Blood Magic

by Tessa Gratton

  It was so beautiful, dark and shimmering like the night sky itself oozing out of my hand. I pressed the blade against my skin to make the blood flow faster. Pain cracked up my wrist and curled around my forearm like hot barbed wire.

  “Silla, hurry. We have to get that bandaged.”

  “It’s okay, Reese.” I took a deep breath, pushing at the pain. Tears stung my eyes. The late October night smelled like burning leaves. I leaned over the bird and let a stream of my blood patter down over the yellowing bones. It splashed like thin paint, dark in the candlelight. I imagined the skeleton growing muscles and tendons and flesh and feathers. Imagined it bursting into life and singing for us. Then I whispered, “Ago vita iterum.”

  Make it live again.

  Bending so that my lips were inches from the bones, I breathed the imprecise Latin words over the skeleton again and again. “Ago vita iterum. Ago vita iterum. Ago vita iterum.”

  With each phrase, another bulbous drop of my blood fell off my hand.

  I felt the moment the magic began, buzzing through my palm and up my arm like a swarm of tiny bees. Hissing, I pulled my hand away from the skeleton.

  “Silla.” Reese took my unwounded hand and squeezed. His voice was reedy and shaking.

  The skeleton trembled. Its wings shuddered and extended outward, stretching like it would take off. Feathers suddenly sprouted out of the bones, rangy and thin, and a single eyeball bubbled up in the skull. I couldn’t look away, even as strips of muscle wove onto the bones and the feathers spread, becoming fuller. Reese’s fingers crushed mine. My heart expanded and I wanted to sing—to laugh and shriek in amazement.

  “Ago vita iterum!” I cried at it. The candles sputtered and went out, and the tiny bird leapt into the air, flapping its wings frenetically. It wailed a song before vanishing up into the dark sky.

  We were alone in the cemetery, covered in shadows.

  “Whoa,” Reese said, letting go of me. He leaned forward and skimmed his hand over the dirt where the bones had been. The scattered feathers were gone, too.

  I shivered, suddenly dizzy, and clutched my hands together. The moon spilled down. My skin was cold in the absence of fire. But I laughed. Quietly, triumphantly.

  “Oh my God.” Reese relit one of the candles, then dug into the plastic bag for rags. “Here.”

  I only shook my head. Reese grabbed hold of my hand and pressed the cloth against it. “Jesus. You might need stitches,” he said.

  My palm tingled with warmth; pain teetered at the edge of magic.

  But a dozen feet away, the bird fell from the sky. Its bones shattered, and feathers scattered out, dry as dead leaves.

  May 3, 1904

  Oh, the magic! This I do want to remember.

  It is like nothing I can say. No words Capture what it feels like when my dark blood smears against a red ribbon, or leaks into the lines of a rune carved into wood. The Thrill of the Blood as the magic burned through me, the way it tickles and teases when I am doing other things, begging me to slice my skin open and let it out!

  It hurts, of course, cutting my living flesh to free the blood. I have not conquered the sickening pause before every prick of my needle, every slick cut of Philip’s knife. I hold my breath for the moment, and I feel the world holding its breath with me, awaiting the wash of pain that releases the power. Sacrifice, Philip says, is the key. We give in order to create.

  Oh, but this is Heaven. Philip is my announcing angel—or I am Morgan and he is the wizard teaching me how to rule the world. By candlelight we mix potions, boiling them in an iron cauldron like witches of old. The smoke turns my cheeks pink and I smile at him often, hoping he might notice.

  Philip heals, is obsessed with it, and believes that the gift of our blood is meant to help mankind. Or at least Boston. Most of his charms are for healing, for headaches and fevers, for easy births and gentle deaths. He wants bigger spells, better spells, to heal great swaths of folk at a time, and so he needs all the blood he steals. But in his book are spells for turning stone into gold and discovering lost items. He’s used them to accumulate his power, but now that he is comfortable, he leaves such things alone. But I do not. I practice transforming air into fire with a snap of my bloody fingers, and I turn water into ice, or boil it with a word.

  Who could imagine such magic in the twist of ribbon or a dried-up duck’s beak? Who could imagine blessed water could cure a cough, if only there were a drop of my blood mingled with it? And the stones! Rough and small, oftentimes sharp. Philip showed me how to hold them in my hand and breathe magic into them with intricate patterns of almost-words. They focus my spells and hold my power. With one tucked into my pocket or down my corset, I feel the tingle all the day, feel it pulsing there with my heart.

  I never want to lose this.

  We can do anything.

  SILLA

  I didn’t make it to school on Thursday.

  Reese and I had stayed in the cemetery until after midnight, digging into the spell book together. For Reese’s first attempt at his own magic, he used the regeneration spell to heal the wound on my palm. It was pink and aching still, but closed. No bandages necessary.

  After the healing, we regenerated a hundred dead leaves, experimenting with the words and amount of blood and how many leaves we could do at once. It was intoxicating—only a single drop was needed, and if we bled onto the salt circle, we could make them all snap back to life together in a great, blossoming pattern.

  We’d both felt more alive than we’d been in months, excited and laughing with each other, tossing the leaves up into the air with a smear of blood on them so that they unfurled into emerald life as they slowly fluttered back to the ground.

  I imagined Mom and Dad, brought back to life with a whispered word.

  But then I remembered the bird falling out of the sky in a heap of bone and feathers. The spell wasn’t permanent. Reese thought the energy of our blood was only enough to give a kick start, not to create real life. I thought it was because the little bird’s soul was long gone.

  Like Mom’s and Dad’s. Their spirits had fled.

  Unreachable.

  When I’d finally crawled into bed, I’d fallen into such a deep sleep there’d been no dreaming, and I didn’t hear my alarm. Judy came in to shut it off, and shook me awake. My tongue had been heavy and thick and my forehead sticky with sweat. It felt like my flesh was melting off my bones, and so Judy’d called the school and I had a day off to sleep and recover. Reese stayed home from work, too, though he felt less drained than me. We spent the afternoon between bowls of Judy’s tomato soup whispering to each other about the ingredients we should get online and what spells to try over the weekend. Clearly we needed rest between spells, and the magic itself used more energy than we could readily spare. Neither of us had lost enough blood to account for the lethargy.

  But I never wanted the day to end. Watching Reese talk about the magic was like seeing him reborn into the brother he’d been before the summer. For his whole life, Reese had learned as if his brain was a sponge: he’d choose a subject, like grafting or genetics, and for three weeks or so read every book he could get his hands on. It had been common to find him in his bedroom surrounded by a pile of twenty library books and Internet printouts. And then they’d be gone. For a week or so, he wouldn’t mention the subject, like everything was being processed into all the parts of his brain. Finally, blam, the information reappeared, woven into the rest of his life as if it had always been there. It would be the same with the spell book.

  Friday, Reese had to be back out in the fields and I was energized enough for school. I’d have rather stayed home and worked on more magic, but there was no getting out of school when both Reese and Gram Judy noticed I was doing better.

  In third period Physics, I was lost in daydreams about feeling that tingle of power in my blood when Wendy passed me a note asking if I’d been sick.

  Day bug, I wrote back.

  Glad better. What hpnd w/Nick?

&
nbsp; Oh, yeah. Nick had driven me home on Wednesday night. I scrawled my reply. Drove home.

  Wendy: ?

  Me: Nothing.

  Wendy lifted both her eyebrows, and underlined her question mark twice. I just shrugged a little and looked back at the diagram Mr. Faulks was drawing on the blackboard. After a moment, Wendy got out her pink lip gloss and pretended to concentrate on reapplying, when what she was really doing was letting me ignore her.

  Guilt pushed at my ribs. If I drove Wendy away, there’d be none of my old friends left. I wrote, I like him, and slid it to the side of my desk so that she could see.

  Her eyes widened, and she smiled. She bobbed her head and the pink barrettes holding back her blond hair glittered in the fluorescent lights. Then she wrote, Good! I’m glad. B/c u won’t mind if I ask Eric out.

  WHAT?

  Don’t want to step on yr toes.

  You HATE him.

  He’s so cute!

  I boggled at her. I’d gone out with Eric for a few months two years ago because we’d been the only two freshmen cast in Oklahoma!, but since then he and Wendy had had this wicked rivalry going on. Now that he was president of the drama club in my place, she’d done nothing but jerk him around.

  Wendy shrugged, then smiled a sinful little smile.

  After class, she grasped my elbow and leaned in to whisper, “You have to come to the party tonight, to be my backup.”

  “Party?”

  She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Sil! The Anti-Football Party! At Eric’s place. Duh.”

  Oh, that. It was a big thing for all the nonsports clubs at the school, held every fall by the drama club president. Always the night the football team played our chief rivals, the Glouster Panthers. I winced. Reese and I had agreed to try more magic tonight … but Wendy was smiling at me in that way that meant she was being more lighthearted than she wanted to be. She was pretending it was less of a deal than it was. I softened my expression. “You think Eric will really go for it?”

  “Only one way to find out,” she said lightly. “And you need a party. You haven’t been out since.”

  I chewed the side of my tongue.

  “It’s important, Silla. And I need you.”

  How could I say no to that? Reese could entertain himself. “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  “Yay!” she squeed, her curls bouncing like Slinkys.

  NICHOLAS

  I stared at her in the cafeteria as she stood in line, putting a single cup of Jell-O on her tray. Her hair stuck in a half-dozen directions today, with only a thin blue headband holding any of it back from her face. She’d finally been in the cemetery again Wednesday night, but there’d been a guy with her—a guy with seriously broad shoulders who could probably have crushed my head between his hands if he felt like it. Her brother, I hoped. I’d started to watch them, but that was pretty stalker-boy even for my tastes.

  Speaking of stalker-boy behavior, it hadn’t taken more than two minutes on Google to find out the bare bones of Silla’s issues. Over the summer, her dad had shot her mom, then killed himself. She’d been the one to find them inside the house. It had been a couple of hours before her brother arrived home and called the police.

  No wonder she was hanging out in the graveyard. I mean, she had to be seriously messed in the head. I knew what it was like to see more of your mom’s blood than was healthy, and you didn’t get over it.

  Silla hadn’t been in school yesterday, and it’s possible I spent the entire day grumpier than usual because of it. Sitting at rehearsal while Stokes read her lines was annoying enough that I’d promised myself if she wasn’t there again, I was cutting play practice. Of course, I wondered if she was sick from the magic. Mom used to spend hours in bed sometimes. Migraines, Nicky, that’s all, she’d said. But I knew better.

  Fortunately for my theater career, Silla was there on Friday. She seemed tired, but I was starting to think she always did. And I didn’t really care when I watched how her jeans hugged her thighs and pressed right into her hips. Her friend Wendy grabbed an extra serving of green-bean casserole and plunked it onto Silla’s tray. Silla’s lips curled back in disgust, but she didn’t remove the casserole. And she let Wendy pick out a blue carton of 2 percent chocolate milk.

  “You just can’t take your eyes off,” Eric laughed as he plopped down next to me. “She’s bad news, bro.”

  “Because of her parents?”

  “Because she’s nuts.”

  “Really?” I chewed my own helping of bean casserole. It tasted a lot better than the same in Chicago.

  “Really.”

  “Isn’t everybody?”

  “Oh, man, you have it bad.”

  I skewered a hunk of meat loaf and pointed at him with it on my fork. “Look, just because you didn’t get there first …”

  “Yeah, I did, actually.” Eric’s eyes drifted to Silla and Wendy as they sat with a handful of other girls near the windows. “Freshman year, when she was still hot.”

  “Still? She’s gorgeous.”

  “Not compared to before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before the summer … her parents …” He shoved meat loaf into his mouth but turned to shoot a look at me that plainly said, Duh.

  I nodded like I knew. But I still hadn’t asked anyone the details beyond what I’d read on the Internet. It almost came up several times, but I didn’t—quite—make it. I wanted to ask her, not someone else.

  “She was hot. And eager, man. A few of us were looking forward to her brother going away to college. But then, with her parents … she dropped like twenty pounds from all the wrong places, ya know, and hacked off all her hair. And stopped flirting. I can’t really blame her. But she’s just bony like a skeleton now.”

  “I guess I’m lucky not to have the comparison,” I said, but knew I’d prefer her current incarnation.

  SILLA

  Ms. Tripp had a desk pushed back against the windows, but she never used it when I was in her office. She preferred to invite me to join her on the plush yellow sofa, as if we were just sitting down to tea.

  “So, Drusilla, tell me one interesting thing you’ve done this week.” Ms. Tripp folded her hands over her crossed knees and smiled.

  “I met my new neighbor,” I mumbled, perching on the couch. I dragged one of the bright purple throw pillows onto my lap and skimmed my fingers over the embroidery. Talking to Ms. Tripp was awful, no matter how nice she was. I fixed my calm mask back into place. The ocean-green one, with seashells glued to the edges and some bright coral emblazoned over the cheeks like a false smile.

  “Ah, yes, the new boy. Nicholas, isn’t it? I’m sure he appreciates you being welcoming. I was thrilled with the kindness everyone showed me when I arrived.” Her tone was gentle, asking me without asking if I would look at her.

  There was no reason to be surly, so I did. Ms. Tripp had one of those sweet faces they write romance novels about, with piles of curling hair always escaping the ponytail on the back of her head. She wore cardigans like they were going out of style. Her smile probably would have soothed less damaged girls. When I’d first shown up, she’d asked, “What would you like to talk about today?” but had quickly realized the depths of my desire not to talk to her at all. Now she always had something prepared. When I hesitantly returned her smile (the better to escape on time), she said, “What is the best gift your father ever gave you?”

  The spell book, even though he hadn’t exactly given it to me. But I wasn’t about to tell Ms. Tripp about it. My eyes lowered to my hands, flat against the purple pillow. The rings glittered dully. I flicked my fingers, wanting to be peeling away the skin for fresh blood. For new magic. “He gave these rings to me.” He’d given Reese a matching bracelet with a bright tiger’s-eye jewel. Reese hadn’t worn it since July. He wouldn’t even look at it.

  “They’re lovely.”

  “One every birthday since I turned nine. My eighteenth should have been the last.” My right ring finger stood out
naked. What would it have looked like? They kept getting more complex and more expensive as I aged. Last spring had been a white gold band tightly clutching what Dad had called an emerald-cut emerald. I wore it on my left middle finger. “He said, when I was nine, that he’d build a rainbow around me like armor.”

  “To keep you safe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “From what?”

  She was staring at my hands. I wove my fingers together and pulled them closer to my stomach. I could feel the scar from Wednesday night tingling. “Whatever, I guess.”

  “From the regular monsters that stalk little children? Strangers? Death?” Her voice was light, but when she raised her eyes, they were thick with emotion. I wondered how such a sympathetic person could handle being a counselor. Then she continued: “Or from himself?”

  It was like being hit in the diaphragm, and all my breath froze painfully.

  “Maybe you wish he’d better protected your mom instead?”

  “He didn’t kill her,” I said tightly. My rings cut into my skin as my hands convulsed.

  “Drusilla, honey, I want you to imagine, just for a moment, that he could have. It doesn’t make you disloyal or a bad daughter. Do you think he’d have wanted you to hide from the truth?”

  “Why is everyone always trying to make me hate my dad?”

  “That’s not what we’re doing, Drusilla.”

  “That’s what it feels like.”

  She nodded, like I’d said something good. Blood warmed my cheeks. She’d gotten me talking about my feelings again. I pressed my lips together and grasped at the mask I’d invoked before coming in; the mask of calm, of order, of the bottomless, cold ocean. The flush drained away. Ms. Tripp sighed. “Drusilla”—she said my name as though wanting to remind me what it was—“I want to help you. There’s nothing wrong with anything you’re feeling, all right? I’m here to listen, to help you figure out what those feeling are, why you have them, to untangle any confusions and get you on track. But I’m not here to condemn you, or your needs, or your dad.”