Blood Magic

by Tessa Gratton

  He cut me off with a slash of his hand through the air. But then his anger crumpled. “Bumblebee,” he said, and when he stepped forward again, I didn’t move away. “It’s been three months. You have to accept it.”

  “Like you have?”

  He put his arms around me, and I leaned into his chest. Hay dust tickled my nose, and behind it sweat and tractor oil. Familiar and solid, like Reese had always been. What was it like to be so sure the way he was? To be confident and strong, to pound your anger out against a wall, to work it out in the fields?

  “Yeah,” he answered. The word was tinged with bitterness, and I was relieved that Reese didn’t like it, even if he believed Dad had killed her. It didn’t make sense to him, either.

  After a moment, he said, “I need a beer. Want one?”

  “No.” I was numb enough.

  “Where’s Gram?”

  “Bilking Mrs. Margaret and Patty Grander for all they have.”

  “Oh, yeah. Bunko night.” For a moment, he tilted his face and I thought he’d apologize for yelling. But then I’d have to apologize, too. Instead Reese sighed. “I’ll make sandwiches, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll—I’ll stay out here for a while.”

  Nodding, Reese went back inside. My sneakers gradually sank into the grass. I waited for the earth to grow up over my ankles and shins and knees, trapping me until I turned into stone.

  March 18, 1904

  Philip insists that I write what I remember. It is ridiculous and a waste of my time, because I do not wish to remember where I came from. But the Awful Beast will not teach me more unless I do!

  And so, against my Will, this is the tale of how I came to meet Dr. Philip Osborn (the Beast).

  It was last year, when I was fourteen years old, and I remember the smell of the mill and how I hated it so very much that when the dizziness came to me, I was thrilled. Influenza would send me to St. James! I was the oldest, and dreadful Mrs. Wheelock was furious to lose me because of how fast I could thread the warp. I laughed at her even as the fever shook my bones. I was piled with the others in a narrow infirmary room at the back of St. James, quartered off from the rest of the world. I expected them to burn the hall when we died, and never bother to give us a proper burial.

  The little girl shaking in the bed next to me was certain we were Doomed, the gutless creature. She clutched at me and her prayers rattled in my ears, as useless as rats. I was not going to die.

  When I saw Philip’s face for the first time, I knew that the girl at my side had prayed to the wrong person. Philip’s eyes had a thickness to them, and his copper hair and long-fingered surgeon’s hands Awoke something in me that has never Slept again. He had come to help us, to make the sick children comfortable if he couldn’t make us well. I stared at the corner of his mouth as he concentrated, at the way it twitched when he tried to hide the Truth as he listened to the little girl beside me breathe. I stared and stared, and when he turned to me, he said, “You aren’t going to die, are you?” and I said, “No, sir.”

  A week later, I was the only one left. Philip took me out of St. James and to his tall house in Town. He let them think I was dead, and it was no trouble for me! I had always hated it with Mrs. Wheelock, and escape was worth the risk of going with a stranger like him. Philip cleaned me up, gave me my own bedroom and a cast-iron bathtub with a bar of soap he cooked himself. It smelled of flowers! But even with the soap and scalding water, I could not get the tangles out of my hair. I remember being terrified for one brief moment that he would throw me back to the mill. But when he found me crying on the floor, he cut it all off with a skinny little dagger and said, “All problems have a solution, Josephine Darly. Learn that and you will do well here. I will teach you to read and write, and if you apply yourself, perhaps other things.” I thought he meant man and woman things, which I already knew but did not tell him because I wished him to think me Innocent. Besides, I liked the idea of learning to read and write. With an Education, I’d never have to go back to the mill, and I would impress him so very much with my wits and spirit and prettiness that he would love me above all other things!

  How could I have known that what he would teach me is ever so much greater than Love?

  NICHOLAS

  Yaleylah High School was two buildings: a three-story academic hall and a gym. Between those yellow brick disappointments was a parking lot, and to the south a field of grass that I guessed was a field for football, soccer, track, and baseball rolled into one, depending on the season. You’d think with all the open spaces and farms they could find a place for each sport. Even in Chicago, the baseball team had only had to share with the softball team.

  My natural inclination to irritability was totally made worse by the fact that I hadn’t slept well thanks to nightlong dreams about being trapped in a dog’s body. (Don’t get me started on that favorite recurring nightmare. I don’t know the Freudian explanation, and I don’t want to.) Plus, I was the new kid and from the Big City and had a totally different fashion sense (I’d say the only fashion sense) and taste in music, food, and culture. I talked differently, for chrissake, and at lunch a cheerleader asked me to repeat what I’d just said. I flipped her off.

  The girl in the cemetery distracted me, too. I hadn’t seen her again, though I’d wandered out to the graves last night. Hoping because I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and fearing because I really didn’t want her to be doing what I thought I’d seen her doing.

  As I walked between classrooms, I kept my eyes out for her. I was used to dashing, and occasionally sprinting, between classes, but most senior rooms here were on the first floor, all clustered together. I estimated that there were only about four hundred kids total at the school, and they all clearly knew each other’s names and family histories and et cetera. The herd of cowboy boots made me want to puke.

  On Wednesday, in my calculus class, Mrs. Trenchess told us to pair up and go over homework. I didn’t have any homework, but this guy in the desk next to me snaked his hand across the aisle. “Hey, I’m Eric.”

  I looked up from the dirty haiku I was writing between notes on logarithmic functions. And? I asked with my eyebrows.

  He smacked his hand on the desktop, grinning. “You really are an asshole. That’s what they’re saying.”

  I still didn’t answer.

  Eric dug a silver Zippo out of his jeans and flicked it open, then shut, slouching down in his desk to conceal it from Mrs. Trenchess. “It’s okay, I already know your name, Nick.” He fisted his hand around the lighter, leaned way across the aisle—so precariously I expected him to fall—and read the poem in the margin of my textbook. “ ‘Cramped without recourse / Mrs. Trenchess is against / student survival.’ ” He paused. “Haiku?”

  I couldn’t be totally rude to somebody who knew his poetry. “I thought about etching it into the desk next to ONLY MOFOS PLAY CHESS but wasn’t sure it was clever enough.”

  His laugh was a high-pitched bark. “Do you have any others?”

  I debated for a second, then thought, what the hell. Flipping my notebook over, I found the last poems.

  Formulas, algorithms and graphs

  Make for boredom not laughs I

  won’t need this stuff

  Whiskey’s enough

  To set me on the right paths.

  And:

  Skanky girl with eyes

  Too heavy under powder

  Thinks I give a shit

  “That sounds like Sarah Turner,” Eric mused.

  “It was Western Civ this morning. She was pissed I wouldn’t talk to her. I didn’t even try to catch her name.”

  “So you want to be a poet?”

  “No.”

  Leaning back into his desk, he waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, Eric shook his head. “I hear poets get themselves a lot of tail.”

  We shared a grin. “Hey,” I said. “You know Silla Kennicot?”

  His face stilled, then the skin around his mouth tightened like he wa
s trying not to frown. “Yeah. Why?”

  “She’s just my neighbor.” I shrugged, as if it didn’t matter.

  What the hell?

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You meet her?”

  “Yeah. She seemed a bit odd.”

  He paused, flicking his lighter open again. “No kidding. Ever since her parents died, she’s been messed up.” Eric stopped. “Can’t blame her.”

  I was clearly supposed to ask for details. Instead I asked if he needed help with his homework. He replied that if he’d done it, he would.

  After class, Eric walked with me to my free period. As we passed a bulletin board, he paused and pointed at a neon orange flyer. MACBETH, it read, and WE NEED CREW! ALL THE GLORY, NONE OF THE MEMORIZATION! “You should come join up,” Eric said. “You don’t have to be liked to be on stage crew.”

  The river of students pressed me closer to the orange paper. At the very bottom, it said in tiny letters, SPONSORED BY THE RAZORBACK DRAMA CLUB. ERIC LEILENTHAL, ACTING PRESIDENT. “Acting president? You’re just pretending?” Frankly, Eric didn’t look the part. I’d put him in the home-fried baseball category.

  He pulled a pen out of his jeans pocket and scratched out the word acting. “That bitch.” Replacing the pen, he continued, “Wendy Cole keeps insisting we have a vote, but I was vice prez, and when the president gives up on you, the vice just steps in.”

  “Wow. Drama in drama club.”

  “Yeah, well, your girlfriend Silla is in the show. That make you want to come?” He sneered.

  I liked that Eric was kind of an asshole, too. And I needed something to do after school to avoid Lilith. “Sure. Where?”

  “After school, in the auditorium. Later, okay? I gotta find Wendy.”

  As he marched down the hallway, I thought, Where the hell are they hiding an auditorium?

  SILLA

  School rushed by in its usual blur. Since Saturday night, I’d spent every moment I could up in my bedroom, hunched over the spell book and reading it out loud the way I used to read scripts to memorize my lines. I read cover to cover, and then over again, brushing my fingers against the indentations my dad’s pen had made in the thick paper. The patterns swam in my imagination, and I could hear his voice: Sympathetic magic works with our own associations. Quicken the tincture with a drop of blood. Draw poison out with fire, bind with red ribbons. Fresh beeswax is best for transformations. Drop of blood. Hint of blood. Cut. Sacrifice. Give.

  So many questions I had for him. What does sympathetic magic mean? Why is ginger for burning curses away, and salt best for protection and neutral spells? What do you mean by neutral?

  It all intruded on my school day, memories pressing at me. Not just of reading, of Dad, but of the moment the magic had unfurled that dead leaf, and of Nicholas Pardee rising out of the shadows where he’d crouched like a goblin. They eclipsed the video Mr. Edwards showed in AP History, and Physics lecture, and even Mrs. Sackville’s discussion on The Return of the Native. I tried to push all of it out of my mind and listen to Sackville’s questions about the nature of misfits and sexual identity, but everyone in my classes seemed pale and stony. They were mere gravestones, and only the magic was real.

  And tonight, I’d show it to Reese. I’d prepared all I could, read through everything. Now I needed Reese. Needed to prove to him it was real so that he could stop hating Dad, so that he could help me unlock all the secrets. I’d resurrect something more impressive than a leaf, and he’d have to believe me.

  Finally it was three-thirty, and I escaped to the auditorium. There, I could pull on the masks of the theater and lose myself in the words that weren’t my own. It was a relief to sit on the edge of the stage, to dangle my feet as Wendy and Melissa argued about whether all the songs from Wicked were overdone on the audition circuit. Their conversation echoed up the rows and rows of red seats, and the smells of old paint and musty curtains grounded me back into my body. I’d always loved the theater. Here, I could be anyone, not just the girl who’d found her parents murdered on the floor, not just the skinny, fading kid with dropping grades and choppy hair, but Ophelia or Laura Wingfield or Christine Daaé. Pretending I was someone else, that their words were my words, their heartaches and loves my own; it made me feel like I knew who I was.

  Or it had. When I’d been Silla Kennicot: most likely to star in movies, president of the drama club, and forensics champion.

  Eric walked in with Nicholas Pardee and raised his middle finger in my direction. I frowned, but Wendy giggled. “He probably found my flyers,” she said.

  Melissa laughed, too. “I saw that.”

  I pulled my feet up onto the stage and sat cross-legged, watching Nicholas. I’d been thinking of him that way, the way he’d introduced himself to me in the cemetery, of him being something that belonged there, with a long, old-fashioned name to go with it. But here in the real world, everyone was calling him just Nick. And away from all the death and blood and magic, it was hard to see him as anything more mysterious. It suited the way he walked between the rows of seats and the sharp way he sat down next to Stokes, the teacher, while Eric stomped up the stairs and glared at the three of us. “Cute flyers,” he said.

  “Like your butt, sweetie.” Wendy kissed the air in his direction.

  Flipping her off again, Eric joined Trent upstage, and they kicked off their shoes to start some warm-up stretches.

  “I want my witches front and center!” Stokes called before turning to Nick, who stood beside him.

  It was good I knew the layout of the stage well, because I didn’t stop watching Nick even to head out with Wendy and Melissa to wait for our cue. He was tall, even all cramped up in the small theater seat where he’d sat after talking to Stokes. His hair was longish and sort of slicked back in a way none of the boys here wore it. It opened up his face so that I could see it better than I had Saturday night.

  “Jeez, Silla, you might want to close your mouth,” Melissa said.

  I glanced down at the scuffed stage, then up at Melissa with my lips pursed into a frown.

  Wendy nudged her. “Leave her alone. It’s great she’s showing interest at all.”

  My gratitude for her intercession dried up, and I glared at them both.

  “He is cute,” Melissa offered.

  “He lives in that old farmhouse up the road from me,” I said. “Just moved in.”

  They both watched me like I’d sprouted a conjoined twin on the side of my face. Wendy winced as Melissa laughed. “No kidding, Sil, we know. Everybody’s been talking about him all day. Jerry said he’s Mr. Harleigh’s grandson.”

  “Oh.” He didn’t look like Mr. Harleigh, who’d been stooped over like he was holding a secret against his stomach.

  “And his stepmother is like some huge, famous writer. She must use a pen name, though. Weren’t you listening at lunch when Eric and Doug were starting up the betting pool on what she writes?”

  Stokes waved his pudgy hands toward the stage, and the three of us shifted to where he wanted us. “Why would a famous author move here?” I asked, but didn’t hear any reply because Nick lifted his gaze right then, and caught mine. He smiled crookedly. His knees jutted out, as did his elbows. He was like a giant scarecrow folded up into the seat, smiling at me. I glanced away.

  “Let’s see the start of act four!” called Stokes.

  NICHOLAS

  I’d never been a theater guy. But even I saw it as Silla stepped into her role.

  It was like—I don’t know. Silla was there, but she was more than herself. It was a witch up on the stage, talking about eyeballs and lizard parts, and even though I’d seen her out in the cemetery, this was different. But it was also real.

  So, acting. Apparently it wasn’t just something kids did when they couldn’t get into college.

  Mr. Stokes paused the scene, and Silla fell out of character. Like flipping a switch. She flicked her stare past the director, to me. I smiled a little. Silla glanced away.

  Even when Stokes m
oved on to a scene Silla wasn’t in, I watched her. She stood at the edge of the stage, leaning against the arch. Her hands were covered in rings. She fidgeted, causing the rings to glitter under the multihued lights, making colors dart crazily across the black stage floor.

  SILLA

  In the parking lot after rehearsal, Nick was waiting. He rested his butt against the passenger door of a sleek black convertible.

  Wendy bumped her shoulder into mine. “He’s staring at you again. He could be crazy. You know, I heard that his mom spent time in an institution.”

  “An institution?”

  “A mental one.”

  “Hey!” Melissa cackled. “You two might have been made for each other.”

  I should have done it myself, but Wendy smacked Melissa’s arm for me. “God, Melissa. Insensitive much?”

  We were close enough then that Nick said, “Hey, Silla.”

  I cautiously approached, knowing Wendy was going with Melissa and her boyfriend in Melissa’s old Camry to Evanstown for burgers. I didn’t want to go, and maybe Nick was my excuse. “Hi, Nick.”

  “Can I give you a lift home? It’s right on my way.”

  Low gray light filtering through the afternoon clouds softened all the shadows. I could see all the angles of his face. His eyes were brown, a dark, greenish sort of brown like a freshly turned field. His lashes curled like birthday ribbons. “Silla?” he said.

  “Oh, sorry.” I lowered my chin and looked at the asphalt for a moment, at his black combat boots. Wendy’s fingers brushed against mine. Go, dummy, she meant. I smiled up at Nick. “Yeah. Yes, I’d love a ride.”

  “Great.” He opened the door for me.

  I waved to Wendy, who bounced after Melissa. As I slid into the passenger seat, I said, “Nice car,” because I was supposed to.

  “It’s my dad’s, but thanks.”

  As he jogged around the front and got behind the wheel, I studied his profile. He’d broken his nose at some point. Before I could ask, Nick revved the engine and pulled out of the lot. Wind grabbed my short hair and ruffled it, and for a moment, I missed the feel of its length whipping against my cheeks and neck. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the soft leather.