The heat wave had broken sometime while she was indoors. Air flowed up from the lakefront, almost chilly. Lissa let her hair fall forward about her neck and crossed her arms.
When she went back indoors, she lifted the drying egg into one of the high cupboards, where she had a faint chance Stella might not look at it.
Lissa had already, in a scant few weeks, introduced Stella to Maksim Volkov, who had to try very hard not to be a monster, and to Gus Hillyard and Nick Kaisaris, who did not seem as if they were trying as hard, and she still did not know what that meant. She did not want to be the one to introduce her stepsister to forbidden new-moon rituals. She was only just getting to know them herself.
Not that she knew Stella so well yet, either; but she did know Stella well enough to wait up.
Stella bounced in after three, just as Lissa had begun to nod off on the sofa. “I’m brilliant!” she said. “Look at all the tips I made. It just keeps getting easier.”
She cast herself down beside Lissa, stretching out her long legs. “It’s true Canadians are polite, you know. Even the rowdy lads.”
“They know you’ll have Rafe chuck them out if they cross the line.”
“The power! The power!” Stella cackled. “I’ve never had any before. I think it’s rather nice.” She rubbed her eyes with both hands and yawned indelicately. “Beddy-bye,” she said. “You too. You look fagged.”
Lissa shuffled upstairs, shivering a little in the late cool. She actually unfolded a blanket from the chest at the end of Baba’s bed and wrapped it close about her neck and shoulders.
She thought she would lie awake, but sleep came down over her as thoroughly as if she’d had one of her own eggs.
JUNE 7
WANING CRESCENT
The ritual’s second night demanded more.
Lissa drank a cup of coffee as soon as Stella had left for work. She washed her hair and let the damp mass of it hang down her back; the heat had come again, steamy and stifling, and the house smelled damp.
She drank a glass of water and used the toilet as if in preparation for a long car ride.
Lissa stood on the porch to watch the sun setting peachy orange at the end of her street, between a factory converted to lofts and a row of Victorian houses, and breathed in the scent of trees.
In the twilit kitchen, she took the egg down from its hiding place. The design of the spell, drawn upon it in black wax, looked ill done and crooked. She ran her fingertips over the letters.
She took the egg up to her bedroom, where she’d set up the necessary things on top of her dresser, in case Stella came home before she was done. Last night’s candle had only half burned; she lit it again and set another one, unlit, beside it.
She uncapped a bottle of black ink bought in Chinatown: cheap, slightly gritty, and as dark as anything she’d ever seen. She poured it into a stone bowl she had found in the back of one of the lower cupboards. It looked heavier than water, and it reflected the candle flame like an open eye.
Tonight’s charm must be spoken. Baba had given it to Lissa in English, because Lissa’s Russian pronunciation had never been very good, and apparently the rune required a great deal of repetition:
As a horse is curbed to the bit, as a river is bound under ice, so, I ask you, bind this one to stillness. Riders of dawn and day and dusk, I ask you. I, Vasilissa, granddaughter of Iadviga, ask you to bind this one by blood.
Then she said it again, three hundred times.
She lost count, of course; but she figured one repetition per minute, for five hours or thereabouts. Baba had told her to repeat it until the hour of the hag, which she figured out was a particularly unpleasant way of designating three in the morning.
With the clocks unplugged, she could not be too sure of the time, but she felt it, nonetheless. Her voice had almost given out, her throat dry like an old bellows, squeezing air between cracked leather.
The air in the house cooled. The candle began to gutter.
Lissa licked dry lips with a dry tongue and stopped speaking. She had to work her mouth for a moment, but she managed just enough saliva; she leaned over the bowl of ink and spat.
Beside the bowl was a box cutter, with a fresh blade, which she’d dipped in rubbing alcohol at the beginning of the night. She pricked her thumb with it, and squeezed. A single, fat droplet of blood fell into the ink and sank.
Carefully, using both hands, Lissa took the wax-written egg and bathed it in the ink, turning it over and over until the faint greasy marks of her fingerprints had vanished.
She took it out and set it back upon the tripod. The ink dried quickly, first marbling in the currents of air and then turning matte.
Lissa watched it, heavy-lidded. After a while, she blew out the candle and went to fetch a glass of water.
Downstairs, the door creaked open. Stella fumbled about, set down her bag, bumped into something, whispered a curse.
The power in the house was still off. Lissa had not thought.
She stood, breathing silently, at the top of the stairs, while Stella tiptoed into the living room; she heard the flick of a flint, saw a faint bloom of light. She waited until the candle was extinguished again and then counted off ten long minutes before she crept downstairs and reset the breakers.
The hallway light flashed on for a second and then died in a fizzle of overstressed filaments. The refrigerator hummed to life.
Stella murmured in her sleep. She sounded distressed. Lissa stood outside the living-room door, but she was quiet after that, and finally Lissa went up to her own room and tried to sleep.
JUNE 8
NEW MOON
On Tuesday, Maksim arrived on foot, limping, leaning on Gus.
“You made him walk?” Lissa said.
“He wouldn’t get in the cab,” Gus said. Under the streetlight, her eyes showed white, too wide. “Your sister’s not here, is she?”
Lissa shook her head. “At work.”
“What’s up with your voice? And that smell?” Gus said. She shivered and tossed her hair. “Ah, Christ, I’ve been over and over it, and there’s fuck all I can do on my own. Take him.”
She shoved Maksim at Lissa. He stumbled and caught at Lissa’s shoulder but kept his feet. It helped that he had lost weight.
“I’ll be back for him tomorrow,” Gus said, and she shoved her hands in her pockets and walked away, too quickly, boot heels loud on the sidewalk.
From the corner, she shouted, “Don’t fuck this up!” And then she ran.
Lissa left Maksim sitting on the porch steps while she prepared the house. She brought the black egg down to the kitchen, turned off the power again, took down her hair.
Outside, Maksim seemed to have crawled up and slumped against the door, his weight holding it shut. Lissa kicked it before she realized, and she heard the hollow rap of Maksim’s head against the wood.
A shuffling confusion of noise, and the door was jerked from her hands. Maksim bulled inside, all awake now, all menace. He crowded Lissa into the kitchen, saying nothing, pressing his fist against his forehead.
He took the glass of water she offered him, but he only set it aside. His face looked clay-colored and heavily lined.
“Do you need a sleep egg before I start? I can’t have any interruptions.”
“Your voice, koldun’ia,” Maksim said. “Are you ill?”
“Stayed up all night chanting,” Lissa said. “So? Do you?”
Maksim shrugged. “I had two before I left so that we might walk here. Gus did not like it.”
“She’s not the only one.”
Maksim angled his head oddly. In the candlelight, his pupils were dilated all the way so that his eyes looked black. “I smell witchcraft,” he said.
Lissa brought down the stone bowl, impatient to get this done now that she was committed.
“And something else,” Maksim said.
Lissa opened her notebook to the page where she’d written Baba’s instructions.
“I should not a
sk this thing,” Maksim said. “I should go.”
“What? Don’t be an idiot. It’s almost done, anyway.”
“I should go,” he said again, folding his arms around his body, shaking his head. His eyes looked spooky, blown open wide like that; maybe because his face was thinner than Lissa was used to seeing it.
“You’ve already made the choice,” she said. “Sit.” She pointed to the stool by the counter.
He sat. The tendons in his arms and neck stood out harshly beneath his skin.
Lissa placed the black egg in the bowl and poured more ink around and over it. She began to say the charm again.
After the first hour, her voice went, scraped down to a husk of sound, but that did not matter. Her mouth, a witch’s mouth, formed the words. Her mind, a witch’s mind, held the intention.
Maksim moved only once, to release his grip on his own forearms and pick up the glass of water. Lissa could see the marks on his flesh where his fingers had pressed. He held the glass too tightly also and lifted it to his lips with a grim care that made Lissa wince; and then she turned her eyes away so that she would not lose the thread of the words.
Finally came the hour of the hag.
Chill swept the house. The candle went out.
In darkness, Lissa took Maksim’s wrist and led him to the stone bowl. She made him spit in the ink. The egg was bound to her from last night’s working; now it must be bound to him, as well.
She held his hand over the bowl, felt for the pad of his thumb, and handed him the blade.
Maksim inhaled sharply.
“Cut,” Lissa rasped. “You don’t need much.”
He said nothing, only sighed out. Lissa heard the blood splash into the ink. She let Maksim go, and she snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Then she reached into the bowl with both hands, turning the egg, coating it.
When she drew it from the ink, her gloves were black up to the knuckles. She found the tripod—her eyes had begun to adjust to the lack of light—and set the egg to dry.
“Now we wait,” she whispered.
On her words, the candle flared back to life.
It showed her Maksim, cradling his cut hand against his chest; he’d cut deeper than she meant him to, for blood had run into his palm and down his wrist.
It showed her the familiar kitchen made stark and strange by looming shadows. It showed her the hairs pricked upright on her own arms.
For a moment, unheralded dread stopped her mouth.
She swallowed, swallowed again, gestured to Maksim to pass her the water glass.
He did not seem to see her, sunk deep within himself. Lissa got up eventually and went to the tap. She peeled her gloves off, binned them, washed her hands twice over, and drank straight from the running stream, letting it splash her chin and hair.
When she lifted her head again, Maksim had wrapped his hand into the hem of his shirt. He met her eyes.
“I felt it,” he said. “I felt it take.” His voice sounded rusty too. He waited until Lissa had finished at the sink, and he held his thumb under the cold tap and then slipped off his shirt to rinse it.
“Thank God,” Lissa said, almost light-headed with the lifting of a worry she hadn’t even known was so heavy.
“Rest your voice,” Maksim said.
Lissa took his place on the stool and drank another glass of water, while Maksim went carefully about her kitchen, pouring out the mess of ink and fluids from the bowl, washing it with plenty of soap. He hung his wet shirt over the back of a chair and went without, though he shivered occasionally. Lissa could see on his skin what the last few weeks had cost him: new livid scars, scour marks, starkly knotted muscles.
“Your sister,” Maksim said. “Is she well?”
“She’s working late,” Lissa said. “It’s convocation week for the universities.” Elsewhere in the city, people were laughing. Celebrating their achievements. Getting ready for their new lives.
Maksim sat down beside her. “And you?”
“I have to do the last thing,” Lissa said. She slid off the stool.
She’d hidden it in her bedroom, in the closet that still smelled of mothballs and Baba’s clothing. She brought it out slowly, almost ceremoniously: a steel urn, designed for the ashes of a beloved cat or dog. She’d already stuffed it with a nest of green plastic Easter grass.
In the kitchen, Maksim sat with his face in his hands. He lifted his head when Lissa returned. He did not bother to wipe his swollen eyes; he turned away a little only when Lissa looked at him.
“Why did the candle light again?” he asked as Lissa slid it closer to her.
She shook her head and shrugged. The egg had dried. She wrapped it in a rag and held it gingerly, close to the flame. Nearest the heat, the waxen Cyrillic characters warmed and slid. Lissa wiped away the melted wax with her rag, exposing the bare shell the wax had kept free of ink.
Bit by bit, she revealed the design. Maksim watched. The letters looked uneven, childish; but when the shell was quite smooth and free of wax, Maksim shivered again and looked to Lissa.
She placed it gently within the urn and packed more Easter grass around it.
“Would you like to seal it?”
Maksim shook his head, twisting his hands together on the countertop. Lissa sealed the urn herself, first screwing the lid into place and then dripping hot wax all around the seam. She burned her fingers a little, but she could be sure the urn would not take in any groundwater.
“I’ll bury this in the yard,” she told Maksim.
“Now,” he said.
He followed a few paces behind, out to the garden shed. He dug the hole, two feet deep, between the roots of her grandmother’s favorite tree. He would not touch the urn. He stood back while Lissa leaned down to set it in the ground.
He shoveled earth over it as quickly as he could, breathing hard. He filled the hole and stamped it down with his boots.
Only then did he rest, leaning on the shovel and smearing sweat over his forehead with the back of his hand.
“My God,” he said. “I am hungry.”
Lissa restored power to the house. They took turns in the shower. Maksim fried a pound of bacon while Lissa toasted rye bread and chopped mangoes, bananas, and strawberries.
Just before dawn, Stella came in. She stood in the kitchen doorway and frowned. “Lord, you’re weird,” she said.
“I am better,” Maksim said. “I am sorry I behaved badly before.”
“Actually, I meant you were weird for having breakfast in the middle of the night,” Stella said and helped herself to bacon.
JUNE 9
WAXING CRESCENT
The food tasted right, as food had not done for so long. Blueberry jam, crusty toast, ripe buttery mango. He ate almost all the bacon himself, some of it right from the pan, hot enough to burn his fingers and his tongue.
Stella made a pot of tea, but she and Lissa were both drooping over the table by the time it had finished steeping.
“Go and rest,” Maksim said. “I will tidy up. Thank you for breakfast.”
Lissa whispered, “You’re welcome.” Her hair lay in a wet tangle over her shoulders where she had not bothered to comb it all out. That, and the fragile little voice, would make her seem childlike if Maksim was not what he was and could not smell the heavy thunder on the air.
It made the hair rise on him, even now, with the thing safely sealed up and buried.
He watched Lissa stifle a yawn and pad toward the stairs and turn to wave good night, and he flashed back to the memory of her soft hands gloved and black with ink, a few hours ago, maybe, the memory cloudy and dreadful. The night had gone blurred, everything before the moment when the spell had taken and he’d come to himself, with his own blood pooling in the palm of his hand from a gash in his thumb he did not recall receiving.
He had a pink Band-Aid over it now, and it still hurt: a proper, sharp hurt. A lot of things hurt. Bruised ribs and scabbed-over skin and the knitting bone in his wrist, which had begu
n to ache when he was digging under the tree.
He relished it. Too many days of smeared-out numbness, burying himself down deep so that he could not do harm, could not do anything at all.
“So,” said Stella.
Maksim spun. He’d forgotten her; the new, darker thunder scent covered everything else. And he was tired.
“She didn’t want me to see it,” Stella said. “It was a bit of a pain, really, not being able to come home. I had to go to an after-hours club with a couple of the girls from the pub and dance to house music. Which I hate.”
Maksim raised his eyebrows.
“Well?” said Stella. “Aren’t you going to fill me in?”
“If she did not want you to see it…”
“Someone’s got to look out for her while she looks out for you,” Stella said. “Or are you just fine with letting everyone else take the heat for your mistakes? Because I know you’ve made some, and so far, it looks to me like Lissa’s the one who’s been cleaning up after you.”
“Her grandmother made a promise,” Maksim felt compelled to point out.
“Her grandmother was a horrible old hag who kept her away from the rest of the family,” Stella said.
Maksim remembered Iadviga, young: all pride and temper, almost like one of the kin. He had shepherded her across half of Europe, because kolduny were rare and his home was long gone. He’d been glad when he realized she was with child, thinking there was a husband somewhere to whom he could restore her; but she only said fiercely that there was not and kept her head up, glaring.
Sometimes it was hard to remember it had been more than fifty years since he’d found Iadviga in the grip of the Gulag and thirty since he’d asked her to repay that debt. And perhaps the things he admired in Iadviga, the fury that had kept her alive in war and the honor that had urged her to help Maksim, had not made for an easy legacy.
“Her grandmother gave her the spell,” Maksim said now, “to give to me. I do not know more than that.”
“You know it worked? For sure?”
“Yes,” he said, feeling the truth of it: his nature leashed, with a choke leash, barbed enough to hurt if he strained against it.
Spells of Blood and Kin Page 22
