“Off the counter, Nick.”
I remained, and chewed directly into the sausage log.
“I’m only making it worse, I see.” She pulled a stool away from the center island and sat delicately, folding her long fingers together like she was about to pray to God for my soul. “What, then, would you like for me to do? Ignore you? Treat you like garbage that I can’t wait to throw out when you graduate?”
“That might be a nice change.”
“It wouldn’t make your father happy.”
“He ignores me pretty well, so you never know.”
For a moment, I thought she might argue in Dad’s defense. But she sighed instead. “Did you have a nice party? You weren’t out late.”
“I hooked up, no worries.”
Her lips pinched into a frown. “Hooked up? I hope that doesn’t mean you had sex, Nicholas.”
I decided right then that only Silla ever got to call me that again. “Nick. It’s Nick, okay? And God, this conversation is just a bad idea.” I slid off the counter, thumping down onto my feet. “I’m going to bed.” Wrapping the sausage back into its plastic, I replaced it in the fridge and turned to glance at Lilith. “The tow truck’s coming at nine. See ya.”
“Good night, Nick.” She oozed to her feet.
I left, aware of her stare prickling between my shoulder blades. Ugh.
SILLA
The full moon lit my path almost as well as the sun. I allowed myself to wander, unconcerned with getting home too quickly.
My fingers skimmed over the familiar gravestones. DAVID KLAUSER-KEATING, MAY HIS SOUL FIND PEACE, DIED 1953. The Klausers still lived in town, and owned one of the gas stations. Beside him: MISS MARGARET BARRYWOOD, 1912–1929, BELOVED DAUGHTER. My age when she died. I paused there, fingers playing over the rough granite grave marker, wondering if she’d ever been kissed.
I hoped so.
I smiled. The kind of secret smile that changes your whole face, from lips to hairline. A laugh spilled out and I clapped my hands over my mouth, embarrassed I’d let it escape. My head fell back and I grinned up at the moon, directly overhead, shining down like a spotlight: Here’s Silla Kennicot. For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t wait to be back onstage, the curtains drawn, my arms out as I used gesture and tone to plead with the audience to bear me up on their applause. The headstones were my audience here, and I wanted them to remember this moment as much as they remembered the night I’d spilled blood and brought life back into the cemetery.
The moment I’d felt alive again.
Filled with inspiration, I ran for my parents. I didn’t know if they were listening, too, or if their spirits would even recognize a burning, living girl, but I had to tell them about Nick.
My stone audience flashed by as I hurried on, cold air burning down my throat and into my lungs. I slid to a stop, leaves crunching under my boots. Something was wrong. A tangy scent in the otherwise clear air.
Slowly, I walked around their wide double headstone, holding my breath.
It all rushed out of me in a sob of horror.
A splash of red tore across their names. I pressed my fists into my stomach. The earth over their graves was disturbed in a pattern. My breath fluttered in and out like I had a bird trapped on my tongue, beating its wings against my teeth. Slowly, I crouched down and touched my palms to the ground. They tingled, especially my left palm where the scar was. It pulsed, as though the blood just under my skin wanted out.
I traced the pattern as best I could. Angles and lines, all of them sharp. Definitely purposeful. A symbol. But I didn’t recognize it at all from Dad’s book. Which meant Reese couldn’t have done this, even if I could think of a single reason he might have.
Someone else knew the magic. And they were here. Nearby.
Someone who could have used the magic against Dad. To kill him and Mom.
I stumbled back, slamming a shoulder into the corner of a headstone. Standing, I looked in every direction for anything out of place. Any movement. But in all this silvery moonlight, everything was still. Not even the wind blew. In the silence, the dead who had cheered me a moment ago pressed close. The weight of eyes raked down my neck, sending shivers all the way to the tips of my fingers.
But I was alone.
I ran.
SILLA
Reese’s cell phone rang and rang and rang.
I pushed my back against my bedroom door and drew my knees up to my chest. “Answer,” I hissed at the phone.
But it only kept ringing, and eventually his voice mail picked up. “This is Reese.” Beep.
“Reese, you have to come home. I’m home, and I was in the cemetery and someone else knows the magic. I told you, I told you that this could explain so many things about what happened to Dad and Mom, and I was right. Somebody else knows. Come home, please. Be all right.” The last words were merely a whisper, and I snapped my cell shut, clenching it in my fist.
What was I going to do?
I pressed the phone against my forehead and closed my eyes. Downstairs, Gram Judy was in her room with the TV on, and canned laughter was the only sound other than the wind in the trees outside.
Pushing to my knees, I crawled across the carpet to my bed and pulled the spell book from under my mattress. I flipped through, searching for anything similar to the symbol dug into my parents’ graves. The black drawings stood out against the old paper as I turned pages, hunting.
Nothing. None of them were right. The closest was a seven-pointed star for breaking curses.
I called Reese again. Nothing. Again.
Maybe he was just having a blast at a bar, where he couldn’t hear his phone. Nothing was wrong. He’d probably gotten my earlier message that I was safe, so he’d stopped worrying about me. I shouldn’t worry, either, until it was after midnight and he should have been home. That wasn’t for another half hour.
There wasn’t anything for me to do until he got home. I didn’t even know what we’d do when he did get home.
I climbed onto my bed and lay there, staring up at the ceiling. Beneath me, the bed seemed to swing gently, as though it was a hammock and a breeze rocked me. If I closed my eyes, the sensation went away, but all I saw was the slash of blood across the headstone, the huge puddle of it soaking into the office carpet.
It was better to stare at the ceiling and feel the dizzy motion beneath me.
The magic had drained me. Even though I’d barely lost any blood when I made the flowers. My power had rushed out, leaving me exhausted. And I was sure the excitement of kissing Nick followed by the surge of fear and adrenaline hadn’t helped.
There had to be a way to regulate the effects of the magic. Maybe just practice would work. Like honing muscles. This was just another muscle that gets sore when you start using it.
Or maybe … maybe it didn’t have to be my blood. Maybe I could get the power from something else. An animal. Witch stories were rife with animal sacrifice and familiars, weren’t they?
I leapt out of bed. It made sense.
Grabbing a sweatshirt and my cell phone in case Reese called, I carefully opened my door and crept downstairs. In the dark kitchen, I drank a glass of water and leaned against the counter with my eyes closed, just listening to the patterns of night. My house creaked gently, and the wind outside tapped thin branches against the upstairs windows. The same wind hissed through the fields. I’d always loved that noise—it was like being surrounded by water.
Quiet conversation from Gram Judy’s TV interrupted my silence, and I momentarily wished I could ask her advice.
Instead I imagined sitting at the kitchen table with Dad, asking him all my questions. Why could we do it? Why did my blood turn dead grass into flowers? Why did I burn with the power? Then he’d use a pen and scrap of paper to sketch out the answer, the way he’d diagramed Latin sentences for me after dinner almost every night when I was in junior high. Mom would have cleared the table around us, taking a moment to run her fingers through Dad’s hair. Absently, like she wasn??
?t even thinking about it.
Then Dad would tell me it was because I was special. My blood was strong.
Turning to the counter, I put my glass down and leaned both hands against the cold, flat tile. The kitchen knives glittered against the magnetic strips glued to the wall. I grabbed the butcher knife. The wooden handle was cool and smooth. I’d need something to carry the blood in, too.
My throat dried out, and I swallowed repeatedly.
Mr. Meroon had rabbit traps set up throughout the trees at the far end of his fields. Reese and I, when we were little, had hunted for them to set the bunnies free. We reset the traps so that Mr. Meroon never knew they’d been triggered, and he never moved them around much. Even ten years later, I knew exactly where to find them.
By the time I got there, it was nearly one. This time of night, everything slept. The cicadas and frogs had given up their moaning, and the only sound accompanying me was the wind. My boots crackled sharply through the underbrush as I carefully pushed aside blackberry bushes and low ferns to find the traps.
The third long box I came to had a guest. Kneeling, I put down the knife and Tupperware I’d brought. When I touched the wood, my hands were shaking. “Stop,” I whispered. It was just a rabbit. A rodent. And Mr. Meroon was going to kill it anyway, and skin it. I might as well use the blood. I set the Tupperware in my lap and opened the lid. The thick plastic was stained from years of use, and should probably have been thrown out. I thought of Mom carefully measuring leftover casserole into it. She never wanted to overfill the containers so that the lid squished the food down or stuck to the top layer. Even her leftovers were supposed to look good.
But memories of Mom had no place in the little midnight grove.
It was easier than ever to open the trap. Quickly, I reached in and grabbed one of the paws to drag it out. The scruffy brown thing was huffing and scraping its claws along the trap’s walls. I bit my lip and pinned it to the ground with both hands. The rear legs kicked and jerked. Scrambling for the butcher knife with my right hand, I leaned up on my knees. My heart thumped in my ears; my stomach was filled with heavy, tumbling rocks. You can do this, Silla. One, two, three. I was in a daze, and couldn’t move.
The rabbit scooted, and as I grappled for a better grip on its fur, it shrieked. Over and over like a siren, like a baby, screaming and screaming. My throat closed and I couldn’t breathe—I pushed down, but it struggled, the cries not ceasing. My fingers caught the hilt of the knife. I blinked back panicky tears. Did I really need this? Could I really do it? My stomach rolled over and over, crawling up my chest, and in one more minute I was going to puke.
I thought of Mom and Dad, dead. Thought of Reese, who was still alive, and I had to learn everything I could to protect him. I had to figure this out. There was nobody to ask.
I had to.
Shoving the blade against the rabbit’s neck, I pressed down, all my weight behind the knife.
The screaming stopped as the blade popped through the fur and skin and muscles and bone and dug into the earth beneath. Blood immediately gushed over my hand and the blade, melting into the ground. I released the body and the knife, yanking backward onto my heels and wiping my hands frantically on my jeans. I sucked air in a huge, painful gulp. My ribs pulsed in and out, barely keeping my lungs and heart and terror from spilling up my throat. I stared at the decapitated rabbit, at the blood trickling out.
And remembered the Tupperware.
I whirled and grabbed it, my head swimming, then ordered my hand to curl around the rabbit’s rear legs and lift it up to dangle over the container. My body obeyed that determined voice, though I felt as though I had no part of it.
The blood flowed quickly, at first pattering into the container, then gathering in a crimson pool that spread to fill the bottom. I could barely breathe. What little air I managed came in short, gasping bursts. The arm holding the rabbit up grew tired, and I transferred the corpse to the other. I stared at the blood, like a thick string connecting my mother’s old Tupperware to the torn neck.
It didn’t take long for the rabbit to bleed out, and there was hardly any blood in my Tupperware. I’d wasted a lot, flailing around. And the rabbit couldn’t have weighed more than three pounds. The poor thing.
I stood up with it, swelling the ball of nausea that clung to the back of my tongue. I’d done it. I couldn’t believe I’d done it. And … suddenly all my enthusiasm fell away. I tossed the body aside. It would feed a local coyote.
The head had rolled beside the knife, and I picked it up by one ear. With all my strength, I heaved it as far as possible. I heard it crash through the dry bushes.
In the dark, I put the lid on the container and picked up my knife. My hands were sticky with blood, and the container was already cooling. In the center of the tiny clearing, I listened to the quiet forest. My breath was loud in my ears.
Then the smell hit me. The overwhelming stench of blood. I gagged and fell to my knees.
By the time I’d crawled far enough away from the smell to get to my feet, it was so late that the sky in the east was tinged with the first trace of light. As I stumbled across the front lawn, Reese’s truck pulled into the drive, wheels crunching over gravel. It was still the worst sound in the world. Blood on my hands, in my nose, on the gravel—if I shut my eyes, I’d see it all again with perfect clarity.
Reese climbed slowly out of his truck. He shut the door carefully and turned around, obviously trying not to wake Judy or me. When he saw me, he jumped back so that his elbow slammed into the truck. “Silla?” Shaking his head, he walked toward me. As he peered through the shadows, his steps slowed and then picked up until he ran the final feet. “Are you okay? What happened?”
He tried to grab me, but the knife was clutched in one of my hands and the Tupperware in the other. “Silla? What are you doing with that knife?” His tone shifted into wariness, as if I was a wild animal.
“I killed a rabbit.” I offered him the Tupperware.
Automatically, he took it, then nearly dropped it. “Jesus!”
“It’s just blood.”
“You …” He stared at me, eyes wide, then at the container, and back at me. “You sacrificed an animal?”
“Mr. Meroon would have killed it anyway.”
“And eaten it! Jesus.”
“I fed it to the forest.”
I could see him steeling himself. His fingers twitched and he clenched his jaw. “Okay, bumblebee, you’re freaking me out a bit. You sound totally psycho.”
“Like father like daughter.” Dizziness swamped my head and I almost floated away.
Reese ignored my raving and put the Tupperware on the ground like it was poison, then daintily removed the knife from my hand. “You’re covered with blood.” He bent to stab the knife into the ground.
“More on me than in the Tupperware. Mom would disapprove.”
His eyes darted to mine, sharply. “No shit.”
We faced each other over two feet of nothing. We were the same height, though he was broader, thanks to that Y chromosome and years of football. Mom used to say we had Dad’s eyes. Pale and curious. I thought, suddenly, that the rabbit blood would never work now. It was old and dead. Wasted. I said, “You should check your phone messages.”
He frowned. “I did. You got home fine … didn’t you?” As he spoke, he reached into his jeans pocket for his cell.
“Yeah,” I whispered, “but …”
He flicked it open with his thumb and pushed a button before putting it to his ear.
I walked, feet heavy as concrete, and sat on the porch steps.
Reese’s eyes flashed wide. He stared at me, mouth pressing together. I shrugged and leaned my head against the railing.
“Jesus Christ, Silla!”
He was right in front of me, hands on my shoulders, dragging me up. “You’re okay? What else happened? Who did it?”
“I don’t know.” My head shook involuntarily.
“Take me out there.”
> “I’m too tired. Wait … wait a few hours. Until the sun is up high enough to burn away all the moon shadows.”
“Jesus.”
I leaned forward against him, my head on his shoulder with my arms crossed, hands fisted against my ribs. “I don’t think it will work.”
“What?”
“The rabbit blood.”
“Sil, you—”
“It’s dead now. Old. Not used quickly enough. And God. A rabbit. What was I thinking?”
Reese wrapped his arms around me and pulled me with him back to the porch, where we sat beside each other. I put my head down on his shoulder.
“Tell me what happened.”
I did. Everything from kissing Nick to the flowers to finding the desecrated graves. To hoping—needing—for there to be some truth about the magic that didn’t lead straight back to my blood.
When I finished, Reese was so quiet I had to open my eyes and look at his face. He was glaring off toward Nick’s house. “Oh, Reese.”
“He made you bleed, goddammit.”
“That isn’t the point of this story.” I took his chin in one hand and forced it toward me. “Stop being overprotective.”
Reese jerked out of my grip. “Never.”
I held his gaze, trying to make my expression as stern as possible.
Finally he nodded.
“Good, because he’s coming over this afternoon to work with us. To try.”
“Silla!”
“It will be good to know if he can do it. If it’s just our blood or anybody’s.”
Reese actually growled in frustration. But after a moment, his curiosity made him admit through his teeth, “You’re right! It’ll be good experimentation.”
I put my head back on his shoulder and, as casually as possible, said, “I’ve been thinking how the magic could have been used to kill Mom and Dad. Since we know now that somebody besides us can do it.”
His jaw clenched. I felt the muscles move against the top of my head.
“The possession spell. Dad’s notes mention birds, but why couldn’t you do it to a person, too?”