Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 21

MAY 26.

WANING GIBBOUS.

"There's a gin bottle on the front steps," Stella sang out. "Oh! And you're in the armchair. You haven't been on a bender, have you, Lissa?"

Lissa rubbed her eyes. They felt crusted and swollen. "What time is it?"

"Ten," said Stella. "I know-unG.o.dly, right? I've had a ghastly night, and I escaped as soon as I possibly could. And I want to know about your night."

Lissa sat up slowly. She could think of nothing at all to say.

"Bit the worse for wear?" Stella said. "I'll make some coffee, and you can tell me all about it. And you will tell me."

Lissa stumbled after her into the kitchen. The eggs and the grimoire she had put away, but the lavender-stained mixing bowl rested in the sink, with an inch of sc.u.mmy water in it, and the shoe box of baby-food jars sat in plain sight beside the refrigerator.

"Cooking up a frenzy, I see," was all Stella said as she bustled about, putting on the kettle and measuring coffee into the grinder. "I've just had the unforgettable experience of seeing an entire high school football team share a bad acid trip," she confided. "One of them was a bit sweet and told me he was gay and he'd never come out to anyone before. The others were animals."

"What brought this on?"

"Anne's sister is a cheerleader," Stella said. "Anne told me their parents were out of town. She didn't happen to mention there was a party on. Good G.o.d, your Canadian kids can drink."

"Can they?" Lissa said.

Stella paused at the stove. "Are you all right? You look a bit peaky."

"I didn't sleep well."

"Might have something to do with being in the armchair."

While Stella fussed with the coffee, Lissa had a few minutes to think of what to say to her and how to either explain Maksim away or, preferably, get rid of him completely, eggs and all, before he could invite unwelcome questions.

But the scent of brewing dark roast undid all that. Before Lissa had anything like a reasonable idea, she heard the floorboards creak upstairs, and Maksim shambled into the kitchen, shirtless and scarred and clothed in still-damp jeans.

He stopped when he caught sight of Stella. "I smelled coffee," he said apologetically. "I will go now."

Lissa sighed. "Now that you're up, you might as well stay for breakfast. Stella, this is Maksim Volkov. Maksim, my stepsister, Stella. Be very polite to her, or I'll make your life h.e.l.l somehow."

"My life is already h.e.l.l somehow," Maksim said, unsmiling.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet one of Lissa's friends," Stella said, extending her hand. "How do you know each other?"

"Church-" Lissa began.

"I knew koldun'ia Iadviga," Maksim said and shook his head. "And somehow, I think I have not said until just now how sorry I am for your loss."

Lissa dissolved into unexpected tears, groped wildly for a napkin, and spilled her coffee all over the table.

By the time Lissa had located the napkin, smoothed her damp hair back from her face, and wiped up the coffee, Maksim was gone, and with him, two cartons of eggs from the refrigerator, although the wet T-shirt still lay in the bathtub.

Stella had made herself scarce when the crying started. Lissa found her in the front room, hunched over her phone.

"Your friend owns a boxing gym?" she said. "Now I know why he looks like that. Wow."

"Were you just..."

"Googling him? Yep. Haven't you? Or ... maybe you're just not curious." Stella rolled her eyes. "I know, I know. He's too old for me, right?"

Lissa choked on a hysterical laugh. "Definitely."

"What about you? Is he your lifelong crush or something? Is that why you've been taking it so slow with Rafe? No, you didn't look at him like that-and he said that thing about your grandmother ... okay, no, wait ... I know! Russian Mafia! What's it called again? That's why you didn't want me to meet him-and come on, boxing and organized crime always go together."

"Russian Mafia?" Lissa said. "Seriously?"

"Okay, you don't have to make me feel mental just because I don't know about organized crime. Just tell me."

"He's..." Lissa said.

She swallowed. Whatever she said now, Stella would remember it. There was no getting rid of Stella; it was too late for that. Maybe out of the house, maybe even out of Canada for the moment, but not forever. Lissa was going to be on the hook for this lie for the rest of her life.

She had already waited too long.

"So it's not organized crime," Stella said. "But it's something old country, definitely. Wait-let me think. Dad used to rant a bit about your grandmother and her superst.i.tions and how it wasn't right to bring up a child that way. Is it something to do with that?"

Lissa nodded.

"So I'm warm. When did your grandmother come over to Canada?"

"She escaped from the Gulag," Lissa said. "I can't remember what year exactly."

"So he can't have known her then. There's no way he's more than forty, right? Whatever ... that's all beside the point, isn't it? What I really want to know is why is he here now."

"He's dangerous," Lissa said. "I mean it. I don't want you Googling him, I don't want you thinking about him, I don't even want you to answer the door if he shows up when I'm not here."

"And yet you let him stay overnight," Stella said, brows high. "Forgive me, dear sister, but you are completely full of s.h.i.t."

"I'm serious."

"I can see from your face that you are," Stella said. "That doesn't mean I'm wrong."

"You don't understand."

"Of course I don't, since you won't tell me. I'm going to let him in," she said. "I'm going to invite him in, and I'm going to give him the third degree until I figure out what's going on here."

"Two weeks' notice," Lissa blurted.

"No fair. That's the nuclear option."

Lissa deflated.

"Coward," Stella said, perfectly calm. "You know where to find me when you're ready to chat. Until then, I'm going for a pedicure."

"Again?"

"They don't last forever. I'm on my feet all day, you know."

And she left the house in a haughty swirl of scent, and Lissa moved slowly to clean up the kitchen, as tired as she could remember being in her life.

MAY 26.

WANING GIBBOUS.

Maksim limped homeward, two egg cartons under his arm. The sun felt uncomfortably hot on his shoulders; after a long, blinking moment of thought, he understood that it was because he had no shirt.

He didn't remember where he had left his shirt. At the witch's house, no doubt. He did not want to go back there. That house was so oppressively still. Though he thought he remembered it being even more so when koldun'ia Iadviga had been alive.

The first time he'd visited it had been in the early eighties. He'd come straight from Afghanistan. Traces of blood still under his fingernails. Three days awake, trying not to dream about the thing he'd done. Three days of travel among crowds of civilians. He wore a sore into his inner cheek with his teeth.

He hadn't seen Canada before; didn't see it now. He took a taxi from the airport, because he didn't know the way and it would be faster; he made the driver roll down all the windows, and he sat quite still with the harsh air beating on him, and he pressed his fingers to his eyes until the driver stopped the car.

Maksim did not see the house right away. What he saw was Iadviga Rozhnata on the front steps. Iadviga Rozhnata, no longer young.

She smelled familiar: a smell like thunderstorms, which he knew was the smell of witchcraft. But the bright hair was all gone gray, and the limber carriage slumped and rigid under the burden of nearly thirty years. She folded her arms and did not smile.

Maksim stood at a safe distance on the walk, twisting his fists into the canvas of his kit bag. "You made me a promise."

"There is no place for you here," she said.

"You made me a promise," he repeated.

"I did not think you would come."

Maksim felt the winter cold then as he had not in years. He missed his gun very much; he had thrown it away before leaving Afghanistan, and in the rush to get here, he had not yet tried to find another.

"Koldun'ia..." he said and paused. Even if he had his gun, he could not shoot himself right here, in front of a person who'd been kind to him once. And there was the matter of how to keep people away from his blood.

He would have to go somewhere else and get money and buy a new gun and then find an empty field.

The thought was so exhausting that he dropped his kit bag and wept. He stood on Iadviga's front walk with tears dripping from his nose and chin.

The taxi driver shouted in English, and Maksim had forgotten the words to respond. He only stood and watched, and finally Iadviga paid the man and took Maksim by the arm into the house.

"My daughter and her husband live here too. I will send them away," she said. "It will be three days. You are right: I made you a promise."

She sent him to rest in the garden shed while she made her arrangements. He did sleep a little, but his nightmares woke him; mostly he sat in the dim, cold mustiness and ran the point of a rusted screw around his cuticles to sc.r.a.pe away the blood traces. When the daughter and son-in-law were no longer present, he was allowed to come inside and shower and finally, properly, wash his hands.

Two days later, he received the enchantment. Iadviga, fatigued, hair slipping in strings from her crown of braids, said words over a black-sh.e.l.led egg. She set the egg in a stone bowl and had Maksim spit upon it and smear it with a drop of his blood.

Maksim didn't know what it meant, but it worked. He felt the restless fury of the kin spirit subdued, as smoothly as a gas flame shrinks when the stove is turned down. It was still there, burning, but low and blue and not the searing thing it had been. It would not goad him into doing things like he'd done in Afghanistan.

It would let him walk among people again, people who were not soldiers. It would let him swallow down the desire to hurt, to hunt, to rend.

Without that desire, he was not a person, yet, exactly; he did not know what he liked or what he could do, apart from violence. He would have some time to find out, though.

Now, nearly thirty years later, Maksim paused on a street corner, remembering the recently departed weight of Iadviga's spell. Not as heavy or slow or horrible as these eggs. Under it, he had been able to read books and enjoy food and spar with DeShaun. Yet he had often thought of himself as a golem of clay. Cold and inhuman and slower than he should have been.

And this was what he would be asking koldun'ia Lissa to do to him once again.

He would miss the molten heat of his nature.

He sighed, tucked the egg cartons closer to his chest, and began limping across the street.

From his left, a sense of bright motion, a flash of sun on gla.s.s.

He half turned. Something lifted him up and threw him down again, far and hard.

He couldn't catch his breath. Sh.e.l.ls and yolks everywhere. And blood. He trailed a hand through the mess, tried to sit up, and went to sleep.

Seven.

MAY 26.