Spells of Blood and Kin (2 page)

“Jesus!” Nick said, surprised to find his eyes shut, dragging them open. “Didn't hear you coming.”

“Show me.”

Nick turned his face toward the light over the bar's back door. In its halo, all he could see was a brimmed cap and the glint of eyes and teeth in a man's face; muscular shoulders in a wifebeater, one bicep marked with a tattoo or maybe a scar. An army guy or something. The kind of guy you could maybe allow to take charge in an emergency.

Nick stood still while a fingertip prodded at his temple and forehead. “Do you, like, know first aid?”

“You will bear a scar,” the guy said. “You should be careful in this neighborhood.”

Nick gagged on laughter. He stubbed out the joint on the rusted flank of the Dumpster and carefully stowed the roach in his pocket.

“And your friend? Is he well?”

“Hammered,” Nick said.

The guy was still standing really close. So close that Nick could see his lower lip was split, smeared with blood a little around the tear. It wasn't reassuring. Nick edged back against the Dumpster.

The guy leaned in as if to get a closer look at Nick's head. Instead, he laughed: a soft, bitter chuckle.

Nick laughed too, uncertainly.

The guy grabbed Nick's shoulder hard and kissed him on the temple, right over the jagged cut. Open-mouthed. His tongue probed the torn skin and lapped at the blood. Then with a choked sound, he wrenched away.

Nick belatedly got his hands up. “What the hell—”

The guy stumbled back a few steps. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and licked that too.

Nick got his only good look at the guy then, under the bar's security light: a tanned face, seamed with sun and wind. Dark eyes under the shadow of the weathered army-green cap.

Nick saw him take a breath as if to speak, but instead, the guy turned and ran away west down the alley.

“Jesus,” Nick said.

“What?” said Jonathan, reeling up from his slouch and wiping at his mouth with the hem of his T-shirt. “Who the hell was that?”

“I don't know. Totally random,” Nick said, staring down the alley at the runner receding into darkness. He raised his hand to touch the cut. Wet. He jerked his hand back.

“Shit. Your head,” Jonathan said. “Should we call the cops?”

“No. No phone. And I just got baked—no way do I want to deal with the cops.” He looked at his fingertips, smeared with saliva and blood. Was it only his own blood? What if the other guy had hepatitis or something? Nick shuddered. God, he was going to hurl if he kept thinking about it. He tried to shake it off. “It's fine. Come on, we should get out of here.”

“Get a cab?”

“No money,” Nick reminded him.

“Streetcar, then. Hope they didn't get our tokens,” Jonathan said. “I'm not fucking walking all the way home.”

“Streetcar,” Nick agreed, shivering harder.

With the change Nick had left, they had just enough for two fares. The driver looked dubiously at Nick's bloodied face and the smears on Jonathan's shirt, but she let them board. A girl in the forward seats rolled her eyes. Nick and Jonathan stumbled to the rear. Jonathan took the window, and Nick sidled in close to him, chilled.

The doors flapped shut. The streetcar's great weight rumbled forward along Queen Street. The girl at the front talked on her cell phone; a couple in the middle leaned their heads in to whisper to each other.

Nick looked over at Jonathan to see his friend scrutinizing him, brown eyes puffy and red-veined. “What the fuck was that?” Jonathan said.

“What?” Nick said. “You're asking me? Come on. Like this was my fault.”

“Whatever,” Jonathan said. “I told you I didn't want to smoke that joint.”

“You wanted to celebrate the end of finals, dude. Which, well deserved, by the way. And I'm pretty sure it was your idea to start with bourbon.”

“It's just … you never know when to stop.”

“Stop when I'm dead. Jerk.”

“That was funny when we were first-years. Which was five years ago, in case you lost count.” Jonathan closed his eyes and let his head drop against the streetcar window.

“It's still funny,” Nick said. “Come on. I'm hilarious.” There was drying blood on his fingertips. He tried to wipe them on his shorts, but the stickiness wouldn't come off, and Jonathan wasn't laughing, wasn't even looking at him.

APRIL 26

  
FULL MOON

On the second day, the funeral was held in the church with all ceremony, though Baba had not been allowed to set foot in the sanctuary in life.

Lissa was still forbidden to enter the sanctuary, though Father Manoilov allowed her into the less holy parts of the building. Father Manoilov had always been polite to Baba, even deferent, as one practitioner of faith to another, both integral to their community, and he told Lissa he was thankful for the chance to welcome Baba's soul back to the fold.

Father Manoilov ushered Lissa in the side door and let her stand at the foot of the basement stairs. She could hear most of the service.

It was in Russian, which Lissa did not really speak.

She leaned against the wall, creasing her black dress, feeling sweat pool between her breasts. Even standing up, she nearly went to sleep, catching herself upright again with a jerk of knee tendons.

Her eyes stung and burned. She had wept, of course, yesterday, but she felt more weeping under the surface, and she wanted it to stay there, safely invisible, until she could be alone for as long as she wished. As she walked about the basement, Lissa pinched the web of her thumb and bit the inside of her cheek.

She found the church kitchen, where the trays of sweets were laid out, sweating under Saran Wrap.

She found the percolator humming to itself, smelling burned already; who would want hot coffee on a day like this?

She found the refrigerator, and she opened the door wide and leaned into the cold air. The refrigerator contained a bowl of individual creamers, several cartons of milk, one of soy milk; another bowl, this one of butter pats; five pounds of grapes; and, tucked in the door, a baby's bottle neatly labeled with today's date and wrapped in a Ziploc bag against leakage.

Lissa picked it up and tilted it back and forth. No sediment: not formula. Why bring milk to the church when there was already—oh!

She opened the bag and then the bottle and sniffed. Definitely fresh, sweet-smelling. Mother's milk.

After she resealed the bottle, she wrapped the bag around it again and slipped it into her purse.

And just in time: there was a recessional booming out from the organ upstairs and the great creaking shuffle of the congregation rising.

By the time the first of them came down, she was back at the foot of the stairs, composed and ready to receive condolences.

She did not want to stay in the prickling heat with the contraband bottle slowly warming inside her handbag, but she was a one-girl receiving line. Father Manoilov did not stand with her, though he patted her on the shoulder once. The entire congregation filed past and murmured the same things over and over and shook Lissa's hand. Several of the ladies even called her
koldun'ia,
crossing themselves: it was the ancient word for a village witch, but here in Canada the village had become a cluster of Russian immigrants centered on the church, and
koldun'ia
had become something more like an honorific.

Lissa was Baba's successor, so it was right and natural that they should transfer the title to her, but it sounded achingly strange to her ears, strange and undeserved.

Only one lady asked Lissa about her recipe. Lissa had Baba's list of orders posted on the side of the refrigerator, but somehow she had not yet thought to review it.

The full moon was that very night, and the spells would work for two more nights after, which would give her plenty of time, at least. Lissa assured the lady she would have it ready and hoped she was not lying.

When she got home from the funeral, instead of beginning on the recipe she checked her voice mail again. One message, and she could tell right away it wasn't from Dad, because the voice was a girl's, light and sweet and … British?

“Lissa? I thought I should call ahead in case … look, Dad told me what happened, and I—oh, it's Stella, I should've said. I'm coming. To Canada. I'm so sorry for your loss. I know she meant a lot to you, and I—look, they're calling my flight; I have to go. See you soon!”

Stella. Lissa hadn't seen her since the wedding of her dad to Stella's mother, twelve years ago. She remembered a thin, laughing child in a ribboned frock who had begged Lissa to spin her around.

Stella. Not Dad.

Lissa supposed she ought to be grateful she had any family at all. Some people didn't.

She didn't have the family she needed, though. Like a stepsister she'd barely met could possibly do anything for her in the face of losing Baba.

Maybe it was best Dad wasn't coming: he would have got all involved in the businessy parts, trying to make Lissa sell the house and invest in a new condo or something like that. He wouldn't be able to help her with the church ladies. He would want her to drop everything Baba had taught her and enroll in an accounting course. At least with Stella, she'd probably just get platitudes.

Lissa dropped the phone on the floor and lay down on the sofa, exhausted beyond anything, and after dark, she woke up briefly to shuck off her dress, and then it was the third day.

APRIL 26

  
FULL MOON

Maksim slowed when the sun began to rise behind him, casting the shadow of his running form onto the dew-wet road. He veered off across unkempt grass and ducked through a stand of poplars. The buds smelled like vanilla caramel, intoxicating in the cool dawn air.

He was wringing wet with sweat, his hair and his shirt slicked to his skin. He peeled off his clothes, tossed them over a poplar branch, and strode naked right into the wavelets of Lake Ontario. The water was heavy with weed and cold enough to make him bare his teeth. He forged ahead and dove.

He burst up through the surface, blinked wet eyelashes. Lake water ran down his face, into his mouth; along with the rank freshness of aquatic life, he could taste faint lacings of city soot and jet fuel. The sunrise struck brightness off the glass towers of downtown. Maksim shook droplets from his hair and walked up through the water onto the beach.

He paced over the sand and up onto damp grass. The breeze lifted all the tiny hairs on his skin. Delicious.

With the cold and the light and the long run he'd had, Maksim came to a bit of clarity and recalled there was something not correct about walking naked out of doors beside the water.

Maksim ran his hands through his wet, matted hair and tried to think. He wasn't supposed to be doing any of this. Was he?

He circled back along the sand to where his clothes hung from the tree; the breeze carried the reek of his own dried sweat lingering on the fabric. And something else too, on the shirt, as he pulled it from the branch and over his head, something both enticing and horrifying. He settled his cap in place and looked down at himself.

Blood. That was blood on his clothing. Only a few droplets and smears, dry and brown, but he could smell it fully now, electric. The scent shot straight to his other nature, his worst and wildest self.

Maksim rubbed the stained cloth over his face. The blood smell, his own and another's. Whatever he'd been thinking was already lost in the intense and thoughtless pleasure his nature brought on him. His human will was nothing in the face of such intoxication.

He held still for a second with the shirt pressed to his mouth and nose. Something was not right.

Tossing his head didn't shake off the confusion. He barely remembered to shove his feet into his battered shoes. He strode quickly west along the water's edge and picked up speed, hitting the sand harder. Nothing in his mind but his body's command.