Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 29

"They make you dress up at the print shop?"

Lissa felt herself blush. The black dress. She'd actually forgotten she was wearing it, in her haste to shake off the foreboding quiet of Izabela Dmitreeva's mother-in-law's house. The fertility eggs had not worked yet-no surprise, if her first batch of sleep eggs had been anything to go by-and while Izabela coolly kept right on knitting baby blankets, her mother-in-law had given Lissa a truly grim look.

"I had to visit a friend of my grandmother's," Lissa said now, thinking it felt like another lie even though it was not.

Rafe's face warmed. "And you didn't show up with blue hair and multiple piercings? You're a better person than I am."

"Blue? Really?"

"Why d'you think I shaved it off?"

Lissa laughed aloud at that. Rafe bowed with a flourish of his hands. "Stella tells me that's hard to do."

"What is?"

"Making you laugh."

"It's not fair, you getting dirt on me from my sister. Who am I supposed to ask if I want to know things about you?"

"Me," Rafe said. "I'll just tell you. No secrets at all. I'm silly that way."

"Really? What's your worst fear?"

"I love that your mind went straight there," he said, rolling his eyes a bit. "Blood. Can't stand it. I pa.s.s out."

"Where did you get your toque?"

"Board shop on Queen Street. Best twenty bucks I've spent all year. Why would I keep that a secret, though?"

"It was the next thing that came into my head," Lissa protested. "Ever broken the law?"

"Smoked quite a bit of pot in uni," he said right away. "Stole twenty bucks off my da to buy it once too. Let's see ... climbed over a few fences in my time, climbed up the downspout of a cathedral onto the roof-and then fell off, no bones broken thanks to all the lager I'd had-oh, and I stole a stuffed stag's head from a pub once too. No idea why."

"But those are all funny. Just pranks," Lissa said. "And most of them involve climbing."

"I was skinnier then," Rafe said, shrugging. "I don't know. What were you looking for? Really serious lawbreaking? I've got nothing. Never locked myself to any construction equipment or threw any Molotov c.o.c.ktails. Wasn't thinking ahead to when I'd have to impress you, obviously."

She let it go and took the pint of organic he slid across the bar to her. And when she was ready to leave, Rafe went on break and met her in the alley out back and gave her a much more serious kiss than he'd given her before. The most serious kiss she'd ever had, really. Black dress and all.

She gave it back to him, and that was breaking a rule too, and so it seemed he had very useful advice on the topic, after all.

JUNE 5.

WANING CRESCENT.

Nick ran around the track at the high school near his old apartment. He had forgotten his running shoes, but it turned out not to matter.

He ran for three hours, maybe four. At sunset, he slowed to a walk and left the track. Sweat dried in his hair. He strolled north from the school grounds, hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts.

Jonathan's street. He pa.s.sed the corner and turned down the alley. The same graffiti marked the garage doors. The same Labrador puppy came to a rear fence to watch him pa.s.s.

He leaned on a cinder block wall beside a froth of blossoming vines, and he looked up.

At first, the fading sunset glared off Jonathan's window too brightly to let him see anything; not that he expected to see anything.

He wondered if he was holding a wake and wished he'd brought something to drink, after all.

Dark came on slowly, with the scent of frying onions. Above him, windows brightened, here and there and there.

And there.

He saw a hand-whose hand?-turn on the old wicker lamp at Jonathan's window and then pull the cord of the blind.

Nick left the alley, circled around to the fire door, and tugged. Locked.

He bit his lip and went to the front entrance. Suicidally dumb, he told himself.

He didn't listen.

A woman approached with an armload of groceries. Nick said, "Be right up," toward the intercom speaker as the woman opened the outer door.

She paid him no attention, flashed her keycard to the inner door, and smiled distractedly at Nick as he held the door for her and followed her in.

Too easy. He rode the elevator to a random floor and took the stairs to Jonathan's so he could approach from the far end of the hall.

Even from there, once the stairway fire door was open, he could tease out the unique smells of Jonathan's apartment: sandalwood soap from Chinatown; microwaved popcorn; stale beer; Aussie shampoo; a fading underlay of pot smoke.

Nick crept almost up to the door, listening. If only his hearing would do what his sense of smell had done.

It wouldn't, but the apartment building was not new and the soundproofing was imperfect.

From within the apartment he could hear a woman's voice-Hannah?-very faintly, and then, from right by the door, "Got it. You sure?"

Jonathan.

Footsteps receded. More speech from farther in, too quiet for him to make out.

Nick leaned right against the door, straining. Jonathan was in there. Alive, together with Hannah, doing normal things. Making dinner.

He thought he heard them laughing. Sc.r.a.ping chairs, sitting down to eat.

He could have been there with them. Had been a few weeks ago. They'd teased him about getting a better haircut, finishing his degree on time, getting a girlfriend, a whole bunch of the normal things he hadn't managed to figure out yet.

Would never manage now.

It was a long time before he could tear himself away.

JUNE 6.

WANING CRESCENT.

The pub was full, and someone was sitting in Lissa's usual spot, and though Rafe was glad to see her, he didn't have time to chat, moving briskly up and down the bar, pulling pints and slapping down coasters and hip-checking the cash drawer shut.

Lissa was only having the one pint, anyway, to kill the rest of the time until dark. She fed coins into the jukebox and put on, for kicks, all the songs she could find with "moon" in the t.i.tle. She had already eaten at the roti shop after work, and she had all the information she needed on the ritual, and she'd been to check on Maksim.

He'd been mostly asleep, again, but on the sofa this time. And he'd showered, although he was wearing a wrinkled U of T Athletics T-shirt that probably belonged to Nick. And Gus had gone back to protective glowering, which Lissa thought indicated that she was sober, or at least less drunk, which she'd count as a win.

For this step, she didn't need them. She explained as much and watched Gus shudder whenever Lissa got too close, watched Nick pace in and out of the room, watched Maksim lace his fingers together over his knees, the injured ones still swollen and dark. He didn't seem to feel them, and that was creepy. No one looked sorry when she said good-bye.

Through the window at the Duke of Lancashire, she saw the sky dim down: orange to bruise purple to the dull dark red that pa.s.sed for night in a city of this size. She tried to get a good-night kiss from Rafe, but someone was pounding a gla.s.s on the bar, and someone else was brandishing a twenty, and she gave up and only waved.

The walk home, through heavy, bloom-scented air, did nothing to ease her nerves. Inside her bag, her fingers twined themselves into the hair of the doll.

At home, she'd left the windows open all day. The house felt humid. She moved around the kitchen in darkness, unbinding.

The first part of the ritual called for wax. Black wax and a rusty nail. Lissa had found the nail in the gardening shed, lying beside a tomato sauce can full of more of the same. Now she sat close to the candle, tucked her loose hair back behind her ears, dipped the nail in the pool of wax around the wick, and began scribing: rough lines, awkward and uneven, the wax clotting heavily at the beginning of a stroke and then too quickly sc.r.a.ping away to nothing.

It was the first time she'd had to do this: instead of just painting the egg with a paste, making an actual design upon it. The design wasn't too complicated, fortunately: a black circle that might represent the new moon and a few Cyrillic letters arranged around it. Baba had not told Lissa what they stood for, but at least it was the kind of design she'd been able to describe verbally, while Lissa took notes, back during their last full-moon conversation.

Before Lissa had finished the first section, the point of the nail broke through. Yolk slimed her fingers. She tossed the ruined egg in the compost, washed her hands, and tried again.

The second egg she crushed in her own hand, startling when the house settled and a stair creaked.

Quiet, she told herself, wiping her hands again. You're not used to the quiet anymore.

She could not put on the stereo with the house powered down, but she hummed to herself a little while she set up again. Whistling in the dark, the spooked part of her brain said, and so she shut up.

Third egg was the charm, of course. She sc.r.a.ped the point of the nail over the sh.e.l.l, thankful there weren't too many curved lines. Thankful she didn't know enough Russian to guess what the Cyrillic letters might stand for.

Ridiculous. Spooked again. A full-grown, practicing witch ought to do better. She elbowed her hair back and let her shoulders fall square again, deliberately exposing her back to the kitchen doorway.

When she had finished the design, she propped the egg on a mini-tripod to let the wax harden, poured herself a gla.s.s of tap water, and stepped out to the porch.

Light, high clouds covered the sky, red with the reflected lights of Toronto. If they had not been there, she would have been looking at an empty sky or maybe at the dark, covered face of the moon. She was not usually awake on such a night.

The heat wave had broken sometime while she was indoors. Air flowed up from the lakefront, almost chilly. Lissa let her hair fall forward about her neck and crossed her arms.

When she went back indoors, she lifted the drying egg into one of the high cupboards, where she had a faint chance Stella might not look at it.

Lissa had already, in a scant few weeks, introduced Stella to Maksim Volkov, who had to try very hard not to be a monster, and to Gus Hillyard and Nick Kaisaris, who did not seem as if they were trying as hard, and she still did not know what that meant. She did not want to be the one to introduce her stepsister to forbidden new-moon rituals. She was only just getting to know them herself.

Not that she knew Stella so well yet, either; but she did know Stella well enough to wait up.

Stella bounced in after three, just as Lissa had begun to nod off on the sofa. "I'm brilliant!" she said. "Look at all the tips I made. It just keeps getting easier."

She cast herself down beside Lissa, stretching out her long legs. "It's true Canadians are polite, you know. Even the rowdy lads."

"They know you'll have Rafe chuck them out if they cross the line."

"The power! The power!" Stella cackled. "I've never had any before. I think it's rather nice." She rubbed her eyes with both hands and yawned indelicately. "Beddy-bye," she said. "You too. You look f.a.gged."

Lissa shuffled upstairs, shivering a little in the late cool. She actually unfolded a blanket from the chest at the end of Baba's bed and wrapped it close about her neck and shoulders.

She thought she would lie awake, but sleep came down over her as thoroughly as if she'd had one of her own eggs.

JUNE 7.

WANING CRESCENT.

The ritual's second night demanded more.

Lissa drank a cup of coffee as soon as Stella had left for work. She washed her hair and let the damp ma.s.s of it hang down her back; the heat had come again, steamy and stifling, and the house smelled damp.

She drank a gla.s.s of water and used the toilet as if in preparation for a long car ride.

Lissa stood on the porch to watch the sun setting peachy orange at the end of her street, between a factory converted to lofts and a row of Victorian houses, and breathed in the scent of trees.

In the twilit kitchen, she took the egg down from its hiding place. The design of the spell, drawn upon it in black wax, looked ill done and crooked. She ran her fingertips over the letters.

She took the egg up to her bedroom, where she'd set up the necessary things on top of her dresser, in case Stella came home before she was done. Last night's candle had only half burned; she lit it again and set another one, unlit, beside it.

She uncapped a bottle of black ink bought in Chinatown: cheap, slightly gritty, and as dark as anything she'd ever seen. She poured it into a stone bowl she had found in the back of one of the lower cupboards. It looked heavier than water, and it reflected the candle flame like an open eye.

Tonight's charm must be spoken. Baba had given it to Lissa in English, because Lissa's Russian p.r.o.nunciation had never been very good, and apparently the rune required a great deal of repet.i.tion: As a horse is curbed to the bit, as a river is bound under ice, so, I ask you, bind this one to stillness. Riders of dawn and day and dusk, I ask you. I, Vasilissa, granddaughter of Iadviga, ask you to bind this one by blood.