Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 28

Gus sniffed along Nick's neck and wrinkled her nose at the new shirt. She let Nick drop and gave Stella a flame-edge blue glare.

"Jesus, Gus, stand down already," Nick said and yawned. "Her sister was out, so I brought her. Would you chill?"

"You were gone a long time," Gus said.

"Nothing happened. She egged me. No, f.u.c.k, it's fine; I was being a d.i.c.k."

"Thank you for that," Stella muttered.

"You egged him," Gus said. Her voice was flat.

Nick edged protectively in front of Stella.

Stella pushed at the flat of his shoulder with her hand. "Don't be an idiot, Nick. Get out of my way, or I'll do it again."

Gus laughed: a real, normal, amused chuckle. Nick opened his eyes wide.

"A witch I could like," Gus said. "Who knew? Hey, I've forgotten your t.i.tle, but I'd use it if I had half a brain for Russian."

She was drunk, Nick thought: not very, but he could smell it, along with the smell that meant family to him now.

Stella, behind him, was laughing too. "I can't say it, either," she admitted. "We'll get Maksim to walk us through it, shall we? How's he doing? I've got more of the sleep eggs, but I'm afraid if there was anything else you needed, Nick didn't manage to tell me."

"Sure. Blame it all on me," Nick grumbled, trailing after the two women, "when you egged me before I had a chance."

Stella didn't seem to hear him, and he was still too d.a.m.ned sleepy to bother to raise his voice; he only plodded upstairs and picked at the crusty egg drying on the back of his shorts.

JUNE 1.

LAST QUARTER.

Lissa was getting better at lying spontaneously, at least to people who didn't know her well yet.

Rafe seemed to believe she was really getting a migraine. He offered to take her home, and when she demurred, he hailed her a cab, kissed her gently, and told her to come by the pub tonight if she felt better.

When she reached her house, though, she wished it hadn't been so easy. She was already getting used to the warm and solid presence at her shoulder. She stood on the porch and looked at the bits of eggsh.e.l.l scattered there. What the h.e.l.l had happened?

The front door was locked, the kitchen tidy, all the lights turned out. She found Stella's note, thank G.o.d, in an obvious spot on the counter, weighted with the sugar bowl. Gone to drop off eggs to M., it read.

Gone, without Lissa, to the home of the very person she'd been told to keep away from. And why was Maksim out of eggs again?

She didn't waste any time getting back out the door and into another cab-the amount of money she was spending on cabs these days, for Christ's sake; what about the house bills?-and when she was speeding up Ossington, she took out her phone again and tried Stella once more.

"Hey," said Stella, picking up.

"You're okay?" Lissa asked, feeling it come out breathless. "You're at Maksim's?"

"Yes." Stella sounded puzzled. "Didn't you get my note?"

"I was worried. I called you back, and you didn't answer."

"Oh, sorry. Must've missed it. Yes, I'm here. Brought some eggs, though it turns out he still had some."

"No one's hurt you?"

"No. Really, I'm fine. Maksim, though..."

"I'll see for myself in a second," Lissa said. "I'm just pulling up." She flicked her phone shut and paid the cabbie. Her head ached for real now, in the backwash of fear. Stella said she was fine-but so much could have gone wrong, and all of it would have been Lissa's fault.

Stella met her at the downstairs door.

"I'm glad you came," she whispered. "I don't know what to do."

Lissa seized her hand to stop her going back up. "Is anyone giving you a hard time?"

"Nothing like that. Nick got a bit handsy, but-hey, don't go all big sister. I'm trying to tell you something here. You know how Gus really doesn't like you?"

"I got that, yeah."

"Well, she sent Nick to ask you for help. And I'm starting to get why." In the shadow of the foyer, Stella's eyes were liquid and dark, beseeching.

"You think I should fix him," Lissa said.

"Can you? For good? Is that how it works?"

She didn't answer, patted Stella on the arm, and went up.

Gus was sitting on Maksim's sofa with a bottle of rye between her knees.

"He's over by the refrigerator," she said unnecessarily, for Lissa could see Maksim's legs sprawling in the kitchen doorway.

She knelt beside him without touching; she remembered what he was like when surprised awake.

He lay curled on his good side on the linoleum; someone had put one of the sofa pillows under his head. He wore the same jogging shorts she'd given him at the hospital and nothing else; the waistband was grimed with old blood. He'd taken the plaster off his arm; the injury still looked swollen and unhealed.

"Koldun'ia," he murmured.

"I thought you were asleep."

"Am I?"

"That doesn't make sense," she said, but he only made a dismissive gesture and winced and curled up tighter.

Lissa went back to Gus and Stella on the sofa. "He wasn't that thin before."

Gus's lip lifted. "I feed him."

"I didn't send him home with you so that he could lie on the floor," Lissa started.

"Of course you feed him," Stella interrupted, soothingly, hand hovering an inch above Gus's knee. "You're doing just about everything for him, right? Nick's useless, I can see that."

Gus's mouth worked. Her hands were wrapped tight about the rye bottle, bloodless, showing the ugly, dark scars on most of her knuckles.

Lissa bit her tongue and let Stella keep talking.

"But you want him to go back to doing things for himself. I know. It's frightened you, hasn't it, seeing him like this?"

"G.o.d help me, yes," Gus said, taking a drink, her mouth twisting at the taste. "All he does is sleep. And the dreams he's having..."

"You can see inside his head?" Stella said, wide-eyed.

Gus shook her head. "Wouldn't want to. What's on the outside is bad enough."

"And you left him on the floor because..." Lissa prodded, ignoring Stella's glare.

"Every time I turn my back, he f.u.c.king lies down there!" Gus spat.

Maksim roused a little, opening one eye. "She made me take a pillow."

Gus scrubbed a fist over her mouth. "He doesn't want to be comfortable." She watched Maksim until his eye shut again, and she leaned forward, beckoning Lissa and Stella close. "He did something. I don't know what it was. After it, he went to your grandmother," she whispered, breathing rye fumes. "He won't tell me. But he's afraid he'll do it again."

"And he thinks I can stop him," Lissa said.

Both Stella and Gus looked at her, waiting.

"There's something I can do."

Gus shuddered, a full-body reaction. "I won't like it, will I?"

"I doubt it."

Gus took a deep breath and shut her eyes for a second. "I'll go to my place until it's over. You can send Nick to get me."

"Wait. Just wait. I can't do it right this minute. There are rules." The most important rule she was going to break, but maybe Gus didn't need to know that. "It has to be done on the new moon. That's a full week out."

Gus winced.

"You can manage to look after him until then," Lissa said. "What with none of you having a job or anything. Where the h.e.l.l is Nick, anyway? He's not missing again, is he?"

Gus pointed at the open door of the bedroom. Lissa could just see an unmoving lump lying diagonally across the bed.

"Your sister egged him," Gus said, her drawn face lighting. She clapped Stella on the shoulder. "I'm going to be laughing about that for ages."

"Hey," said Lissa, returning to kneel beside Maksim. "I'll see you in a week, okay?"

She watched his eyes drag open, dazed and wet.

"A week. Koldun'ia, are you certain?"

She nodded.

He wrapped both hands around her arm and pressed his forehead against them, breathing in short little gasps. Not quite sobbing.

Lissa pulled her hand away as gently as she could. "Hey," she said again. "My grandmother wanted it. Okay? Just hang in there until it's time. And stop sleeping on the floor."

Maksim fisted his hands to his mouth and nodded.

"Jesus," said Stella once she and Lissa were outside, walking south through Bellwoods Park. The air felt wide and fresh after Maksim's apartment.

"Yeah," Lissa said.

"He needs psychological help," Stella said.

"Well, he's got us."

"And Nick. And Gus," Stella said. "Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Ten.

JUNE 3.

WANING CRESCENT.

"I was hoping you'd be in yesterday," Rafe said. "Headache stayed bad, did it?"

"It's fine today," Lissa said, sliding onto what was becoming her favorite barstool, at the end away from the door. She hung her bag from one of the convenient hooks underneath the bar and looked up again at Rafe's smile: the private one she was coming to know, not the one he used for customers, even regulars. "I went to work and everything."