … solidarity. So that I would feel how she felt when she died, so that I could carry that memory with me forever.”
He said very quietly, “My dad sells curses sometimes. Things so, like, a farmer’s fields go all to rot or—or once so a man stopped breathing exactly when Dad wanted.”
“It isn’t your fault,” I said again. “Come on.”
I took him down to the workshop, and while he explored the barn, I shifted the stacks of drawing paper and can of colored pencils off my worktable. I moved a pile of my raw rubies onto the ground and the plastic bin with the remains of my doll, too, until the only things left were the butcher’s block of knives and a can of blood-letters. “Hop on up here,” I said.
There was plenty of room for Lukas to stretch out, and I helped him remove his shirt. “Are you warm enough?”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek down onto the old worn table.
Rummaging around in one of the wooden boxes on the uneven shelves off to the right, I pulled out an old pair of Josephine’s glasses and brought them back. “I’m just going to look, all right, Lukas? But let’s ground you so you’re safe.”
With one of the small pins from the butcher’s block, I jabbed his wrist as quickly as possible. He did not even flinch as the blood trickled into my palm. “We feed you, Earth,” I said, “that our magic may come full circle,” and dripped his blood onto the earthen floor of the barn. With the final drop, I dotted his shoulder and then his forehead.
I slid the blood-sight glasses over my ears, and immediately my vision reddened. I saw my binding spell like a circle of calm around his center, and the curling magic of the black candle rune carved into his back. Its sickly red wavered gently like grass in a slight breeze, and tendrils of it doubled back to sink into his flesh, while others reached up into the air, up and up through the roof in thin strands. All the way to his father, no doubt. The dots of blood on his shoulder and forehead shone brighter, newer.
It was going to take effort to destroy the black candle rune without hurting him. But I couldn’t let him go on with these nightmares, and with that fierce, uncomfortable binding. Lukas didn’t deserve that sort of cold, that rope imprisoning him away from the magic of the world. I’d find a temporary fix to hold him while I hunted for the permanent solution.
“All right,” I said, removing the blood-sight glasses.
He rolled over and sat up, hugging himself. His hands were healed, though the burns had left tiny pink scars almost like caterpillars creeping around his knuckles and across his palms. I took one of them and said, “I have an idea.”
THIRTY-FOUR
You showed me the rest of yourself that summer.
Our mornings we spent separate, working around the house and land. But in the afternoons, you would come find me and take my hand and lead me on long, meandering walks, stretching for miles. And you talked. You answered any question I thought of, big or small. You told me all the same stories Gabriel had, but in every detail, with tangents and looping philosophy. Sometimes Gabriel joined us, interjecting his version, which was usually more audacious and amusing than yours. We laughed, all three of us, and I have never been so happy.
As you wove history for me, I felt again that overwhelming sense of age wrap around you, but it was not oppressive, it was freeing. Because as you gave me this gift, I began to realize that you could have been doing anything: traveling, adventuring, living anywhere and loving anyone.
But you chose to spend your time holding my hand.
THIRTY-FIVE
WILL
It had been a very long day, thanks to a bad night and having to face the growls of my dogs when I fed them that morning. Havoc’s curled lips stuck with me all through school. I’d been too swamped, trying to catch up with my teachers since I’d missed Monday and finals were next week, to hang in the halls. Or even eat in the cafeteria. So it wasn’t until after final bell that I tracked Matt down in the locker room. He flipped me shit about getting grounded. When I told him I’d been with Mab Prowd, he hit me on the arm. Called me a secret agent. Which made about as much sense as anything he ever said. Matt refused to let me go until I coughed up details. I walked him out to the practice field and told him a condensed, incredibly edited version of how I met her and why we were hanging out. He said we should all four of us, him, me, Mab, and Shanti, go to a movie when my sentence was over.
I really hoped we got this curse taken care of so that I’d have a chance to try and convince Mab it was a great idea.
As we hit the sunlight, I noticed him peering at my face. I remembered the red in my eyes and said, “Shit, I’m late,” before peeling off for the parking lot. The blood color was tough to see in most indoor lighting at this point. But the sun seemed to narrow in on it like a spotlight.
Mab called just as I walked in the door. I smiled through my hello. Tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder while I grabbed a mug out of the kitchen. She said everything would be ready the next day for my cleansing ritual. I broke the news that I was grounded, and all she said was “Hmm. Well. Drink the tea. I’ll think of something and let you know.”
“Should I—” The dial tone interrupted me.
Being left hanging like that didn’t do wonders for my headache.
As I pulled my steaming mug of water out of the microwave, Ben clapped me on the shoulder. “Hey. What’s up with all the tea drinking?”
I shrugged him off and dropped in the little paper bag of Mab’s tea. “Tastes good.”
“You used to be as coffee-blooded as the rest of us.” He headed for the fridge. Cold air puffed out as he reached in for a soda.
Ben leaned against the kitchen counter, giving me that superior officer dress-down look. I stood with my arms crossed. Chin down slightly so that it was harder for him to stare right into my eyes.
It stayed like that between us until I hooked the teabag with my finger and dropped it in the sink.
“Let’s take it outside,” Ben said, jerking his head toward the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. He grabbed my mug and propelled me forward. He slid the door back and basically shoved me out onto the concrete steps.
Ben sat down on the top step, stretching his legs out in front of him. He handed me the tea and cracked open his pop-top. “God, smell that! Smells like summer. I can’t wait for the rain.”
Reluctantly, and avoiding looking at the kennel, I joined him. I grunted instead of responding. I guessed the mountains of Afghanistan were pretty dry compared to Kansas in May.
Neither of us spoke for a while. The incoming storms had started to push out a lot of the heat and humidity, so it wasn’t too stuffy, but so far there was just a little wind and a couple of clouds breaking up the sunlight. I imagined flying straight through them, toward the sun. The wind in my ears would be so loud.
“Let’s go get the dogs and bring them around for some fetch.” Ben set his soda can on the step with a clang and stood.
“Oh no, I’m—uh …” I didn’t know what to lie about. I pushed to my feet. “I’m not really up for it, but you should take them for a walk or something if you want. They could use the exercise.”
Ben planted his hands on his hips. “What the hell is wrong with you? Not up for fetch? That involves about two points of effort.”
We were the exact same height, but I stood up on the step and he was in the yard. He looked one part annoyed, three parts baffled. I avoided his eyes. Couldn’t take chances in the sun. I glanced at him and away, sure it was making me seem even more guilty.
“I knew it,” he said. “Tell me now what you’re into. Drugs?”
“Jesus, no!”
“Then what?” he stepped up so our glares were level. “You’re not yourself. Avoiding eye contact? Fevers? Running off like last night? You used to have ambition! Drive! You’re acting so different, Will, and I don’t like it.”
“What would you know about how I act?” I wrapped my arms around my chest, fingers pressing into my ribs. “You’ve only seen me twice in two years. One of which was a funeral, and you were only here for three days before they packed you back off again. You haven’t been here.”
“I know that.” He jabbed a finger down in the air.
“For a whole long year, it’s just been me and Mom and Dad.”
His lips flexed and he shook his head. “I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”
I laughed so I wouldn’t sneer. He’d only be here until the Marines snapped their fingers. “You can’t just fix things because you want to.”
“Tell me what’s broken so I can try.”
“No.” I shook my head. Bent to pick up my mug and go back inside. “You don’t get it.”
“You’re my only brother, and I’m not going to just walk away.”
“Again, you mean.”
“I was fighting a war, Will, not off on a pleasure cruise drinking martinis and ignoring my family. I was doing my duty.”
“Not to us.”
“Will.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “Is this about that girl? This secret girlfriend of yours? She’s getting you into whatever it is?”
I never should have even mentioned Mab. Everything was a weapon to Ben. I shoved away and spun to go back in. But he caught my elbow.
His fingers tightened. “Remember that last time, right before I shipped out. Remember? Down at El Dorado.”
I didn’t want to, but it was plastered in my memory with superglue. Me, Aaron, Ben, with a cooler full of beer and soda and sandwiches, out camping at the big old reservoir in southern Kansas. We’d only just moved to the Midwest after a two-year tour in Japan. I was prepping for my sophomore year—my first at a regular high school instead of DODS—Aaron was about to be a senior, and Ben had his marching orders and was only a few months out from his first major action as a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. I barely knew Ben then, either. But at least he’d been my supercool oldest brother, off learning how to shoot rifles and jump out of planes.
That night he and Aaron had even let me have a beer while we built up the fire for hot dogs and s’mores. There’d been so much laughing and joking around, and all my clothes were wet from me being dumped into the lake. They steamed when I got close enough to the fire. I remembered telling Ben that I was gonna be just like him, and Aaron would, too. And even though they’d never let us all serve in the same platoon, it would be like we were superheroes secretly working together across the world. Ben would come up with the crazy world-saving plans, Aaron would MacGyver some used car parts into a special weapon, and I’d deliver it with perfect, last-minute timing.
There’d been bright stars, howling coyotes, and the crackling fire. I’d smeared melted marshmallow on Aaron’s face in revenge for him throwing me in the lake. Ben taught us an awesome bingo game involving little pocket-cards with sex acts drawn on them with stick figures.
I stared at Ben now. He’d probably thrown those cards away a long time ago. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re all different now.”
Both.
I should have said we were both different, since Aaron didn’t get to change anymore. I jerked my elbow out of his grip.
The sun came out from behind a cloud and made Ben squint at me. He said, “Different doesn’t have to mean separate.”
Wasn’t I supposed to be the one coaxing him back toward brotherhood? He was the one who’d been to war, who should have post-traumatic stress. I shrugged unevenly. The center of my chest itched like something was alive under my skin. “Sometimes it does.”
He stepped up onto the top step, close to me with his hand on my shoulder. “Mom and Dad need us, Will. If you won’t tell me what’s wrong for yourself, talk to me for them. They’re worried. Mom is worried.”
“I’m fine,” I whispered.
My brother’s fingers tightened on my shoulder. “I don’t believe you.”
“You said I have to trust this thing, and I’m trying. Can you trust me, too?”
He sucked in air through his teeth. “Will, do you remember what we said that night? Around the fire?”
I lowered my head in a nod. My chin nearly touched my chest.
“Don’t forget it,” Ben said quietly, before jogging off toward the garage.
I escaped upstairs, but watched from my bedroom window as he romped around with Havoc and Valkyrie. Everything was squeezing me out. Out of my body, out of my place. I used to know. I used to know everything. What I wanted to be, who I wanted to be. Who my family was and what they’d do for me. What I’d do for them.
I rubbed the pink scar on my wrist where Mab had cut me, bled me, and healed me again.
At El Dorado reservoir, Ben, Aaron, and I had all three cut our hands and bled together into the fire. A dumb kids’ trick. Ben had said “Always faithful.” It was the Marine Corps motto. Semper Fidelis. We’d repeated it over and over again while drops of Sanger blood splattered into the flames.
THIRTY-SIX
It was a cool reprieve in the middle of August, the hottest month. I’d been eighteen for three weeks, though you didn’t know my birthday in those days.
I’d gone down to the meadow near your favorite oak tree with a basket to gather flowers for drying into tea. The meadow spilled violet with verbena and phlox, and I settled down in the sunlight, where the wind ruffled the prairie grass and the blossoms bobbed. The beauty of the afternoon distracted me, and I unpinned my hair, leaned back on my hands, and watched the clouds roll by.
You couldn’t have been watching for more than a few minutes before I noticed you, leaning as you always did with your shoulder against a tree. Cradled in one arm was a pad of sketching paper, and you delicately held a thin lead pencil. Your eyes darted to me and down, back and forth, as lazy as the wings of the monarch butterflies spinning around the phlox.
Slowly, you set down your drawing and came to me through the tall grasses. They whispered against your knees, and I shivered, though the sun filled the glade with golden warmth. Just before me you knelt, and you took my face in your hands. You said, “Evelyn Sonnenschein, may I kiss you?”
I turned my head and kissed the ball of your hand, then gently took your wrists and led your fingers into my hair. The motion pulled you closer, and I said, “Please.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
MAB
The gathering storms lent the air a quality of anticipation. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise as I chalked a complex rune of stalwart action into the grass atop our hill. At every point I placed a black candle to absorb the aftershocks of the cutting I planned. And in its open center, I drew a black candle rune to match the one on Lukas’s back.
Donna watched from the porch, holding Lukas’s hand. Her chin was up, and she would help because I’d explained to both of them and Lukas had agreed. It was going to hurt, but in the end, his father would have no more power over him. The rune would still be there, and there would continue to be danger, but the immediacy of his suffering would be gone.
I was dressed in a long white skirt and a shirt Lukas had chosen from my closet—his favorite color of green, he said, and it was for him to focus on. To remember me for the long moment when I ripped apart the black candle rune’s connection to his father and fed it into the earth instead.
First we all three stood
at the edges of my ten-foot rune, and together each cut our wrists to drip blood and ground the magic. “We feed you, Earth,” I said, and Donna finished it with me, “that our magic may come full circle.”
Immediately I staged Lukas in the center, walking him over the lines of my rune so that none of it was disturbed. I put him on his hands and knees, and pushed up his shirt. “Are you ready?”
His back quivered, and I saw his fingers dig into the grass on either side of the black candle rune there. “Yes,” he said, and I touched his spine gently. Proudly.
With a thick but sharp dagger, I rebroke the skin of my wrist and quickly drew a blood circle all the way around his black candle rune. I crouched, finding a strong stance, and took a deep breath. I dripped my blood onto the rune of stalwart action marking the grass, and the earth shivered. Wind picked up, tossing my curls around my face.
Donna said, “I’ll catch what falls,” and reached into the circle to hand me the blood-sight glasses.
I smeared my blood up and down the blade of the dagger, whispering that the blade should slip between worlds, be sharp against skin and air and magic, too.
Then I took it in my fist and, with no warning, slashed down Lukas’s ribs, cutting through my day-old binding and waking his power.
Lukas cried out, but did not fall.
The braided ribbon slipped away from his waist, and through the blood-sight glasses I saw my day-old binding break. The sickly red tendrils of his father’s magic flailed like tentacles, and I sliced through them with my dagger. Each was cut apart but stuck to the blade, twisting and burning up the steel and into my hand. I gritted my teeth and hissed, my breath as sharp as the knife.
Lukas whimpered. His fingers dug into the earth.
Dropping the blade, I quickly clapped my bloody hands together and activated the tiny runes of entrapment I’d drawn on each of my fingers and my palms with a marker. I reached out and gathered the swinging tendrils of magic in the basket of my fingers. If we didn’t do this fast, the magic would only reconnect to his father.