Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 32

"Because I was a girl, you mean."

"Yes: a girl in a country of men, in an age of men."

Gus scrubbed her fists through her hair. "I don't know why I'm f.u.c.king arguing with you. I have to go."

"Augusta..."

"You don't need me right now." She pushed past Nick, boots heavy on the hardwood.

"Hey," Nick said.

"Christ, will you shut up?" Gus said, pausing at the door, her hand clenched on the upright of one of the new shelves.

"I was just wondering if-"

"No," she said, and she cast down the shelf.

Nick flinched back. Books cascaded. Nails shrieked in the wood.

Gus's boot heels drummed down the outer stairs. The door banged open and shut.

Maksim sighed. "Will you help me clean up?"

"I have been. All day, in case you didn't notice," Nick said. "And it's not really what I pictured doing with my superpowers, so far."

He kicked a tumble of books out of his way and stormed out. He thought about following Gus, but her scent led toward the park, and Nick was tired of sitting around drinking out of paper bags like a street person, and so he went the other way.

He heard Maksim calling him from the balcony. He kept running.

JUNE 10.

WAXING CRESCENT.

On the following night, Stella did not have to work. She went out for a while and came back with a grocery bag bristling with frisee and baby lettuce.

"I've got the makings of a great big salad," she said. "And a bottle of pinot grigio. I thought we could have a nice night in."

"Sure," Lissa said.

"I thought we could watch a chick flick."

"Okay."

"Throat still sore? I can do a soup, if you'd rather."

"Salad sounds good," said Lissa.

"For real? Because you don't sound very excited," Stella said, taking her head out of the refrigerator.

"I didn't sleep well," Lissa admitted.

Stella hugged her. "I know. That's what gave me the idea. We'll have a sleepover in the living room, you and me. Braid each other's hair, watch our film, have our wine. Just the thing."

The movie was about an editorial a.s.sistant at a fashion magazine in New York, and Stella seemed to find it hilarious. Lissa sprawled on the sofa and drank the pinot grigio and fell asleep while Stella was still sectioning her hair into tiny braids.

It did not help, though.

At the appointed hour, the cold came over her, and she woke gasping.

She reached out to rouse Stella, in a panic, but her hand stopped just short.

Lissa had broken Law; she had fraternized with evil. Maksim had blood on his hands. She had not even taken the time to find out what he'd done. Maybe she should have let him kill himself.

She had not seen, until now, that he'd meant exactly that when he said he should go before the ritual, but it was so clear now-he'd meant to go to the subway and throw himself on the track, and instead of letting him make his amends, she'd done a very wrong thing.

And after, she'd shared food with him. She'd let Stella share food with him. Stella would never shake it now, the wrong like a cancer infecting her house and her family and following her even back over the sea. And Lissa ... she'd been wrong since childhood, wrong since Mama was ill, and she had been too small to help. People who needed Lissa would always be disappointed.

She might as well take her punishment.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back and bit down on it and lay in silent terror until the hour pa.s.sed.

JUNE 11.

WAXING CRESCENT.

Almost three weeks since he'd taken off. The air smelled flat and dusty when he got the door open. A piece of paper lay half-crumpled on the mat: a testy note from his landlord, inquiring about the June rent. Nick tore it in half and dropped it back on the floor.

He'd been three years in this apartment, and now he followed his old habits: dropping his keys on the table, toeing off his sandals, giving his heavy bag a quick pummeling, going to the refrigerator to uncap a beer, and then leaving a trail of sweaty clothes on the floor on his way to the shower.

The products in his shower smelled too strong to him now, but the water pressure had always been excellent. He stood under it and had a good w.a.n.k, which had been a bit hard to accomplish lately, considering he was pretty sure Maksim and Gus would know if he did, and the idea of them knowing anything about his s.e.x life was just f.u.c.king weird, like incest, and that was not a thought he wanted to be having while trying to get off, which meant he had to start over, thinking about Stella instead.

When he'd finished and thoroughly rinsed off the scented soap, Nick dried himself off with the cleanest-smelling towel he could find. He stared into the open dresser drawer: two stacks of folded T-shirts in dark, dull colors and a strip of expired condoms.

He opened the next one. Five pairs of cargo shorts and two pairs of pants. The informal uniform of every guy his age in Canada; in any country in the world, probably. He'd blend in the way he always had. He grabbed whatever was on top and got dressed.

He strode quickly to the kitchen and opened another beer. He could use his credit cards again, his bank card. No one would be monitoring them. Even if Jonathan had reported him, no one would pay so much attention to the perpetrator of a simple a.s.sault; and since Jonathan was fine, he probably wouldn't have said anything to anyone at all.

Nick would be able to go wherever he wanted, so long as he could stand to get on the plane. Maybe he could ask a travel agent, find out flights with the fewest seats sold.

If he knew where he was going.

Someplace wild, he thought; someplace with fewer people and more s.p.a.ce. Up north, maybe.

He rolled up his shorts and pants and some of the T-shirts and packed them into a duffel bag, along with extra socks and underwear and toothpaste. He did not pack any of the scented soaps or shampoos. He found a stack of maps left over from various summer holiday backpacking trips and added those and his pa.s.sport.

He did not pack any of his books or his camera or his iPod or his PSP. He had not even thought about those things in the last three weeks.

He set the duffel bag by the door and looked around. On the table was a wide brown ceramic bowl given him by Hannah last Christmas; she'd filled it with clementines and pomegranates and told him someone needed to make sure he was getting his vitamins. After the fruit was gone, he'd mostly filled the bowl with overdue bills and unanswered family letters.

Now he ruffled his fingers through the paper, smelling the adhesive of stamps. He picked up the bowl and dumped out the mail on the tabletop. The ceramic felt chrome-smooth and faintly cool.

Nick raised it and brought it down hard on the table's edge. The bowl split into five asymmetrical wedges, sharded with fractured glaze.

As a gesture, he thought it was perfect.

He wasn't done smashing things, though, so he retrieved all the condiment jars from the refrigerator and broke them like eggs into the mess. He opened all the windows and tore out the screens to let the flies in. Then he shouldered his duffel and left.

JUNE 11.

WAXING CRESCENT.

"Does midsummer mean anything to us?" Stella asked.

"Us?" Lissa echoed.

"Witches." Stella pointed to a page in the book she was reading. Lissa looked more closely. Witchcraft and Sorcery, it was called, and it looked to have come from the library.

"I don't think so," she said. "Not our kind, anyway."

"It might help with my research if you told me what kind we were," Stella said.

"What kind I am," Lissa said. "Not you."

She stood there looking at Stella's face and hearing the echo of her own words in the heavy air.

"What I mean is-" she said.

"You're right," Stella said, snapping the book shut. "Thanks for reminding me you don't actually want me around."

She set the book very gently on the coffee table, picked up her bag, and walked out the front door.

Lissa waited. After a long time, she went out to the front porch, but Stella was not there. She could not remember whether Stella was working tonight, and she thought in any case it would be a bad idea to barge in on her at the Duke if she was upset.

And why should Stella be upset? She was pushing in. She and Lissa weren't real sisters.

And who was a real sister if not a person who'd stay up with you, braiding your hair, while you tried to avoid nightmares?

They'd even started to fight like sisters, Lissa thought-at least she had-fixing on the thing she suspected would hurt Stella most.

She settled for leaving a message on Stella's cell phone. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm being a jerk. It has nothing to do with you, and I'm sorry. I'll try to do better." She hesitated. "Love you." And hung up.

Lissa cleaned the bathroom in penance, very thoroughly, taking a brush to the grout in the shower.

When the doorbell rang, she struggled up, dried her hands hurriedly, and ran downstairs to answer.

Maksim stood there under the porch light: clean-shaven, dressed in khakis and a T-shirt with the logo of his gym on it.

He looked rather shy as he held out a bundle of carmine-red alstroemeria. "Koldun'ia," he said. "I did not thank you properly the other day."

"That's very sweet," Lissa said.

He followed her inside, politely accepting her offer of a gla.s.s of wine.

"I suppose I am still not thanking you properly," Maksim said, looking into his gla.s.s, "because I have come with a question. Can it be worked upon someone unwilling?"

Lissa blinked. "I don't get it," she said. "I thought you didn't like it, what it does to you."

"No," he said simply. He shook his head and took a deep swallow of his wine, looking for a moment almost the way Lissa remembered from before.

Maksim set down the gla.s.s and looked at his hands. "It is not pleasant. It is a shackle, or a weight, and beneath it, I struggle sometimes."

He looked up again, eyes catching the light. "You do not know what it is to fear your own self," he said. "To know that if you fail in your vigilance, you will destroy whatever it is you care about."

"Sure I do," Lissa said. "Everyone does. People hurt their loved ones all the time." She thought of Stella's eyes and the careful way she'd set the book down.

Maksim gazed at her, steady and cold. "Most of your mistakes do not end in murder."

Lissa did not have an answer for that.

"My mistakes," Maksim said, "are visited upon my progeny. If I wish to protect them from harm, I must protect them from doing harm."

"You want me to do the ritual for Gus and Nick too? I thought they both hated the idea."

"They do."