Molly and Kels scowled my way. Delighted, I said almost merrily, “Eric sure can’t get away from me fast enough.”
“It isn’t you,” Nick said, resting his hand lightly against the small of my back. His touch was hot through my layers of T-shirt. “He thinks he’s doing me a favor.”
“Is he?” My smile widened.
Nick paused; then he raised a finger to tip the brim of his fedora lower in a bow. “You bet.” He wrapped his fingers around mine. “Christ, you’re freezing. Here,” he said as he reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a flask. “This will warm you.”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s just Jameson. Whiskey.”
I winced.
“Good for the soul?”
His hopeful expression made me laugh.
“Okay, okay!” Nick tucked the flask away. “Just dancing, then, to warm you up.” He pulled my hand, drawing me through the crowd to the bonfire. No one else was dancing. Nick spun so that his back was to the fire, and grinned. I could barely make out his features with all the orange light behind him. He leaned in, took my other hand, and brought me closer. Under the brim of his hat, his eyes were shrouded in darkness. My heart beat faster, and I had to blink away the halo surrounding him. He was Mephistopheles, smiling and tempting me, his Dr. Faustus, to dance.
I closed my eyes and stepped in. My hands found his shoulders, and my finger bones sucked up heat from the fire. Nick was warm, too. I followed his movements, letting my feet go freely where he took me, and his hands pressed just over the belt of my low-riding jeans, guiding me, pulling me, pushing me, willing me to twirl and step and glide. His fingers dug into my hips, not painful but making me want to grip his shoulders and climb up into his arms. To forget myself in the dancing, in the flickering orange fire and black night.
The song shifted and he murmured in my ear, “It’s practically a swing beat. Can you swing?” He let go of me except for one hand on mine, and spun me under his arm. I snapped out and back in, hitting his body, but he moved with it, catching me against his chest so we sank into a shallow dip. I gasped. He swung me up and around and I couldn’t pay attention, could only close my eyes and feel the pressure of his hands pushing and pulling, his hip tapping mine, telling my body where to go, what to do. I felt my blood racing through me, powerful and strong, singing the way it did right before magic happened. But we were only dancing.
As he twisted my arms overhead and spun me again, I let my head fall back. The stars swirled and there was the moon, so full and close to us. I laughed, releasing some of the weight that had rested heavy on my shoulders for so long.
Nick tugged me sharply. My body snapped against his. His hands flattened on my back and he dipped me again, deeper this time, and held me there. I clung to his shoulders.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “No worries, Silla.”
I remembered how he’d risen from behind the grave marker last Saturday night, so at ease and belonging there with me, and I wondered if anybody’s blood would work. Could he do magic? Nicholas, my boy from the cemetery? Could I invoke that part of him that had met me the first night I bled for magic? The laughter drained out of me. I glanced away.
Slowly, he drew me upright. “Silla, what did I say?”
His chest was so warm under my palms, for a moment, I almost leaned in and rested my cheek against it, buried my face in his neck. I wanted what his hands promised. Stepping away instead, I put on a bright smile. “Nothing.”
“Silla.” His frown pulled at the shadows hiding his eyes.
“Haven’t you heard? I’m crazy.” I turned away and added, “It’s in the genes.”
NICHOLAS
She left a great black hole of cold air behind. As she moved away, she wrapped her arms around herself again. The sparkle of her rings winked back at me. “Shit,” I hissed, and jogged after her.
“Silla.” I swung around in front of her. “Wait.”
She stopped, eyes down. The light punching out of the barn hit her face. There was glitter in her eye shadow, and her lips were painted a soft maroon to match her clingy shirts. Finally she looked up. Even standing this close, I’d barely have to bend to kiss her. But she looked so tired; it was scratched into the edges of her eyelids, pressing down the corners of her mouth. For a moment, I could see through her ivory skin to the webbing of capillaries and muscles and tendons beneath.
It hurt, I wanted to kiss her so badly.
“What?” Her fingers tightened on her elbows.
“Let me get you a drink.”
She nodded once. “There’s a water jug in the barn. Eric’s mother insists on it, because it would be tough to spike.”
“Brilliant.” I considered offering my hand but didn’t. Instead I gestured for her to go first.
A long fluorescent light glared over the wooden floor and hay bales for benches. Three mostly depleted trays of food waited on a card table, and beside it was a bench spread with two-liter soda bottles and piles of plastic cups. I grabbed two cups and followed Silla to the corner with the water cooler.
Armed with water, we found a hay bale. I straddled it and Silla sat with her knees together. The cowboy boots peeking out from under her jeans were red. And adorable. I took back every nasty thought I’d ever had about cowboy boots.
Only three other people congregated in the barn, over near the snacks. I tasted my water and watched Silla’s delicate profile. “I haven’t heard,” I said. It was a lie, of course. I’d heard plenty from Eric.
Startled out of some reverie, she said, “Heard what?”
“That you’re crazy.”
“Oh.” She dropped her eyes again. Swirled the water in her cup. “Well, you’ve only been here a week or something.”
“You should tell me.”
She laughed.
“No, really. If you tell me, your version will be the first I hear.” I grinned and pushed my hat slightly higher on my forehead.
“You’re really something, Nick.” Silla turned and hooked her leg up on the hay bale.
“I’m not used to all this small-town, everybody-knows-everything-about-everybody business. Where I come from, gossip is just gossip, and everybody’s crazy.”
“Sounds like a castle on a cloud.” Her smile faded as she studied my face. I crossed my eyes.
“Okay, Nick.” She smiled at my expression, then gulped the rest of her water. “Here’s what happened. I came home from spending the afternoon with Wendy and Beth and Melissa. We’d been shopping, and I had a really nice new pair of jeans. I got home and Mom’s and Dad’s cars were both there, which wasn’t that weird. It was summer, so Dad didn’t have regular classes. But the front door was open, even though it was like a hundred degrees outside. I went in, dropped my bag, and smelled this awful, reeking smell.” She licked her lips and raised her chin.
Staring into my eyes, she continued, “It was blood. I found them in the study, Dad’s office. They were collapsed on top of each other. Huge holes were blown in Mom’s chest and Dad’s head. It was like someone had spilled gallons of bright red paint everywhere. The floor was sticky with it. I stopped in the doorway and just couldn’t move. It smelled, and … their arms were around each other. There was blood on the desk and bookshelves. I wish I’d thought to look for a pattern, but who’d—” She shook her head, blinking and pressing her fists into her lap. She looked away. Took a deep breath. For a moment, I thought she was finished. Then she said softly, “Reese found me, like an hour later. I was just kneeling on the floor, staring. Blood had soaked into my jeans. He dragged me outside and left me in the sun while he called the police. I hadn’t even called the police. I found my parents dead in their own blood and I didn’t do anything.”
I didn’t say the obvious things. What could you have done? Who could blame you? “So that’s why people think you’re nuts?”
“No.” She smiled: a weird, twisted smile. “They think I’m crazy because the official report, or whatever, claims my dad went crazy
, killed Mom, and then killed himself. And I flipped out when they told me. It got around.”
“That … seems like a pretty normal reaction to me. I’d be pretty pissed in your shoes.”
“It was the most violent crime in the history of our town, and until it happened, everybody loved my dad. He was quiet and kind and a really good teacher. But lurking inside, apparently, was a psychopathic killer.” Silla’s jaw clenched.
“And it scared people. Especially because he worked at the school, right?”
She darted a glance of surprise at me. “Yeah, exactly. They were a bunch of cowards and didn’t really believe in Dad. I mean, they should have tried to catch somebody else harder, if they really had faith in him.” Color soaked into her cheeks, blotchy and mad. With one thumb, she was rubbing the palm of her other hand in jagged little strokes.
I took her hand and started to rub the palm with both my thumbs. Her skin was warmer than I’d ever felt it. Almost hot. I looked down. In the center of her palm was a thin pink line. Like an old wound. The edges pulled at her skin, distorting her life line a little. It could have been an accident, could have happened when she tripped and caught herself on some rock, or when she grabbed a broken plate. Anything.
But I knew it wasn’t. As sure as I knew this cowboy town wasn’t where I wanted to spend the rest of my life, I knew Silla had made this cut herself.
Silla hissed sharply, and tugged at her hand.
“Silla.” I watched her face. Tell me about the magic.
She didn’t meet my eyes. “I have to get out of here.”
“Let’s go.” I stood up, pulling her by the hand.
“Nick, you don’t have to—I mean, you should stay.”
“Nah. Not my thing. Honestly, and speaking of flipping out, I’m about to take an ax to those speakers.”
“Can you drive me home?”
I grimaced. “Actually, no. I don’t have my car here. It got a massive flat this morning.”
Silla hesitated, her lower lip sucked in just slightly, then she said, “Walk me, then?”
“You bet.”
We left the barn, hand in hand. I managed to catch Eric’s eye and waved. “Which way?” Several people glanced at us, noted our hands and that we were leaving together. Good.
Silla pulled us to the right. “It’s only about two miles that way.” She pointed.
“Not a problem, unless you get cold.”
“I’ll survive.”
“Whiskey will keep you from hypothermia.”
She stopped, threw me a sideways glance. “And you?”
A smile spread across my mouth. “God, I hope so.”
We walked silently for a few minutes. There was no path, and we tromped through knee-high grass and weeds. My pants were going to need dry cleaning, and I wished I’d worn something more practical, like jeans. Oh, well. Silla, on the other hand, dove straight into the grass with total disregard for her clothes. I tried to imagine my ex tromping over anything but concrete or manicured lawns. Made myself chuckle.
“What?” Silla asked.
“I was just thinking about girls from Chicago dragging me off through fields like this.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Prissy girls? No way. I like this better.” I squeezed her hand.
“I mean Chicago.”
“Oh.” I dragged the sound out, like I was only just realizing what she’d meant. She rolled her eyes and smiled. “In that case, yes. Almost constantly. There was always something to do. Movies, clubs, libraries. I could hop on the El and get anywhere in the city.” I shrugged. “Didn’t need a car.”
“Sounds crowded.”
“Yeah. It was great.”
“Why’d you move here?”
“Ha—well, that’s because my dad is a lawyer and he thought it was in my stepmom’s best interest to get out of Chicago. Some stalker or something, they tell me. Real hush-hush. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more illegal than that. Or she made it up in an impressive play for Dad’s sympathy. They’ve only been married for a few months, so maybe she used it to get her hooks in more securely. And to drag us out here.”
“Wow.”
“It was extremely convenient that Grandpa Harleigh croaked when he did.”
“Did you know him?”
“Nope. Just met him the once. I don’t know why he left me the house. No other family, I guess.”
“Will you go back to Chicago after graduation?”
“Sure, eventually. Periodically.”
“But not to live?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do? College?”
We hopped together over a tiny irrigation stream. “Find my mom.”
“You don’t know where she is?”
“Last I heard, somewhere in New Mexico pretending to be Native American.”
“What?”
“We’re, like, a sixty-fourth Cherokee or something totally minuscule like that, and she said she felt called to the ‘old ways.’ There wasn’t a forwarding address so that I could tell her the Cherokee were never a desert people.”
“How old were you when she left?”
“The first time? Eight. I don’t really remember, except being at the hospital. She’d bled all over the bathroom after a really stereotypical suicide attempt. And drugs, Dad says. She got clean, cracked up again when I was nine, tried to kill herself again, got clean, in this constant cycle. Then she screwed her dealer and Dad used that as an excuse to divorce her. He got full custody, and basically a restraining order. I haven’t seen her since I was thirteen. Just random postcards. She claims she went through rehab and is on the right track. I’ll find out after school, maybe. Dad can’t keep me from her when I’m eighteen.” I fell silent. It had been a long time since I’d laid it all out like that. I guess it was the night for stories.
Silla didn’t respond for a while. I watched my shiny black shoes kick through dead grass and thought of Mom sitting down in a hostel or bus station, scrawling a few words to me and putting on the stamp, then forgetting I existed for another few months. Or taking a razor to her wrists again. It was too much to ask that Mom had really given that up. It was an addiction. She hated her own blood for some reason she never shared. And when she couldn’t drain herself dry, she’d turned to drugs to dilute the magic’s power.
“That sucks, Nicholas,” Silla finally said, sounding very formal. Like she was closing off some ritual. Acknowledging what I’d gone through in a way nobody ever had before.
“I like it when you call me that,” I admitted. “It’s real.”
“Nicholas,” she said again, but more slowly.
I shivered and had to roll my shoulders back to regain some firm ground. “So what about you, Silla? What are you going to do after high school?”
She winced and I wanted to know what had crossed her mind. But she said, “I don’t know. Go to college, I guess. I was going to apply to Southwestern State, in Springfield. They have a great theater program.”
“You want to act, then.”
“I’ve always loved it. Performance. The audience, the language, the action, and just the energy that’s all around it. But you know, I have to feel it again.”
“I guess you aren’t feeling much these days.”
“Easier that way.”
It was too perfect an opportunity to pass up. I stopped. When she realized, she did, too, and turned to me with eyebrows raised. I took one step, let go of her hand, and put both of mine under her jaw. I kissed her.
Just a gentle press of lips, to gauge her reaction. I could smell her makeup, powdery and light. Her lipstick tasted vaguely of sweet, sharp fruit.
Silla curled her fingers into the hem of my vest, and she leaned in. I was abruptly aware of the rush of blood in my ears, drowning out the night bugs and the rattle of wind through dry leaves. Silla shuddered and broke her lips from mine, then pushed her forehead against my neck. Her nose was freezing. I wrapped both arms around her and hugged her,
tucking my chin over her head. She hunched into me, like she was taking shelter. I kissed her hair, and she lifted her face. “Nicholas.”
“Yeah?” I whispered.
Her hands crawled up my chest, and she raised them to bury in my hair. The fedora was knocked off and fell to the ground. She kissed me, hard. Like she was going to break my teeth. I gasped, grabbed her shoulders. Then I bit her lip and kissed back. We kissed like it was a competition, desperately clutching at each other.
Suddenly, Silla flung herself away. She turned her back. Her panting mirrored mine.
I was a little dizzy. And severely turned on. “Silla? Are you okay?”
She nodded and spun to me. Her eyes were bright as the moon. She held up her left hand, the one with the tiny pink scar. The tip of her middle finger was slick and dark. “I’m bleeding.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” I cringed, reached for her hand.
“No, no, that’s okay. It’s just, you know—blood.” She shook her head like she was rattling nasty thoughts free, then smiled rigidly. I saw the drop of blood on her lip.
I got it. The harsh smell, especially from inside her own mouth, had to hit her hard after finding her parents like that. How did she manage the magic? I swallowed a shaky breath. “We can keep walking.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moved. And then we were kissing again, pushing against each other. I tasted the tang of her blood and it made me dizzy, but elated—I was flying high, and my heart pumped hot, boiling blood through my veins.
Silla stumbled and fell, tearing out of my arms. I grabbed at her, but she landed with a girlish grunt in a tuft of thick grass. “Silla, sorry, I …”
She pressed her hands down, and the grass began to transform.
It shivered, green and gold turning bright, eye-popping yellow. Magenta flowers blossomed up the stalks, and violet, electric-blue, neon-orange buds exploded. Silla was surrounded by a Technicolor land of Oz.
From the center of it all, her mouth parted and she brushed her fingers over the tips of grass and petals.
My brain whirred like a toy helicopter, spinning and spinning until all I heard was the roar of rotator blades. I’d never seen anything like it.