Blood Magic

  A wordless cry of dismay fell from my lips.

  The rune Reese had found behind the house. It was so similar to the protection rune, we’d assumed it was the same symbol. But this was it. I felt it in the tingle of my palm. There’d been a binding around my house, not a warding. It had been a spell to trap something inside.

  Dad had tried to bind Josephine. That’s why he’d let her come to him at the house instead of luring her elsewhere. But Mom must’ve come home, and flipped it all around so that Josephine captured Dad instead.

  Yes, there at the bottom of the page it read: “Spirit-binding, not physical.” It kept Dad from jumping when she killed him.

  It also meant that if we found Josephine’s body, we could do the same thing to her. And she had to be in the forest. Her body, I mean. That’s where her blood trail had gone cold, and with all the dead animals, she must have used them to possess the whole freaking forest. But her body was dying, or at least broken enough that she couldn’t get out.

  I turned back to the armoring spell.

  NICHOLAS

  The moment I pushed open the attic door, Silla raised her head and grinned. “This spell, Nick, the armoring spell, it’s my rings!” She held out her hands and I grabbed them, hauling her up. “I’ve had protection from her all along, and …”

  “It’s why she never possessed you, or even tried,” I finished for her.

  Silla nodded, knocking her forehead against my lips. “And why she was always trying to get me to take them off.”

  Tilting up her chin, I kissed her.

  “Nick,” she said. “Put this on.” Silla pulled back and stripped the bracelet off. “It was Reese’s. He never—he never wore it, though, or he’d have been … safe.” Her eyelids fluttered. “You should wear it. I’ll put my rings back on.”

  I frowned. She pushed the bracelet into my hands. The metal was warm from being against her skin, and I suddenly wanted to wear it because she had. But as I slid it over my wrist, I couldn’t help thinking of Reese. Of all that blood. The bracelet tingled, and I didn’t have the first clue if it was magic or my own nerves.

  Systematically, Silla pulled rings off her necklace and jammed them onto her fingers. “I always thought they were just comforting, but this … my whole life Dad was building up armor for me.” She smiled up at me, and it was the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.

  The window glass rattled as something slammed into it.

  We jumped away, whirling around.

  A crow beat its body against the glass. Silla ran for it, yelling “Get away!”

  Another cry rang out, then another, and then it was a cacophony of crows screaming at us.

  I was at the window instantly, pressing close behind Silla. A massive flock of them swept around the backyard. Like a hundred shadows come to life. Their feathers glinted in the bright afternoon. One dove at the window, and Silla leapt back into me.

  Then I saw it. Peering through the scattered birds, I saw Eric.

  At the edge of the forest, he hung ten feet in the air, snarled in the branches of a tree. Blood stained the whole front of his shirt.

  NICHOLAS

  I didn’t move, even though my heart danced jaggedly in my chest. Silla spun around and went to dig in my desk, finding a pair of scissors that she held out like they were a miniature sword.

  The crows had settled down, and all I heard was a soft mechanical buzz. My stereo. The album had ended. I hit the power button and realized my hand was shaking. I had to keep it together. But all that blood, just like Reese … I should have made sure he got to his car. This was my fault.

  I fisted my hands and pressed them into my eyes as though I could force away the memory of Silla’s face and neck splattered with blood, of her bloody handprints on the headstones.

  “Nick?”

  My hands fell away at her quiet voice. “Sorry, just … we still don’t have a plan.”

  “We have to bind her. The spell she used to bind my dad so that he couldn’t jump free when she killed him.”

  “Bind her into her body, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” She went to the magic box and pulled out the spool of red thread and piece of beeswax. Tucking them into the front pocket of her huge sweatshirt, she came back. “We need a little box. A matchbox, a—a card box, anything we can seal this up in. And we have to get to her body.”

  “Okay.”

  She touched my cheek. “This might be it, you know.”

  “I know.” I turned my face and kissed the tips of her fingers. Then I leaned over and kissed her lips.

  And Silla didn’t move, didn’t even breathe.

  When I leaned back, she opened her eyes. I focused on them, on the curve of the lid, on the tight, curling lashes.

  I kissed her again, and the air around us warmed. My blood burned, ached from fingertips to toes and where our lips touched. “Silla.”

  “Yeah?” She met my eyes with determination, with this edge of wildness.

  I kissed her again, but harder.

  “It’s okay, Nick. We can do this.”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  SILLA

  Downstairs, I waited with the binding spell ingredients tucked into the kangaroo pocket of Reese’s sweatshirt while Nick searched for a proper box.

  Outside, the crows blanketed the grass, standing between the back door and the forest where Eric was suspended. I took long, deep breaths. Tonight was it. I was going to find Josephine’s body, bind it, and trap her there forever. I squeezed my hands around the scissors in my pocket.

  Nick came back and offered me a thin metal box with a painting of a lily on its cover. “Will this work?”

  “I hope so.” I popped it open. One of Lilith’s business cards was stuck to the roof. I dug it out, and Nick tossed it to the floor.

  “Oops. Left one.” He quirked up his eyebrow. Even though he couldn’t quite bring himself to smile, I saw the satisfaction he got out of destroying something of hers.

  Through the thick sliding glass, we could see crows hopping around on the grass, barking and cawing at the forest. And at the row of rats crawling along the two branches holding Eric up. I swallowed a deep breath.

  Nick unlocked the sliding glass door, and shoved it open. We walked out together.

  Although the sky continued to hold light, the afternoon sun was low enough that here in the center of the woods everything was dim and shadowed, like looking through a dark lens. I winced, realizing I should have grabbed the blood-sight spectacles. But then I’d have to look at the horrible red stain painted across the whole forest.

  As we approached, the blanket of crows parted for us. They flapped back over the lawn and watched us with their tiny black eyes. Feathers ruffled and beaks clacked quietly. I pressed closer to Nick and finally looked at Eric, suspended between the trees.

  His eyes were closed, head hanging. His whole body was limp. It swayed gently, almost peacefully. Blood matted his hair to his skull, had turned his shirt scarlet. And a steady stream of bright red drops trickled off the toe of his sneaker.

  NICHOLAS

  “Josephine!” I yelled. “Show yourself. We know you’re out there.”

  Eric’s blood pattered on the leaf-strewn forest floor. Silla said, “Let him go.”

  It was easy to ignore the crows behind us, thanks to the row of nasty rats in front of us. They clung to the branches with their tiny claws. Some were missing eyes, and most had blood matting down their fur. Not just rats. Zombie rats. It would be totally awesome if it wasn’t so real. “Come on,” I said with as much scorn as I could dredge up. “You aren’t scaring us, you’re just being as annoying as ever. No wonder Philip ditched you.”

  The trees shook, and a rain of red-stained leaves fell. A crow cawed behind us, then a second and third. “They’re coming closer,” Silla said quietly. I glanced back. They were lined up, wings out like the eagle on the U.S. seal.

  Silla gasped. When I looked, I saw that Eric’s head had lifted. His eyes we
re closed, and his whole face was coated in blood. Like someone had dumped him in a bathtub full of it, and hung him up to dry. His lips parted, and he said, “My beasts will tear you to shreds if you approach, Silla Kennicot.”

  It was Eric’s voice, but flat and low.

  “Did you hurt him?” I demanded.

  “No, Nick, I did not. And I suggest you not take that tone with me.” Eric’s lips pulled back into a grimacing smile that bared all his teeth.

  Silla stepped in front of me. “What do you want?”

  To kill us all, I guessed. I pressed my shoulder against Silla’s so that we were an obviously united front.

  “We’re gonna do a little magic.” Eric’s mouth twisted into a sneer.

  A crow jumped into the air and flapped up toward Eric’s shoulder. The rats chattered and screamed, clambering closer to Eric. The crow backed off. Silla grabbed my hand and squeezed.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why should we help you?”

  One of the rats scuttled up onto Eric’s shoulder and slid its nose through Eric’s hair, then hopped up to his head. Its claws pricked into Eric’s forehead. Fresh blood welled up and ran down over his closed eyes. “Because,” he said, ignoring the stream of blood skimming the corner of his mouth, “if you don’t, I’ll kill him.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Silla asked.

  “You’re going to heal me, with that shining bright blood of yours.”

  Silla tucked her hands into the front pocket of her sweatshirt. “Josephine, why don’t you just use Eric to heal yourself?”

  I hoped Silla didn’t mean it; she just wanted to get Josephine to tell us where her body was.

  Another rat walked awkwardly down a tree branch to pick at Eric’s face with its nose. “His body,” Eric said, “lacks the power of the Kennicot flesh.”

  “Seems like you’re doing fine without it.” Silla flung her arms out. “You’ve got control of a whole forest and a ton of rats—plus his body.”

  Eric’s eyes snapped open. His expression twisted into a leer. “I want my own body back, girl.”

  “It’s hurt, isn’t it?” Silla stepped forward, and I didn’t like the aggressive way her shoulders tensed. “Is it hidden in the woods? Broken? Dying? Are you dying, Josephine? What happens if your body dies?”

  “You cretin,” Eric spat. A handful of the crows snapped their wings. Eric’s whole body shuddered, and the rat perched upon him chuckled angrily, claws digging in. “You’re going to heal me, and you’re going to give me Philip’s precious spell book, too.”

  “We don’t have it,” I said.

  The trees shook again, stirring more leaves. “Where is it?” Eric shrieked. I clenched my hands into fists. His voice was strained beyond recognition. Did he know what was happening to him? What I’d let happen?

  Silla lifted her chin. “It’s safely buried six feet underground with my brother. What you want, what I want, unreachable.”

  Josephine cackled: a rough, squishy sound through Eric’s throat. “Perfection, my darlings! We’ll dig him up, take the book, and take his strong, unprotected bones for my carmot.”

  “You’ll try.” Silla gripped my hand.

  “I always do.” Eric’s head tilted. “Nick, you go inside and get some salt, and we’ll get started.”

  I glanced at Silla. Were we still playing along? She nodded, and said, “Go.”

  SILLA

  The distant slick of the glass door signaled that Nick had made it inside. Crow wings flapped slowly, patting the dry autumn grass. The rats chattered from the branches of the trees.

  Eric’s body swayed.

  His eyes were closed, his face slack. I wondered how hard it would be to bind Josephine while convincing her that I was trying to heal her. If she figured it out, or panicked, what would she do? Could she get out, take Eric’s body, or an animal’s or something, flee somewhere safer? I couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t hurt any more people. The only thing to do was to bind her and destroy her.

  Coldness dripped through me as I realized I was planning murder.

  It was too dark to see much of anything in the forest. The trees were black and the space between them full of shadows. Moving shadows. It wasn’t only rats—on the ground, now that I focused, I could see other animals, too, huddled between roots and ducked under small bushes. Their eyes gleamed. Rabbits, raccoons, possums, and several foxes. And they were dead—many of the corpses Nick and I had seen that afternoon were now blinking at me. Staring at me. Even smaller birds hopped among the menagerie. They shouldn’t have been all together. Rabbits don’t just hang out with foxes, or little mice, like the ones gathered in a herd just below Eric’s dangling shoes.

  Josephine was in them all.

  Her power had to be enormous. How could the binding spell contain her? What if it wasn’t enough to bind her body—what if we had to bind all the trees and every single little animal she possessed? Was I strong enough?

  The silence dripped down my skin like rain. Goose bumps rose on my arms and neck. My palm, the one with the cut I’d made last night, to show Nick my poisonous blood, ached and itched. I opened my hand, staring down at it.

  I’d kept it broken to remind myself what Nick had said. This is who I am.

  All it had taken that night in the field, the first time I’d kissed Nick, when the flowers had exploded around me, was blood. Reese had healed the deep cut on my chest with just will, blood, and need. And banishing possession, and possession itself … so many of the spells only required blood. Blood and … imagination. Oh, boy, did I have that in spades.

  I just had to want it more than Josephine.

  I looked back to Eric. I hated that his eyes were closed. Like Josephine wasn’t really paying attention to me. But she had so many other eyes. Rat eyes. Fox eyes. Crow eyes. “Josephine. Tell me why you want the spell book. Why does any of that matter if all we ever need is blood?”

  “You want to talk philosophy, Silla? Right now?” Eric’s eyes snapped open and his fingers twitched.

  “I’d rather find your body and tear it into a dozen pieces.” But what I wanted was for someone—anyone—to explain this stupid, impossible magic to me.

  She laughed, and even through Eric’s weary voice I could hear her delight. “Wouldn’t you just. But very well. A quick lesson: It’s hard to pull your will out of the reality you’ve always known, isn’t it? Even when you see with your own eyes? Taste with your own tongue? The spells help us form our will. Fire symbolizes certain things to us—cleansing, destruction, transformation—things that have been the same or nearly so for millennia. Ritual bridges the gap between what we sense with our hands and eyes and ears and what we believe is possible in our hearts and minds. And words are the sharpest tools we have to trick our minds into having faith that the magic will work. Belief, will, faith—whatever you want to call it. I have only met one person who had such a complete understanding of the magic, had such faith in it that he could make mountains move without a word.”

  “The Deacon,” I said, before I could stop.

  “Yes. The Deacon. A humble name for one near godhood.”

  I shivered at the worshipful tone in Eric’s voice. And was suddenly glad I hadn’t tried contacting the Deacon. Inside the kangaroo pocket, I held tight to the cold metal of the scissors.

  The back door slid open, and I glanced over my shoulder, reluctant to turn my back on Josephine’s forest. Nick had a blue paper bag of salt under his arm.

  He came to stand beside me. “Okay, we have what you want.”

  Eric’s head lifted, eyes open and staring.

  “Now what?” I called.

  Eric’s face parted in a gruesome smile. “Now Nick and I go desecrate some graves.”

  “I will not help you do that!” Nick shouted.

  “You won’t have a choice. Your body is mine.”

  I laughed. I actually laughed. “You’re so wrong, Josephine. You can’t have us. We have armor.” And I held out my rings
. “You should know that.”

  “Oh, silly, silly girl.” Eric’s mouth pulled into a mocking frown. “Didn’t you know? Armor like that only works for the person it’s made for.”

  Nick whispered in my ear, “Be bound, to the ground.”

  The grass at my feet exploded up, spitting chunks of earth at me, and thick, snakelike roots grabbed hold of my ankles. I kicked and jerked away, but fell back and slammed into the ground. Pain jolted up through my bones, and I tasted blood on my tongue a moment before sharp pain caught up to where I’d bitten the tip.

  Roots kept bursting up through the ground, winding around my legs. I yelled, wordlessly, reaching down and tearing at them. Crows took to the sky, screeching and beating their wings. The roots stilled, but I was stuck. They tightened when I pulled, like a Chinese finger trap. I twisted onto my stomach and searched, but Nick was gone.

  NICHOLAS

  It was like being in the dog dream, where I’m bombarded by images and sensations and can’t control them or make any sense of them—but it doesn’t matter anyway, because my brain hasn’t really kicked in. It was so much worse than before, in Silla’s front yard. I’d been able to fight then, push and feel the capillaries in my fingers and toes burn. Now I was nothing but a viewer.

  But I’m glad I wasn’t fully engaged.

  The ground trembled, and I saw flashes of a great mechanical arm in front of me, thudding into the earth again and again.

  A thing, a slimy, awful thing, clung inside my head, made my feet move, my hands move, directed my eyes and lips. I heard slick thoughts that weren’t my own, longings and anger and old, old sorrow, crowding me as I watched the backhoe excavate Reese’s grave.

  SILLA

  The sky was perfectly clear above me. In the circle of forest where I lay tied down with roots, it was dark and shadowed, but up there, where the crows wheeled in frenetic circles, it was light. The sun shone.