Gifts of the Blood (2 page)

“Oh, God, Amberlyn, shut up!” I squealed. I did not want to think about my best friend and the crush she’d had on my brother since the seventh grade. I jerked my hands away and grabbed the sketchbook from my lap. “It’s just… I was just daydreaming, ok? Seriously. There is no one.” I started to rip the picture from the book to wad it up, but she stopped me.

“No, wait,” she insisted, snatching my sketchbook away. She ignored my squeals. “Daydreaming or not, this is really good, Caspia.” She crinkled her perfectly shaped little nose and narrowed her golden-green eyes. “In a Gormenghast meets William Turner kind of way.”

“A fantasy-horror landscape painting. That just about sums up my life right now,” I moaned, falling back against the bench. My head felt hot and heavy. I let it drop into my hands. “They say there’s truth in art.” I realized I was near tears.

“Oh, Caspia. Sweetie.” She let her golden-brown curls rest against my shoulder. “You know what you need?” Amberlyn snaked an arm around my shoulder. Even in fall, she managed to smell like cocoa butter. “You need a caramel latte with extra caramel. And you need me to buy it for you.”

I sat up straight and looked out over the river. School was supposed to be the easy part of my day, and here I was, almost crying. I still had work and chores and homework and Logan. I had better shape up. Then I realized I had just lumped my brother in with chores, and almost started crying again. A sudden chill breeze helped bring me to my senses; I quickly wiped my tears and reached for my knapsack. “I have to check on Logan before I go to work at the place that makes the caramel lattes. Making my own makes it less of a treat,” I grumbled.

“Mmm hmm. Just go ahead and be difficult then. Because then I won’t have to tell you how much charcoal you just smeared on your face, wiping away your own tears when you had a friend right here to do it for you. And I surely won’t have to go buy three extra caramel lattes that someone else made so Logan can have one too and then bring them up to your apartment while you clean yourself up for work.”

Amberlyn had already smoothed my incriminating drawing and closed my sketchbook, tying it tightly closed with its black leather cord. She held it with uncharacteristic solemnity. Her golden-brown spiral curls blew all around her café-au-lait skin. In the afternoon light, she looked angelic. I felt suddenly, powerfully alone. We’d been best friends since we both showed up on the first day of junior high with identical cartoon lunch boxes, cementing our eternal torment and instant solidarity all in one day. But my visions were a secret I had never shared. Not even Logan or my parents were comfortable with the subject; Gran had been the only one.

I felt heavy with secrets and pent-up emotions. “You don’t have to do all that.” I started to refuse, but my voice came out in a whine even I was sick of hearing.

“Just promise me two things.” I nodded, ready to sign over my first born child for the chance to catch up with Logan, grab a shower, and drink pure sugary sin with my friend before work. Amberlyn slapped me on the forehead with the front of her hand. “Don’t be such a martyr. You and Logan are like family.” I scowled and rubbed my forehead.

“And the other thing?” I prompted warily, ready to smack her back, if necessary.

She swept her corkscrew curls out of her face with one hand and held my sketchbook out to me with the other. “Don’t you dare trash that picture. It’s good, Caspia. Really original.” I gave her the barest nod before slipping it into my knapsack. A part of me wished it had been my firstborn child after all. She had no idea what that picture represented to me. All my feelings of freakish isolation and impending disaster came bubbling up, threatening to overflow. But then I stopped myself. What if it wasn’t bad this time? What if it really was just a picture of some random guy?

I realized then I wasn’t afraid of the picture so much as I was of my “gift” reawakening, in public, when everything else was so out of control. But my visions weren’t something I could control. Never had been able to. I slung my knapsack across one shoulder and gave Amberlyn a wicked grin. “Try not to get eaten by tornadoes on your way over,” I teased. “Logan might actually notice this time.”

I tried to dodge the flying object I knew was coming but I wasn’t quick enough.

***

I burst through our apartment door, slightly breathless from my sprint up two flights of stairs. We lived two floors above Mr. Moore’s tiny hardware store, and one floor above Mr. Moore himself. Jackson Moore had been my father’s best friend, and took it upon himself to watch over us after he died. When settling my parent’s estate meant selling the turn-of-the-century house Logan and I had been born in, Mr. Moore insisted we take the empty apartment above his. He kept the rent reasonable, and even let Logan and I do some renovations instead of putting down a deposit.

Logan started working odd jobs for him when he was around sixteen. When our parents died, his part-time job grew into a full time job at the hardware store as Mr. Moore’s head carpenter. But it had been months since Logan could carry lumber or pound a hammer. So I was learning all kinds of things about insurance, disability, dependants, deductibles, and claims processes until I thought my head might explode. Mr. Moore patiently helped me through all of it. Neither one of us brought up “the details” with my brother. He had enough to worry about, trying to hang on to his husk of a failing body.

I loved our little apartment. It was just big enough for Logan, Abigail, and me. What it lacked in modern conveniences it made up for in outdated charm, like the oversized claw-footed bathtub, the hand painted kitchen wall tiles, towering ceilings, and ivy-covered patio. It overlooked Whitfield’s Old Town Square, with its gorgeous fountain and trees draped with lights year round. I could walk almost anywhere I wanted or needed to be in minutes. Most importantly, it made me feel like I was a part of the city’s vibrant beating heart. Whitfield wasn’t a big and exciting city. It was definitely Southern and I had lived there all my life, so by rights I should have hated it and been desperate to escape. But I didn’t. Instead, I felt an intense connection I couldn’t exactly put into words. I tried to paint it instead, with varying degrees of success.

“Logan!" I yelled, dropping my knapsack next to the door while I kicked my Chuck Taylors off in two quick, sure movements. “Amberlyn’s coming over.” My hoodie crumpled onto the gold-varnished wooden floor, missing its hook by inches. I just shrugged and slammed my keys down on top of the bookshelf by the door, knocking several pieces of mail off in the process. “She’s bringing delicious beverages,” I continued, walking away from the mess I’d made without a second glance. We were both used to my slovenly ways. Logan had given up trying to break me of them long ago. He picked up after my messes, and I did his laundry. “I’ve got just enough time to grab a shower before work, so if she…”

Logan wasn’t listening. He was curled up in a little ball on one side of the sofa, his shoulders rising and falling slowly. Very slowly. A knit navy toboggan covered the tops of his ears and most of his eyes. His bare neck looked pale and graceful in its fragility; I resisted the urge to stroke it. Abigail lay sprawled against as much of him as she could reach, every orange and fluffy inch of her radiating watchful protectiveness. She head-butted me as I leaned over my brother, touching his face, reassuring myself that yes, he was breathing, he was alive.

But he was icy cold to the touch, and the skin under his eyes, even in sleep, looked sunken and hollow. The bones of his face were so sharp, so prominent; it struck me how much weight he’d lost over the last few months. He covered himself in the baggiest clothes these days, so I hadn’t really noticed. Or maybe I was just that unobservant. I was failing at this, at taking care of him…

A blurry orange vibration nudged at my hand. I blinked away tears yet again as I petted the purring cat that meowed quietly for my attention. “You’re right, Abby,” I whispered, pulling an old fleece throw over my sleeping brother. “We’d better not wake him. I’ll put a note on the door for Amberlyn, warning her.” Abigail flicked her tail in agreement before resuming her position as guardian of Logan’s fleece-covered back.

I lingered a moment longer. I knew I had to hurry, that work was waiting, that Amberlyn would come trooping in at any moment like a pack of wild wolves. In the slanted half-light pouring in through our front window blinds, my brother looked like something newborn and delicate, something so vulnerable that the very act of observation might be enough to take him away. I thought of baby rabbits trembling in my hands, of snowflakes melting on coat sleeves, of lightning bugs in mason jars living only until morning. I watched him, hardly daring to breathe, willing myself to memorize this moment when my brother’s shoulders brushed too slowly against the fuzzy orange of Abigail the cat.

You’re going to lose him soon
, a voice whispered deep within my mind.
He’s too fragile for this world now. Winter will take him.
I clenched my fists against the truth of it.

“No,” I whispered through locked teeth. “I will fight for him. He’s all I have left.” I let myself feel the fear, give in to it completely, for the space of several deep, long breaths. Then, because I had no other choice, I let it go.

Under the bay window overlooking Old Town Square stood an antique mahogany roll top desk that used to belong to my father. We kept our parent’s wedding bands, important papers like birth certificates and insurance mumbo jumbo, keepsakes, art, and photographs in it. On the top of its dark surface stood the last picture of the four of us together, surrounded by candles, dried flowers, and whatever odds and ends happened to catch our eye. It was a shrine of sorts, I suppose, although both Logan and I would deny it, if pressed. I went to this picture and lit a half-melted candle.

I wish you could make him better
, I thought at the picture, reaching out to touch my parent’s smiling faces with two fingers.
I wish… I wish you could help us. There’s only me, and I’m not enough.
It was the closest I had come to praying since they died.

I saved my tears for the shower, where they finally took me in great heaving waves, muffled by music and pounding hot water that washed them down the drain.

Chapter Two:

A Visitor

I rinsed off vanilla and brown sugar body scrub just as the last bars of “Your Heart to Haunt" faded away. Perfect. I had given myself exactly two songs to shower. No time to soak; I gave the claw-footed tub an apologetic backward glance as I stepped gingerly, dripping wet and naked, into my room. Lost in pensive thoughts, I’d forgotten my towel. I started the playlist over as I pawed through my basket of clean but unfolded laundry, relying on the music to keep me moving even if my thoughts wandered. My dark hair was still wet; droplets gathered on the tips below my shoulder blades. Wispy and fine, it would dry on its own before work.

The unimaginatively named Whitfield Coffee Shop had no set uniform. Brown and beige aprons with the company logo emblazoned right across the chest distinguished us from customers. As long as we were clean and relatively covered, we could wear what we wanted. I dug out my second-best pair of jeans and my Feral Fire t-shirt. The weather was turning. Short sleeves wouldn't be an option for much longer.

Amberlyn half-sat, half perched in one of the squashy chairs that flanked the sofa when I crept from my bedroom. Thin bright sheets of metal paper rested carefully across one thigh. Eyes narrowed, pink tongue held tightly in place with her teeth, she concentrated on the last folds of a silver origami crane as if the fate of the world depended on its completion. Her school bag and purse sat stacked in a neat pile on the floor, and her black ballet flats flanked them with almost military precision. Logan hadn’t moved since I covered him with the blanket. Crane completed, Amberlyn gestured to a plastic-topped cardboard cup on the coffee table without a word. Eyeing Logan, she offered the delicate silver crane to Abigail, who looked at it with interest, but did not surrender her post.

“Has he moved at all?” I asked as I took a quick gulp. Oh. My. God. Delicious and still so hot it burned my tongue. The extra-caramel latte was one of my own inventions. I invented almost all the drinks at the coffee shop. My boss, Mr. Markov, was Russian and old and had the imagination of a turnip. The extra caramel cinnamon spice latte was our flavor of the week, in honor of the changing seasons. It did taste better because I hadn’t made it, though. I closed my eyes as I took another sip and tried to guess which one of my twin coworkers, Amelie or Nicolas, had made it. My guess was Nicolas. Amelie always used too much cinnamon. I crossed to Logan’s prone form and debated whether to wake him.

Amberlyn shook her head no. She took in my second-best jeans and my freshly scrubbed face with one swift sideways glance. “I’m going to stay with him.” She gestured to a lone cup sitting amongst stacks of papers and dishes on the kitchen table. Her gesture managed to convey elegant disapproval of my slovenliness. “So I guess there’s an extra. Take it with you, in case you run into someone who needs a pick-me-up.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I protested as vehemently as I could manage without waking my brother. “Besides, what if he wakes up and wants one then?”

She rolled her golden-green eyes at me. “Then I’ll just run two doors down and get you to make me another one.” She grinned. “Or two.” Amberlyn settled more fully into the chair and made shooing motions at me. “Look, Caspia. I want to stay. The cable’s out at my house, and your maid seems to have quit or something.” I made a face at her. She ignored me. Her eyes held a hint of desperation I didn’t quite understand until she practically growled, “I’m going to cook something and make him eat it if I have to tie him up and force him.”

“Oh, sweetie,” I said, reaching for her. Amberlyn didn’t have the most stable home life. Her mother was long since happily divorced and even happier when she could come and go as she pleased. My best friend had never lacked for anything material, but hadn't seen her father in over a decade and her mother only when it suited her social calendar. Logan was important to her, too. Over the years, I watched as she navigated the lines among secret crush, hero worship, mature friendship and sometimes, some combination of the three. “I’ve tried, I swear. I’ve tried all his favorites. One day we ate nothing but ice cream and peanut butter cookies. It’s just a part of it, the weight loss. The doctors say he’ll gain it back, afterwards.”