Spells of Blood and Kin (36 page)

Nick bit his lip and inhaled. “You aren't really going to Durban, are you?”

Gus laughed. “How would you know?”

He was right; he could tell by the flat look on her face, but she seemed to want him to show his work.

“You're here drinking,” he said, “instead of at the airport or on a train. You don't have any things to pack. You know Maksim is okay now. You could be out of town in about ten seconds if you meant to go.”

She nodded.

“Why?” Nick said.

“Why do you think?”

“You know she wouldn't take you back,” he guessed. “She's your ex for a good reason. Right? You've been here in Toronto for a long time, years, and you wouldn't have been if you could have gone back to this girl anytime.”

“She isn't a girl anymore,” Gus said, but she didn't disagree with any of what Nick had said. “I haven't seen her in a decade, at least.”

“What did you do? Cheat on her? Act crazy? She didn't like your drinking?”

Gus shrugged. “All of the above. Also, I hit her.”

Nick whistled.

Gus narrowed yellow-gray eyes at him and lifted off the sofa. “So would you have.”

“I'd never…” Nick paused.

“Hit a woman? Tell that to the bruise on my ribs,” Gus said. “A person weaker than you? Didn't you skip out of your flat because you think you killed your best friend?”

“He's okay,” Nick said, hands out, warding her off.

She kept advancing. “Maybe you got off easy this time,” she said, “but you won't always.”

“I can control myself.”

“You have to want to. That's the thing that keeps fucking us up,” Gus said. She turned away, wiping at her face.

“Why do you even give a shit?”

“Because you're my kid brother,” she said, and she whipped around, catching him in a headlock, and she scrubbed his hair with her fist.

Nick twisted his shoulder into her gut and tried to throw her.

Gus's apartment didn't contain many breakable things, but they managed to crack an arm of the sofa and decorate the kitchen floor with vermouth and broken glass before the pounding of the neighbors below began to register.

Nick spat a strand of Gus's hair out of his mouth and sat up. “Fuck,” he said, falling back again, picking a glass shard from the ball of his thumb.

“You did better this time,” Gus mumbled through swollen lips.

Nick grinned. “I feel better.”

“Don't get comfortable.”

“Not much danger of that.” His knuckles ached, and his cheekbone began to swell; his scalp stung where Gus had thrown him into the corner of the refrigerator; the little toe on his left foot felt broken, and maybe the one beside it too. But all of that paled beside the weirdness that had been creeping up on him unnoticed during the fight. “Is it magic? Something's really seriously making me want to get out of here.”

“Animal instinct,” Gus said, shrugging. “This is my territory. Not yours.” She bared her teeth.

“I'm going. I'm going,” Nick said. “See you around.”

He shouldered his duffel again and left by the fire escape, kicking broken glass from the stair treads.

Gus thought Nick would have to be like her, drinking alone in a shit hole apartment, reminiscing about people whose lives he'd ruined. Not bloody likely. What a waste of a very long life.

And Maksim wasn't much better. Castrating himself with the witch's magic. He smelled different, even: duller and less compelling. A boring relation of the graceful, menacing creature Nick had first seen in the alley six weeks ago.

Nick did not have to be like either of them. He was going to enjoy his new life—his long, powerful life—to the fullest.

The only bad thing Nick had done was hit Jonathan. And Jonathan was fine.

JUNE 11

  
WAXING CRESCENT

Lissa went to the Duke anyway, since Stella hadn't phoned back. Probably hadn't even got the message yet, and Lissa hated the idea of her going through a whole shift with her usual cheer pasted on over a sore heart.

Rafe was in the middle of serving someone. She took her usual seat at the end of the bar and waited for him to notice her.

When he did, the look that crossed his face wasn't anything she'd seen before.

“Oh, love,” he said, and he came to take her hands.

She opened her mouth to say something—what did he mean? what was he looking at?—and Rafe's expression changed to something else, and he ducked around the edge of the bar and pulled her close, face against his brown T-shirt. And when had she started crying?

Rafe cupped the back of her head in one big hand, murmuring, “Hey, hey, hey.” She could feel his voice through his chest. His other hand rubbed between her shoulder blades.

She ducked away and wiped hard at her eyes.

“Okay,” he said, “no hugging, then, but what about tea? It's a cliché, but help me out here—I have to do something.”

Lissa nodded and took the Kleenex he handed her and bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. By the time he came back with a mug of tea and a slice of lemon on a saucer, she was breathing without that shuddering hitch, and she'd managed to dry her face.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Don't apologize. Unless you're upset because you're here to break up with me, in which case, I'll have my tea back,” he said, smiling in a way that wasn't quite as cocky as he might have meant it to be.

“No. No. It's just everything.”

“Bad few days? I wondered when you hadn't been around much, and then I thought, well, she's a nice girl, probably going to work and evening Mass or something.”

“I'm not,” Lissa said. “I can't even go to church—and Stella—”

“Hey, it's okay. You don't have to. Look, whatever you want to tell me. Or not.” He smoothed his hand down her arm. “Let me get you another tissue.”

He was gone a few minutes, pulling a series of pints and setting them on a tray for one of the waitresses, a gangly brown-skinned girl who looked barely of age in her kilt. Lissa blew her nose and drank some tea.

Rafe was right; it did seem to be working.

When he came back, he looked rueful. “I'm terrible at this. You'd think a bartender would be better at the tea and sympathy, wouldn't you? I don't have anyone to fill in right now.”

“No, no, it's fine. I'm fine.”

“You don't look it,” he said frankly. “I mean, you're still adorable and all that. But look, whatever it is … is it more migraines? You've been poorly?”

“It's…” How to even begin to translate? She hadn't thought about it at all, had stupidly not even expected to see Rafe here. “I said something awful to Stella,” she admitted.

“That'd be why she called in,” Rafe said. “Well, she's a talented barmaid, but I know which sister I'd rather have around.” He tugged Lissa's hair affectionately. “She thinks the world of you, you know. You'll get things patched up in no time.”

“Wait, she's … not here?”

“Hey, don't look like that. She's a big girl. Probably went to let her hair down somewhere.”

“You're right.” He was right. Stella wasn't an idiot, and eventually she would check her phone, and things would be fine tomorrow.

Lissa was only tired and strung out and not used to dealing with people. All she had to do was get through the night.

 

Twelve

JUNE 11

  
WAXING CRESCENT

“This was a great idea. I needed to get out,” Stella said, stretching her long legs under the patio table, one calf just brushing Nick's.

She glinted in the lantern light: straight teeth and mink-brown eyes and diamond stud earrings. She tilted her head back to get the last drops of her wine, and the skin of her throat looked as delicate as a magnolia petal.

They were the only customers on the patio. The fence between them and the neighboring yard was overgrown with Japanese honeysuckle, just beginning to bloom. Between that and the scent of Stella and a tart Rueda, Nick felt absolutely dizzy with pleasure.

“That's usually when you should stop,” Stella told him, sliding his glass along the table, away from his hand.

“I can drink much more than other people. In fact, it's good for me. Gus says so.”

“Gus sounds like a bit of a bad influence, if she really said that.”

“You have no idea.” Nick chuckled.

“I should probably slow down too,” Stella said.

“It's okay. I'll look after you.”

“I prefer to look after myself,” she said, meeting Nick's gaze with a wry smile.

Good God, he was glad he'd had a chance to jerk off in the shower earlier. He retrieved his glass and drained it.

“Really,” said Stella. “It's nice to get out from under everyone's thumb a bit. But this bad-boy thing you have going on is sort of…”

Nick smiled slowly.

“Transparent,” Stella said.

Nick blinked.

“I mean, I know your life has changed a lot lately,” Stella said. “Mine has too. You think you know exactly what's going to happen next, and then you find out you were wrong, and you have to figure it out all over again. And you find yourself on the other side of the ocean, or whatever, with people who don't really like you that much. But all this, like, Ernest Hemingway stuff—I mean, the black eye and the drinking and the dark hints…”

“What are we talking about?” Nick said.

“I'm giving you unwanted advice,” Stella said, laughing bitterly into her empty glass.

“Damn. I thought you were flirting with me,” Nick said.

“I'm taking a break from men,” Stella said.

“Some of us never go back,” Gus said from the other side of the honeysuckle hedge.

“Jesus!” said Nick. “Where'd you come from?”

“Behind this plant,” said Gus, strolling around it. “Smells great, doesn't it? You'll learn to use that kind of thing.”

Now Nick could smell her,
kin
to him, but he wasn't sure if he would have noticed it on his own, not with the heady flower scent drowning everything.

“Pretty good,” he said. “You're like a ninja. A fun-killing ninja.”

Stella, without asking, filled her glass with the rest of the wine and handed it to Gus. “Give it a rest, Nick. I was never going to sleep with you,” she said.

Gus laughed hard at that, pounding her fist on the table.

“I'm going home,” Nick said, wondering if he sounded as sulky as he felt.

“I thought you were going to Greece. With Stella.”

“He said that? That's kind of creepy.” Stella gave him a raised eyebrow.

“It's no creepier than Gus going to Durban to stalk her ex,” Nick said.

“Who's got a packed bag under the table?” Gus said, kicking it with her boot.

“Seriously?” said Stella, turning to Nick.

He shrugged one shoulder. “I just went by my old place to get some stuff.”

“When were you going to invite me on this supposed trip?” Stella demanded. “Christ, you've known me how long? And I've already had to egg you once.”

Fuck. He had nothing. It did sound stupid when she put it that way. He didn't think he'd always been this stupid with women. When had he turned stupid?

When Maksim Volkov licked him was when.

He needed advice from someone smart, someone who wasn't neck-deep in supernatural bullshit. If he wasn't going to get laid, he needed something to go right, just one thing.

He made himself turn to Stella and apologize. Maybe she wasn't as into him as he'd thought, but he'd learned at least one thing from the whole Sue Park debacle.

Gus, though, she could fuck herself. Nick grabbed his duffel from under her boot and walked away without saying good-bye.

JUNE 12

  
WAXING CRESCENT