Spells of Blood and Kin (6 page)

She finger-painted the egg with the curdled pink mixture and, with it, felt the spell sink into place.

APRIL 29

  
WANING GIBBOUS

The doorbell rang sometime after midnight.

Right: Lissa had not given Stella a key. After a couple of hours of cooking and chanting and being alone in the house, she felt her earlier emotional reaction seemed out of scale, ridiculous. She set aside a just-completed egg in the carton, washed her hands quickly, and went to let her stepsister in.

It was a man, though, a stranger. Tanned arms, muscled like a martial artist. He wore old jeans and a brimmed cap shadowing his face under the porch light.

“You are the granddaughter,” he said.

“And you are?” asked Lissa, blocking the entrance with her body.

“Maksim Volkov.” His voice had a hoarse, strained edge to it.

“Oh. Yes. You knew my grandmother.”

“For many years,” he said. “Is she not at home?”

“She's dead,” Lissa blurted.

Maksim Volkov tilted his head and stared at her. She thought he had a funny way of standing, absolutely still but somehow ready to burst into motion.

“I guess you hadn't heard,” she said. “A few days ago. It was a heart attack.”

“She left nothing for me?” said Maksim.

Lissa shook her head and spread her hands.

“You cannot help me?” He loomed toward her. She backed up a step into the hallway. Maksim crowded closer and caught her by the arm, gripping tight.

“Let me go,” Lissa said, fighting to keep her voice steady.

“I must know if you are also a witch.” His voice was rougher with each word, a dark rasp as of a file on granite.

So he knew and wanted something, and Baba had said he was kin. She nodded, and he abruptly let go of her arm. Mingled with the budding lilacs, she could smell him: a heavy reek of sweat.

“Tell me she taught you,” said Maksim.

“I can do some things. She wanted me to help you. But you can't just, just push in here.”

“Can you give me calm? Or sleep? I would not ask you,” said Maksim, “except that I have a great need.”

“I can see that,” Lissa said, rubbing her arm. Sleep wasn't so hard. And Baba had given her his name. She fought down her unease. “Okay.”

He sighed in relief and shuffled along behind Lissa as she led him down the hallway to the kitchen.

“Is it insomnia, then?” she said. “Because you sound like—”

Then she saw him in the light of the kitchen candles. Maksim was filthy: grit spattered his jeans halfway up the calf, and his tank top was far from white. Something dark spotted the fabric down one side of his chest; his lower lip looked bruised. His hair under the brim of his cap was stiff with salt.

He eased himself onto one of the high stools and hunched there, rubbing one palm against his thigh. A muscle in his jaw knotted and released, knotted and released.

“I was thinking tea, but maybe you'd like something stronger,” Lissa said. “There's some rye. I could do you up a rye and Coke.”

He nodded sharply.

Lissa found the rye and mixed him a fairly stiff drink. “How are you related to my grandmother?” she asked.

Maksim gave Lissa a flat look. “If she kept silence, it is not mine to break. But if you are wondering whether you should send me from the room, there is no need. I have seen your grandmother at her work.”

“All of it?”

“I have seen her mix potions, and I have seen her say runes as she painted eggs. If that is not all of it, it is all I know to ask of you.”

If Lissa hadn't heard it straight from Baba herself, she wouldn't have believed it: Someone who knew what they did yet wasn't part of the community around the church? Someone who had actually been in the room when Baba was working? Someone whom Lissa had never met in all the years she'd lived here?

But the cold voice in the back of her head had been perfectly clear. Lissa had asked Baba about unfinished business, and this man was the answer.

“Here,” she said. “I'll leave the rye and the Coke beside you; help yourself. I don't want you walking around, spoiling my concentration.”

To be honest, Maksim's presence would shake Lissa's concentration no matter what he did. Strangeness hung about him. But admitting this would not inspire confidence, and while she didn't really want him watching her, she wanted even less to let him sit unattended in some other part of her house.

She went back to the fertility eggs before the mixture could dry out, fetching another couple of cartons from the refrigerator.

Then she found another page in the grimoire and began on the sleep eggs.

The words were different, and this recipe called for the hair of cats and for valerian and lavender; but this spell was one Lissa had done before, and she moved through the ritual with a bit more confidence. She and Baba had been trading these off for years now, long enough that Baba had stopped bothering to test Lissa's eggs before handing them out to the ladies.

Across the room, Maksim waited in silence, flames reflecting from his eyes beneath the brim of his cap. Now and then, she heard liquid on glass.

Lissa finished the sleep eggs after another hour. She flipped the main back on, and the refrigerator hummed back to life.

Maksim was squinting at the rye bottle. “Very little is left,” he said. “I apologize.”

Lissa blinked. “Whatever. It's been in that cupboard for ages. I'm just surprised you got through it all.” She settled on the other stool beside Maksim. “These are ready for you now. You'll want to take them at home, where you can—”

He took one of the fresh eggs and cracked it into his glass, where it slopped unattractively into the dregs of his rye and Coke. He downed the whole mess in a swallow, grimacing.

Lissa choked. “I was going to tell you to take it in a milk shake.”

Maksim shrugged.

After a moment, during which Lissa watched him closely, Maksim let out a breath and slouched a little where he sat. “I think it is good.”

He let his head sink onto his folded arms.

Lissa cleaned the kitchen around him, moving softly. Her newest patient shifted only once to turn his face against his forearm and settle more easily. He breathed slow and deep.

A success, then. She only hoped he could wake up enough to make himself scarce before Stella got back. She refrigerated the newly bespelled eggs, washed out the mixing bowls and spoon, and put away the grimoire.

By that time, Maksim was stirring. He lifted one eyelid and turned to pillow his cheek on his fist. “You are accomplished,
koldun'ia,
” he murmured.

“That's the first time you've used my title.”

“I was not sure you merited it.” He pushed himself up to lean against the wall and dumped the rest of the rye into his glass. He was too brown-complected to go truly pale, but he was very sallow, so the stubble stood out dark on his chin.

“I hope you didn't drive here,” Lissa said.

Maksim blinked heavily. “I ran. If I do not keep myself fatigued, there is no telling what I will do.” He quirked the corner of his mouth and swallowed some of the rye, straight. “I have done something that is not permitted already.”

“Oh?”

But he shook his head, letting his eyes droop closed. He lay against the wall, boneless.

“I think I infected someone.” Maksim's voice startled her just as she thought he'd fallen asleep. He sounded drunk, as well he should. “I was not trying. You must understand, I was not the one who hurt him. He was only there, bleeding, and I came upon him. The smell, the sight—it was … irresistible.”

“What did you do?”

“You are right!” he snapped as if she'd accused him. “It is my duty to resist. But it is very hard, and this time I failed.”

“Just tell me what you did.”

“Licked him,” Maksim said, sudden mad laughter in his voice. “Then I ran away.”

“You found some poor guy bleeding—and you licked him and ran away.”

Maksim slouched farther down, one hand over his face. “Part of me is not human,
koldun'ia
. And the other part is not good.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Lissa said. “You need to tell me from the beginning.”

But Maksim slid down from the stool, supporting himself on the counter, and gave her a distracted half smile. “I must go,” he said. “I will take these eggs with me, yes?”

“Yes,” Lissa said. “But I'd really like to know—”

Maksim waved a dismissive hand. “I will tell you another time, when I have more words. These eggs are fine,
koldun'ia.
”

“That's … good.” Though he had only slept for a few minutes. Lissa had expected these eggs to be knockouts. “That's good,” she said again to cover her worry.

He was already walking away from her, down the hallway, trailing his hand along the wall for balance.

“Are you sure you're okay to get home on your own?”

He chuckled, low and chilly. “No concern for me is warranted,
koldun'ia
.” He slanted a glance at her from beneath his cap, nodded once, and let the door close.

 

Two

APRIL 29

  
WANING GIBBOUS

Maksim walked because he did not trust his balance quite enough for running. The rye on its own would only have been enough to loosen him up, but the witch's spelled eggs were something else: a heavy drag on his limbs, a haze on his thoughts. He kept the egg carton cradled in one hand and let the other hand reach out to touch things: fences, lilacs, brick walls, walls covered in shingle. Once, his head blurred enough that he found himself leaning upon one of these walls, and he stayed there a moment, breathing thickly.

He walked past the mouth of the alley without seeing it and found himself on King Street already, about to walk into a crowd of black-clothed teenagers at a streetcar stop; he turned himself around again and went back north, murmuring a curse.

Was this where he had found the young man? Was this where he had begun to go wrong—this sodium-lit aisle of broken pavement? It held a shopping cart and a jumble of gas cans; he could smell the gas, cloying, confusing the other scents. He held his breath and went farther in. A Dumpster. That could be right. Stale beer, rancid grease, cat piss, mice. When he went to crouch beside the Dumpster, he fell to one knee, dizzy again.

He could smell blood, though, a bit, faint and tantalizing below the other smells. He got right down and snuffled at the ground.

Here: a fat drop, smeared by a shoe. Dry now, but there'd been no rain, and the scent of it was still true.

Under the blanket of the witch's magic, his other nature roused sleepily, sullenly. He drew the scent in. That made it better.

The young man had been just what his nature loved most: graceful body slowed by pain and shock, bruises just starting beneath the silky skin. Blood like liquor, and Maksim suddenly as thirsty as a sailor on leave. He'd let himself get closer, closer, never thinking his will would fail him so completely. Never thinking his nature would slip the collar of Iadviga Rozhnata's spell.

After what he'd done, Maksim had run off west. The young man would not have followed; he had been frightened, confused. He would be more frightened now, more confused, with Maksim's nature taking root in him. He would be all
kin
soon, and he would not know what it meant, and if Maksim did not find him in time …

Maksim dragged his mind from hazy, dire forebodings and back to what had happened, what evidence might be left to him.

The young man had been drunk. His sweat had tasted of it—his breath, his blood. Maksim wondered if this had made him even more appealing, because it reminded him of Augusta: drink and blood and the sweat of a healthy, athletic body.

The second young man had been drunk too, even worse off. They would have had to help each other or ask for help from some other person. East was downtown, heavier traffic, more taxis.