The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (25 page)

“May I?” I asked, watching the coyote’s golden eyes
.

“Ask the old man yourself,” you said
.

I crouched and put my fingers to his muzzle, and he creaked open his jaw. Many of his teeth were missing, but his tongue curled out between yellowing fangs, and his nostrils quivered as he smelled me. He sighed heavily, and I put my palm under his jaw to scratch gently
.

You cut your finger with the fleam you always carried in your pocket, and drew a triangle against his forehead. You whispered into his huge ear, and I felt the blanket of magic slip around me, too. What the coyote felt, we felt. Its bones ached, and pulling air into its lungs took too much concentration
.

“Oh, Arthur,” I murmured, glancing up to see the sorrow coating your eyes
.

“Stand back.” You lifted up onto your knees and put your hands on the coyote’s ribs
.

The world shivered and the coyote’s mouth yawned open. Its fur rippled and its paws splayed out. A strong wind rushed over the ground, scattering leaves and strips of fallen birch bark. The wind peeled the fur away from the coyote, tossing it into the air like dandelion seeds! The coyote’s skin sank down, sucking close to bones. The skull and ribs and sharp shoulder blades stood out. His eyes melted, and so did his tongue. Bones crumbled, sounding like tiny hail slapping down through baby leaves. From his eye socket a thin green stem grew, like a pointing finger, and blossomed into a tiny, perfect violet
.

You laughed. It was a soft, happy sound. You said my name, Evelyn, and I couldn’t feel my own body suddenly. My heart had vanished into the earth along with the coyote’s spirit. I was overwhelmed, and tears made my vision waver
.

You stood up and grasped my hands. “Did you see?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Your skin was hot, and I put my hands on your face
.

“That is my most favorite beautiful thing,” you said. “Not the sunrise or flying with the wind. Not any of it but this: death and life, and this moment when they are the exact same thing.”

It was so quiet in the grove, with your face in my hands. Your voice was low, and the death energy continued to resonate around us, but softly. Gently
.

And I knew you, in that moment. Love seemed too small a word for what I felt, what I understood. I knew you, Arthur. And I’ve never stopped
.

All night, Lukas screamed with nightmares.

I crawled into bed beside him, humming and singing all the lullabies I knew from Mother and Granny Lyn. When he was awake I used a pen to connect his burn scars with smiling faces and elephants to make him laugh. In the morning I strengthened my binding and gave him a draught of magic to keep his body relaxed. I asked him to tell me exactly what his father had done, what was the spell he’d needed the black candle rune for.

Lukas curled his feet onto the sofa, leaning away from me and into the corner, and said, “I don’t wanna say.”

I crawled nearer, sitting with my legs tucked up, too, un-threatening, kind, young as I could be. “It was not your fault, Lukas, I promise. You couldn’t have stopped him, whatever it was.”

His fingers made dents in the sofa cushion because he gripped it so hard. Behind him a fire crackled in the hearth, because although it was hot today, Lukas couldn’t get warm. Donna had brought hot chocolate and tea, offered him medicine and soup, suggesting he was only sick from his hard work.
But I knew, and he knew, what was keeping his energy and temperature down now.

I put a finger on his knee, traced a protection rune there, though it would do no good without blood. “It may help me to know why, the particulars of it. Even if you don’t wish to talk about it. And when I can remove it, you won’t need to be bound.”

“It’s cold,” he said.

“I know.”

“Have you ever—have you ever been … like this?” Lukas caught my finger and held my hand achingly tight.

My eyelashes fluttered. I didn’t like to think about having my magic bound. “I did it to myself once, after my mother died. To know what it felt like.”

“Why?”

I scraped my teeth over my bottom lip, pinched it. Thinking how to explain. “For … solidarity. So that I would feel how she felt when she died, so that I could carry that memory with me forever.”

He said very quietly, “My dad sells curses sometimes. Things so, like, a farmer’s fields go all to rot or—or once so a man stopped breathing exactly when Dad wanted.”

“It isn’t your fault,” I said again. “Come on.”

I took him down to the workshop, and while he explored the barn, I shifted the stacks of drawing paper and can of colored pencils off my worktable. I moved a pile of my raw rubies onto the ground and the plastic bin with the remains of my doll, too, until the only things left were the butcher’s block of knives and a can of blood-letters. “Hop on up here,” I said.

There was plenty of room for Lukas to stretch out, and I helped him remove his shirt. “Are you warm enough?”

“Mm-hmm,” he said, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek down onto the old worn table.

Rummaging around in one of the wooden boxes on the uneven shelves off to the right, I pulled out an old pair of Josephine’s glasses and brought them back. “I’m just going to look, all right, Lukas? But let’s ground you so you’re safe.”

With one of the small pins from the butcher’s block, I jabbed his wrist as quickly as possible. He did not even flinch as the blood trickled into my palm. “We feed you, Earth,” I said, “that our magic may come full circle,” and dripped his blood onto the earthen floor of the barn. With the final drop, I dotted his shoulder and then his forehead.

I slid the blood-sight glasses over my ears, and immediately my vision reddened. I saw my binding spell like a circle of calm around his center, and the curling magic of the black candle rune carved into his back. Its sickly red wavered gently like grass in a slight breeze, and tendrils of it doubled back to sink into his flesh, while others reached up into the air, up and up through the roof in thin strands. All the way to his father, no doubt. The dots of blood on his shoulder and forehead shone brighter, newer.

It was going to take effort to destroy the black candle rune without hurting him. But I couldn’t let him go on with these nightmares, and with that fierce, uncomfortable binding. Lukas didn’t deserve that sort of cold, that rope imprisoning him away from the magic of the world. I’d find a temporary fix to hold him while I hunted for the permanent solution.

“All right,” I said, removing the blood-sight glasses.

He rolled over and sat up, hugging himself. His hands were healed, though the burns had left tiny pink scars almost like caterpillars creeping around his knuckles and across his palms. I took one of them and said, “I have an idea.”

You showed me the rest of yourself that summer
.

Our mornings we spent separate, working around the house and land. But in the afternoons, you would come find me and take my hand and lead me on long, meandering walks, stretching for miles. And you talked. You answered any question I thought of, big or small. You told me all the same stories Gabriel had, but in every detail, with tangents and looping philosophy. Sometimes Gabriel joined us, interjecting his version, which was usually more audacious and amusing than yours. We laughed, all three of us, and I have never been so happy
.

As you wove history for me, I felt again that overwhelming sense of age wrap around you, but it was not oppressive, it was freeing. Because as you gave me this gift, I began to realize that you could have been doing anything: traveling, adventuring, living anywhere and loving anyone
.

But you chose to spend your time holding my hand
.

It had been a very long day, thanks to a bad night and having to face the growls of my dogs when I fed them that morning. Havoc’s curled lips stuck with me all through school. I’d been too swamped, trying to catch up with my teachers since I’d missed Monday and finals were next week, to hang in the halls. Or even eat in the cafeteria. So it wasn’t until after final bell that I tracked Matt down in the locker room. He flipped me shit about getting grounded. When I told him I’d been with Mab Prowd, he hit me on the arm. Called me a secret agent. Which made about as much sense as anything he ever said. Matt refused to let me go until I coughed up details. I walked him out to the practice field and told him a condensed, incredibly edited version of how I met her and why we were hanging out. He said we should all four of us, him, me, Mab, and Shanti, go to a movie when my sentence was over.

I really hoped we got this curse taken care of so that I’d have a chance to try and convince Mab it was a great idea.

As we hit the sunlight, I noticed him peering at my face. I remembered the red in my eyes and said, “Shit, I’m late,” before peeling off for the parking lot. The blood color was tough
to see in most indoor lighting at this point. But the sun seemed to narrow in on it like a spotlight.

Mab called just as I walked in the door. I smiled through my hello. Tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder while I grabbed a mug out of the kitchen. She said everything would be ready the next day for my cleansing ritual. I broke the news that I was grounded, and all she said was “Hmm. Well. Drink the tea. I’ll think of something and let you know.”

“Should I—” The dial tone interrupted me.

Being left hanging like that didn’t do wonders for my headache.

As I pulled my steaming mug of water out of the microwave, Ben clapped me on the shoulder. “Hey. What’s up with all the tea drinking?”

I shrugged him off and dropped in the little paper bag of Mab’s tea. “Tastes good.”

“You used to be as coffee-blooded as the rest of us.” He headed for the fridge. Cold air puffed out as he reached in for a soda.

Ben leaned against the kitchen counter, giving me that superior officer dress-down look. I stood with my arms crossed. Chin down slightly so that it was harder for him to stare right into my eyes.

It stayed like that between us until I hooked the teabag with my finger and dropped it in the sink.

“Let’s take it outside,” Ben said, jerking his head toward the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. He grabbed my mug and propelled me forward. He slid the door back and basically shoved me out onto the concrete steps.

Ben sat down on the top step, stretching his legs out in front of him. He handed me the tea and cracked open his pop-top. “God, smell that! Smells like summer. I can’t wait for the rain.”

Reluctantly, and avoiding looking at the kennel, I joined him. I grunted instead of responding. I guessed the mountains of Afghanistan were pretty dry compared to Kansas in May.

Neither of us spoke for a while. The incoming storms had started to push out a lot of the heat and humidity, so it wasn’t too stuffy, but so far there was just a little wind and a couple of clouds breaking up the sunlight. I imagined flying straight through them, toward the sun. The wind in my ears would be so loud.