Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 8

Augusta left him for the first time as soon as they docked in Cape Town. She sat quietly enough in the cutter, though Maksim could feel her heel tapping the carpetbag beneath his seat. Once they had said their farewells to the captain, though, she began walking, fast and jerky, hands jammed in the pockets of her waistcoat.

"You have been warning me of this forever, and I am bound to say you were right," she said furiously, not looking at him, kicking at the cobbles.

"Handsome of you," Maksim said, laughing rather, though he too was affected with restlessness and appet.i.te after the tedium of a sea voyage.

"It is not," Augusta said. "It is very grudging, and having said it, I feel even more as if I would like to throttle you and leave your body right here in the middle of the street."

"You may try," Maksim said.

She whirled on him. "Do not joke!"

"I do not. You will not win over me, not yet, but you'll find few other opponents to give you satisfaction."

"But I don't want to hurt you. You're my friend," Augusta said, wrenching at her own hair.

"That is why we may trust each other with this," Maksim said as gently as he could.

"You don't understand! I need to wreck someone-with my hands-"

"Run it out," Maksim said. "Tire yourself until you collapse. And if you must hurt someone, make it someone who heals-or someone who will not be noticed."

"How do you do this? How do you do this?" Augusta said, fingers tearing at her cuffs.

Maksim sighed and groped in his pocket and handed her the money he found there. "Go figure it out. I will take a room at the Two Sisters for some weeks," he said. "Find me there when you are ready."

She closed her fist over the money and ran from him.

Maksim found, at the Two Sisters, a clean bed, a stock of half-decent wine, and a young man whose skin bruised deliciously. He kept himself busy for a few days in this way until the young man began to complain of his roughness, and Maksim sent him off. Without company, the Two Sisters did not hold his interest; the mountain overlooking the town, however, proved a worthwhile excursion to occupy Maksim for a couple of days.

When he came down from the mountain, footsore and filthy and as satisfied as one of the kin could be, he still found no Augusta awaiting him, and he discovered his temper was not as quelled as he had wished.

The young man, bruised afresh, brought him bread and cheese and hot water to wash in, and he kept his eyes down. Maksim thanked him guiltily and promised not to break anything else, a promise he broke the next day.

Two full weeks, and finally Augusta returned. She had messily shorn what remained of her hair, and the inch-long crop looked bleached with sun and salt, shockingly pale against her newly browned face.

She would have looked savagely healthy, in fact, were her eyes open and her limbs properly arranged, but some boys brought her laid out on an old door and told Maksim she was not ill but only dead drunk and that she had promised them a British guinea if they would deliver her to Maksim Volkov at the Two Sisters.

Augusta did not so much as murmur when Maksim shook her. He paid the boys and carried Augusta up to his room, where she cast up her accounts all over his pillow.

She did not wake until after midday, and even then, she was stupid and sick for some hours; but she told Maksim she had done with her fit of temper and would like to explore the country with him now if he would be so good as to lay in a supply of victuals and drink.

"And the money I gave you?"

"Gone," she said. "Was I meant to husband it? I am sorry."

She looked sorry, all sallow and sore-eyed and thinner than she had been, tucked up in Maksim's dressing gown, sitting next to his window with the sun across her lap.

Maksim struck her, anyway, because he had not yet done so, and she was come into her own strength now and must learn the way of things.

"I apologized," Augusta said, blocking his fist with her raised forearms, cowering back. "I apologized."

"I am not punishing you," Maksim said, slapping Augusta's arms aside and grabbing at her throat.

"Yes, you are," she gasped, clutching his wrist. "Stop it; I said I was sorry."

"I have no one else," Maksim said, and he punched her in the side of the head. "Hit me back. Hit me back."

She shook her head, tears flying from her eye on the side where she'd taken the blow, but it wasn't a denial. She gave up trying to pry Maksim's hand off her and instead hammered him in the floating rib in an untutored but st.u.r.dy attempt.

Maksim chuckled low and tossed her bodily onto the floor. "Again. You can do it. Get up and hit me again."

And she did, and she did, and she did, and Maksim thought there was a smile starting on her swelling lip.

MAY 5.

WANING CRESCENT.

Stella seemed to be trying. She wasn't around in the evenings-working, Lissa a.s.sumed. Her suitcase was neatly stowed behind the sofa, her clothes folded on top of it.

Lissa could only tell she was eating in the house at all by the occasional misplacement of a clean salad plate or cereal bowl; the reappearance of a fat, th.o.r.n.y brown pottery mug that Baba hadn't used in years; and the lowering level of milk in the carton. Stella replaced what she used too; the new milk was a different brand, but still 1 percent.

Stella left a little envelope of her tip money beside the grocery list. She cleaned the bathroom, right down to the grout. She didn't touch Baba's room or any of Baba's things; she might have dusted the shelves in the kitchen and living room, but she did it without changing the arrangement of the objects on them, so that Lissa was not even sure it had happened.

Lissa heard her in the shower late at night and smelled her shower gel and her expensive scent. Found a couple of her long hairs on her towel or in the sink. Saw her spare shoes neatly side by side on the mat.

Barely saw the girl herself, though. If Stella was just washing up her tea mug when Lissa came in to make coffee, she ducked her head and hurried out. One night when she wasn't working and Lissa had been out, Stella was still awake when Lissa came in: curled on the sofa under a light blanket, with her face scrubbed clean and her hair tied up for sleep. She had a magazine and a pencil, and Lissa thought maybe she was doing crosswords. She saw Lissa in the hallway and smiled shyly and waved good night.

Lissa couldn't remember whether she'd waved back.

The problem wasn't in anything Stella was doing or not doing. She seemed sweet. Well raised. More than Lissa would've expected, considering it was Dad doing half of the raising.

The problem wasn't in the idea of having a roommate, either. Lord knew she could use a bit of help with the household and the bills. Having to keep her rituals secret would be a pain, but she could invent something-a church meeting to pretend to host, something like that.

The problem was that Stella was family. Stepfamily, sure. Still too close for Lissa to pretend she was just some friendly but distant connection sharing a financial arrangement and alternating turns with the washing machine.

Family went one of two ways. They ruled you, or you ruled them. You couldn't be equal; you couldn't be neutral. If you didn't want to play, you had to go. Dad went: first overseas, then into a whole new marriage. Mama went too; exhausted and irritable at the end, she didn't seem sorry to be going. One of the last things Lissa remembered hearing from her mouth was a vindictive comment to Baba, that now she'd have Lissa all to herself, just like she wanted.

And Baba had wanted. As soon as Mama died, she began training Lissa in earnest. She put away all the photos of Mama and Dad with Lissa and had one taken of just the two of them at the portrait studio at Sears: Baba in her best gray dress, with her hair coiled around her head, and Lissa in a purple skirt and a blouse with purple kittens on it, hair in two long braids. She was nearly ten, and the other girls in her cla.s.s were starting to pay attention to fashion and steer away from things that looked too childish, but Baba did not hold with fashion and thought children should be children.

That photo was still on Baba's dresser.

After a few days of tiptoeing, Lissa left Stella a note on the refrigerator.

They met at an organic-food cafe on Queen Street, which Lissa had picked because it was affordable but sounded trendy enough for Stella to appreciate. Stella was a few minutes late, which gave Lissa time to find a seat on the patio with a wall at her back. The air was humid and smoggy, but with the sun down behind the buildings, the heat was starting to lift; the smell of toner still lingered in Lissa's hair, and she unbraided it and shook it out, inhaling, instead, the fragrance of the blooms in a nearby garden and the cafe's aroma of toasting c.u.min.

She ordered a juice made from beet, ginger, carrot, apple, cayenne, and lemon, which arrived, capped with brilliant pink foam, just as Stella slid into the opposite seat.

"One of those," Stella said to the waitress, round-eyed. "Hey, Lissa." She made a motion that might have been an impulse to hug Lissa h.e.l.lo, but she checked it, instead slinging her purse over the back of her chair.

"Hey," Lissa said, and her mouth went dry and thick, and she blinked across the table at this stranger who was her stepsister, and the things she'd thought to say were gone.

Stella's juice came. They both sipped and raised their eyebrows and licked pink foam from their lips.

"Stay for now," Lissa said. "I don't want to make promises."

"Are you sure?" Stella said. "You don't seem very sure."

"I don't know what to tell you," Lissa said. "I haven't done any of this before. I'm not going to lie to you; I don't think I'm going to be easy to live with."

Stella paused and thought. "If you think it's not working, can you give me two weeks' notice? Because I don't think I can take it if I come home to find my stuff on the lawn and have to get a hotel like a cheating hubby." She grinned as she said it, but it wasn't a happy grin.

"Two weeks' notice," Lissa said. "Got it." She held out her hand across the table, and Stella took it.

Lissa had been expecting a handshake, but Stella put her other hand over top and squeezed.

"Thanks," Stella said, and she bit her lip, and d.a.m.ned if that didn't make Lissa tear up a bit too. With her free hand, she took a gulp of her juice so that she could blame the watering eyes on the cayenne.

MAY 5.

WANING CRESCENT.

Maksim, snarling, slammed his fist into brick.

"Ouch," said Gus.

"There is nothing," Maksim said. They stood at the corner of Queen and Bathurst. A streetcar rumbled heavily past, followed by a string of cars and a rickshaw. The wall Maksim had punched was painted purple, and now flecks of that paint decorated the b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.pes on Maksim's knuckles. He brought his fist to his mouth and licked the injury clean.

"Maybe if we make a wider circle," Gus said.

"We already have. I cannot find it. Too many scents."

Understatement. Even Gus, used to Parkdale, had said she found this stretch of Queen Street difficult in the warmth of May-rotten fruit, pigeon droppings, Indian food, hot metal, motor oil, sweat, s.p.u.n.k, ammonia, liquor, coffee. People and all their mess.

"Maybe if we go back to Palmerston again," she continued. "Maybe if you weren't f.u.c.king yourself up with the witch's business-"

Maksim caught her gesturing hand in his own, roughly. He did not speak, but he let her lead him up to the alley, the capillary north of Queen. The people they pa.s.sed did not look, absorbed in private business: urinating, making out, sharing joints or bottle tokes. Maksim kept his head lifted, searching for that elusive scent.

Gus stepped in too close beside him once, and he whirled on her, baring his teeth.

"You're stalking," she whispered. "You'll find no prey here."

Maksim watched his hand wrap itself around Gus's forearm and squeeze, bruising the pale skin.

She scowled and raised her other hand. "Does that mean it's time to hit you?"

"You promised," Maksim said. "You promised you would not let me hurt someone."

"Someone else," Gus said.

Maksim lunged at her, knocking her against a garage door, but not in an attack. He slid down until he was crouched against her legs and let go of her to wrap his arms tight about himself.

"I know," Maksim said. "I know, I know. I cannot remain among people like this."

Gus shook her head. "Okay. My place. We can fight some more, tire ourselves out."

"Give me something now," Maksim said. "I will go mad otherwise."

Gus hauled him up by his ear and punched him in the mouth. "I'm sober," she hissed. "And you're not."

Maksim licked blood off his teeth. "Keep going," he said.

Gus kicked him in the kneecap, and he fell, twisting.

"It's no fun if you aren't fighting back," she said. "Get up!"

Farther down the alley, a trio of heads turned, and a conversation ceased.

"I have already marked your face for you," Maksim said. "Mark mine."

A hammering blow across his cheek. "Well done," he said; it did not feel split, but the instant heat of a bruise rose below the skin.

The next one caught him almost by surprise a half second later, rocking his head into the garage door. He had sprung up and tapped Gus in the chin before he recollected his purpose.

Gus danced back. "That's it," she said. "Keep it up." And she darted in under his half-formed guard with a straight to his ribs and a second, random blow that caught him under the arm.

Maksim coughed. He dropped his hands and lifted his face, wide open to Gus's next punch, and it took him in the forehead and made him see gold-shot black.

When his eyes refocused, he saw that she was standing back, frowning fiercely and waiting for him to recover.

"I needed to know you would do it," he explained, although she had not asked. "I am ready to go home and sleep now," he said. When he tried to move away from the support of the garage door, he wavered.

Gus seized his arm and held him upright. "My turn to bully you," she said. "You're coming to my place, where I can keep an eye on you, and if you do decide to break something, it won't be something you love."