Blood Magic (38 page)

My cell rang at eleven-thirty. I’d only been awake for an hour. “Yeah?” I hadn’t checked the incoming number and was pretty freaking surprised when Silla said, “Nick.”

I didn’t think she’d want to talk to me for a while, after last night. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to
her
for a while, either. But her voice had me sitting up straight at my computer and glancing out the window toward the cemetery and her house. I had to tell her about the raccoon.

“Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” I cleared my throat.

“I’m in my dad’s study, looking for a way to contact the Deacon.”

“The … oh, the guy who sent the book.”

“Yes. I figure since the book is buried, and Josephine isn’t, he might be the only person who can help us. He knew Dad. He probably knew Josephine.” She sounded certain, and calm. Like she was talking about her plan for studying for final exams.

“Good idea.” I leaned back into my chair. The joint creaked. I should’ve told her about the raccoon right then. But
if she wasn’t over her whole suicidal-didn’t-want-the-magic thing, I’d just have to deal with it myself.

After a pause, she said, “I was hoping you might come help me.”

“Yeah?”

“A second pair of eyes. I might not see something that stands out because I’ve been looking at my dad’s office for my whole life.”

“Yeah.”

“And”—she took a deep breath—“I’d like to apologize to your face.”

I huffed out air like a popped air mattress. “Okay.”

“Good.” Her smile was audible. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Nick, be careful. There are crows all over my front yard.”

We hung up.

Dad and Lilith had left for a matinee performance of some “cutting-edge” play that they were driving the two-plus hours to St. Louis for, so I didn’t have to make any excuses. I headed straight over.

Reese’s truck was in the drive, and I parked next to it. Three crows were chilling on the hood, arguing over a bit of purple ribbon. They squawked at each other but ignored me. I headed straight through the unlocked front door, calling “Silla? You here?” Music filtered out from the rear of the house. I followed the singing.

The door to her dad’s study hung open, and I walked right in. “Silla?”

A portable CD player blared some girly country-pop-rock,
and I leaned down to unplug it. There was no sign of her, other than the chaotic jumble on the desktop. “Silla?” I called again as I moved around the huge desk. A brass lamp glowed faintly yellow, casting light onto the top of her head. She was crouched behind the desk with her legs crossed and a random collection of objects in her lap.

“Oh, Nick.” She gently moved the knickknacks to the floor and stood up. She was wearing a sweatshirt about five sizes too big for her. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I can’t believe you left your door unlocked.”

Silla shrugged. “Did the crows bother you?”

“Nope.”

Her eyes slowly rose to my face. Her expression was guarded, but not
masked
. “I didn’t mean it last night. About your mom.”

“Good. Because it was stupid.”

One corner of her mouth twitched up. “I didn’t sleep much, worrying about it. And you.”

“Me?”

She shrugged. “And myself. And every possible thing I could worry about. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life afraid like that. Grieving. I want to act. Even if it means murdering a king.”

“What?”

“Oh, um”—Silla offered me a cheesy smile—“I was using Lady Macbeth for pep talks.”

“Sounds like the opposite of healthy.” I reached out and brushed my thumb against her cheek.

She caught my hand. Pulling it down, she studied it, rubbed
her own thumbs over my palm. The deep gouge from last night was only a raw pink line. Like the scar on her collarbone.

“Magic,” I said lightly, noticing that she had her own hand wrapped in medical tape. “You should let me fix yours.”

“I think …” She raised her face. “I think I need the wound right now. As a reminder of last night. Of what you said.” She pressed her lips together and nodded once, fiercely. “Of who I want to be.”

I lifted her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. The air between us was warm again. “So. We’re looking for the Deacon.”

With a heavy sigh, Silla dropped back to the floor and skimmed her hand over the assorted items: a pair of old glasses, a glass paperweight, some quill pens with ratty plumage.

Hunkering beside her, I pointed at the pens. “Your dad used those?”

“He had ink pots and everything. They’re in the top drawer there.” She glanced up at the desk; then her eyes flickered at me. She lifted the glasses. “I don’t know what he used these for. See? The lenses are pink.”

“Rose-colored glasses? I could use a bit of that.” The rims were silver and twisted in an odd S curve, and the earpieces were shaped like candy canes. “Oh, I remember him wearing these.”

“You … remember?”

Robert Kennicot glares down at me, through the weird glasses. “Robbie would not have approved, Donna Harleigh. You have gone too far.”
I closed my eyes, pressed my fingers against them.

“Nick?”

“Mom used to look for your dad through a mirror, the far-sight spell. And … I think I remember him looking at me through them, but talking to me like I was Mom … and Sil”—I met her worried eyes—“he said ‘Robbie would not’ like he wasn’t Robbie. But it was definitely your dad.”

“You mean someone possessed Dad’s body,” she whispered.

“Something like that … maybe.” I shook my head. “I’m not sure.” Picking the glasses back up, I asked, “You mind?”

“Go ahead. Tell me what you see.”

I settled the strange glasses onto my nose, and pushed the wire over my ears. Then I looked at Silla.

And fell backward onto my ass. “Shit!”

Her hand glowed with this reedy red aura. It bled out from her, stretching in tendrils. Toward me.

“Nick?” She leaned up onto her knees. The red wavered around her, less like liquid—more like a heat mirage. I glanced down at myself. The tendrils grasped at me, weaving around my hand.

“Uh, Silla. Um.” My eyes must’ve been huge. I couldn’t stop staring. “The glasses are magic.”

She frowned. “What?”

Reluctantly, I pulled them off. It took a second for my eyes to refocus. I handed the glasses to Silla.

With a massive frown, she put them on. “Everything’s a little pink.”

“Look at yourself.”

Her mouth fell open when she raised her hand. “Oh, God.” She climbed to her feet, still staring down at herself. “This is amazing. And weird.”

I smiled. She looked funny with the delicate round glasses perched on her nose.

“We’re connected, Nicholas.” Her eyes followed the long tendrils. “Probably because of whatever you did last night.”

“Or just how I feel about you.”

She froze, lips parting slightly. “Oh, Nick.”

I just looked at her. Thinking about the poem I’d written for her on Monday. Before all this had gone down.

Swallowing, she distracted herself from what I’d said by turning slowly in a circle, scanning the room. “I wonder if we can see any kind of blood magic?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh!” She froze, staring at one of the squares of bookshelf.

“Sil?”

She walked toward the shelf, hands out, and removed the stack of hardbacks leaning there. They dropped to the floor with a sharp thud. “This is glowing—sort of a red-gold, not exactly like what’s connecting us.” She shuddered and pressed a hand to the back of the shelf. “It’s a false back, I think.” Knocking on it, she peered in closer. The knock echoed hollowly.

I joined her at the shelf. “Maybe there’s a trigger or opening mechanism or something.”

Chewing on the inside of her lip, Silla ran her fingers along the edges. “Here!” She pushed on the bottom corner, and the panel popped out. She handed it off to me and reached inside.

She pulled out a portfolio, bound shut with a strip of leather, and a small Moleskine-like journal. Silla set them on the desk, on top of a scatter of sticky notes and old bills. She
unwound the leather quickly, and pulled out sheets of paper thick with writing. “Spells.”

The first one I picked up contained a diagram of a triangle inside a circle, and a bunch of notes and arrows and scratched-out words. From the top of the page, I read, “Triangle first, then the circle, or the energies won’t be bound.”

“It’s my dad’s writing,” Silla whispered. She flipped through. “God, some written in Latin. Like a code. It’ll take a bit to translate everything. But they look like they’re all for a huge, complicated charm—more stuff like what’s in the spell book, but less finished.” Silla glanced at the little journal. Slowly, she set down the spell notes and caressed the journal’s cover. It was plain black, with a thin red ribbon marker sticking out the bottom like a tongue. With a large sigh, she lifted it and opened it. “Nineteen-oh-four,” she read.

I leaned in as she continued. “I am Josephine Darly, and I intend to live forever.” Silla dropped the journal.

Touching the journal, I said, “Let’s take all this to my house. Dad and Lilith are gone for the day, and we can spread out and have the place to ourselves.”

“Yeah.” Silla nodded.

I left a note for Gram Judy, stuffed my backpack with my marked-up Latin dictionary and everything from Dad’s secret cubby. Nick took salt out of the pantry, and as we walked to his car, we filled a plastic sack with gravel for throwing at crows.

On the way, they winged silently overhead. Pacing us. I wanted to scream at Josephine that we had her diary—that we’d find whatever weaknesses were inside it and destroy her.

We got into the house unscathed, though. They didn’t even dive close or caw. They only landed gently on the lawn as we ran in through the garage.

It was amazing that I had enough energy to be thrilled by Nick’s bedroom. Playbills and posters made it look like he’d leached all the color and emotion out of the stark house and splashed it onto his walls.

We spread out across the floor, which was piled with horrible rugs. Oriental rugs and modern geometric rugs; even a shag rug. The chaos suited him.

Nick propped himself on his elbows, his legs stretching
back toward the stereo, and began to read the diary out loud. His finger tapped with the low beat of some weird music he called Swedish electronica. His eyes and lips had relaxed into an expression of slight amazement, and I stared. And listened. I imagined brushing my lips across his eyelashes, skimming them along his wide cheekbone. He hadn’t bothered, apparently, to slick back his hair this morning, and it flopped around his ears and down his neck. It looked soft.

I closed my eyes, stretched out beside him, and listened as he read to me about Josephine, about how she’d learned the magic from a mysterious doctor named Philip, about their lessons and theories, the decades they spent together. Josephine was insane, clearly, but I think if I hadn’t known she would eventually start killing people, it would have been easy to relate to her. She was just so excited about the magic, and determined to use it to live a good life. And she was in love. I understood why she enjoyed possessing people, and Philip’s difficulty with it made me feel better about failing so abysmally at it myself.

She even wrote about sacrifice. Philip taught her that the magic required balance, that our blood is strong but can be used for good or evil. It must have been wonderful to have a real teacher. Josephine mentioned the Deacon, too, who seemed to be an ancient wizard. Though it was hard to believe they’d all really been alive for so long.