He looked up again, eyes catching the light. “You do not know what it is to fear your own self,” he said. “To know that if you fail in your vigilance, you will destroy whatever it is you care about.”
“Sure I do,” Lissa said. “Everyone does. People hurt their loved ones all the time.” She thought of Stella’s eyes and the careful way she’d set the book down.
Maksim gazed at her, steady and cold. “Most of your mistakes do not end in murder.”
Lissa did not have an answer for that.
“My mistakes,” Maksim said, “are visited upon my progeny. If I wish to protect them from harm, I must protect them from doing harm.”
“You want me to do the ritual for Gus and Nick too? I thought they both hated the idea.”
“They do.”
In the house next door, someone played piano: long arpeggios, an exercise, marred here and there with hesitations. Lissa felt the weight of her sleepless nights.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Because they have not agreed?” Maksim said, a rough edge in his voice.
“I just can’t.” Lissa’s turn to hide her face with a too-large sip of wine. “You were a mess for a while there. Do you remember me telling you about the ritual? About how it was against the rules?”
Maksim shook his head.
“Yeah. We’re not supposed to do anything at the new moon. And when I asked Baba about it, what she’d done for you, I didn’t ask all the right questions.”
Maksim frowned, the lines in his face deepening. “That smell,” he said. “I thought the magic smelled wrong.”
“Yeah. I don’t really want to discuss it in detail, but it’s not something I can do again. Not now. Maybe not ever.”
“Your sister?”
“Hell no,” Lissa said. “You’re not listening. There was a price, and I’m paying it. And it kind of sucks, and there’s no way I’m going to let Stella do that for Gus or Nick or anyone else.”
“Break the egg, then,” he said, laying his hands flat on the table. “Dig it up and break it.”
“No. No, Maksim. I know what you were thinking of doing when you offered to leave before the ritual.”
She could see from the look on his face that she’d been right. He didn’t have to speak.
“Were you suicidal before, when you first came to my grandmother?”
He made a motion with his head that might have been a nod.
“That’s why she did it for you, then.”
“She owed me a very great debt, koldun’ia.”
“She never told me about it.” And Maksim did not look likely to tell her either, Lissa saw.
He pressed his hands to his eyes. “All I knew was what she owed me; I did not know what I asked of her or of you.”
“My grandmother was willing to pay the price. She asked me to do this. She must’ve known it wouldn’t be easy, but she thought you were worth it.”
“I will try to find a way to thank you, koldun’ia,” Maksim said, unsmiling. “And I will not ask again.”
He left then, leaving his wine half-finished.
Lissa flipped through a grimoire and set it aside. She’d been through it all earlier, looking for the ritual in the first place; she wouldn’t find answers here or in any of Baba’s full-moon books. She’d have to wait and ask Baba herself.
How to stop the nightmares or live through them, of course. And what Maksim had done for her, whenever he had done it.
Lissa did not think she would ask anyone what Maksim had done later to make him fear himself so much. It had been bad enough that he’d rather die than do it again, and that was all she wanted to know.
JUNE 11
WAXING CRESCENT
Nick’s sense of smell worked even better now. He was learning. And he had, also, the memory of Maksim’s address book, which had listed an apartment on Dunn Avenue.
Who even used an address book anymore? People who were hundreds of years old and hadn’t really got used to computers, apparently; but he guessed there was the factor that other people who were hundreds of years old had shitty subsistence-level lives and weren’t on Facebook, and so you had to remember it somehow. At least Maksim hadn’t written it in Russian or something.
He’d forgotten the street number, but it didn’t matter. All of Dunn Avenue smelled faintly of Gus, as if she’d been walking up and down it for decades. Maybe she had.
Nick stood in the middle of the street. A taxi honked at him. He gave the driver the finger and turned in a slow circle.
South, toward the lake, stronger scent beckoned. Not far.
He followed the thread down an alley between two old Victorians. They’d been beautiful once. Dead vines dangled from the walls; gingerbread trim rotted below leaking rain gutters.
Of course Gus would live here. Nick climbed the fire escape on the outside of her building and knocked upon the boarded window of her door.
She threw a bottle, by the sound of it. It didn’t make it through the plywood barrier, but Nick heard it burst and shower shards onto a tiled floor.
“Are you done?” he called.
“Fuck off!” Gus shouted from within. “I told you. We don’t enter each other’s houses.”
“We both spent the last week in Maksim’s,” Nick said with syrupy reason, hoping it would piss her off even more.
She banged the door open. “I’m going to Durban,” she said.
“Why? Oh, wait, I know. To visit your old girlfriend or something. Right?”
“She wasn’t my girlfriend,” Gus said, hanging on to the door frame.
“How drunk are you?” asked Nick.
Gus laughed and backed down; Nick cautiously stepped into the apartment.
“What a shit hole,” he said, without thinking. The window over the fire escape wasn’t the only broken one. The fire door led into a cramped main room furnished with a sofa and one wooden chair. The door into the kitchen had been torn from its hinges and left propped against the nearby wall.
The kitchen barely rated the name: it held a laundry sink with the tap wound about in duct tape, a bar refrigerator, and a hot plate mounded with a mess of melted plastic and scorched food.
Gus saw where he was looking. “I forgot I was cooking,” she said. “It could happen to anyone.”
“Anyone drunk,” Nick said.
Gus sprawled on the sofa. “Did you come to fight?”
Nick shrugged.
“You know you’re not up to my weight yet,” Gus scolded him.
“Maybe not. But no one else is up to mine, really, so I don’t have much choice. I’d rather get my ass handed to me than completely mangle some random shithead who happens to be in the wrong alley.”
“That’s a lie,” Gus said. “You’d love to mangle a random shithead.” She tongued over the words mockingly, nearly missing a few of the consonants.
Nick shrugged again and helped himself to the open bottle of rye, making a face at the taste.
“If you don’t like it, you could have brought me something else.”
“I did,” Nick said, remembering. He dug through his duffel bag and brought out an unopened bottle of Jameson’s, half a mickey of rum, and two airline-sized bottles of vermouth. “The leftovers from my place,” he explained.
“Raising anchor?” Gus said and began singing “Spanish Ladies.”
“What is it with you and that song? Don’t you know anything from this century?”
“It reminds me of the first girl I kissed. In Cadiz. A long time ago.”
“I think I’m going to have girls all over the world too,” Nick said. He felt a smile spreading over his face as the rye sank in. “I’m going to start with Stella Moore.”
Gus went quiet and looked at him.
“She likes me,” Nick said. “I know she does.”
“She hit you with an egg.”
“That’s because she has a lot of self-respect.”
Gus covered her eyes with her forearm and reached out her other h
and for the bottle, which was nowhere nearby; Nick uncapped the rum and guided her fingers around it.
“I think I’ll take her with me on a trip,” he went on. “Her sister would never let me hang around their place; and anyway, Stella’s not the kind of girl who will stay in one town for long. Maybe we’ll go to Greece.”
“Nick,” said Gus.
Nick blinked.
“You came to my home,” Gus said. “Against my wishes. You have about five more minutes before I finish drinking your rum and start doing violence. I suggest you say what you came to say.”
Nick bit his lip and inhaled. “You aren’t really going to Durban, are you?”
Gus laughed. “How would you know?”
He was right; he could tell by the flat look on her face, but she seemed to want him to show his work.
“You’re here drinking,” he said, “instead of at the airport or on a train. You don’t have any things to pack. You know Maksim is okay now. You could be out of town in about ten seconds if you meant to go.”
She nodded.
“Why?” Nick said.
“Why do you think?”
“You know she wouldn’t take you back,” he guessed. “She’s your ex for a good reason. Right? You’ve been here in Toronto for a long time, years, and you wouldn’t have been if you could have gone back to this girl anytime.”
“She isn’t a girl anymore,” Gus said, but she didn’t disagree with any of what Nick had said. “I haven’t seen her in a decade, at least.”
“What did you do? Cheat on her? Act crazy? She didn’t like your drinking?”
Gus shrugged. “All of the above. Also, I hit her.”
Nick whistled.
Gus narrowed yellow-gray eyes at him and lifted off the sofa. “So would you have.”
“I’d never…” Nick paused.
“Hit a woman? Tell that to the bruise on my ribs,” Gus said. “A person weaker than you? Didn’t you skip out of your flat because you think you killed your best friend?”
“He’s okay,” Nick said, hands out, warding her off.
She kept advancing. “Maybe you got off easy this time,” she said, “but you won’t always.”
“I can control myself.”
“You have to want to. That’s the thing that keeps fucking us up,” Gus said. She turned away, wiping at her face.
“Why do you even give a shit?”
“Because you’re my kid brother,” she said, and she whipped around, catching him in a headlock, and she scrubbed his hair with her fist.
Nick twisted his shoulder into her gut and tried to throw her.
Gus’s apartment didn’t contain many breakable things, but they managed to crack an arm of the sofa and decorate the kitchen floor with vermouth and broken glass before the pounding of the neighbors below began to register.
Nick spat a strand of Gus’s hair out of his mouth and sat up. “Fuck,” he said, falling back again, picking a glass shard from the ball of his thumb.
“You did better this time,” Gus mumbled through swollen lips.
Nick grinned. “I feel better.”
“Don’t get comfortable.”
“Not much danger of that.” His knuckles ached, and his cheekbone began to swell; his scalp stung where Gus had thrown him into the corner of the refrigerator; the little toe on his left foot felt broken, and maybe the one beside it too. But all of that paled beside the weirdness that had been creeping up on him unnoticed during the fight. “Is it magic? Something’s really seriously making me want to get out of here.”
“Animal instinct,” Gus said, shrugging. “This is my territory. Not yours.” She bared her teeth.
“I’m going. I’m going,” Nick said. “See you around.”
He shouldered his duffel again and left by the fire escape, kicking broken glass from the stair treads.
Gus thought Nick would have to be like her, drinking alone in a shit hole apartment, reminiscing about people whose lives he’d ruined. Not bloody likely. What a waste of a very long life.
And Maksim wasn’t much better. Castrating himself with the witch’s magic. He smelled different, even: duller and less compelling. A boring relation of the graceful, menacing creature Nick had first seen in the alley six weeks ago.
Nick did not have to be like either of them. He was going to enjoy his new life—his long, powerful life—to the fullest.
The only bad thing Nick had done was hit Jonathan. And Jonathan was fine.
JUNE 11
WAXING CRESCENT
Lissa went to the Duke anyway, since Stella hadn’t phoned back. Probably hadn’t even got the message yet, and Lissa hated the idea of her going through a whole shift with her usual cheer pasted on over a sore heart.
Rafe was in the middle of serving someone. She took her usual seat at the end of the bar and waited for him to notice her.
When he did, the look that crossed his face wasn’t anything she’d seen before.
“Oh, love,” he said, and he came to take her hands.
She opened her mouth to say something—what did he mean? what was he looking at?—and Rafe’s expression changed to something else, and he ducked around the edge of the bar and pulled her close, face against his brown T-shirt. And when had she started crying?
Rafe cupped the back of her head in one big hand, murmuring, “Hey, hey, hey.” She could feel his voice through his chest. His other hand rubbed between her shoulder blades.
She ducked away and wiped hard at her eyes.
“Okay,” he said, “no hugging, then, but what about tea? It’s a cliché, but help me out here—I have to do something.”
Lissa nodded and took the Kleenex he handed her and bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. By the time he came back with a mug of tea and a slice of lemon on a saucer, she was breathing without that shuddering hitch, and she’d managed to dry her face.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Unless you’re upset because you’re here to break up with me, in which case, I’ll have my tea back,” he said, smiling in a way that wasn’t quite as cocky as he might have meant it to be.
“No. No. It’s just everything.”
“Bad few days? I wondered when you hadn’t been around much, and then I thought, well, she’s a nice girl, probably going to work and evening Mass or something.”
“I’m not,” Lissa said. “I can’t even go to church—and Stella—”
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to. Look, whatever you want to tell me. Or not.” He smoothed his hand down her arm. “Let me get you another tissue.”
He was gone a few minutes, pulling a series of pints and setting them on a tray for one of the waitresses, a gangly brown-skinned girl who looked barely of age in her kilt. Lissa blew her nose and drank some tea.
Rafe was right; it did seem to be working.
When he came back, he looked rueful. “I’m terrible at this. You’d think a bartender would be better at the tea and sympathy, wouldn’t you? I don’t have anyone to fill in right now.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look it,” he said frankly. “I mean, you’re still adorable and all that. But look, whatever it is … is it more migraines? You’ve been poorly?”
“It’s…” How to even begin to translate? She hadn’t thought about it at all, had stupidly not even expected to see Rafe here. “I said something awful to Stella,” she admitted.
“That’d be why she called in,” Rafe said. “Well, she’s a talented barmaid, but I know which sister I’d rather have around.” He tugged Lissa’s hair affectionately. “She thinks the world of you, you know. You’ll get things patched up in no time.”
“Wait, she’s … not here?”
“Hey, don’t look like that. She’s a big girl. Probably went to let her hair down somewhere.”
“You’re right.” He was right. Stella wasn’t an idiot, and eventually she would check her phone, and things would be fine to
morrow.
Lissa was only tired and strung out and not used to dealing with people. All she had to do was get through the night.
Twelve
JUNE 11
WAXING CRESCENT
“This was a great idea. I needed to get out,” Stella said, stretching her long legs under the patio table, one calf just brushing Nick’s.
She glinted in the lantern light: straight teeth and mink-brown eyes and diamond stud earrings. She tilted her head back to get the last drops of her wine, and the skin of her throat looked as delicate as a magnolia petal.
They were the only customers on the patio. The fence between them and the neighboring yard was overgrown with Japanese honeysuckle, just beginning to bloom. Between that and the scent of Stella and a tart Rueda, Nick felt absolutely dizzy with pleasure.
“That’s usually when you should stop,” Stella told him, sliding his glass along the table, away from his hand.
“I can drink much more than other people. In fact, it’s good for me. Gus says so.”
“Gus sounds like a bit of a bad influence, if she really said that.”
“You have no idea.” Nick chuckled.
“I should probably slow down too,” Stella said.
“It’s okay. I’ll look after you.”
“I prefer to look after myself,” she said, meeting Nick’s gaze with a wry smile.
Good God, he was glad he’d had a chance to jerk off in the shower earlier. He retrieved his glass and drained it.
“Really,” said Stella. “It’s nice to get out from under everyone’s thumb a bit. But this bad-boy thing you have going on is sort of…”
Nick smiled slowly.
“Transparent,” Stella said.
Nick blinked.
“I mean, I know your life has changed a lot lately,” Stella said. “Mine has too. You think you know exactly what’s going to happen next, and then you find out you were wrong, and you have to figure it out all over again. And you find yourself on the other side of the ocean, or whatever, with people who don’t really like you that much. But all this, like, Ernest Hemingway stuff—I mean, the black eye and the drinking and the dark hints…”
Spells of Blood and Kin Page 24
