Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 9

"What about," Maksim said and spat blood. "What about the things you love?"

"None left but you," Gus said.

Three.

MAY 8.

WANING CRESCENT.

Lissa came up her walk to find Maksim lying asleep on the porch steps. She could smell him as she got closer: stale sweat and rye, mixed uneasily with the heated lilacs. He slept heavily, with his face pressed into the crook of his arm.

"Evening," she said in his ear.

He bolted up and grabbed at her, catching her braid in his fist and pulling her head down.

"Hey-ouch!"

He sucked in a deep breath. "Koldun'ia," he said, and his grip relaxed fractionally. Lissa yanked her hair back and pulled away, while Maksim blinked and stared and finally unlocked his posture and sank back against the stairs.

"It is not good to surprise me," he said.

Lissa backed off. "You hurt my neck."

"I am sorry. Only do not wake me up with a touch. It is best not to step close to me if I am unaware."

"You plan on crashing on my front steps a lot, then, do you?"

This seemed lost on him; he was rubbing his face with both hands and did not answer.

"Hey," Lissa said. "I haven't forgotten what you said last week. I'd like to help you. My grandmother said you needed help. But that means I need to hear the whole story."

"Your grandmother spoke of this?"

"Some." Close to the chest: she'd learned very early that being a witch meant mystery, and mystery was best preserved by keeping your ignorance to yourself. Maksim did not need to know that Lissa had no idea how they might be kin to each other or why Baba hadn't mentioned him earlier. Or that Baba was still able to communicate with Lissa, even if only under constraints.

Maksim asked her for a drink. She led him into the kitchen, where she could see that he was dirty again (still?) and had not shaved, and his face looked puffy and bruised.

She filled a bowl with borscht and made him up a plate of Izabela Dmitreeva's cabbage rolls and a stack of toast to go alongside, and she opened him a bottle of Stella's lager.

"You do not need to do this for me," he said.

"I didn't. Some other people did it for me. You're just getting the benefits."

This seemed to be the right thing to say. Once rea.s.sured, Maksim proceeded to eat everything in front of him, plus two more beers and a second helping of borscht.

"We all eat like this when we can. I thought you knew," he said when Lissa raised her eyebrows.

She hadn't spent enough time with her extended family to have any idea at all that they were big eaters, but she didn't care to admit as much to Maksim. "Anyway, don't stop on my account."

"The eggs are wearing off. I think you should give me more," he said.

"Already?" Lissa blurted. She'd definitely got the recipe too weak, then, somehow.

"You are not afraid of me," Maksim said, looking up at her from his slouch over the plate. "Why is that?"

"My grandmother was not afraid of you," Lissa said, hoping it was true.

"Ah-I see." He sc.r.a.ped his bowl clean and sprawled back in his chair. Quite different from the sleepy sprawl on the steps somehow; he looked tighter wound now and ready.

"So," she said. "Are you going to tell me?"

"I have figured out part for myself now. Why I have gone mad again. I have been many years without the madness, since your grandmother made a spell upon me. I believe the blessing has pa.s.sed with her, and now I must make shift with my own weak will."

"My grandmother gave you a cure for ... madness?"

"Not a cure-or so I see now. I thought it was one until I felt it slip with this full moon. Before I knew what I was about, I came upon the boy. You know the rest."

"Pretend I don't and tell me."

He knotted his hands together so that the knuckles stood out heavy and white. "He had the marks of violence on him, quite fresh. I think I could have run my madness out if not for that." He was silent again. Lissa could see his jaw clenching, the way it had the other night.

"So you ... licked him," she prompted.

"I told you it was madness." He looked up from under sullen brows. "When I am sane, it is a madness I would never wish on another. When I am not sane ... I do not rule myself as I ought. And it is a madness that spreads."

"You think you infected him? With your madness?"

"If I did, it will be some weeks before he is fully consumed. We have a s.p.a.ce of time to find him."

"We?"

"Augusta and I. She is my ... she is my family. And you-you said you would help also." Maksim hunched over and trapped his hands between his knees. "No. That is very forward of me. You have already helped me with your eggs, and if you will let me take more of them with me-"

"Of course. But I thought they were to make it easier for you to sleep."

"They are to stop me hurting anyone," he said. "So that I can go among people, to do my work and to find this young man, without my madness overtaking me."

"It would be better if I could figure out what my grandmother did for you and do it again," Lissa said.

"Yes." He sat up again restlessly and worked his hand upon the fabric of his jeans, over and over, kneading the muscle of his thigh.

"Will eggs be enough to tide you over?"

He shook his head and scrubbed a hand through his sweaty hair. "I do not know." He chuckled, mirthless and low. "I can feel it now," he said, rising and pacing to the window. "Perhaps I should have another one before I go."

She gave him two dozen; he cracked one in his hand and slurped it straight from the sh.e.l.l like an oyster. He grimaced, but the line of his shoulders slackened, and some of the tension in his face eased. At least they were doing something for him.

Lissa wrote her number on a blank card from Baba's recipe keeper. "Keep me posted. If you can't find him."

She locked the door behind him and went upstairs to the shelf in the sewing room where Baba kept her grimoires.

MAY 10.

NEW MOON.

Nick met Jonathan at the coffee shop on Spadina, near the Graduate Students' Union building. The University of Toronto's downtown campus had seemed impenetrably huge and forbidding to Nick as a first-year, with its fifty-odd buildings sprawling over multiple city blocks linked by networks of footpaths traversing several different gra.s.sy commons. But five years in, the campus had shrunk, or Nick had grown, to the point where it felt like a pinching shoe, blistering him with its closeness.

"We can't stay here," he said, glowering, grabbing at Jonathan's book bag and pulling him back when he tried to choose a table. "It's only been, like, two weeks. I'm still having PTSD about f.u.c.king Boyczuk's seminar of doom."

"It's just convenient," Jonathan said. "But we can go to the Starbucks on College if you'd rather."

"It's too hot for coffee. I don't know why I agreed to this," Nick said, but he pulled Jonathan with him, anyway, hustling him through the door.

"There's such a thing as iced coffee," Jonathan said.

"f.u.c.k coffee. I want a f.u.c.king beer."

Jonathan looked like he was going to protest for a moment, but then he shrugged. "I could use a break, anyway. Maybe you were right to go with the lighter course load."

"Summer vacation!" Nick exulted. "You wish you had one!"

"Maybe I would if I had a trust fund," Jonathan said.

"It's not a trust fund, and anyway, it's going to run out in, like..." Nick paused to calculate.

"Is it going to run out before 6:00 P.M.?" Jonathan said. "Because it's happy hour at the Palmerston tonight, and I think they have Great Lakes guest taps."

Nick chortled in victory, tugged Jonathan's bag out of his hand and slung it over his own shoulder, and led the way toward the Palmerston in a quick, jerky stride.

"Slow down," Jonathan said. "Let me just text Hannah-she gets out in half an hour."

"No," Nick blurted and then mentally kicked himself. "I mean, didn't she say she was having a girls' night tonight? You know, with Sue Park?"

"Did she?" Jonathan said. "Oh, Sue the violinist. Maybe? I don't remember." But he put his phone back in his pocket and followed Nick down the sidewalk. "You still into Sue Park?" Jonathan went on, half-teasing, half-serious. "I remember you calling her on my phone like five times after that music department social."

"That was years ago," Nick protested. "And I only called her on your phone because mine was out of minutes."

"Not because she started blocking your number, stalker?" Jonathan said, shoving him.

Nick laughed easily because it hadn't been like that at all, at all. He slung his arm around Jonathan's neck and tugged him in close for a second. "I forgot about Sue Park until today," he said and added, leering, "But I'll bet she hasn't forgotten me."

"Ugh, dude," Jonathan said. "Let go of my head and stop being gross about Hannah's friends."

"You were the one who said Sue Park had the most amazing rack you'd ever seen on an Asian chick," Nick said.

Jonathan dragged himself out of Nick's headlock and shaded his eyes with one hand instead. "This is the problem with knowing someone for, like, ever," he said. "You're always there to remind me of the stupid s.h.i.t I've said and done."

"And get you to do more of it," Nick said.

"And that," Jonathan agreed, but he didn't really look like he minded, so Nick bought the first round.

The Palmerston was only moderately full, happy hour on a Tuesday; they got a table in the corner. Nick stretched out his legs, crooked his arms behind his head, kicked at the legs of Jonathan's chair. Drained his first pint in a few easy swallows.

He had lapped Jonathan by the end of his second, Jonathan sipping slowly and yawning a little and surrept.i.tiously checking his phone. Nick laid his palm over the screen and said, "Buddy. Jonathan. J. I'm right here, and Hannah's out, and there's literally no one else in your life, so put the f.u.c.king phone down and-"

"I do have a family," Jonathan said mildly.

"Me too, but I don't take selfies at the bar for them," Nick said. "Turn it off and get the next round."

Jonathan put the phone away and obeyed, out of long habit. Nick watched from his chair as Jonathan ordered: more polite than he would have been a couple of years ago, eyes not straying below the bartender's chin even though she was wearing a Maple Leafs T-shirt with the neckline cut out to show a hint of royal-blue lace.

Jonathan was working as a teaching a.s.sistant now in addition to his own studies, and he seemed to think it required him to be a bit more formal, khakis and oxfords and a short-sleeved b.u.t.ton-down, even though Nick knew for a fact he'd seen TAs in shorts and T-shirts before. It made Jonathan look older, or maybe he just was older; Nick didn't always look at him very closely, seeing instead the familiar blur of a dozen years of friendship, and now he wasn't sure when Jonathan had tidied up his haircut or when he'd switched his electric-blue steel hoop earring for a quieter silver stud.

Nick kicked out of his chair and joined Jonathan at the bar, scrubbing his fist into Jonathan's hair.

Jonathan twisted away, annoyed. "Give it a rest; I'm trying to buy you a drink."

"Arm wrestle," Nick said, grabbing at Jonathan's hand. "If you win, I'll help you mark that f.u.c.kton of papers you have in your bag. If I win, you're doing shots with me."

"I don't know what's with your new arm wrestling thing, but I am not going there. No way."

Nick ignored him, braced his elbow on the bar, centered his weight.

Jonathan only yawned and paid for their pints. "Nick, you're being such a freak. All this G.o.dd.a.m.ned energy. Don't you ever just, like, relax anymore?"

"Not when there's arm wrestling to be had," Nick said. He pointed to a beefy guy at the bar and crooked his finger.