Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 30

Then she said it again, three hundred times.

She lost count, of course; but she figured one repet.i.tion per minute, for five hours or thereabouts. Baba had told her to repeat it until the hour of the hag, which she figured out was a particularly unpleasant way of designating three in the morning.

With the clocks unplugged, she could not be too sure of the time, but she felt it, nonetheless. Her voice had almost given out, her throat dry like an old bellows, squeezing air between cracked leather.

The air in the house cooled. The candle began to gutter.

Lissa licked dry lips with a dry tongue and stopped speaking. She had to work her mouth for a moment, but she managed just enough saliva; she leaned over the bowl of ink and spat.

Beside the bowl was a box cutter, with a fresh blade, which she'd dipped in rubbing alcohol at the beginning of the night. She p.r.i.c.ked her thumb with it, and squeezed. A single, fat droplet of blood fell into the ink and sank.

Carefully, using both hands, Lissa took the wax-written egg and bathed it in the ink, turning it over and over until the faint greasy marks of her fingerprints had vanished.

She took it out and set it back upon the tripod. The ink dried quickly, first marbling in the currents of air and then turning matte.

Lissa watched it, heavy-lidded. After a while, she blew out the candle and went to fetch a gla.s.s of water.

Downstairs, the door creaked open. Stella fumbled about, set down her bag, b.u.mped into something, whispered a curse.

The power in the house was still off. Lissa had not thought.

She stood, breathing silently, at the top of the stairs, while Stella tiptoed into the living room; she heard the flick of a flint, saw a faint bloom of light. She waited until the candle was extinguished again and then counted off ten long minutes before she crept downstairs and reset the breakers.

The hallway light flashed on for a second and then died in a fizzle of overstressed filaments. The refrigerator hummed to life.

Stella murmured in her sleep. She sounded distressed. Lissa stood outside the living-room door, but she was quiet after that, and finally Lissa went up to her own room and tried to sleep.

JUNE 8.

NEW MOON.

On Tuesday, Maksim arrived on foot, limping, leaning on Gus.

"You made him walk?" Lissa said.

"He wouldn't get in the cab," Gus said. Under the streetlight, her eyes showed white, too wide. "Your sister's not here, is she?"

Lissa shook her head. "At work."

"What's up with your voice? And that smell?" Gus said. She shivered and tossed her hair. "Ah, Christ, I've been over and over it, and there's f.u.c.k all I can do on my own. Take him."

She shoved Maksim at Lissa. He stumbled and caught at Lissa's shoulder but kept his feet. It helped that he had lost weight.

"I'll be back for him tomorrow," Gus said, and she shoved her hands in her pockets and walked away, too quickly, boot heels loud on the sidewalk.

From the corner, she shouted, "Don't f.u.c.k this up!" And then she ran.

Lissa left Maksim sitting on the porch steps while she prepared the house. She brought the black egg down to the kitchen, turned off the power again, took down her hair.

Outside, Maksim seemed to have crawled up and slumped against the door, his weight holding it shut. Lissa kicked it before she realized, and she heard the hollow rap of Maksim's head against the wood.

A shuffling confusion of noise, and the door was jerked from her hands. Maksim bulled inside, all awake now, all menace. He crowded Lissa into the kitchen, saying nothing, pressing his fist against his forehead.

He took the gla.s.s of water she offered him, but he only set it aside. His face looked clay-colored and heavily lined.

"Do you need a sleep egg before I start? I can't have any interruptions."

"Your voice, koldun'ia," Maksim said. "Are you ill?"

"Stayed up all night chanting," Lissa said. "So? Do you?"

Maksim shrugged. "I had two before I left so that we might walk here. Gus did not like it."

"She's not the only one."

Maksim angled his head oddly. In the candlelight, his pupils were dilated all the way so that his eyes looked black. "I smell witchcraft," he said.

Lissa brought down the stone bowl, impatient to get this done now that she was committed.

"And something else," Maksim said.

Lissa opened her notebook to the page where she'd written Baba's instructions.

"I should not ask this thing," Maksim said. "I should go."

"What? Don't be an idiot. It's almost done, anyway."

"I should go," he said again, folding his arms around his body, shaking his head. His eyes looked spooky, blown open wide like that; maybe because his face was thinner than Lissa was used to seeing it.

"You've already made the choice," she said. "Sit." She pointed to the stool by the counter.

He sat. The tendons in his arms and neck stood out harshly beneath his skin.

Lissa placed the black egg in the bowl and poured more ink around and over it. She began to say the charm again.

After the first hour, her voice went, sc.r.a.ped down to a husk of sound, but that did not matter. Her mouth, a witch's mouth, formed the words. Her mind, a witch's mind, held the intention.

Maksim moved only once, to release his grip on his own forearms and pick up the gla.s.s of water. Lissa could see the marks on his flesh where his fingers had pressed. He held the gla.s.s too tightly also and lifted it to his lips with a grim care that made Lissa wince; and then she turned her eyes away so that she would not lose the thread of the words.

Finally came the hour of the hag.

Chill swept the house. The candle went out.

In darkness, Lissa took Maksim's wrist and led him to the stone bowl. She made him spit in the ink. The egg was bound to her from last night's working; now it must be bound to him, as well.

She held his hand over the bowl, felt for the pad of his thumb, and handed him the blade.

Maksim inhaled sharply.

"Cut," Lissa rasped. "You don't need much."

He said nothing, only sighed out. Lissa heard the blood splash into the ink. She let Maksim go, and she snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Then she reached into the bowl with both hands, turning the egg, coating it.

When she drew it from the ink, her gloves were black up to the knuckles. She found the tripod-her eyes had begun to adjust to the lack of light-and set the egg to dry.

"Now we wait," she whispered.

On her words, the candle flared back to life.

It showed her Maksim, cradling his cut hand against his chest; he'd cut deeper than she meant him to, for blood had run into his palm and down his wrist.

It showed her the familiar kitchen made stark and strange by looming shadows. It showed her the hairs p.r.i.c.ked upright on her own arms.

For a moment, unheralded dread stopped her mouth.

She swallowed, swallowed again, gestured to Maksim to pa.s.s her the water gla.s.s.

He did not seem to see her, sunk deep within himself. Lissa got up eventually and went to the tap. She peeled her gloves off, binned them, washed her hands twice over, and drank straight from the running stream, letting it splash her chin and hair.

When she lifted her head again, Maksim had wrapped his hand into the hem of his shirt. He met her eyes.

"I felt it," he said. "I felt it take." His voice sounded rusty too. He waited until Lissa had finished at the sink, and he held his thumb under the cold tap and then slipped off his shirt to rinse it.

"Thank G.o.d," Lissa said, almost light-headed with the lifting of a worry she hadn't even known was so heavy.

"Rest your voice," Maksim said.

Lissa took his place on the stool and drank another gla.s.s of water, while Maksim went carefully about her kitchen, pouring out the mess of ink and fluids from the bowl, washing it with plenty of soap. He hung his wet shirt over the back of a chair and went without, though he shivered occasionally. Lissa could see on his skin what the last few weeks had cost him: new livid scars, scour marks, starkly knotted muscles.

"Your sister," Maksim said. "Is she well?"

"She's working late," Lissa said. "It's convocation week for the universities." Elsewhere in the city, people were laughing. Celebrating their achievements. Getting ready for their new lives.

Maksim sat down beside her. "And you?"

"I have to do the last thing," Lissa said. She slid off the stool.

She'd hidden it in her bedroom, in the closet that still smelled of mothb.a.l.l.s and Baba's clothing. She brought it out slowly, almost ceremoniously: a steel urn, designed for the ashes of a beloved cat or dog. She'd already stuffed it with a nest of green plastic Easter gra.s.s.

In the kitchen, Maksim sat with his face in his hands. He lifted his head when Lissa returned. He did not bother to wipe his swollen eyes; he turned away a little only when Lissa looked at him.

"Why did the candle light again?" he asked as Lissa slid it closer to her.

She shook her head and shrugged. The egg had dried. She wrapped it in a rag and held it gingerly, close to the flame. Nearest the heat, the waxen Cyrillic characters warmed and slid. Lissa wiped away the melted wax with her rag, exposing the bare sh.e.l.l the wax had kept free of ink.

Bit by bit, she revealed the design. Maksim watched. The letters looked uneven, childish; but when the sh.e.l.l was quite smooth and free of wax, Maksim shivered again and looked to Lissa.

She placed it gently within the urn and packed more Easter gra.s.s around it.

"Would you like to seal it?"

Maksim shook his head, twisting his hands together on the countertop. Lissa sealed the urn herself, first s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the lid into place and then dripping hot wax all around the seam. She burned her fingers a little, but she could be sure the urn would not take in any groundwater.

"I'll bury this in the yard," she told Maksim.

"Now," he said.

He followed a few paces behind, out to the garden shed. He dug the hole, two feet deep, between the roots of her grandmother's favorite tree. He would not touch the urn. He stood back while Lissa leaned down to set it in the ground.

He shoveled earth over it as quickly as he could, breathing hard. He filled the hole and stamped it down with his boots.

Only then did he rest, leaning on the shovel and smearing sweat over his forehead with the back of his hand.

"My G.o.d," he said. "I am hungry."

Lissa restored power to the house. They took turns in the shower. Maksim fried a pound of bacon while Lissa toasted rye bread and chopped mangoes, bananas, and strawberries.

Just before dawn, Stella came in. She stood in the kitchen doorway and frowned. "Lord, you're weird," she said.

"I am better," Maksim said. "I am sorry I behaved badly before."

"Actually, I meant you were weird for having breakfast in the middle of the night," Stella said and helped herself to bacon.

JUNE 9.

WAXING CRESCENT.

The food tasted right, as food had not done for so long. Blueberry jam, crusty toast, ripe b.u.t.tery mango. He ate almost all the bacon himself, some of it right from the pan, hot enough to burn his fingers and his tongue.

Stella made a pot of tea, but she and Lissa were both drooping over the table by the time it had finished steeping.

"Go and rest," Maksim said. "I will tidy up. Thank you for breakfast."