The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (39 page)

He woke from my possession and raged—at first trying to break through the bars with sheer strength. But my roots lived, and they were solid, hearty wood. Ben’s groans of effort and yelling and cursing filled the barn with noise I was certain it had never before known. This was a place of beauty, of magic and peace and family, yet here I’d brought a prisoner to keep.

When he accepted that brute force wouldn’t free him, Ben inspected everything carefully, paying particular attention to the base of the roots. He hopped up to grab two of the bars, then swung himself higher, pulling himself hand over hand toward the center. The branches bowed slightly under his weight but did not break. They wouldn’t, and even if they could, I’d only need to grow replacements.

It was a losing battle, and that wasn’t something I believed Ben was used to at all.

I watched from the far corner, mostly concealed by shadows and a green tractor so old I’d never seen it move in all my
years. When Ben had been quietly standing in the center of his cage for quite some time, I slowly emerged.

Instantly, he leapt to his feet, grabbed two of the bars, and demanded I tell him what the
hell
was going on, and where Will was.

Holding my hands out, fingers splayed wide, I said I’d explain it all, if only he’d sit.

We stared at each other for a moment, and Ben crouched. It wasn’t sitting, but the angle of his chin told me it was the best compromise I could possibly hope for. Backing away, I sat against the worktable, with my spine pressed into one of the legs. I hugged my knees against my chest and explained everything to Ben. He gripped the rough wooden bars of his cage and watched me so closely I hated to move. Every shift, every sigh, every flutter of my hands drew that sharp gaze.

Ben said nothing, but I said everything. He had to understand. I told him about the blood magic and the Deacon, about the far-flung blood kin, about Eli and Faith, Gabriel and the crows and my mother and Silla. About Donna, Nick, and Lukas. About how I’d met Will and everything I knew that had happened to him.

I talked until I was hoarse, until all I could manage was a whisper and my bottom was numb from sitting, my arms tight from how I held them so close around my knees. The sun lowered enough that it pierced straight through the hole in the southwestern corner of the barn roof, lighting up the rafters and showering us with golden motes of dust.

There was silence for a long stretch after I finished. The quiet lasted so long I began to think he would never
acknowledge me, never let go of the bars of his cage. I let my knees stretch out and sighed hard, rubbing the heels of my hands into my eyes.

It would be better if only the crows would come
, I thought. If only I had them near me, could hear the familiar swish of their feathers and the comforting barks of their play.

Another minute slipped past, and I used the edge of the worktable to climb to my feet. Standing, I pressed my hips into the table and turned to Ben. His face was drawn, his knuckles white where he gripped the cage. Something desperate shone in his eyes, and I felt like I was walking a precipice on a thin strand of rope. When it snapped, he would either pull me to safety or watch me drown.

I didn’t have any idea what else to tell him, though, because I’d said everything. All the truths laid out for him in the best words I knew. My confession. I needed him to believe me, the way Will had.

But unlike Will, there was nothing welcoming or ready in Ben’s expression.

Closing my eyes so that I would stop seeing his accusations, I grabbed a lancet from the coffee can under the table and went to the overflowing shelves of potions and boxes and knickknacks.

I rummaged through them, hunting for the crayons I knew were hidden somewhere. I shuffled aside old bank documents; I moved a pile of river-bored stones; I tipped upside down a woven basket of seashells and twenty-year-old plastic Happy Meal toys. There it was—the crumbling box of crayons that had been tucked behind a ceramic piggy bank. Taking it and the
lancet, I grabbed loose drawing paper from the worktable and knelt an arm’s length away from Ben’s cage.

Without glancing up at him, I drew a colorful butterfly on the blank paper. I heard his breath hitch and then the shuffle of movement as he crouched to get a better look at what I was doing.

When my blue and pink and yellow butterfly had antennae and a long swallowtail, I took my lancet and pricked my wrist. A long drop of blood slipped out, spilling onto the crayon butterfly. I bent down as if bowing deeply and breathed my mother’s favorite spell.

“Become,” I whispered, channeling the tingling magic from my heart, through my blood, and into the drawing.

The paper fluttered, and the butterfly snapped up and away, flapping its rainbow wings in dizzy spirals. It bounced toward Ben, and I leaned back onto my heels, watching him.

His fingers uncurled and he reached to touch it. It skimmed along the back of his hand, and he turned it over to cup the little magic creature delicately.

Then he began to shake his head, pulling his hand back, making a fist. I said, “Will would love that spell. He believed me.”

Ben met my eyes, and finally he spoke. “He cared about you. I don’t.”

Swallowing a surprising hurt, I said, “That isn’t why he believed me, though. He believed me because magic was the only answer that made sense. Not because he—he cared.”

He laughed once, bitterly. “What does sense have to do with it? I’ve been places and seen things that didn’t make any sense at all. But that didn’t make them less true. Sense and
logic and truth don’t have much to do with each other.” His low voice was as calm and certain as mine had ever been. “Just because I think I see that butterfly, or that—that fire, doesn’t make it more likely. Just because I don’t understand and you say you do … that isn’t how the world works.”

My hands were limp in my lap. I’d never had to convince anyone of this before, who didn’t believe what they saw. “You don’t want to believe me.”

“No shit.”

“Why not?”

“Are you kidding?” Ben gripped the bars again, shook them. “If I believe you, then there are people who have so much power and they’re sitting in Kansas gardening instead of using it, for starters.”

I opened my mouth but wasn’t sure what to say.

Ben kept going. “And worse, if I believe you, then my brother isn’t just on drugs but
some other person stole his body
. How is that something I’d
want
?”

“Because I can fix that!” I leapt forward, grabbed the bars just below his hands. “I can save him, if it’s magic!”

He moved his hands onto mine, crushing them into the wood.

“You’re hurting me,” I said.

“I know.” Ben put his face inches from mine. “Let me out of here.”

I pulled back with all my weight, but he held tight. My fingers pinched, and I felt heat in my palms. “Stop, let go.”

“Let me out and I will.” There wasn’t any emotion in Ben’s face. Just calm, hard certainty.

“Please, Ben, Will believed me,” I gasped as he tightened his grip. “You said you trusted him.”

“And then he punched you in the face.”

“It wasn’t him,
I told you
.” Desperate, I put my feet against the bars, but Ben was that much stronger than I was, trapping me. “Please.” I closed my eyes and tried to relax. The bones of my hands crunched together.

Crows dove down at us, cawing as loud as firecrackers. Their wings flapped between us, slapping the cage, batting at my face. One clawed at our hands.

He let me go.

I fell back, scrambled away, then curled my poor fingers into my stomach.

The crows landed around me and around the cage. All remaining nine and relief blossomed cool and gentle in my chest. “Hi,” I whispered to them. One brushed my cheek with his wing. The tenderness sent a shiver through me, and I felt tears pinching my eyes. At least I still had someone.

I bowed against the dirt, smelling the dusty barn floor, huddled there, drawing strength up through the earth just a little, but not enough that Gabriel might notice.

“Mab.”

Ben’s voice was so soft it took a moment for it to register that he’d said my name. I pushed up to sit, and one of the crows hopped onto my lap. His claws scratched my leg through the thin dress. I looked at Ben, and he was staring at the crows, who all nine cocked their heads at him in the exact same moment, in the exact same way.

“Look.” He shut his eyes, and I saw the shudder pass down his body. “Look.” He pressed his hands flat to the dirt a few inches from the nearest bar of his cage. His eyes snapped open. “If you want me to trust you, you have to give me something. You have to let me out of this. So long as I’m your prisoner, I’m your enemy.”

I watched him, studying his face, wishing I could read it. But he was solid and unflinching. How did I know he meant it at all? That he wasn’t lying to me in exactly the way I was lying to Gabriel?

One of the crows hopped through the bars and into the cage next to Ben. He flapped up and landed on Ben’s shoulder, who leaned away and grimaced as the crow’s claws cut through his T-shirt until little pricks of blood seeped into the material. Ben turned his head and stared at the crow, and the crow stared back.

I supposed that trust should be a mutual gift, and Ben was right that I needed to offer first.

I reached forward and picked up the discarded lancet, cut my palm, and pressed it into the cage bar. Closing my eyes, I breathed through the magic, and the tingle of power spread into the cage. Two bars grew out, bowing until there was room for Ben to slip through.

The crow on his shoulder pushed off him, flying out and up past me. The wind of its passing ruffled my hair, and the crow on my lap leapt up, too, until all nine spiraled over us in the air.

Ben climbed out of the cage and stood, stretching tall. I
looked up at him from the ground, waiting. The barn door was open, and he could get to his car, because I wouldn’t chase after him, wouldn’t stop him. He glanced at the wide-open doors, at the sunlight and the red clover, at the hint of green from the forest. His eyes narrowed as if he was seeing something he didn’t like, and he lifted a hand to the back of his neck.

A heavy sigh settled his shoulders, and he dropped down to crouch in front of me. “All right. Tell me your plan.”

Once he turned his attention to believing me, Ben poked holes in all of my ideas.
What if this? What if that
? he asked again and again. I put my head on the table and thought,
If only he’d been around to destroy my plans before I lost Lukas and so perfectly readied Will for Gabriel’s magic
.

By the time the sun had set enough that it was difficult to tell the crows from the shadows up in the rafters, I was thoroughly frustrated and said, “But I have to try something!”

Ben tapped his finger on my worktable and shook his head. “Being patient is sometimes the best offense. You have to make sure your intelligence is the best, and that you know as much as you can about what’s around the next corner.”

“The longer Gabriel has Will, the harder it may be to get him out.”

His eyes narrowed again like he was peering into the sun, an expression I was learning to interpret as Ben weighing options that he didn’t like. “Better it be harder than we screw it up.”

That was true, and stabbed at my guilt. I nodded and took a deep breath.

“I won’t give up, Mab,” he said, almost gently. “And I think you’re as stubborn as anybody.”

“I should go back up to the house, before Gabriel comes looking for me.”

Ben sighed through his teeth. “Back into the cage for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded and said, “I’m gonna go … outside for a second.”

I watched him, hoping he was enjoying enough wide-open freedom that sleeping in the cage wouldn’t make him angry again by the time morning came.

While Ben was outside, I dragged the plastic bin with all the remains of my homunculus away from the wall and dumped it out. I spent a few moments arranging it, setting up some old sketches of regeneration runes and my notes from last month when I’d begun to create the doll—in case Gabriel came down when I wasn’t here, he’d have evidence of what I was supposed to be doing.

The crows hopped around me and the remains, nudging at them with their beaks and claws. I said, “Stay here with Ben, keep him company. I know even your strange presence will be good for him—so he doesn’t feel alone.”

Two crows angled their heads up at me, questioning.

“I’ll be fine.” I offered a smile.

“Are you talking to them?” Ben asked from behind me.

Turning, I said, “Of course, and you can, too.”

“Hmm.” He frowned, and reluctantly climbed back into his cage.

After I re-formed it around him I promised to bring food and more water at dawn. He held on to the cage as he had earlier
that afternoon, but loosely, and leaned his forehead against one of the bars. “Be careful,” he said.

It felt like he was only protecting an asset, but I smiled just a little before I left him.