Blood Magic

  The earth dropped out from under me, and I clutched at the nearest gravestone. I had to eat one of those damn cookies, and get to the water. Why couldn’t I do this one? I’d made a hundred flowers bloom without trying, like the power in my blood had awakened completely and was starved for magic. But now … now I was failing.

  Suddenly Reese’s body lurched up. His hips lifted off the ground, and his eyes flew open. Then he collapsed and laughed. He flung out his arms, destroying the circle. “Silla! Oh my God.”

  My heart sank back down into my chest where it belonged. He was okay.

  Flipping onto his stomach, Reese grinned. “Silla, it was amazing. I was flying. The wind was as thick as water under my wings. I couldn’t fall—there wasn’t enough weight in the world to push me down!”

  “Wow,” I whispered, trying and failing not to be completely jealous.

  He nodded, and pushed to his knees. His head turned until he found the crow he’d abandoned, hopping jerkily in a circle. “I can hardly think of how to tell you—I just knew what things meant. And”—he closed his eyes—“the colors were … the trees were a million different greens, the sky—God, the sky. Not blue but blue-white-silver-green-blue-blue-blue—there isn’t a name for it. Wind in my feathers, dipping, spinning, swirling, always knowing what was up, where the clouds were, what was too high, and my wings—my wings!—my muscles and bones remembered how to move, my feet tucked up.” Reese swayed in place, opened his eyes. “Whoa. Dizzy.” He reached out for me and I caught his hand. He looked like a little boy.

  “That sounds amazing.”

  “It was. You’ll get it. I’ll help you.” He squeezed my hand. I pulled him out of the circle and shoved the bag of cookies into his lap.

  NICHOLAS

  When I arrived at the graveyard, Silla and her brother were sitting together snacking on cookies. They both wore jeans and sweaters and had blood on their foreheads. Like a gruesome splotch jerking you out of an otherwise pastoral scene. That happened to be a cemetery. Okay, it was all pretty gruesome.

  I lifted my hand and said, “Hi.”

  Silla slowly got to her feet. Her eyes were pinched as if her head hurt. “Hey, Nick. This is my brother, Reese.”

  Also standing, Reese held out his hand. “Hey.”

  I shook it, and was glad he didn’t do any of those macho competitive hand-squeezing things. “Nice to meet you.” He was bigger than me in every way except height. But he stood casually, like a guy who gets his size from actually working, not from spending hours in epic battles with weight machines.

  “You too.” Reese leaned his butt against the headstone, arms folded across his chest.

  Normally, I’d have made some comment about his attitude being big enough to hold the headstone up without the help of his ass, but I didn’t want to piss him off right away. Or piss Silla off.

  “Hungry?” Silla asked. She was still standing, her hands clutched together in front of her. A blue strip of cloth was tied around her left hand.

  I wanted to kiss her. It had been somewhere around fifteen hours since the last time. I wanted to take her face in my hands and kiss until I couldn’t breathe. But instead I just shook my head. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

  “We were resting, eating. This spell is pretty tiring. Want to sit?” She gestured at the ground, her gaze following her hand.

  I glanced down at the edge of the salt circle. The chunky crystals glittered like diamonds in the sun. There wasn’t anything I wanted to say that I could say to Reese, too. “So. Magic. What have you done today?”

  “Reese flew.”

  “Flew?” I darted a look at him, but he only offered a smug smile.

  Silla said, “It’s a spell called possession, and he willed his mind into the body of one of those crows over there. And flew.”

  Over to my left, the crows were hopping around, some on headstones, others tearing at the grass, arguing over bits of red leaves. “That’s incredible,” I said to Silla. The drying blood on her forehead had dripped one streak down to the bridge of her nose, and she looked like she’d been beamed with a two-by-four. So did Reese. “The blood on your face—that’s part of the spell?”

  Warm liquid falling into my eye. I rub at it, and Mom’s voice: “Nicky, honey, don’t do that.”

  I frowned and pushed away the flash of memory as Silla said, “To open up our ability to separate mind from body. Or something.”

  “Right over your third eye chakra.” That’s right, I covered up my discomfort with major geekitude.

  Reese glowered. “Our what?”

  “Oh, um, you know—the points of energy in your body that …” Neither of them nodded. I tried again. “From Hindu traditions … and also very New Agey … never mind.”

  Silla took my hand and drew me to sit down beside her. “I’m glad you came.”

  I wove my fingers with her freezing ones. “Me too.” This close, I could tell the smeared symbol on her forehead was familiar. Think about the doggie, Nick, pretend you’re running with him across that grass. What’s it feel like under your paws? What do your floppy ears feel like? I shuddered. Possession.

  “Nick?” She squeezed my hand and kissed the knuckle of my forefinger.

  “I …” I smiled tightly, glancing at Reese. “I’m just kind of nervous, I guess. Blood isn’t my thing.” It was almost the truth.

  Reese shot a look at Silla, clearly letting her know he was not impressed with me. “You’ll have to get used to it if you want to participate,” he said wryly, and flicked open the blade of a pocketknife.

  SILLA

  We sat in a triangle, just inside the salt circle. Reese and I had talked about what spell to try with Nick before leaving the house. The problem with most of the spells was that you couldn’t tell immediately that they were working. A protection spell was only apparent if it didn’t work. A charm for luck was long-term. We could have tried the far-sight spell to look for whoever’d killed Mom and Dad, but neither of us wanted to talk with Nick about that quite yet. And it called for yarrow, which we didn’t have. Several other spells called for harder-to-get ingredients, or things I’d never even heard of.

  So we were going to try transformation. A famous one.

  When we were situated, knees almost touching at the corners of our triangle, Reese grabbed a pale ceramic bowl from beside the headstone. The edges were scalloped like a pie crust and the bottom etched with the figure of an orange koi. Gram Judy had bought it from a catalog in August, and when it arrived she tucked it into the china cabinet and never touched it again.

  I unpacked a bottle of wine from the backpack and set it between Reese and me.

  “You’re sure you’re up for this, Sil?” Reese asked. “Not too tired?”

  “I’m good. I have to do at least one thing today.” I took the pocketknife from the grass. For the possession, Reese and I had slashed the meaty parts of our palms, since we’d needed enough blood to paint the runes on ourselves. It had hurt, and my left hand continued to throb quietly. But for this spell, just a drop would do.

  Reese poured water from a sport bottle into Gram Judy’s ceramic bowl. The clear water splashed up the sides as it glugged out.

  Crows laughed as if they knew something we didn’t, and the three of us waited for the water to settle. Glints of the sun flashed in the uneven ripples, moments of silver brilliance that made me blink and look away. I caught Nick watching me, and smiled. He returned it.

  Reese shifted in place as he brought the bottle of wine close and untwisted the screw top.

  “Wine?” Nick raised his eyebrows.

  “Oldest trick in the book.” Reese grinned.

  A frown wrinkled Nick’s forehead for a moment, then he glanced at the water and at me. “Water into wine.”

  I nodded, feeling my pulse quicken. “Can you imagine?” I whispered.

  “Won’t have to.” He reached over our knees and took my hand.

  Reese cleared his throat. “Ready?”

  Nick
and I took deep breaths and let them out through pursed lips, simultaneously. As though we’d planned it. If he hadn’t been holding my fingers tight, they’d have been shaking: we were meant to do this together.

  “Ready, Nick?” I asked quietly. “After Reese drips in wine, we say, ‘Fio novus.’ It means ‘Become a new thing.’ ”

  “Why Latin?” He didn’t look curious so much as puzzled.

  “Because that’s … what’s in the book,” I said sheepishly, tapping the spell book’s cover. It blended into the dry grass.

  “We teach it what we want to become with the drops of wine,” Reese said. “Our blood provides the energy, and our words the will.”

  Nick nodded. “Okay. Got it.”

  “Wine,” Reese said as he tilted the open bottle and allowed a thin stream of dark maroon liquid to spill. It fell in, dispersing almost immediately. The water in the center of the bowl turned a shade darker. The sun spots flickering in my eyes were less bright.

  I leaned over the bowl, and Nick and Reese each put a hand on one of my knees. Pricking my forefinger, I held it out and watched a drop of blood slowly, slowly gather at the tip.

  My hand burned, and I felt the surge of energy push out from my guts and down my arm to gather in my hand. The power pulsed in that tiny drop of blood, trembling at the tip of my finger as I held my breath, and then finally—finally—falling to the water.

  The blood landed with a tiny plunk, staying gathered in a sphere. A crimson bubble of blood floating in the water.

  “Fio novus,” I murmured. Become a new thing.

  “Fio novus,” the boys repeated. We all said it a third time, bending close so that our breath whispered against the water.

  The surface trembled, shifting up and down in tiny eddies like an earthquake had disturbed it. In the middle, where my blood had landed, a strange vortex of purple grew, reaching out with tentacles for the edges of the bowl, for the surface, for the little orange koi at the bottom. Like oil, the vines didn’t mingle with the water at first. It was a living organism, a water plant, growing to fill the space. My stomach was tight, and I bit the tip of my tongue, hardly daring to breathe.

  “Fio novus!” I hissed.

  The organism exploded, instantly turning all the water into dark, glittering liquid that lapped gently at the scalloped edges of the bowl.

  We three just stared. I thought of Macbeth’s witches huddled around their cauldron. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags. What is’t you do?

  A deed without a name.

  We were as quiet as the gravestones around us.

  NICHOLAS

  I reached forward and dipped my finger into the bowl. Bringing it to my mouth, I hesitated only a second before popping it in. Sweet-sour taste flooded my tongue.

  Silla watched me, wide-eyed, and Reese said, “Well?”

  “Wine.” I shrugged and laughed in amazement. “Bad wine, but wine.”

  With a shout of triumph, Silla dunked her finger, too. When she tasted it, she winced. “Gah. I guess I need practice.”

  “You don’t like wine anyway.” Reese grinned. “Maybe we should try water into chocolate milk next.”

  She laughed, and they shared a moment of understanding. It practically glowed in this sparkling freaking line between them. I told myself I wouldn’t have gotten along with any siblings anyway.

  In unison, they turned to me. Reese said, “Your turn, man.” My mouth opened, but for once I didn’t have anything obnoxious to say.

  “Don’t you want to?” Silla rested her hand on my knee, and it was impossible to think.

  “We want to know if it’s just us. Our family. Or if it’s you, too.” Reese stood up in a single motion, bowl of bad wine in his hands. He walked a few feet away and tossed it in a long arch over some dude’s grave.

  “Nicholas.”

  The invocation of my full name gave me my words back. “Yeah,” I muttered, reaching down to take her hand off my leg. I kept it in mine, and raised her finger up to kiss the tiny cut. “Yeah, I want to try.”

  Of course, I knew I could do it.

  Reese sat back down and plunked the bowl into the center again. He poured the rest of the water in. Silla squeezed my hand before letting go, and searched around in the grass for her dropped pocketknife. Finding it, she offered it to me.

  “Wait,” Reese said. “You don’t have any diseases, do you?”

  Silla pursed her lips in annoyance. “You’re the one sleeping with Danielle Fenton.”

  But Reese kept his eyes on me. I held them, making my expression casual and uninterested, like I didn’t care about this additional display of dominance. It was mildly irritating that I had to do it again, but thanks to Lilith, I was good at responding to this kind of game. And Reese didn’t dislike me, I thought. He just didn’t want me touching his sister, which I could totally respect. He’d have to get over it, but I could respect it.

  Finally he nodded, and Silla handed me the knife with a little exasperated sigh.

  Reese poured in another stream of wine, and then they both put their hands on my knees to complete the circle, just as we’d done for Silla.

  I put the knife to my finger and pressed. The pain was immediate—I’d cut too deep, but the pocketknife wasn’t as precise as Mom’s quill blood-letter. Trying not to blanch and look like a loser, I held my finger over the bowl and focused on what I wanted. More than one drop fell, splashing heavily. My body itched all over as the magic hissed out. I didn’t remember it itching.

  “Water be wine,” I said, not thinking and distracted by the surge of the magic. “Tears of the heavens, become fruit of the vine.”

  I felt more than saw Silla and Reese hesitate.

  But I kept going. “Water be wine. Water be wine. Blood from my body, the power is mine. Water be wine.”

  With a silent clap of energy, the entire bowl of water transformed into dark wine.

  “Nick!” Silla said, muffled because she was pressing her hands to her mouth.

  Reese dipped his finger into the bowl and tasted it. His lips turned down thoughtfully. “Better,” he said.

  I shrugged. “I, uh, think of spells in rhyme. You know, like in movies.” And my mom taught me to make spells like poems.

  “And Shakespeare!” Silla laughed, shaking her head at me.

  “That answers two questions, though.” Reese took another taste of the wine I’d created. “You can do it, and we don’t need Latin.”

  “Just meaning,” Silla said.

  I sucked on my finger. It still bled sluggishly. The taste reminded me of kissing Silla.

  Reese clapped his hands together, then hissed and glanced down at his wounded palm. “We should go. Clean up, and make dinner. Get some sleep. Nick, this could knock you on your ass. You should take it easy tonight.”

  “Sure.” I flexed my finger. The blood was slowing.

  “Maybe”—Reese glanced up at the sky and around the wide-open cemetery—“we should do any more spells at our house, in the backyard. Make sure Judy isn’t around, and then we’ll have privacy.”

  Silla said, “No. We have to do it here, with Dad and Mom.”

  “They aren’t here, Silla.”

  “I can’t forget them here, though. I mean …” She avoided Reese’s eyes by concentrating on erasing the salt circle, picking the spell book off the ground, and dumping it into her bag. I helped her pack the box of kosher salt, the pocketknife, and a pile of used candles.

  When the backpack was zipped, she said to her silent brother, “I mean, this is a connection to them, the magic is, and being here reminds me why I’m doing it in the first place.” She poured the wine out at the foot of her parents’ headstone like an offering.

  “I guess.” Reese took the bowl and backpack. “I’m gonna run back and shower first.”

  “Okay.” Silla tossed him a quick smile. He did not return it.

  “Hey,” I said, something suddenly occurring to me. “Can you leave the spell book? I’d like to read
it, if that’s okay.”

  Reese held out the bag so that Silla could fish out the book. “Later,” Reese said. He took off. I wondered what exactly had soured his mood.

  Silla and I stood facing one another. She held the little spell book to her chest, hands splayed over it protectively.

  Stepping close, I touched the spine with my finger. “I’ll take care of it, babe.”

  “I know.”

  “I promise.”

  “I know.”

  I curled my hand around the book, but she didn’t let go. She just stared at me, her eyes moving all over my face. “You okay, Silla?” I used the spell book to pull her nearer. Inch by inch.

  “Yeah.” Her bottom lip moved like she was chewing on the inside. I wanted to be the one chewing on her lip. As if she’d heard me, she let go of the book abruptly and put her arms around me instead.

  Hugging her back, I asked, “When can I take you to dinner? Monday? Tuesday?”

  “I don’t have rehearsal call on Wednesday.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  I did what I’d wanted to do since arriving. I tilted her chin up and kissed her. It was different in daylight, with my own magic still ringing in my ears. More real, like this was proof that I hadn’t dreamed everything after the party last night.

  She smiled into the kiss. I pushed closer, loving the feel of her whole body pressed up to mine, with only the spell book between us. I wanted more.

  “Nick.” Silla stepped back and took a deep breath, leaving the book in my hands. “Gram’s expecting us for dinner in a bit. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.” Very sorry.

  I only watched her walk away for a few seconds. But they were a good few seconds.

  SILLA

  The afternoon shone cheerily all around me. As I climbed over the crumbling cemetery wall, I could hear songbirds chattering and singing as if they approved of our magic. I was light-headed, but whether from the magic or kissing, I didn’t know. I didn’t really want to know—it didn’t matter, because I planned to be doing a lot more of both in the very near future.