Spells of Blood and Kin

by Claire Humphrey

  She didn’t have the family she needed, though. Like a stepsister she’d barely met could possibly do anything for her in the face of losing Baba.

  Maybe it was best Dad wasn’t coming: he would have got all involved in the businessy parts, trying to make Lissa sell the house and invest in a new condo or something like that. He wouldn’t be able to help her with the church ladies. He would want her to drop everything Baba had taught her and enroll in an accounting course. At least with Stella, she’d probably just get platitudes.

  Lissa dropped the phone on the floor and lay down on the sofa, exhausted beyond anything, and after dark, she woke up briefly to shuck off her dress, and then it was the third day.

  APRIL 26

  FULL MOON

  Maksim slowed when the sun began to rise behind him, casting the shadow of his running form onto the dew-wet road. He veered off across unkempt grass and ducked through a stand of poplars. The buds smelled like vanilla caramel, intoxicating in the cool dawn air.

  He was wringing wet with sweat, his hair and his shirt slicked to his skin. He peeled off his clothes, tossed them over a poplar branch, and strode naked right into the wavelets of Lake Ontario. The water was heavy with weed and cold enough to make him bare his teeth. He forged ahead and dove.

  He burst up through the surface, blinked wet eyelashes. Lake water ran down his face, into his mouth; along with the rank freshness of aquatic life, he could taste faint lacings of city soot and jet fuel. The sunrise struck brightness off the glass towers of downtown. Maksim shook droplets from his hair and walked up through the water onto the beach.

  He paced over the sand and up onto damp grass. The breeze lifted all the tiny hairs on his skin. Delicious.

  With the cold and the light and the long run he’d had, Maksim came to a bit of clarity and recalled there was something not correct about walking naked out of doors beside the water.

  Maksim ran his hands through his wet, matted hair and tried to think. He wasn’t supposed to be doing any of this. Was he?

  He circled back along the sand to where his clothes hung from the tree; the breeze carried the reek of his own dried sweat lingering on the fabric. And something else too, on the shirt, as he pulled it from the branch and over his head, something both enticing and horrifying. He settled his cap in place and looked down at himself.

  Blood. That was blood on his clothing. Only a few droplets and smears, dry and brown, but he could smell it fully now, electric. The scent shot straight to his other nature, his worst and wildest self.

  Maksim rubbed the stained cloth over his face. The blood smell, his own and another’s. Whatever he’d been thinking was already lost in the intense and thoughtless pleasure his nature brought on him. His human will was nothing in the face of such intoxication.

  He held still for a second with the shirt pressed to his mouth and nose. Something was not right.

  Tossing his head didn’t shake off the confusion. He barely remembered to shove his feet into his battered shoes. He strode quickly west along the water’s edge and picked up speed, hitting the sand harder. Nothing in his mind but his body’s command.

  APRIL 26

  FULL MOON

  Nick woke to Hannah’s voice. He wrapped his arm over his ears but couldn’t quite block it out.

  “You know better than that, even if he doesn’t. Christ! You’re like little kids. I don’t know which of you is worse.”

  “Hannah,” Jonathan said. “Are you seriously mad at me for getting mugged?”

  “I’m mad at you for not taking your best friend to the hospital!” she said. “What if he has a concussion?”

  “Me?” Nick said, squinting. “Come on, seriously? I don’t have a concussion; I have a hangover.” He sat up too quickly and saw flashes of color: pale-blue walls, burgundy Ikea love seat, salt-and-pepper shag rug, parquet floor. He pressed a hand to his head. “Why are we at your place, J?”

  “You couldn’t find your key,” Jonathan said. He didn’t look so great himself: black hair shower-wet, straggling over his pale forehead, his whole posture slouched and pained.

  “I don’t remember that,” Nick said before he could censor himself.

  “See?” said Hannah. “Short-term memory loss. That’s not a great sign, in case you weren’t paying attention.” She was bent toward him, big brown eyes too intent and close. Nick thought her eyes were pretty, but not when she was pointing them at him like this.

  “That’s a sign that I was plastered,” Nick said as firmly as he could manage. “And high. Also high.”

  Hannah shone a flashlight in his face.

  “What the hell?”

  “Your pupils are normal,” she said, standing upright again and crossing her arms. “Any dizziness?”

  “Jonathan, J, God, make your girlfriend leave me alone,” Nick said, scrambling off the love seat and making for the bathroom. “You might’ve signed up for this, but I sure as shit did not.”

  “Head pain?” Hannah called after him.

  “Yes!” he snapped. “You. You are a pain in my head. Also a pain in my ass. Hangover, remember? I’m helping myself to your Tylenol.”

  “Take the aspirin instead. Better for your liver,” Hannah said.

  Nick slammed the bathroom door and leaned over the toilet. The heaves tugged a bright net of pain over his left side. He tucked his elbow down reflexively, but it didn’t help. His head throbbed in a hot, tight, feverish way.

  He didn’t look at himself in the mirror until he’d rinsed his mouth and swallowed a couple of pills. Then, with Jonathan’s washcloth, he dabbed at the crusty dried-blood trail that led down from his temple. The cut itself was beaded with fresh red and clear ooze by the time he’d finished, and it looked gross but clean. Jonathan didn’t seem to own Band-Aids large enough to cover the whole thing, but Nick put three little ones across the widest part, stretching them tight in the hopes it would pull the skin together.

  His eyes looked okay to him: gray green with a dark ring around the iris, like his father’s, usually vivid against his Greek coloring, when he wasn’t busy looking like shit. Right now, his skin was weirdly sallow, and he could actually see why Hannah was freaked out, not that it was any of her business. He splashed cold water on his face until the sweaty dizziness began to recede, and then he had to redo one of the Band-Aids.

  By the time he came out, Hannah had given up yelling at Jonathan and was curled up against his side on the cramped love seat, reading Harper’s, her dark bangs covering the frown in her brows.

  “Seriously, though,” she said to Nick. “Can you assure me, as a grown-up, that you don’t need medical attention?”

  “Don’t you count as medical attention? You’re going to be, like, a brain surgeon by next week or something. You aced everything this year, right?” As if he didn’t know; as if Hannah’s transcript wasn’t stuck to the refrigerator right here in Jonathan’s apartment. Nick didn’t know who was more proud: Hannah of her high marks or Jonathan of the genius he’d managed to convince to date him. It was kind of gross.

  “No joking,” Hannah said. “I need to know you’re taking this seriously.”

  “Fine,” said Nick. “I’m totally, completely fine. Swear to God.”

  “And you’ve learned your lesson.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And you’re not going to take Jonathan drinking in bad neighborhoods anymore?”

  “Not even to celebrate the end of finals? There are only so many more finals in our lives, you know,” said Nick. He shuffled over to the love seat and slouched down on the arm of it, ignoring the way it creaked. “And as soon as they’re all over, you’re going to make Jonathan marry you, and then neither of us is ever going to have fun ever again.”

  “There’s fun, and then there’s fun,” Hannah said with one of her sudden little grins; she glanced up at Jonathan through her eyelashes, and he sighed happily and kissed the side of her head.

  “Gross,” Nick said aloud. “J, that was supposed to make
you uncomfortable. The marriage thing, I mean. And you’re just sitting there and taking it.”

  “It’s not like we haven’t thought about it,” Jonathan said, yawning. “I mean, we’ve been together two years already. I’m only one more semester away from my MA, and then I do my doctorate and Hannah does her residency, and assuming the stress doesn’t make us kill each other…”

  “So romantic,” Hannah said, rolling her eyes a little. “I just know he’s going to propose while I’m in the middle of a thirty-hour shift, up to my elbows in placenta or something.”

  Nick groaned and wrapped his arms around his head. “You’re going to make me puke,” he said, and it didn’t come out as jokey as he was hoping, given the upsurge of actual nausea in his throat. “I’m unfriending you and moving to Japan to teach English or something.”

  “Nope. No way. You’ll be our best man,” Hannah said, reaching up to pat Nick’s cheek. “If you live that long.”

  Nick gingerly slid down to the floor away from her hand and propped himself against the love seat’s leg. “If you have any sisters, I’ll try to make it until the wedding.”

  “As if I’d ever let my sisters within a mile of you,” Hannah said.

  “Pick out my tux while you’re at it,” Jonathan said, stretching. “But let’s do it over eggs.”

  “Eggs!” Nick agreed with an enthusiasm he definitely didn’t feel.

  He managed to keep it together through a diner breakfast, forcing down enough bacon and pancake to keep Hannah off his back. Jonathan kept going back over the mugging, making up details that Nick swore to. He didn’t mention the other guy—maybe didn’t even remember him—and Nick wasn’t going to be the one to start that.

  At least he’d found his house key in the bottom of the wrong pocket of his blood-smeared cargo shorts.

  By the time he made it home, he was bagged—cold and exhausted and nauseated, and his ribs burned, and maybe he was being an idiot about not going to the doctor, but he just wanted his own bed.

  He went to sleep right away. Sometimes he shivered himself back awake. Sometimes he sweated.

  Everything hurt, bone-deep. Everything thrummed with a feverish energy.

  Sometimes he heard a voice that might have been his own, whining quietly like a puppy—sometimes, outside, the rush and roar of the city as it rolled over from day toward night.

  APRIL 27

  WANING GIBBOUS

  The third day consisted of organizing the cremation, the transfer of the deed to the house, the bank account.

  Also, it was time to wash the kitchen floor.

  Lissa was just filling a bucket when the doorbell rang. The church ladies had been coming by since the funeral, but silently. Women brought rugelach and blood sausages and huge Tupperware bowls of borscht and left them on her doorstep. Gifts, as well as food: a little leather purse of subway tokens, a basket of herbal teas, and several envelopes of cash. But they did not interrupt Lissa in her time of grief.

  Through the front window, Lissa saw a taxi departing. She dried her hands and opened the door.

  A young woman stood before her, tall and smooth-haired, with a silk scarf around her throat and a characteristic way of tilting her chin down. “Stella?” Lissa said.

  “Did I make it in time?” Stella said. “I flew out as soon as Dad called me, but I wasn’t sure. He’s in Belgium right now, closing a deal, and Mum couldn’t leave the surgery, but I thought someone should come to you.”

  “You missed the funeral,” Lissa said.

  “Oh,” Stella said. “I’m sorry.” She stood there, hair and scarf stirring in the warm breeze.

  Lissa stood, too, in the doorway of the house, which was her house now—every dim and dusty corner of it, every old book. She felt it hunched behind her like an injured animal, waiting to be put out of its misery.

  Stella stepped forward and embraced her carefully. She smelled faintly of expensive scent. After a moment, she let go and patted Lissa’s shoulder, fished in her purse, found a travel pack of Kleenex, and handed one to Lissa.

  Lissa took it automatically and kept standing there, and then Stella’s arms came around her again.

  “You’ve been doing this all alone, haven’t you?” Stella said. “It’s okay. I’ll help with everything. I can stay as long as you need.” She took the tissue and wiped the tears from Lissa’s face until Lissa pulled away, edging back inside the house.

  Stella followed her in. “I’ll just bring my gear in, shall I?” she said, and she started lugging things into the front room: two suitcases, one of which was tagged as overweight; a rolling laptop case; and a handsome leather tote with a scarf tied around the strap.

  Lissa backed against the hallway radiator. “You … you don’t have a hotel room, do you?”

  “That’s all right, isn’t it?” Stella said over her shoulder. “Dad said the house was big. And the flight pretty much used up my budget.” She came up with the tote and the laptop case and stacked them on Lissa’s sofa. “Dad wanted me to tell you he’s sorry for your loss,” she said, a little stiffly.

  “Um. Thanks.” Lissa took the tote and the laptop case from the sofa and placed them fussily beside the lamp in the corner. Stella, seeming not to notice, put one of the suitcases on the sofa instead.

  “He didn’t even write a card, the arse,” Stella burst out. “I shouldn’t’ve said that! I’m sorry. I know he feels for you, of course he does, he’s just—”

  “He’s just Dad,” Lissa said, moving the suitcase into the corner with the other things. Dad called Lissa once or twice a year, on or near her birthday. On Christmas sometimes too, forgetting that Baba and Lissa followed the Russian tradition of celebrating the new year instead. “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

  “It’s not fine. Family needs to stick together. That’s why I came,” Stella said.

  “How long are you here for?” Lissa asked, taking the final suitcase out of Stella’s hands and wheeling it into the corner.

  “As long as you’ll have me.” Stella smiled tentatively. “I mean, I figured you might need some help cleaning the house.”

  “I don’t have a guest room,” Lissa said. The house had three bedrooms: Baba’s, Lissa’s, and the storage room. She wondered if she sounded like a jerk but didn’t apologize.

  “You have a chesterfield,” Stella said, biting her lip. “You won’t even notice me. And I can help—really, I can.”

  Stella didn’t look particularly useful: all posh prettiness and sleek blown-out hair, even after however many hours on a plane. She looked like the receptionist at a high-end law office: someone who probably made a great cup of tea and knew people’s official titles. Not what Lissa needed at all. And if Lissa was right, the quickest way to get rid of her was probably to take her up on her offer.

  “The kitchen floor needs mopping,” Lissa said. “That’s where Baba died.”

  She led Stella into the room, where the bucket still stood, half-filled. She stopped short of pointing out the spot on the floor, not out of kindness but because the words backed up in her throat.

  Stella was too tall to look up at Lissa, but with her head ducked down like that she gave a good imitation of it. After a stiff moment, Stella unclenched her hands, took the mop—wordlessly—and the bottle of Mr. Clean, laid her pair of gold rings on the counter, and went to work.

  Lissa left her to it, shut herself in the upstairs bathroom, and had a very long shower. When she was as clean as she could get, she still didn’t know what to do next.

  She dressed and braided her hair. In the mirror, she saw a person who would never be mistaken for anything other than Stella’s stepsister: six inches shorter, heavier chested, lacking Stella’s lean grace. Fair-haired but not quite blond. Peasant stock. When Lissa got old, she’d look just like Baba, lumpy and square.

  That was half of why Dad had left Mum, she thought; bearing Lissa had used up whatever beauty had attracted Dad. Or maybe as he earned more money he’d felt himself entitled to someone mo
re cultured, with less old-country baggage. He’d met Julie while he was on a business trip.

  He hadn’t married Julie until well after Mum died. Lissa didn’t know why he’d waited.

  She wondered if he’d ever talked with Stella about any of it.

  Downstairs, Stella was just putting away the mop in the closet under the stairs. She rolled her head on her neck and said, “It’s just drying. I was wondering—I’m starved—do you have a favorite takeaway? On me, I mean.”

  Lissa, feeling like even more of a jerk, picked her way over the damp spots on the kitchen floor to show Stella the refrigerator stuffed with the casseroles and soups from the church ladies.

  “My God,” said Stella. “How many people do they think are living here?”

  They ended up eating cold borscht and piroshki, sitting on the porch steps. By the time she’d finished her portion, Stella was yawning every minute. “It’s much later at home,” she explained. “I found some sheets in the closet and set up the chesterfield. I was wondering if you have a spare pillow?”

  As easy as that, Lissa seemed to have missed her chance to be firm and send Stella to a hotel. For tonight, anyway.

  She gave up thinking of it after a minute and helped Stella get settled, locating towels and pillows and toothpaste. Stella went to hug Lissa again when she said good night, and Lissa let her, standing still within the circling arms.

  Lissa shut the door and wandered back into the kitchen, where the floor was now clean and she could walk on every part without seeing Baba’s face and the dribble of bloody sputum.

  She saw it, anyway. She should have expected it, she said to herself, trembling beside the cabinet, unwilling to cross to the sink.

  There were recipes to make for the ladies. Tonight was a day off the full moon, and her unexpected houseguest was sleeping. There would not be a better time.

  She still could not face the kitchen. She turned away and went to bed.

  And then it was the fourth day, and the lawyer called her to come by for Baba’s lockbox, which turned out to contain the letter and the doll.