Authors: Tessa Gratton
I shivered and pulled my hands from his. I reached down for a jagged rock, and made a long, shallow cut through my palm.
“Silla!”
Nick snatched the rock away from me.
I held out my bleeding hand. “I don’t want this power. Look at it. Look how it bleeds out of me. What if all it does is bring death like this?”
“It isn’t the magic—it’s the person using it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do. The blood is what we make it.”
“Your grandpa knew; he said it was evil. That what your mom was doing was.”
“But we don’t know what she was doing!”
“Maybe it was just the magic itself. Maybe Mr. Harleigh knew it couldn’t be used for good.”
“But your dad, all his spells are good. For good!”
I shook my head. “But the price, Nick. The sacrifice is too much. My brother, my mom, they both died for it—and even a rabbit is too much.”
“It’s part of who you are, Silla.”
“I don’t want it.”
“That’s what my mom thought, and she tried to kill herself and then drug it out of her.”
“Maybe she had the right idea.”
Nick was in my face in an instant. “Don’t say that. Don’t
say that.
”
The air was warm between us. Cold on my back. I got off the monument, pushing around him. “I’ll say what I think is true,” I said quietly.
Lips pressed into a frown, Nick tore the bandage off his left hand. He put the rock against the stitches knitting his palm together, and sliced. Blood gushed. Hissing through his teeth, Nick dropped the rock, reached out with his unwounded hand, and grabbed my bleeding one. He jerked me forward and slapped our bleeding hands together.
Power cracked somewhere deep inside me, like lightning. And then a long summer roll of thunder rumbled from my center out toward our joined hands. All my blood was alive. I met Nick’s eyes and they were wide. I could almost see sparks of reddish lightning reflecting in his pupils.
“This is what we are, Silla,” he said. Then he paused, shook his head. “This is
who I am
. I know it now.” Snatching his hand from mine, he clenched it until blood dripped onto Reese’s grave. “Tell me when you decide who you want to be.”
With that, Nick strode away from me, into the shadowy cemetery.
My palm burned, and I turned it over to watch the blood pool. All around me, the crows screamed.
The October air cut against my hot cheeks as I plowed through the field on my way home. I kept not breathing and then having to suck in a huge, choking breath to catch up with myself.
Everything was so, so clear. My hand freaking hurt, but the fingers moved, thank God. I cradled it against my stomach as I hurried home to stanch the bleeding. But it almost didn’t matter. I’d get up to the attic, pull out the box, and use the holy water and willow leaf to heal it up. Mom had done it when I skinned my knees.
The woods enveloped me, and I dove in. The path wasn’t here, but I could just barely make out the glow of my house, so I’d be fine. Trees scratched at me, and I batted them away. I thought of when Silla had said she didn’t want the magic, and of how it had made me want to shake her. And I thought of kissing her, of how I’d wanted so much more than only kisses. Of the burn of magic between us.
A root snaked out and grabbed my ankle. I landed with a grunt on my palms, wrists jarred and knees popping with instant bruises. Furious pain coursed up from my cut hand. I just lay there, aching, my cheek against the cold ground. Damp leaves plastered themselves to my skin, and I breathed in cool, moldy air. Wind shivered through the trees, dropping more leaves down around me, soft and quiet as snow. I smelled mud and wet wood and—blood. Old, rotten blood.
My eyes snapped open and I pushed up, hissing at the pain. As I clutched at my hand, I peered into the darkness, at the bulbous shadows near the base of the tree trunk beside me. Something huddled there. The carcass of a raccoon, guts
spilled out everywhere. My eyes picked out the details, and I realized, swallowing back a sour taste, that there wasn’t any blood. I smelled it but didn’t see it. The raccoon was totally eviscerated, but the intestines glowed pink and white and pale blue in the bare moonlight. Every drop of blood was gone. I faltered back onto my ass, shoving away.
Branches creaked overhead, and I jumped to my feet, then spun around.
The whole woods groaned.
Skidding and sliding, I ran for the lights of my house.
Drusilla. Your mother almost didn’t agree to the name. We’ve told you this story before, that I said it was the name of a Roman empress and Emily found out she was the sister of the crazy, possibly incestuous Caligula. I could not tell her, nor you until now, that Drusilla was the name of my mother, who died a hundred and fifty years ago, alone and unknown, and is buried in a simple grave with only her given name upon it.
When you were born, I wept. And I remember thinking, for the first time in fifteen years, how glad I was of what I had done. I would not have changed anything that had led to the moment I held you in my arms. I was not—am not—sorry.
Emily insisted we call you Silla. My sweet, gentle Silla, all these things I write down will capture your imagination, and you would follow them into the face of God if you could. Or the Devil. As I begged your brother, so I beg you: only be yourself. Forget these bloody things when Josephine is gone, and if you can, forgive me.
The crows followed me into my dreams, and I woke up over and over again, batting away black wings that turned out to be my sheets. I sweated and panted and pulled Reese’s crumpled T-shirt against my face, breathing in that hay-and-oil smell.
It was sick and weird, I knew, but in the middle of the night I didn’t care. I pretended the smell would never fade, that he was right in the other room. That I wasn’t totally crazy.
I got my cell phone. It glowed an eerie blue against the dark of my bedroom. The light reflected along the ceramic and glass planes of all my masks, their empty black eyes reminding me of Nick, of how he’d disliked them—of how he’d yelled at me, pushed me back.
Tell me when you decide who you want to be
.
Scrolling through my address book, I passed his name and came to Wendy’s. I’d never apologized for the things I’d said at rehearsal the day Reese died. I typed: SRY SO CRZY. MISS U. THX 4 BNG HR.
SEND MESSAGE?
My phone blinked. I tapped the green button. Message sent. At two-thirty in the morning.
Then I lay back and stared at the ceiling.
You know what this all means, Silla?
Gram Judy had said.
It means you’re strong
.
I didn’t feel strong. I felt alone and terrified. Helpless. Dad had kept this secret, and he’d left me. Taken Mom with him. Reese hadn’t been able to stop it, hadn’t been able to fight it. And if he couldn’t, how could I possibly? I didn’t want this, not any of it. I wanted my life back, the one where the worst thing I had to worry about was that my best friend was dating my ex-boyfriend and I hadn’t been cast as the lead in the play. But of course, if I had my old life, I would’ve been Lady Macbeth.
Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valor / As thou art in desire?
Was I afraid of making a new life? Afraid of what it might entail? How did one choose such bloody deeds as ours?
Nick had. My father had. He’d studied it for his entire life, and lived in peace until he died, so far as I knew. And the Deacon. The Deacon who had sent me the spell book—he had chosen this life, too.
Who was he? Where was he? Could he help with Josephine? He’d said in his letter that he communicated with Dad—that Dad told him he was proud of me. Of my strength.
I owed it to my parents and to Reese to stay alive. To fight. I owed Nick and Judy. And Josephine had a lot coming to her.
But what did I owe myself?
Tell me when you decide who you want to be
.
I had a choice to make.
With the first light of dawn, I was up and moving. I scoured the bathroom until my shoulders ached and I was light-headed
from bleach smell. Despite a bandage and heavy-duty cleaning gloves, the cut on my palm ached. When the bathroom sparkled, I put together a casserole with all the vegetables left over from the memorial service. I scrubbed the microwave and emptied out the fridge, things that Gram Judy had thought too minor to matter in our day of cleaning. But in my mood, nothing was too slight.
Judy left around ten to meet Mrs. Margaret for yoga, and donuts afterward. She tried for a few minutes to get me to go, but not terribly hard. I did stop her, though, with a hug when she was pinning her salmon and turquoise Sunday hat over her braids. She patted my back, rather delicately. “Don’t crush my hat, love.”
Releasing her, I said, “Sorry.”
Judy patted my cheek. “I won’t be late. Be careful. We’ll be okay.”
As she climbed into her beat-up little Rabbit and zipped away, I wished I took as much of life on faith.
A few minutes later, I’d pulled on one of Reese’s sweatshirts for strength, slid the chain with my rings around my neck, and was gripping the study door frame, trying to decide where to begin my search for the Deacon.
I only stared at the hardwood floor, unable to take the first step.
My breathing sped up. I needed music to distract me.
In ten minutes, Reese’s old CD player was plugged in. It squatted on the floor beside the door, music whirring softly. Gentle guitar chords strummed, reminding me of the steady revolution of car tires.
We’d had a professional cleaner come down from Cape Girardeau to get rid of the stains in July. Gram Judy had arranged it when Reese had refused to let her help with the funeral costs. For a couple of weeks, the house had smelled like chemicals. I hadn’t minded, but Reese had bitched about his food tasting like peroxide. He’d threatened to buy sticks of incense or pour whiskey all over everything. I remember imagining the whole house going up like a bonfire. Judy had bought a bunch of flowers and lined the hallway with them. Roses and peonies and carnations: things with vibrant or cloying scents to counter the chemical stench.
Now it smelled like kicked-up dust and old books.
It was a dead room, guts torn out by the same thing that had killed my whole family.
Standing in the center of it, I felt all the empty weight crush down onto my shoulders. The music crooned, but beyond that, the house was silent.
I was alone.
“Stop,” I told myself. My voice rang against the music. I held out my wounded hand and gently touched the gash across my palm. It was red and throbbing.
Who am I?
Silla Kennicot, lost and washed-out cutter? Afraid of her own blood, always crying, always alone? Or Silla Kennicot, magician? Strong friend, in control of her own power? It was an easy choice to want to make, but taking the first step felt like leaping over a chasm of fire.