He yelled, and I scrambled away, into my roses. I clutched them, splitting my skin. My blood burned out, and he yanked my ankle, throwing me forward. A hundred tiny rose thorns slashed at my bare skin, and I jerked away from him. But Gabriel was too strong. He cried out a word, and my body caught fire from the tattoos. They tightened around me, and I shrieked with the sudden pain. I dug my fingers into the ground, dragging and pulling, but he was there on top of me, shoving my head into the earth, scratching my face on the roses.
The only thing that saved my life was an old trowel, the one I’d forgotten a month before when you surprised me with tickets to a traveling musical and we had to leave suddenly for Kansas City.
I grasped it, and as Gabriel flipped me onto my back I stabbed it into his neck.
Blood cascaded down onto me, choking me, and he reeled back. I scrambled after him, terror stealing away all my hesitations. I stabbed him again in the chest as he scrabbled at his throat. His eyes were wide, and his lips splattered red.
I grabbed my roses, whispered to them, and with my blood dripping down their stems, they wrapped around Gabriel, piercing him a hundred times.
FIFTY-ONE
MAB
Dawn brushed the car with gentle fingers as Lukas and I returned home from dropping Donna off at the bus station. We’d had to be up hours ago to make the 5:27 a.m. pickup, but that hadn’t been difficult, because my nightmares had brought Lukas running into my room to take his turn holding my hand and soothing me back into wakefulness.
Now I distracted both of us from heavy eyelids by telling him the story of how my mother had given me the silver bracelet I was charging for him. It had been an armoring bracelet, and her lover had created it for her with a drop of his blood and a drop of her own, in Paris in the 1930s. Lukas said his dad had armor like that, but made from leather and wood rings. We were so involved in discussing the relative strength of silver armor and wood that I didn’t notice the crows’ changed behavior until we were a hundred yards up the pebble road and the entire flock shot across our path with raucous shrieks.
I hit the brakes, and the station wagon skidded to a halt, nearly swerving off the road.
“Mab?” Lukas said, leaning forward to stare out the windshield and up at the frantically circling crows.
My palms tingled as I gripped the wheel and closed my eyes, listening to the wind and the whisper of the trees. I pushed open the door and got out, crunching barefoot up the road. The door slammed behind me, and all the crows dove at and around me, their wings snapping at my hair and face.
Falling to my knees, I dug my fingers into the raw earth and felt nothing unusual. Everything was quiet.
Lukas ran around the car and gripped my arm. “What’s happening?”
“Are you all right? Do you feel anything strange?” I looked into his summer-green eyes for any sign of pain or magic.
He shook his head and his curls flounced. “Just tired. Kinda heavy.”
The crows batted at both of us, but more gently, and half of them took off up the hill, darting between branches straight for the Pink House.
I said, “All right. Let’s go see what they’re fussing about.”
Together we stepped off into the forest, following the crows. Through the soles of my feet, I felt the earth more firmly, felt the familiar hum of the blood land. It was charged and ready, but not crying out.
And as we came out of the woods onto the lawn, I saw Will’s brother Ben, in jeans and a dark T-shirt, leaning over the open passenger door of Will’s truck.
“Ben?” I called.
His shoulders flexed as he pushed away, turning sharply. “Get over here,” he yelled in a panic, but I heard Will say from inside the car, “Is that Mab?”
Releasing Lukas’s hand, I hurried forward, opening my mouth to ask what was wrong, then Ben jerked back from the car, and Will crawled out. He fell to his knees, and Ben knelt instantly to help him, but Will shoved him back. He lifted his head; from halfway across the yard I saw his eyes.
Red as blood, through and through.
My heart expanded in shock, and I ran forward, sliding to a stop in a scatter of pebbles and collapsing next to him. “Oh my God, Will,” I breathed, pushing the collar of the bathrobe he wore off his neck.
His skin was dark, and rolling with red and brown blood marks.
“Holy shit,” Ben whispered.
The marks rose off his skin like long, boiling scars, like tree roots or rough vines wrapping his shoulder and trailing down to his chest under the robe. “Will.” I breathed his name, aware of a sensation washing through me I’d never known before, a gasping sort of half pain, half violent emptiness. “Will!” I gripped his shoulder so hard flakes of blood broke off and crumbled.
I tugged my hands back and said his name again.
His lips moved, and nothing but raspy air came out. The second time he tried I heard “Mab.” His eyes were flecked with a hundred shades of red.
“What did you do to him? What’s wrong with him?” Ben demanded, pushing my shoulder roughly away from Will. Anger painted his voice, and his teeth were bared.
I said, with the calm of a thorough lie, “Help me get him into the house, and I will help him.” But I had no idea what was doing this to Will, why he suddenly was twisting in pain when yesterday I’d cleansed him, yesterday he’d been fine!
“Tell me now!” Ben said. “He needs a doctor, and I don’t know what kind of drugs and bullshit you’re growing out here, what you fed my brother, what these abrasions are from, but you’re going to tell me now so when I call an ambulance I know what to tell the police, too.”
I smeared my fingers down Will’s shoulder, and new, fresh blood slipped out. It glinted scarlet on my skin.
“Trust me,” Will choked out, one hand grasping Ben’s T-shirt.
The sun lifted over the trees, beating down with the promise of a hot day, and Lukas held back tentatively but with one hand out toward me as if to align himself.
Will’s brother glared. “I promised I would, and that’s the only reason we’re here. His story is insane—everything he told me on the way over …” Ben trailed off, looking between me and Will and back again.
I flattened my hand on Will’s shoulder. The crows landed around us in a wide circle, and I said, “He’s cursed. It’s a curse, and you cannot call the police or hospital. They can’t help him.”
“Bullshit.”
The blood on my hand tingled with power. It was Will’s blood burning with magic, and I clapped my hands together.
Fire exploded in the air, knocking Ben back two feet to hit the ground. Will winced away, and Lukas cried in fear; the crows jumped as one back into the sky. And I knelt with a rainbow of brilliant fire balanced between my hands—the same trick I’d shown Will, but fueled now by drama and need. “See here,” I said, holding my bow of fire toward Ben. “This is my power, this is why Will is here, because I can help him. It’s magic hurting him, and magic that can heal him. And I will not explain more until he’s in a bed, and resting.”
Sweat slicked down my neck, and the skin of my face tightened from the heat. My fingers ached, and any second now they’d burn, the skin would blacken, because my heartbeat was too erratic, my own blood was not in control. The curse in Will raged between my hands and all around us.
I snuffed the fire with a clap and glared at Ben, then ducked down and helped Will get his arm over my shoulders. My nose and mouth were overwhelmed by the scent of wet stones and rainy leaves and blood, and the hazy ozone smell of fire. I struggled to my feet with him beside me, leaning into me. Will’s breath rattled in his chest, and where my hands touched his waist he felt as hot as the silo’s orange tiles at the end of a long sunny day.
Then Ben was there, lifting Will from the other side. “I’ve got him,” Ben murmured as he took Will’s weight. Together we hobbled up the porch steps.
“Lukas,” I called, “tear up three of the coneflowers down by the well, and bring me their roots as soon
as you can.” The boy only grunted, and I heard his feet shuffling fast through the tall grasses.
Inside, I told Ben to get Will up to the second floor, the first door to the right. He obeyed, and I ran into the kitchen for a wide bowl to fill with water. I sprinkled in willow bark and wished I had time to dig up fresh acorns to grind, but first I had to get Will cool, had to get this fever down that was eating him from the inside, wrapping itself around his bones and heart. I grabbed an envelope of boneset powder from the pantry and stirred it into the water, then I cut my wrist with the fleam and let three drops of blood spill in, all the while whispering a song for cool cleansing, for peace and gentle rain. Then I tucked the fleam into my bra and gathered the bowl against my stomach.
I had to balance the bowl carefully up the stairs, and it gave me time to center my energy, to calm myself on the outside. Even if my insides were a raging summer storm.
In the bedroom, Ben was stripping the robe off of Will, jaw set fiercely, hands moving quick and certain. He did not look at me as I entered. I pushed a cluster of dried butterflies off the bedside table, smearing pollen and flecks of their wings everywhere. I put the bowl down and sat on the bed, edging Ben away. He leaned over me, breath hard and uneven, but he didn’t say anything.
“Will?” I brushed his hair with my fingers. Sweat glistened on his temple, and his eyelids parted.
“Mab.”
“I’m here. I’m going to try to cool you down.” I wetted one of the cloths and wrung it out. The cold drops of water splattered onto his skin, and I scattered the water down his chest. Will shivered, and I dripped it out over his ribs, over his heart and up to his shoulders. But the blood marks twisted all around his body, raised against his skin like huge, dark welts. I’d never seen anything like them. My fingers moved over them, rubbing in the boneset.
Ben paced behind me, slow and steady from one end of my bedroom to the other. His footsteps lent a rhythm to my heart, and to the motion of my hands as I covered Will with cool, soothing magic.
When the water had all been transferred from my bowl, I pricked my wrist with the fleam and drew a rune for balance as best I could over the uneven surface of Will’s chest. Ben stopped me with a strangled noise, and I said, “Wait outside, Ben Sanger,” hoping the invocation of his full name would compel him.
Helplessness cut through his dark brown eyes, so like Will’s had once been. Sorrow was thick in my throat as I saw the battle in him, as I remembered the way Will had listened to me and decided to believe what I was telling him about my homunculus. This man would not be so quick to choose my side, with his narrow pressed mouth and hard cheekbones. He was at once the same as Will and oh so different. I held his gaze, willing him to go, to let me do my job so that I could get Will to rest and then have a moment to think, to figure out what had happened.
Ben looked past me to his brother, to Will’s slow but finally measured breathing, and I saw the moment he let himself take in the blood roots, the intricate patterns of them, so unlike anything remotely natural. His face loosened as I watched, falling into a distant expression like nothing I’d ever seen: haunted, remote. Filled with helplessness. “You have fifteen minutes,” Ben whispered. “Then I’m taking him to the hospital, no matter what.”
I nodded, though I knew I’d have to think of some way to delay that again, to convince him to listen to me. For now, though, it was enough that he was leaving me alone with Will.
After a long, despairing look, Ben slipped out of the room and shut the door.
There was no moment of relief for me. I leaned over my rune and whispered against it, asking Will’s body to remember what it was, to know its strength and power. “Will,” I whispered. Will. A name, and so much more than that.
His hand found mine, and I gripped it. I held it up against my heart.
WILL
Everything was warm, and I felt like I was melting, but Mab’s voice never faltered.
I came to on a mattress, a cool washcloth on my head. Mab was there. She rubbed my chest. Made me drink water that tasted like she’d soaked pennies in it. I cracked my eyes, slowly falling back into my body from wherever I’d been. Long rainbow-colored scarves were pinned to the ceiling. It was like a circus tent. Cluttered shelves lined all the walls, closing in on me.
Mab’s hair tickled my side and my left arm. Tilting my head, I saw her, kneeling on the floor with her arms folded on the bed and her head down against them. Her words were quiet, but the sound of them was familiar. A rhythm I knew. I opened my mouth. Pulled my tongue from the roof, where it was sticking. “Are you—” I asked. “Are you praying?”
She raised her head instantly. “Will. Are you feeling any better?”
“Sure. I can see. And I can move without it hurting.” I closed my eyes. I felt empty, drained, and sore, as if I’d spent a hundred years puking my guts up and slept hunched between the toilet and the cold tile of the bathroom floor. I took a deep breath. My throat was thick, as if the same branches winding outside my body wound inside, too. Air rushed out of me, and I coughed.
Mab got up and sat on the bed, one hand on my chest. What was left of my chest. Her lips pulled down, and her whole face screamed worry.
I cleared my throat. It hurt. “Where’s Ben?”
“Pacing in the hallway.”
“Is he okay?”
“Oh, Will.” A tiny smile flashed on her mouth. “Don’t worry about him.”
I tried a smile, too. It stretched my face painfully.
There was silence. My insides were hard as rocks. My skin was on fire. My head pounded, and even just the light from her window shot through my eyes like ray guns. I was in deep trouble. And I wasn’t sure she could help me.
All my fear must’ve been playing on my face, because Mab shut her eyes tight and a tear fell out of each corner.
“Hey, stop.” I caught her hands. “I’ll be fine. You’ll fix me up.”
Mab pulled her hands free and wiped them across her cheeks. Then she pressed her palms to my heart. Compared to me, her hands were frozen. “Will, I don’t know what’s wrong, so I can’t fix it. If you had a cold, I could force it from your lungs. If your bones were broken, I could knit them back together. If you only had bruises or the flu or anything I understand, I could change it. I could remind your body what it’s supposed to be. But this …” Her hands were a cold weight against my heart. “I don’t understand it. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I know it’s in your blood, but it’s too deep, because the cleanse didn’t work. It only …” Mab’s eyes widened, and she glanced at the window. “Oh no.”
Struggling to sit, I followed her gaze. The window was full of light, and on the sill a shallow bowl of water glinted. Something silver rested at the bottom. “What? What?”
Mab gently pushed me back down. “I have an idea why this got worse so quickly. You rest, Will. I’m going to go outside and get help. I will be back very soon.”
My tiredness pinned me to the bed. I grasped at her hair, caught a curl in my fingers. I tugged gently. “Promise.”
“I promise,” she whispered. And then she was gone.
MAB
My shoulders knocked into the wall, I hurried so fast, ignoring Ben’s call. I barely touched the stairs, flew down the hall, and fell out the door and down the porch steps. I landed on my hands and knees in the grass, gasping for breath.
It was my fault ten times over. I’d cleansed Will, but the magic that consumed him had been so deep, so much already united with his blood, that all I did was clear the path. Just as I’d set Mother’s bracelet out to purify under the moon, so that I could draw the power freshly to the surface, so I’d prepared Will.
I’d leapt at the first solution, instead of exploring deeply enough, gathering all the knowledge and whispers. I’d shoved forward, as if there were a race or a prize to win. And now if I didn’t discover a means of rescue, Will would die! He was changing, transforming before my eyes. Becoming the forest.
I pushed to my
feet, wiping dirt from my hands and knees. Donna had warned me to be careful with Will, but I hadn’t listened. I’d thought I was too strong, too powerful, too much a natural part of magic to make such mistakes. I didn’t deserve this power.
The crows circled overhead, spiraling down to land around me, and I wished they could talk to me, wished they could help me figure this out.
And I realized there were nine of them.
Only nine.
WILL
It was too quiet. Quiet like dawn. Quiet like a cemetery. Quiet like the beat right when you answer the phone before anybody says anything.
The worst kinds of quiet.
Until I heard my name.
Will.
From the air itself. The wind blowing in through the window.
Will.
MAB
I ran forward, calling to the crows, and Ben was right behind me, grasping my elbow tightly. He spun me around. “What are you doing? I want real answers right now.”
I spread my hands as dread piled around me, weighing me down. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but a scream shocked through me, high and hard, coursing up from the dirt and clenching its fist around my gut.
It sounded like Lukas.
“What?” Ben shook me, and I clasped my hands over my ears, but he couldn’t hear the scream, even as the prairie wind snapped into a fever, throwing the oak trees into disarray.
Lukas’s scream bellowed up from the earth.
Tearing free of Ben, I ran toward the well, around the west side of the house where the garden was, and when I came around the corner, I flung myself back.
He was there. Lukas. Held high in the center of the swarm of roses, their vines holding his wrists and ankles firmly. Blood dripped down his arms and legs, and the roses shook with it, the scarlet painting their leaves with power.