Spells of Blood and Kin (30 page)

Lissa took the sunny side of the table and watched the fine blond hairs on her arm stir in the warm breeze. She ordered iced coffee.

Rafe arrived before she had time to get too insecure. She saw him strolling up, recognized his walk, a bit shambling, in his skateboard sneakers and cargo pants, the chain of his wallet swinging. He wore dark Oakleys, and she couldn't see through the lenses at all, but the lines of his face turned happy when he saw her.

So she stood up and kissed him. Was that okay? Did people do that?

Rafe answered her by sliding a big hand over her hair and kissing her back, grinning broadly as he took the chair opposite, nudging her foot with his.

“Now I'm glad I set the alarm,” he said. “'Fraid I went for a nightcap with the boys after closing. Going to need some eggs to put me right.”

Lissa bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. She ordered banana pancakes, and Rafe sang part of a song about them in a husky but tuneful voice; the lyrics matched so well with what Lissa had been thinking last night that she couldn't help but smile.

“I was in a band,” Rafe explained, breaking off. “A third-rate cover band playing Tuesday nights in a sports bar in Bloor West Village.”

“You were the lead singer,” Lissa guessed.

“I did a truly awesome Billy Bragg when they'd let me.”

Lissa didn't know who Billy Bragg was. It must have been obvious from her expression.

“Someone too British for the Canadian sports bar crowd,” Rafe said, shrugging. “Remind me next time you drop by the pub; I'll put him on the jukebox.”

There it was again, that easy assumption that this would continue. Rafe didn't even notice he'd done it and just went on naming bands, singing bits of songs. Some she knew, and some she didn't, and one she could even sing along with him. As if she were a person who sang or ate breakfasts with men or lazed in the sunshine on a morning off.

Her pancakes came with a scoop of custard on top, and she couldn't finish them, but Rafe polished off the part she didn't want, finally sitting back and patting his belly. It was a solid belly that went with the muscular arms and the breadth of his shoulders.

And she was sitting there looking at him and not talking, and maybe she should be doing a better job of this date thing.

She looked quickly to his face and saw that he was smiling below the dark glasses.

“I don't have to be at the Duke until six,” he said. “Want to take a wander with me?”

So she got to see College Street in a way she'd never done before, at strolling pace, looking in the windows of boutiques. Helping to flip through bins of used vinyl outside the music shop, because Rafe said he had a vice. Buying herself a tortoiseshell hair clip and wearing it right away, liking the weight of her hair lifted off her neck and the brush of Rafe's fingers over the warm skin exposed.

It wasn't until they stopped for espresso, midafternoon, that she thought of anything else. Rafe was at the counter, paying, and Lissa thumbed her phone open to see a voice mail and three more missed calls from Stella.

When she called back, no answer.

JUNE 1

  
LAST QUARTER

Nick opened his eyes to Stella's face, blurry and way too close, and her hands tugging on his arm.

“Here's the deal,” she said. “I have more of the eggs in my bag. I don't know where I'm going, though. You'll have to take me there.”

“Can't walk,” Nick said, yawning.

The hands left his arm and tugged at his shirt.

“Stoppit,” Nick mumbled. The shirt peeled stickily away from his skin, and he fought to free his head from the fabric.

“Wow,” Stella said. “You'd be kind of pretty if you weren't covered in egg.”

A chilly, rough cloth swiped over his back, and he made an unhappy noise.

“Stop whining. You'll feel better in a moment. Just don't do anything stupid, or I'll put the whammy on you again.”

She sat with Nick while he scrubbed his fists into his eyes and worked spit around his mouth and finally sat fully upright.

“Good to go?”

“Um,” he managed. “Sort of.”

She hauled him up by the biceps. “Put this on.”

It was a T-shirt from the Duke of Lancashire, brand new, size M. It was tight over Nick's shoulders and smelled unappealingly of cheap dye.

He stretched hugely, cracked his neck, shivered at the touch of his still-slimy waistband against his skin.

“What are we doing again?”

“Taking eggs to Maksim. It's what you came for, right?”

There'd been something else, and probably Gus was going to kick his ass if he came back with the wrong sister and the wrong magic, but Nick just couldn't wrap his head around it at the moment. “Whatever,” he said and stumbled after Stella down the walk.

Thank all the gods she hailed a cab, because Nick thought it was at least a few miles, and fuck if he was going to walk all that way with traces of egg still sending pulses of nauseating sleep through him. He sat there dumbly in the backseat with the cab unmoving and Stella staring at him. She finally snapped, “Tell the man where we're going.”

“Dundas. And, uh … Dundas and Bellwoods.”

Stella wouldn't let him lean over against her. He opened his window all the way and leaned his head there instead, breathing cab fumes. How did Maksim deal with this all day? No wonder he didn't want to eat.

When the cab pulled to the curb, Nick fell out and leaned on a newspaper box while Stella paid. “You owe me fifteen bucks,” she said, but he was too busy swallowing down sick saliva to even answer.

It was better out of the car, though. He could smell trees. And home. Home was right there.

He had a fuzzy moment where he couldn't quite remember why Stella was with him. She smelled mostly nice, but there was something.

“Right,” he said. “This sucks. Come on, he lives up here.”

He stumbled up the stairs. He got halfway, and then Gus popped out from somewhere and tackled him into the wall.

“Eggs!” Stella yelped, holding the bag above her head.

Gus sniffed along Nick's neck and wrinkled her nose at the new shirt. She let Nick drop and gave Stella a flame-edge blue glare.

“Jesus, Gus, stand down already,” Nick said and yawned. “Her sister was out, so I brought her. Would you chill?”

“You were gone a long time,” Gus said.

“Nothing happened. She egged me. No, fuck, it's fine; I was being a dick.”

“Thank you for that,” Stella muttered.

“You egged him,” Gus said. Her voice was flat.

Nick edged protectively in front of Stella.

Stella pushed at the flat of his shoulder with her hand. “Don't be an idiot, Nick. Get out of my way, or I'll do it again.”

Gus laughed: a real, normal, amused chuckle. Nick opened his eyes wide.

“A witch I could like,” Gus said. “Who knew? Hey, I've forgotten your title, but I'd use it if I had half a brain for Russian.”

She was drunk, Nick thought: not very, but he could smell it, along with the smell that meant
family
to him now.

Stella, behind him, was laughing too. “I can't say it, either,” she admitted. “We'll get Maksim to walk us through it, shall we? How's he doing? I've got more of the sleep eggs, but I'm afraid if there was anything else you needed, Nick didn't manage to tell me.”

“Sure. Blame it all on me,” Nick grumbled, trailing after the two women, “when you egged me before I had a chance.”

Stella didn't seem to hear him, and he was still too damned sleepy to bother to raise his voice; he only plodded upstairs and picked at the crusty egg drying on the back of his shorts.

JUNE 1

  
LAST QUARTER

Lissa was getting better at lying spontaneously, at least to people who didn't know her well yet.

Rafe seemed to believe she was really getting a migraine. He offered to take her home, and when she demurred, he hailed her a cab, kissed her gently, and told her to come by the pub tonight if she felt better.

When she reached her house, though, she wished it hadn't been so easy. She was already getting used to the warm and solid presence at her shoulder. She stood on the porch and looked at the bits of eggshell scattered there. What the hell had happened?

The front door was locked, the kitchen tidy, all the lights turned out. She found Stella's note, thank God, in an obvious spot on the counter, weighted with the sugar bowl.
Gone to drop off eggs to M.,
it read.

Gone, without Lissa, to the home of the very person she'd been told to keep away from. And why was Maksim out of eggs again?

She didn't waste any time getting back out the door and into another cab—the amount of money she was spending on cabs these days, for Christ's sake; what about the house bills?—and when she was speeding up Ossington, she took out her phone again and tried Stella once more.

“Hey,” said Stella, picking up.

“You're okay?” Lissa asked, feeling it come out breathless. “You're at Maksim's?”

“Yes.” Stella sounded puzzled. “Didn't you get my note?”

“I was worried. I called you back, and you didn't answer.”

“Oh, sorry. Must've missed it. Yes, I'm here. Brought some eggs, though it turns out he still had some.”

“No one's hurt you?”

“No. Really, I'm fine. Maksim, though…”

“I'll see for myself in a second,” Lissa said. “I'm just pulling up.” She flicked her phone shut and paid the cabbie. Her head ached for real now, in the backwash of fear. Stella said she was fine—but so much could have gone wrong, and all of it would have been Lissa's fault.

Stella met her at the downstairs door.

“I'm glad you came,” she whispered. “I don't know what to do.”

Lissa seized her hand to stop her going back up. “Is anyone giving you a hard time?”

“Nothing like that. Nick got a bit handsy, but—hey, don't go all big sister. I'm trying to tell you something here. You know how Gus really doesn't like you?”

“I got that, yeah.”

“Well, she sent Nick to ask you for help. And I'm starting to get why.” In the shadow of the foyer, Stella's eyes were liquid and dark, beseeching.

“You think I should fix him,” Lissa said.

“Can you? For good? Is that how it works?”

She didn't answer, patted Stella on the arm, and went up.

Gus was sitting on Maksim's sofa with a bottle of rye between her knees.

“He's over by the refrigerator,” she said unnecessarily, for Lissa could see Maksim's legs sprawling in the kitchen doorway.

She knelt beside him without touching; she remembered what he was like when surprised awake.

He lay curled on his good side on the linoleum; someone had put one of the sofa pillows under his head. He wore the same jogging shorts she'd given him at the hospital and nothing else; the waistband was grimed with old blood. He'd taken the plaster off his arm; the injury still looked swollen and unhealed.

“
Koldun'ia,
” he murmured.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“Am I?”

“That doesn't make sense,” she said, but he only made a dismissive gesture and winced and curled up tighter.

Lissa went back to Gus and Stella on the sofa. “He wasn't that thin before.”

Gus's lip lifted. “I feed him.”

“I didn't send him home with you so that he could lie on the floor,” Lissa started.

“Of course you feed him,” Stella interrupted, soothingly, hand hovering an inch above Gus's knee. “You're doing just about everything for him, right? Nick's useless, I can see that.”

Gus's mouth worked. Her hands were wrapped tight about the rye bottle, bloodless, showing the ugly, dark scars on most of her knuckles.

Lissa bit her tongue and let Stella keep talking.