The Blood Keeper

by Tessa Gratton

My heartbeat was loud as a helicopter. I wanted to fly—no, I wanted to be here. To be. Here.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ben asked. I heard the cage creaking.

  Mab kissed me.

  She clutched my shoulders and pushed her mouth against mine. Opened up to me.

  Everything lasered in on that.

  On her lips.

  Not moving, just being there.

  “Will,” she whispered. “Don’t lose hold of this.”

  Cupping her face, I kissed her again, ignoring my brother, ignoring everything but Mab. My chest fit back into place. The terrible fluttering in my skin slowed. Mab slid closer, wrapped her arms all around my head until my cheek was against her neck. Her heartbeat filled my ears, and she ruffled her fingers in my feather-hair. “What happened?” she asked.

  “It was—it was my body.” I twisted my fingers in the ends of her yellow hair. I was hers, that voice said again. “I want it back.”

  “Good,” she soothed.

  “No.” I pushed away. Stood up. “Not good. That’s my body and I want it back.” I bent over, braced my hands on my knees. “I have to get it back. It’s mine.” Every time I shut my eyes, I saw it stalking around Mab. Grabbing her shoulders. Shoving her down. Laughing and frowning with my face. I scrubbed these black crow-thing hands over my black crow-thing eyes as if I could block it out.

  Mab stood, too. Her hands set firmly on her hips. “It is good, Will. Because I know how to do it.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  MAB

  It had only taken an hour to explain my plan to Ben and Will, even now that it had been altered to fit both of them into it. Ben had asked a few questions, and I’d had answers for all, until he was satisfied that it was dangerous, but possible.

  Everything revolved around the countercurse Arthur and I had used to destroy the black candle rune on that walnut tree last year.

  I’d use the same curse on Gabriel, and it would burn all the magic out of Will’s body—Gabriel included.

  The spell required two steps: Getting the initial magic into Gabriel in order to open him up to the countercurse. That I would accomplish from the inside: just as Gabriel had poisoned Will’s blood, so would I poison his now. Then, nine hours later, it was a matter of activating the countercurse by delivering the second rune—in our case, by way of an inscribed dagger that would be stabbed directly into him.

  Because magic is a dance of balance, there were also two complications. First was breaking Lukas free of Gabriel’s control, and second was preventing the countercurse from tearing loose to destroy everything in its path.

  The first I would solve by using a black candle rune of my own. The second had a solution, but not one anybody would like.

  The only sound was the scratchy old ballad singing out from Granny’s radio. I’d called for Gabriel, then hitched myself onto the counter with the bottle of charmed wine tucked in my lap.

  From my perch I could see through the archway into the main hall and on through to the living room, where Gabriel was settled with Arthur’s books. “Coming,” he called back to me.

  I crossed my ankles, held my heels against the cabinets, and folded my hands around the neck of the wine bottle. I’d thrown open the windows to let in the warm night wind, grossly aware of how quiet it seemed without the rough calls of my crows.

  All my life had centered in this kitchen. I imagined Donna washing dirt off her hands in the sink. Granny Lyn patting a stool in the corner so that I’d come and let her trim my hair. Mother dancing down the hallway in a two-step, arms up to embrace an imaginary partner. Justin carving letters into the edge of the table with his dinner fork. Faith and Eli huddled over the newspaper, pointing out ads for free kittens because Hannah was begging for one.

  Arthur stood across from me, under the arch of the door. Staring back, not doing anything but looking at me. I wanted to smile, to promise him I was holding the land together. He said, “The blood is yours now, Mab, all the beauty of the world. Take it.”

  I closed my eyes, and when I looked again through a film of tears, he was gone.

  All the beauty of the world.

  In order to stop the countercurse from destroying the blood land, I would have to anchor it to myself as well as Gabriel. Giving it a second point of origin would force the magic to spiral away from both of us, but toward the other. Only we, and everything between us, would fall under the curse.

  This world, this land, was my home, and I could not let the burning fire of the countercurse ravage it all. I could not create ripples of power the way Arthur had when he’d gone into the earth. That single act had drawn Will into all of this, and I would not let anything slip through my cracks, to draw more people into danger. There would be no holes in this plan. No homunculi run amok, no earthquakes, no mistakes. Even if it meant I gave up everything else.

  This curse would begin in Gabriel, and end in me.

  All the beauty of the world.

  My breath was so shallow and fast.

  Come to dinner, Gabriel, I begged silently, before I lose all courage to do what must be done.

  When I was a little girl, and afraid, I’d run to Arthur or my mother. Or I’d tug on one of Granny Lyn’s long silver braids until she let me onto her lap, and there she would put her arms around me and pray.

  Now I couldn’t turn to Arthur, not even to put one of his dry petals onto my tongue, because Gabriel would smell it. If my mother were here, she’d have said, Throw that wine away and embrace your new life with Gabriel—take what he’s offering, pet, and never look back.

  And so I clasped my hands more tightly together around the dark glass bottle. “May I live by thee, oh God,” I whispered, and felt a ghostly dry touch against my knuckles, as if Granny Lyn stood before me, holding her hands over mine. “Support me by the strength of heaven that I may never turn back. May I find the grace sufficient to all my needs.”

  “Are you praying?” Gabriel asked, lounging indolently against the archway.

  Will had asked me, too, and sounded just as surprised. “Why shouldn’t I pray?” I set the bottle of wine a little too hard on the counter.

  He slunk nearer, grinning. “Oh, only because we have no need for God here. Because I expected you to be far beyond such needs. But I suppose you are young yet, and perhaps Arthur put strange ideas into your head.”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “Prayer is like magic. Ordering words to put a call out to God.”

  “Yes, but when you were calling out to magic,” Gabriel put his hands on my knees and parted them so that he could slide up against the counter and say, with his lips very near mine, “you were calling out to me.”

  His power curled around me, a living thing, with roots and tendrils of its own, petals blossoming against my cheeks. I raised my free hand to his neck and rested it there. His pulse thumped under my finger. The rhythm of magic. Oh God, how I’d miss it.

  Gabriel nipped at my nose and then pulled away with a smile. “Have you forgiven me for being cruel this morning?”

  I summoned up a light smile and offered him the wine. “If you’ve forgiven me for the same.”

  Taking the bottle, Gabriel held my hand as I hopped off the counter. Together we sat at the fully set kitchen table. Roasted peppers, stuffed with paprika and ground beef and peas, steamed from our plates. A recipe Granny had taught me, and I wondered if he would know it.

  He did, shooting me an amused look as he poured us both wine. He lifted his glass. “To friendship?”

  “To the past, and the future,” I answered, raising mine as well. “But Gabriel, there is magic in this wine.”

  He paused with the rim against his bottom lip. The purple wine glittered richly through the crystal, as deep as his red eyes. “Magic.”

  I smiled. “Only a potion of sharing. Of gentle connection and forgiveness.”

  Skepticism narrowed his eyes, and so I let all the wine in my glass pour down my throat for him. The power tingled, stretching through me to my fingers and
toes, wrapping gently around my heart.

  WILL

  The moon was this tiny sliver just over the trees. We tried to draw a picture with salt and wax in near pitch darkness. Ben held the paper with the rune Mab had sketched. He loomed over me as I crouched, trying to get the salt circle right. Or the wax curved without burning my fingers off. Or setting these crazy feathers on fire.

  Our mission, while she distracted Gabriel and poisoned his blood, was to make this giant magical circle around the rosebush. We wouldn’t complete it. But everything except for the final line would be ready for Mab in the morning. It was a nine-spiral rune, she’d said, and apologized for the complicated angles we had to make nine times as evenly spaced around the circumference as possible. This was how she’d suck Lukas up from the roots and sever his ties to Gabriel. With power from the sacrifice of this body I was wearing, because it was all that remained of her familiar now.

  The timing had to be perfect, or I’d die and she’d fail.

  Ben nudged my shoulder and pointed at a spot I’d missed. We tried not to talk at all. Quiet, buzzing jazz music filtered out from the open kitchen windows on the front of the house.

  Working with these hands was easier than it should have been. I thought about it. Focused on it. Instead of worrying about Mab inside with that psychopath.

  Frogs screamed from the forest. Clouds rolled in just enough to hide the stars in the east. I shuffled along, pouring salt. Ben muttered as he counted steps around the circle and marked the best places for the nine runes.

  And finally, we were done.

  Ben and I stood side by side, looking at the house. The music continued, but we were more overwhelmed by the wind in the trees and those damn frogs. Crickets, maybe. Ben said, “You should get going. I’m going to use that tree there,” he pointed at a large one, with a branch low enough he’d be able to climb up easily.

  “Yeah.” I didn’t move.

  The wind blew lightly at us. It ruffled the feathers on the back of my neck. On my forearms. I shivered and remembered flight.

  “Better not rain,” Ben said. His eyes pinched as he looked at the distant clouds. “That would really screw all this up.”

  I still didn’t move. Didn’t say anything. My bare feet felt rooted to the ground.

  Ben turned abruptly and clapped his arms around me. “Be careful, you jackass.”

  My fists dug into his shoulders.

  “I wish I could do this for you.” Ben’s voice was hardly even a whisper.

  I whispered, “You can’t.”

  “I know. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be … Just be a Sanger.”

  Be a Sanger. I shook my head. “I wish I knew what that meant anymore, since Aaron died. It’s like the world ended.”

  Ben pushed away, just enough to grab my face. He had to tilt his head back, because in this body I was taller. “It didn’t.”

  “The world where I had two brothers did.”

  He didn’t like that, but he pushed his eyebrows together. “Maybe,” he admitted after a moment. “But not the world where you have one brother.”

  I started to say something, but Ben gripped my head hard enough I felt a feather behind my ear snap. “Not the one,” he said, “where I have a brother. You’re going to survive this. Both of us are. And that’s gonna be a world we deal with.”

  Pulling away, I bent to pick up the bag of supplies we’d brought from the barn. A knife jutted out against the plastic. I took it and cut my hand, gritting my teeth at the sting. Then I offered the hilt to Ben.

  Solemnly, he cut his hand, too. He held it out. I took it, and our blood smeared together.

  MAB

  Gabriel drank the entire bottle of wine, because I continued pouring it into his glass, sipping along with him. Will’s face popped pink in the cheeks, and Gabriel swayed. He laughed outrageously, delighted, he said, at the low tolerance of his brand-new body.

  I turned the music up as loud as the little radio would go, and Gabriel cheered, picked me up, and whirled me around in a jig. Our hands twined together; we cavorted into the parlor, kicked over stacks of books, and scattered Arthur’s drawings to the corners of the room. The bottle of wine rolled over the rug, under the sofa, anointing the house with its sharp aroma. Gabriel sang an old French song, grinning his never-Will grin, and I let my head fall back and closed my eyes as we danced and twirled. I was dizzy, and the magic pushed against my mind, Gabriel pushed there with his power. I welcomed it, I let my blood burn with his, and as we danced the potion seeped into our bones. Our magic reached for each other, and suddenly all the communion I had ever known while racing over the land, touching the power of the trees, rushed through me. My bones rang with it; my skin burned with the power. Oh God, I would miss it! Would miss the magic.

  My back hit the wall and Gabriel held me there, my feet off the ground. He kissed my neck, pressing the whole of himself against me. “Gabriel,” I said, struggling away.

  He laughed and caught my hand as I dashed down the hall, gave a sharp tug and spun me back into a dance.

  I swam through it, the earth turning under me and the music all around. Just those little sips of wine and the potent magic in them set my head spinning. I danced with him, knowing this was the last night of his life, of my magic. For these few moments I would give in, I would swell with the power, our power. And always, throughout the rest of my life, I would have the memories of it burned into my imagination.

  WILL

  I flew down the hill toward Mab’s silo. Crashed through the trees once I was far enough away from the house. I let go and ran.

  If something went wrong tomorrow morning, I was going to die. When the magic ripped through this body, if I couldn’t hold on to my real one, that would be it.

  Poof.

  No more Will Sanger.

  So I flew.

  My bare feet knew the way, and I dodged branches like I’d been running these woods my whole life. In this body, I heard everything. Wind rushed past my ears. I remembered the sound of flying, too, all roaring air and wings beating louder than any heart. Even now the world had come alive for me. Insects, night birds, frogs, and the constantly shifting leaves. It was so loud. So awesomely loud.

  I didn’t want to go back to the quiet. To the scratchy white noise that had been my life as Will Sanger.

  I don’t want.

  I don’t want.

  Always what I didn’t want.

  What did I want?

  I stumbled and fell to my hands and knees in a slick patch of cold, dead leaves. I clutched at them, digging my strange black fingers in. I thought about what Ben had said. The weight of a year without Aaron pushed into my back.

  And with it, Reese’s memories: dead mother, dead father, anger so hard it broke walls. Fighting for life and failing. Death. Death. Death.

  Then flight.

  I rolled over onto my back, wiped at my eyes. Overhead, the trees rose up, winding limbs together into a net of black. Through leaves and twigs, the sky was only more black and tiny, tiny stars.

  In my daydreams I was always flying away from things. From Aaron’s death, from the Naval Academy, from Mom’s silence. From Dad’s expectations and honor. From the sheer awesomeness that Ben wanted to trust me. And even when I had a destination, it was only that distant promised land. Not anything real. Not a future or a destiny. Not even a job.

  Like I was the one who’d died. Been cut off from the life intended for me.

  But I wasn’t dead. Not yet. And it was moronic to stand still just because Aaron didn’t get to go forward.

  I was going to get my body back. Live my life—not anybody else’s but mine.

  Because I wanted it.

  FIFTY-NINE

  MAB

  Arthur’s ceiling had a skylight, roughly cut out and paned with a single piece of glass. Through it, I watched the stars move, while trapped under Gabriel’s arm. He’d passed out singing, holding me with him. I should have slept, too, but couldn’t bring myself to close my
eyes on my last night with magic in my veins. Gabriel’s breath pulsed slow and steady against my cheek, and my heart fell into rhythm with it.

  But late in the night, so late it was nearly morning, I slid out from his embrace.

  “Where are you going?” he whispered.

  “Seven-day binding, and to watch the dawn.” I brushed my fingers on his forehead, skimmed one along his cheekbone just under a bloodred eye. I thought of the black feathers cresting along Will’s new cheek. “If you feel any magic, that’s what I’m doing. Don’t worry, and I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  A sweet smile edged his mouth as he drifted back to sleep.

  As I watched, I felt the lines of my face harden. Now was the time.

  In my own bathroom, I bathed quickly and slipped into a pale lavender dress with a low-cut back. I braided my hair with purple and black ribbons for strength, power, and binding. A single red ribbon wound around my left wrist. Mother used to say it was best to dress the part, and that was the only thing she and Granny Lyn ever agreed upon. I smeared my hands with oil of yarrow and rue, rubbing it deep into my skin, and pulled the wax-sealed box out from under my bed, for it held the things I required.

  As I made my way down the twisting path toward the sunflower field, I reached out and skimmed my fingers along leaves. It was dark, but they knew me as I knew them. So many hundreds of times I’d done this as I walked, but now, this, this was the last.

  I paused in a shady grove of elm trees, beside a cluster of evening primroses. I gripped a dagger in one hand, dangerous and bright, and the other hand I held out, palm up and fingers curled loosely. As I quieted myself, I listened to the beat of my heart as it pumped magic swiftly to all my capillaries. I stared at the lines of my hand, the rough pink pads of my fingers, the bluish veins hiding under the most delicate flesh spreading from between my thumb and forefinger.

  Wind brushed through the narrow elm leaves, sending several to flutter down. Predawn birdsong and the distant tinkling of bells from the charms atop the silo sounded like giggling.