“We’re getting along,” Lissa said, even though she knew he hadn’t been looking for a serious answer.
“You’re not shipping her back to Daddy?”
“She told you that?”
Rafe grinned. “Let’s just say you’re the quiet one in the family.”
“It was never up to me,” Lissa said. “She’s the one who decided to stay here.”
“In your house.”
“Well, yeah, I guess that part was up to me.”
Rafe reached out and took the tip of Lissa’s braid in his fingertips. “You’re doing good by her. In case you wanted my opinion. Which you probably don’t.”
Lissa made herself look at him. “She’s your kid too, right? Someone’s got to make sure I don’t mess her up.”
Rafe seemed to think she was joking. He laughed and tugged her hair and leaned across the bar to kiss her cheek. “Want to get brunch tomorrow? It’ll be breakfast for me, but you’re probably a disgusting early-morning person, right? We could meet up at that place on College at noon.”
“Sure,” Lissa said, dazed. Another date. Where were all these people coming from? People in her life, making plans with her, making jokes—had they all been waiting somewhere until Baba was gone?
She had one more drop-off for the church ladies tonight, and she wouldn’t mind sleeping late herself. She pictured warm morning air, the light sheet covering her, sun slanting at the window—the anticipation of brunch at the patio on College—and what if it was more than a brunch date later? Would she someday ask Rafe to sleep over? Would they wake side by side in the big bed, tangled in sheets, hands touching?
Lissa felt heat wash over her face, and she gripped her hands together under the bar, arms tight to her sides. Rafe wasn’t looking at her; he’d gone to take someone’s order at the other end of the bar. She was not allowed to have these thoughts. She was not permitted. What would Baba think?
She slipped off the stool and slung her bag over her shoulder. One pint and look where her mind had gone. There was work to do, and she had to call and check up on Maksim.
She didn’t cancel the date, though. She only mouthed, “See you tomorrow,” to Rafe and waved to Stella, and then she was outside in summer heat, and it seemed as if, all the way home, everyone she saw was holding hands.
Nine
JUNE 1
LAST QUARTER
Nick knocked too hard on the witch’s door and split his knuckle again.
“Crap,” he said, and he sucked the blood away. It tasted faintly like Maksim’s blood. He wondered when he had stopped finding this creepy.
A wad of Band-Aids bulged in his pocket. Maksim and Gus between them had told him twenty times already that he needed to be careful not to contaminate anyone else. He peeled one and covered the cut and, for good measure, smeared the door clean with his fingertip and licked that too.
Then he knocked again, more decorously.
The sister opened the door. Nick was the luckiest son of a bitch ever. Stella was just as tall and peach-skinned as he remembered from the other day, and she smiled at Nick in a hesitant way that made him wonder how old she was.
“Hi,” he said. “Remember me? Nick Kaisaris.” He held out his unbloodied hand. He knew he was rumpled from living out of his backpack; he had not shaved today and maybe not the day before, and he smiled at her with all his usual ease. Somehow in the last few weeks, he’d lost the need to excuse himself for anything.
“I remember. We weren’t properly introduced, though. Stella Moore.” God, that classy English voice, and her hand felt clean and warm.
“I had a question for your sister, but I’m glad to find you instead.”
“She’s not in,” said Stella, angling her torso to block the doorway. She didn’t look like her sister at all, except for the body language. That much was the same.
“I’ll wait,” said Nick, showing her his open hands. He wasn’t the kind of person who’d knock a girl aside to get into her house, not like Gus.
“I can’t let you in,” said Stella. “But I’ll wait outside with you, if you want. She shouldn’t be long. I suppose I shouldn’t offer you a beer.”
Nick didn’t ask why he didn’t rate a beer. He sat down cross-legged on the porch boards and leaned back on the cool yellow brick. After a minute, Stella came outside, handed him a glass of lemonade, and arranged herself just beyond his reach.
“What were you going to ask my sister?” she said.
“Witch things,” Nick said and laughed. He wondered if he laughed too much these days, with nothing exactly funny but everything so marvelously strange.
“Eggs? I can do that. Which ones did you get the other day? The sleep ones?”
“Not for me,” Nick said. “I tried one. I don’t need it; I can handle myself.” The egg had felt like quicksand, he thought; he’d been hoping for a pleasant, lazy high, like a Vicodin or something. But it wasn’t at all similar. He didn’t know how Maksim could stand it.
“For Maksim?” Stella asked. “Is he okay?” She leaned forward so that Nick caught the scent of her hair.
He swayed closer himself, entranced. “He’s not so good. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t even drink water unless you remind him.”
“Since his accident?” Stella said.
“That’s right; he’s not healing up very well, either. Gus is worried. I’m supposed to…” He could smell the sweat that gathered in the hollow of her throat and the blood that ran beneath her skin. “What was I saying?”
Stella pursed her lips. “Drink your lemonade.”
Nick did. It was delicious. He probably hadn’t been drinking enough water himself, what with all the bourbon he’d been putting away, taking turns with Gus watching Maksim sleep. He probably reeked of it. He was not a credible person anymore, and he could not bring himself to do anything about it.
“Anyway,” he said to Stella, “I wasn’t bound for greatness. I would have got a job in a call center. Or a chain bookstore. And they would have had to fire me sooner or later.”
“You were telling me about Maksim,” she reminded him. “You need to focus. Tell me if he needs medical care.”
“No,” said Nick. “It wouldn’t do any good.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
Stella rolled her eyes. “Are you always this spacey, or is there something wrong with you? Look, never mind. You’re above my pay grade, anyway. I’ll let it pass until Lissa gets here. You just drink your lemonade. It’s good for you. It’s got vitamins and electrolytes.”
“You remind me of Hannah,” said Nick. “Wife material.”
“Not for a couple of years yet,” Stella said, laughing. “Who’s Hannah? Your sister?”
“My best friend’s girl,” Nick said. “I’ve lost both of them.” His eyes spilled over, and he wiped them on his wrist. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t have a reasonable conversation anymore. No one told me about that part.”
“Hey. Hey.” She touched his shoulder. “We’ll do what we can.”
Nick tilted his head back against the bricks and pressed until his scalp felt like it would split. That was better. He would not cry now. He would be nice and sane and charming for the witch’s sister.
He raised his head and looked at Stella’s peach-pale face and scented her perfume again and the fresh sweat of her body. In it all, the very faintest trace of thundercloud.
“Are you a witch too?” he asked.
Stella’s face lit. “I’m learning.”
“I think I like witches. I don’t think I’m supposed to. Gus doesn’t.”
“Her loss,” Stella said. “More lemonade?”
While she opened the door, Nick shut his eyes tight and smelled the breath of the house: dry wood, oil-based paint, lemon polish, and a much heavier blast of the witch scent. It chilled him.
By contrast, Stella smelled like a spring storm, the kind that sweeps in gladly with a fresh, hard wind to crush the petals.
S
he stepped out of the house again with a pitcher in her hand and leaned down to refill Nick’s glass.
He caught her arm and pulled her down beside him, where he could press his face to her jawline. She was trembling, or maybe it was the strong thrum of blood through her body.
“Look, I’m pretty sure you’re harmless,” Stella said, “but what you’re doing is really inappropriate.”
Nick tasted, just barely, the lobe of her ear.
“Fair warning,” said Stella. She fumbled for a moment at the neck of Nick’s shirt.
Something cracked. Chill slimed the small of his back.
Nick jolted back against the wall.
Stella slid back out of reach.
Nick went to follow. He tripped on the toe of his sandal and hammered his knee into the porch flooring.
“You egged me,” he said wonderingly. “It’s a strong one.”
“It had better be,” Stella said. “My sister made it. Just sit there. I have more where that came from.”
Nick shook his head. Sleep fumes curtained his eyes: the heavy, inexorable sleep that comes with sickness. “Damn it,” he said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“You wouldn’t listen,” she said. She examined one of her fingernails and buffed it lightly against the floorboards.
Nick lolled back, blinking. He thought he might feel better if he got the mess of egg out of his shirt and waistband, but he could not quite be bothered. He rubbed at his eyes and face; his skin was half-numb and prickling.
“I’ve just crossed the ocean to get away from a presumptuous tosser,” Stella told him. “I’m not in the mood to put up with more of the same from you.”
“I didn’t mean to be a tosser. Sometimes I can’t stop myself.”
“Erick always said that kind of thing too. Show me you’re different.”
“So sure of yourself,” Nick said, and he shut his eyes; beyond his lids, the summer sun loomed bright and vague.
“I know what I know.”
She couldn’t know. She was young, younger than he was. She’d find out; he wasn’t some annoying little shithead like her ex. He was powerful. He could make things great for her, or he could make them awful. Nick wanted to tell her, to warn her; to take away the calm confidence from her face; to put fear into her, proper fear. No, that was not right; why should he be the one to take away the fresh strength of her? Why should he want to be cruel all of a sudden? Had he always wanted to be cruel?
He said none of this. He forced his eyes open again and plucked a lilac bloom from the tree and tore at the petals with fingers gone clumsy and cold.
JUNE 1
LAST QUARTER
Lissa took the sunny side of the table and watched the fine blond hairs on her arm stir in the warm breeze. She ordered iced coffee.
Rafe arrived before she had time to get too insecure. She saw him strolling up, recognized his walk, a bit shambling, in his skateboard sneakers and cargo pants, the chain of his wallet swinging. He wore dark Oakleys, and she couldn’t see through the lenses at all, but the lines of his face turned happy when he saw her.
So she stood up and kissed him. Was that okay? Did people do that?
Rafe answered her by sliding a big hand over her hair and kissing her back, grinning broadly as he took the chair opposite, nudging her foot with his.
“Now I’m glad I set the alarm,” he said. “’Fraid I went for a nightcap with the boys after closing. Going to need some eggs to put me right.”
Lissa bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. She ordered banana pancakes, and Rafe sang part of a song about them in a husky but tuneful voice; the lyrics matched so well with what Lissa had been thinking last night that she couldn’t help but smile.
“I was in a band,” Rafe explained, breaking off. “A third-rate cover band playing Tuesday nights in a sports bar in Bloor West Village.”
“You were the lead singer,” Lissa guessed.
“I did a truly awesome Billy Bragg when they’d let me.”
Lissa didn’t know who Billy Bragg was. It must have been obvious from her expression.
“Someone too British for the Canadian sports bar crowd,” Rafe said, shrugging. “Remind me next time you drop by the pub; I’ll put him on the jukebox.”
There it was again, that easy assumption that this would continue. Rafe didn’t even notice he’d done it and just went on naming bands, singing bits of songs. Some she knew, and some she didn’t, and one she could even sing along with him. As if she were a person who sang or ate breakfasts with men or lazed in the sunshine on a morning off.
Her pancakes came with a scoop of custard on top, and she couldn’t finish them, but Rafe polished off the part she didn’t want, finally sitting back and patting his belly. It was a solid belly that went with the muscular arms and the breadth of his shoulders.
And she was sitting there looking at him and not talking, and maybe she should be doing a better job of this date thing.
She looked quickly to his face and saw that he was smiling below the dark glasses.
“I don’t have to be at the Duke until six,” he said. “Want to take a wander with me?”
So she got to see College Street in a way she’d never done before, at strolling pace, looking in the windows of boutiques. Helping to flip through bins of used vinyl outside the music shop, because Rafe said he had a vice. Buying herself a tortoiseshell hair clip and wearing it right away, liking the weight of her hair lifted off her neck and the brush of Rafe’s fingers over the warm skin exposed.
It wasn’t until they stopped for espresso, midafternoon, that she thought of anything else. Rafe was at the counter, paying, and Lissa thumbed her phone open to see a voice mail and three more missed calls from Stella.
When she called back, no answer.
JUNE 1
LAST QUARTER
Nick opened his eyes to Stella’s face, blurry and way too close, and her hands tugging on his arm.
“Here’s the deal,” she said. “I have more of the eggs in my bag. I don’t know where I’m going, though. You’ll have to take me there.”
“Can’t walk,” Nick said, yawning.
The hands left his arm and tugged at his shirt.
“Stoppit,” Nick mumbled. The shirt peeled stickily away from his skin, and he fought to free his head from the fabric.
“Wow,” Stella said. “You’d be kind of pretty if you weren’t covered in egg.”
A chilly, rough cloth swiped over his back, and he made an unhappy noise.
“Stop whining. You’ll feel better in a moment. Just don’t do anything stupid, or I’ll put the whammy on you again.”
She sat with Nick while he scrubbed his fists into his eyes and worked spit around his mouth and finally sat fully upright.
“Good to go?”
“Um,” he managed. “Sort of.”
She hauled him up by the biceps. “Put this on.”
It was a T-shirt from the Duke of Lancashire, brand new, size M. It was tight over Nick’s shoulders and smelled unappealingly of cheap dye.
He stretched hugely, cracked his neck, shivered at the touch of his still-slimy waistband against his skin.
“What are we doing again?”
“Taking eggs to Maksim. It’s what you came for, right?”
There’d been something else, and probably Gus was going to kick his ass if he came back with the wrong sister and the wrong magic, but Nick just couldn’t wrap his head around it at the moment. “Whatever,” he said and stumbled after Stella down the walk.
Thank all the gods she hailed a cab, because Nick thought it was at least a few miles, and fuck if he was going to walk all that way with traces of egg still sending pulses of nauseating sleep through him. He sat there dumbly in the backseat with the cab unmoving and Stella staring at him. She finally snapped, “Tell the man where we’re going.”
“Dundas. And, uh … Dundas and Bellwoods.”
Stella wouldn’t let him lean over against her. He op
ened his window all the way and leaned his head there instead, breathing cab fumes. How did Maksim deal with this all day? No wonder he didn’t want to eat.
When the cab pulled to the curb, Nick fell out and leaned on a newspaper box while Stella paid. “You owe me fifteen bucks,” she said, but he was too busy swallowing down sick saliva to even answer.
It was better out of the car, though. He could smell trees. And home. Home was right there.
He had a fuzzy moment where he couldn’t quite remember why Stella was with him. She smelled mostly nice, but there was something.
“Right,” he said. “This sucks. Come on, he lives up here.”
He stumbled up the stairs. He got halfway, and then Gus popped out from somewhere and tackled him into the wall.
“Eggs!” Stella yelped, holding the bag above her head.
Gus sniffed along Nick’s neck and wrinkled her nose at the new shirt. She let Nick drop and gave Stella a flame-edge blue glare.
“Jesus, Gus, stand down already,” Nick said and yawned. “Her sister was out, so I brought her. Would you chill?”
“You were gone a long time,” Gus said.
“Nothing happened. She egged me. No, fuck, it’s fine; I was being a dick.”
“Thank you for that,” Stella muttered.
“You egged him,” Gus said. Her voice was flat.
Nick edged protectively in front of Stella.
Stella pushed at the flat of his shoulder with her hand. “Don’t be an idiot, Nick. Get out of my way, or I’ll do it again.”
Gus laughed: a real, normal, amused chuckle. Nick opened his eyes wide.
“A witch I could like,” Gus said. “Who knew? Hey, I’ve forgotten your title, but I’d use it if I had half a brain for Russian.”
She was drunk, Nick thought: not very, but he could smell it, along with the smell that meant family to him now.
Stella, behind him, was laughing too. “I can’t say it, either,” she admitted. “We’ll get Maksim to walk us through it, shall we? How’s he doing? I’ve got more of the sleep eggs, but I’m afraid if there was anything else you needed, Nick didn’t manage to tell me.”
Spells of Blood and Kin Page 20
