Blood Magic

  Had it only been four days since I sat on the porch with his shoulder against mine, looking up at the constellations? Oh, God, it hurt. It was impossible that he was gone. Not him, too.

  I began to hear the wind through the trees and singing crickets.

  Sweat cooled on my forehead.

  But my breath did not calm, or my blood stop racing. It built harder and faster, until I wanted to explode the way Reese had in July, after Mom and Dad died, when he’d punched a hole through the bedroom wall. My fists ached to do the same.

  “Reese,” I whispered. Then again, louder: “Reese.”

  Why had he left me?

  “Reese!” I screamed.

  Silence.

  To my children: Silla Reese

  I pray with all the strength in me that you never have to read this. That I will defeat her today, and by tonight will have joined you and your mother for a late dinner in Kansas City. Together we will go apartment hunting for Reese, and everything will be as it should be. As it was supposed to be.

  Though that, I realize, is something I destroyed long ago: should be, supposed to be. When I made the decision I did, to take this body from the soul who rightfully possessed it.

  Here is my confession:

  I am not your father.

  I was born in 1803 outside Boston, Massachusetts, named Philip by my mother and Osborn by my friend the Deacon. I am a doctor and healer and magician, and because of her, a murderer.

  I had to escape her, my loves. I had to be free of Josephine.

  This confession is muddled, is it not? Reese should be asking for details, and Silla for meaning. Oh, my children.

  I stole this diary when I pretended to die, when I burned our house in Boston, and it is fitting that here, now, in what may be my final hours in this world, I should use it to confess to my children.

  NICHOLAS

  At ten the morning after, my cell rang. I was wound so tight I almost fell off my bed.

  Her name blinked on the screen. And I hesitated. I didn’t know what to say.

  I thought of the sheriff and Judy finding us in the middle of the cemetery, my arms around Silla, but not to comfort her, to pin her there, to keep her back from Reese. Her staring, comatose eyes. I thought of Reese’s body, his blood everywhere and making me gag. His eyes half-open, his mouth slack.

  I didn’t know what to say to Silla, but I had to say something. So I flipped open the phone and walked to the window. “Hey.”

  “Hi.” Her voice was soft, barely there.

  Silence fell between us, and I pressed my bandaged hand to the cold glass. Under the bandage, stitches held together the gash I’d made on the cemetery wall. It throbbed, and the cold helped. I stared out past my fingers.

  The woods looked so normal in the morning light. Not like the place the sheriff had tracked Josephine’s blood trail to, not like the place they’d lost her. They’d searched Ms. Tripp’s house and found several fake IDs—and not the kind you use to sneak into a club when you’re sixteen. They were birth certificates and driver’s licenses with her picture but different names. So they put out a statewide APB or whatever. Sheriff Todd didn’t want to think she was coming back but had promised my dad there’d be regular deputies driving by our place and Silla’s. Bullshit. They wanted her to be gone.

  I looked past the forest to the cemetery.

  It hadn’t been hard for me and Gram Judy to convince everybody Ms. Tripp had been obsessed with the old stories, that it had made her crazy. If they suspected we’d done magic, too, they weren’t saying anything to me about it. Maybe because everybody knew the rumors but nobody wanted to open a real investigation, real death, up to that kind of speculation. They were happier thinking Tripp had been behind it all. I noticed everybody around here liked to keep things working the way they wanted them to work. They didn’t ask questions that might have knocked our delicately constructed story to the ground.

  Except Dad and Lilith. I could feel them wondering. Right now they were downstairs, working together. They’d been remarkably quiet, both of them, all morning, mostly leaving me alone. Dad hadn’t left for his usual four-day business trip, but hadn’t pushed any kind of father-son bonding on me, either. Or said he told me so. It was like he was saying instead, Son, I’m here if you need me. I hadn’t managed to find a way to let him know I knew what he was doing, and appreciated it, even if I didn’t really want to talk to him at all.

  And Lilith was acting like a human being. Breakfast had sucked, but not for the usual reasons. Dad and Lilith had kept up senseless chatter and passed me French toast and hash browns without forcing me to talk. I’d only sat there, chewing on a couple of forkfuls of potatoes that made me slightly nauseated, and feeling guilty for not talking. Then Lilith’s elbow bumped into Dad as he was reaching for another helping of scrambled eggs, and her grape juice splashed onto the tablecloth. It wasn’t even close to the right color, but I threw myself backward, my chair crashing to the floor. I covered my face with my hands and breathed and breathed and breathed.

  All I saw was blood.

  It had been Lilith who said, “Jer, take him into the kitchen for some cool water. I’ll clean this up.”

  I didn’t want her kindness. But I took it.

  Cold leached into my head from the window, and finally I said the stupidest thing to Silla: “How are you?”

  “Okay.”

  From the stereo behind me, Weezer was complaining about the girl you can’t resist because she’s only in your dreams.

  She pulled a long, slow breath, then said, “I need to see you.”

  “Sure,” I answered immediately. I wanted to kiss her, to remember she was still alive. To remind her that she was, too.

  “Come to Dairy Queen.”

  “The … Dairy Queen?”

  “Please.”

  We hung up. I grabbed a sweatshirt and slipped outside.

  SILLA

  Gram Judy sent me to get napkins.

  It was the most inane thing, but she said I needed something to do. Since the funeral was tomorrow and we’d have a wake at our house afterward, we needed napkins.

  I drove Reese’s truck. The whole cab smelled like oil and hay and sweat. When I turned the ignition, Bruce Springsteen exploded out of the CD player. I hated the upbeat rock and extended guitar solos, but couldn’t bring myself to turn it off.

  My hands curled around the wheel, and I thought of Reese’s hands. Of his sixteenth birthday, when he’d finally bought the truck. He’d wanted to go out with friends, but Mom made him stay in. It was a weeknight, and she said he could go out Friday. I helped her make fried chicken. Reese was being such an asshole, saying if he had to stay home he’d stay in his room—only he was cussing, and Mom was trying so hard not to cry. Dad came home, and when he found out Reese was pouting in his room, he told Mom and me to go ahead and set the table. I don’t know what Dad said, but they both came down about fifteen minutes later, and Reese apologized to Mom. We ate dinner, and Reese opened his presents. I gave him some game for his PlayStation that he’d been really wanting, and Mom gave him a sweater and a credit for three hundred dollars off the price of his truck. He’d been saving up to buy it for a year, and that put him over the top. Dad told him that the truck was waiting at Mr. Johnston’s, getting new tires, which were from Dad. Dad also gave him the bracelet with the tiger’s-eye stone in it. We had ice cream and butterscotch cupcakes, which were Reese’s favorite.

  Maybe at the grocery store I’d buy a box of cupcakes to go with my napkins.

  After I pulled into the parking lot at Mercer’s Grocer, I had to rub at my sticky cheeks. I had that drowning feeling, like the memories and thoughts were a rushing river, surrounding me and pulling me under, and all I could do was fight for air. It left me shaking.

  I climbed out of the truck and into the sun. Five other cars filled the lot, and I recognized them all. God, I hoped everyone would just let me go about my business. Maybe looking like a wreck would actually help with that.
Gripping my purse, I tried to walk like I was fine, eyes on the asphalt before me.

  Mr. Emory held the door open for me. “Hey, Silla girl, you’re doing okay?” Wrinkles hid the corners of his mouth. I nodded, glancing briefly at his eyes.

  A trick of the sun made their regular brown suddenly black and cold.

  I jerked away, slamming my back into the edge of the door.

  “Silla?” He cocked his head and light flooded into his eyes, reflecting normally.

  “Um.” I shook my head. “Sorry, Mr. Emory. I’m fine. Thanks,” I whispered.

  Lips pursed irritably, he nodded and backed away. Slowly, I confronted the inside of the grocery store.

  Josephine could be anywhere.

  Pressing into the glass storefront, I scanned the aisles of food. Two cashiers waited: Beth and Erica Ellis in blue aprons, sisters who’d worked as baggers forever until being promoted last year. Mrs. Anthony and her son Pete were in the canned fruit row. Pete was kicking his chubby legs from the kid seat in the cart. There was Mrs. Morris deciding between Cheerios and Frosted Flakes. Mr. Mercer, the owner, was back by the tiny butcher station talking to Jim, the butcher.

  Any of them. All of them. I hadn’t seen where Josephine’s crows had flown off to. Maybe she was waiting for me to let my guard down. My heartbeat filled my ears as I walked steadily toward the paper goods. Everyone glanced at me. Watching. Just like the crows had. It was just like that awful day at school after Wendy’d been possessed. I saw enemies everywhere. And today, I knew kindergarten tactics like drawing runes over my heart were useless.

  Even little Pete stopped kicking his legs as I passed.

  I grabbed a bag of cheap paper napkins and barely restrained myself from running to the checkout line.

  Erica Ellis smiled sympathetically. “Did you find what you needed?” she asked, like she always did.

  I laughed, and it sounded hysterical even to me.

  She paused, glancing over at her sister with raised eyebrows. But what I needed was not in a freaking grocery store.

  When she took my five-dollar bill, there was a new wariness there, like I might be contagious. She frowned at the cuts on my hands. I wanted to pull down my sweatshirt to display the long, jagged pink scar across my collarbone.

  But behind her, I caught the hostile look on Beth’s face. They could all so easily be enemies. Be Josephine.

  So I said nothing, just grabbed my change and napkins and left.

  NICHOLAS

  The Yaleylah Dairy Queen was a small concrete building next to the grocery store where I’d gotten coffee with Eric, with giant, dirty windows for a front and a huge white and red sign. I could see the peeling plastic of the booths and the tired-looking kid slouched behind the counter before I was twenty feet away.

  Fortunately, I was saved from going inside by a honk. Silla opened the door to Reese’s truck as I turned. She slid out and went around to the tail to grab something out of the back.

  I put my elbow up on the edge of the truck bed. She had Mom’s lacquered box.

  Silla offered it to me. “I don’t want this in my house.”

  My chest tightened. “Oh. Okay.” And here I’d been looking forward to telling her what I’d done to my eyes. Thinking maybe it would distract her a little, make her excited about the magic again.

  Releasing the box into my hands, she stepped back, arms wrapped around her stomach. Before she turned away, I saw tears on her cheeks. Her hair hung lank around her face. All the quick pain of rejection broke up, and I just wanted to make her stop hurting instead.

  “Silla, aw, Silla.” I set the box hurriedly on the asphalt and reached for her. She didn’t turn around, but she let me hold her shoulders, and even leaned back against me. I pressed my cheek against her hair. Her hands slowly slid up and crossed over her chest, and she gripped my fingers tightly. We still had each other. We did. I had to believe that. She wasn’t rejecting me, even though the magic was part of me—was something I wanted. This was just a violent reaction to grief. It had to be.

  “I see her everywhere, Nicholas.”

  “Josephine?” I didn’t really want to say her name, and whispering it made it a little better.

  “Yeah. I can’t believe she just left.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Everyone I look at—that’s her. I couldn’t go into Dairy Queen because Mr. Denley was there, staring at me. I froze, just waiting for him to pick up a knife and come after me. And in the grocery store, I was even afraid of a toddler.”

  I squeezed her, guilt sort of poking at my ribs since none of this had even occurred to me. While I’d been thinking about me, about my magic and the town believing us, about the first dead body I’d really seen, here was my girlfriend falling to pieces. I sucked. I’d make it up to her. “We’ll figure something out.” The protection amulets. We’d make them. We’d make them, just the two of us.

  “I can’t stop crying, either.”

  I hugged her as tightly as I could, trying to make her feel like I wasn’t going anywhere.

  After a long moment while cars drove slowly past and wind blew the warm sunlight off my face, she said, “Why does she get to be alive and Reese is dead?”

  I was helpless. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  “You broke my masks, Nick.”

  “What?”

  “My masks. You ruined them.”

  She didn’t sound angry, but I started to pull away.

  “If you hadn’t been able to see through them, I’d never have even thought for a moment that I didn’t—didn’t need them. But you just waltzed in and looked past and saw me and everything I was and could do—you knew the magic, you knew all the secrets.” Her chest heaved and her voice hardened.

  I let go of her, hurt. She kept her back to me.

  “No one ever told us. The stupid, horrible secrets. Magic! Blood magic. And Dad knew it, and never told us. It’s his fault that he died, and that Mom died. Reese was right. It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger.” Silla whirled on me. “I know how he felt now, how Reese felt.” Her hands balled into fists and she raised them between us. “Look! I want to hit something, destroy something. Anything. I’m so angry, Nick. Reese was right, and now he’s gone and I’m alone.”

  I winced. I thought she had me, but how could I say that? Her whole family was dead.

  “I’m sorry, Nick.” Her eyes closed. “I just need … I don’t know what I need. Take that box away from me. Please.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have listened. Maybe I should have pushed back. Because I was getting angry that I’d finally picked up the magic on my own, used it well and without being haunted by my mom’s stupid choices, and now Silla didn’t want it. Didn’t seem to count me at all as somebody to need. Who needed her. I didn’t know what that meant for us.

  So I took my mom’s box, and I left.

  As I walked away, I heard her open the truck’s creaking door. I heard her tears. But I only tightened my grip on the box until my messed-up hand began throbbing again. Reminding me, over and over, that the magic was part of me.

  She was poisoning me-Josephine, the witch who I created.

  I called to the Deacon for aid, and he sent me here to Missouri, where long ago he’d settled, and so his blood is in the veins of this family. He surely didn’t know what I would do to his great-grandson, Robert Kennicot.

  I brought her diary, ripping out a few pages to leave for her as proof it was destroyed in the fire, and left all other memories of my life before I stole this one. Poor Robert. His mother called him Robbie, and so, too, did his girlfriend, Donna. After she fled, no one called him-me!-Robbie again.

  She knew I was not her Robbie. I saw it in her face so long ago. When she ran up to me one morning and grabbed my hand. A smear of blood was pressed between our fingers, connecting us so suddenly that Donna could see the truth in me. I should have stopped her, but couldn’t. Donna had such an open face, even in her fear, and I wished in that moment that I had been who
she wanted me to be. But I was not. And I was not seventeen, despite this body. I haven’t been a teenaged boy in too long.

  The blood did not tell Donna what she was hoping for. Her power was not as sophisticated and nuanced as mine. She shook her head and her eyes filled with tears. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispered. I nodded. And I stared as she fled, running straight through the cemetery toward her house.

  I don’t know if I lied to her. I killed him, no doubt. But when? Not the moment I took the body. No-for weeks I felt his will pressing gently against mine when I slipped into sleep. I don’t remember when it faded. What day or time Robert Kennicot’s spirit finally fell to pieces.

  This sprawls widely off track, doesn’t it, Reese? It would not make a decent monologue, would it, Silla?

  But if I do not put down my secrets, how will I spend this remaining time waiting for her to come for me?

  SILLA

  Gram Judy drove us to the church in her little Rabbit. I just tried not to puke and watched the bright morning zip past. It wasn’t very funereal. There was so much color everywhere: autumn leaves, blue sky, brilliant sun. All bold and sure of themselves. The opposite of how I was feeling. Reese would have said something obnoxious, but nothing appropriate occurred to me.

  My stomach turned over, and I wished I’d brought the quickly vanishing bottle of Pepto-Bismol I’d been gorging myself with for the past twenty-four hours. It was worse when I managed to be hungry and nauseated at the same time. A stomach that growled and burbled simultaneously was certainly a recipe for some special kind of torturous hell.

  “Silla, honey, how you doing?” Gram Judy asked as she paused at a stoplight. “We’ll get through it,” she continued when I didn’t respond. Like we did before rang in the subtext.

  I glanced at her. She’d dressed as nicely as I’d seen her since July, in a raw silk suit and giant pearl earrings. Her hair was up in a chignon and clipped in place with jeweled pins. It had been her idea to add a pearl necklace to my pink sundress, and a gray cardigan because it was too cold. She’d even gotten out a pair of scissors and trimmed a couple of the more outrageous chunks of my hair, and clipped barrettes in a pretty pattern. I looked like a little kid out for Easter, not her brother’s funeral.