The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (12 page)

We huddled on the floor of my bedroom, me and my mother, tying all the dangerous spells inside that box to my power, to my spirit, until they could never be used against me, but only toward my protection. I remembered how Mother’s breath fell soft and warm on my cheek, and the smell of her magic as she kissed my finger to heal it. In the dim light, with a single flickering candle, my bedroom became a secret underworld for that afternoon hour, filled with dark and delicious magic.

It was everything opposite of this bright kitchen, where Donna and Lukas and I made bread and charms, where Granny Lyn had danced and Arthur had lifted me once onto the table to hang Christmas streamers.

My mother was gone, and I better understood now that she’d been one of those monsters.

But even she had never used me the way Lukas’s father had used him. She wouldn’t have spent time contemplating how to break the black candle rune, or studying it. My mother would have gone straight to Lukas’s father and cut out his heart to break the curse.

I almost regretted that wasn’t an option for me.

Friday after school, I crashed out onto the soccer field.

I’d been warming up on the track when something light and soft hit the top of my head and fell behind me. A red practice jersey.

“Hey, Hero, up for a scrimmage?” Matt jogged up alongside me.

I scowled at him but slowed down, feet beating steady on the soft rubber track. “Yeah, sure.”

Matt flipped his head to get his mop of brown hair out of his eyes. He was constantly jerking like that, and it reminded me of a nervous horse. We all told him to cut the hair off, but he liked the way it flew back when he ran, and claimed the ladies did, too. “You sure? You look kinda spent.”

“I’m good.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, given that the blood taste had faded over the last few days and the headache I’d sported all Wednesday was just a dull, normal thing. I hadn’t been sleeping too well, with mud monsters prowling in my dreams, but that was nothing new, and nothing I was going to talk to Matt about. I was fine. To prove it, I jogged back to the fallen shirt and grabbed it up. I stripped off my T-shirt and replaced it with the sleeveless jersey. Matt was wearing a blue one. I eyed it and said, “You think your side’ll kick my ass?”

He nodded, then had to flip his hair out of his face again. “That’s the plan.”

We headed off the track for the far end of the school grounds. The soccer field needed to be mowed, and a few places had been worn down to dirt in both the goal boxes.
About ten guys were waiting, kicking balls and yelling back and forth. It wasn’t our season, but most of the team didn’t play other sports. We spent the whole year practicing—unofficially when we had to. Soccer was a fall sport, and in a month or so Coach Bryson would be on us for real, every day, for hours. It was gonna be tough finding a summer job that I could ditch by three every afternoon. Hopefully, that landscaping thing one of our strikers had going with his neighbor would pan out.

Matt and I quickly chose our teams, and we divided up to either end of the field. My fellow Reds clapped my shoulders and asked what strategy I wanted to try. Since we only had six men to a team, I decided we’d forgo a keeper and play purely offensive. Matt was the team’s keeper, so we’d have to attack hard and focus on getting the ball past him. I’d stay back to sweep and put everybody else forward. It was a risk, but with Matt as their captain, they’d be sure to hold heavy on the defense.

Since I’d dressed for running on the track, I hadn’t bothered with cleats. It was only a scrimmage, though, and it hardly put me at a disadvantage. The sun beat down on us. Sweat plastered the mesh jersey to me. I was laughing and yelling in equal parts, focused on the wider movement of the field instead of just the ball, since I had to strategize when to push forward and when to hang back or give up my center position momentarily.

Although winning the game would mean glory and not having to take the dirty jerseys home to wash, I was mostly just happy we seemed balanced. It was gonna be an awesome team next year. By the end of twenty minutes, we’d only managed to
slip one goal past Matt, and my Reds hadn’t let the Blues get near enough ours to score. I noticed a few of the cheerleaders, headed up by Matt’s girlfriend, Shanti, stretching out near enough that they were mostly watching us. No wonder Matt took a huge diving leap to block a goal that landed him hard on his left shoulder. He bounced up and tossed the ball at Dylan, his winger, who’d been hanging way right and managed a clean break up the side of the field. I ran at him, met him straight on, and tried to swipe the ball away. He spun and his shoulder knocked into me. I slammed to a stop, foot on the ball, and momentum twisted us up and we both went down.

I hit the ground totally unprepared, all my breath jarred out of me. My ears rang, and I put my arms out to my sides as if I could stop the earth from spinning if I held it down. Dylan was laughing next to me, and rolled to his side to stand. He held a hand down for me. I shook my head, which was a mistake.

A second later the whole team was crowded around me. I gasped, “Fine. I’m fine. Just dizzy.”

“Sanger, shit!” Matt shoved through. “What happened? Your lips are, like, blue.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, man.” Dylan crouched next to me.

“No, no.” I pushed up to sit, swallowing bile that burned its way back to my stomach. My throat felt raw, and I could taste blood again. “Probably just the heat.” That was bullshit, though. I’d lived in Okinawa, which is a tropical island. This was nothing.

Matt took my arm and helped me up to my feet. I swayed
to one side. “Why don’t you guys run some drills while I get him to the side.”

A few hands patted my shoulders, and I started moving with Matt. Something thin and hot drained out of my nose before I could snort it back up. I coughed, and felt the drip hit my chest.

“You’re bleeding, man,” Matt said in a hushed breath.

I put the back of my hand against my nose. “Seriously?” Sure enough, my skin came back with red staining the creases. I leaned my head back and pinched my nose closed. No wonder I tasted blood again.

“Should I call somebody?”

“Nah, I’ll just … I’ll just go shower and go home. Lie down. I’m fine.”

“You sure?” He looked dubious, and used a hand to wipe his hair up off his forehead. His face was flushed with effort, from playing in the humid afternoon. Everybody was hot, but not everybody was fainting.

“I’m sure,” I said. I smiled. I was good at smiling.

Matt nodded. He jogged back to the field. I turned and found Holly waiting. Not pale and covered in bloody water. Just normal, in her blue cheer uniform.

I stopped smiling. “Hey,” I managed.

“You okay, Will?” Her eyebrows lifted and she met my eyes, calm and steady. Nothing like the embarrassment I was feeling rather acutely showed on her face.

About ten feet behind her the rest of the cheerleaders clustered. I hadn’t noticed Holly with them before, probably
because she’d been out of all practices since the earthquake. I’d forgotten to look for her. From Shanti’s expression, I got the distinct impression Holly’d been sent to check on me.

She pursed her lips and glanced back at the cheerleaders over her shoulder. I snapped out of it. “Yeah, Holly, I’m good.”

“Can I get you water or anything?”

I stared at her. And inexplicably thought about that girl in the goggles. Mab. Holly was so different from her. The cheer uniform, for example. Sharp and pleated, in our school colors of black and blue. Holly’s hair was short now, because they’d cut some of it to put the stitches in, and carefully styled to cover the worst section in the back. “I’m good,” I repeated.

Holly hesitated, one hand smoothing the perfectly flat material over her stomach. Her fingers fidgeted.

I jerked my gaze back up to her face. “Are you okay?” I asked, stepping nearer. I felt like I was hulking over her, though I’m not that big. Could never play football. She wasn’t tiny, either. It wasn’t physical, in other words.

“I only wanted to know if …” She paused, and I was struck again by how calm her face appeared. That hand was her tell.

Warm blood hit my upper lip, and I caught it with the back of my knuckle, grimacing. “Sorry,” I mumbled from behind my hand.

Holly’s mouth pinched up, and she nodded quickly. “You should take care of it. I’ll talk to you later. Soon.”

I took two steps around her, my instinct to push, to find out what she needed. “Holly?”

Her eyebrows arched up again.

“You all are manning the sport booth tomorrow morning, right? Down at the farmers’ market?”

“Yeah.”

I tilted my head and tried out a smile despite the gross state of my nose. “I’ll talk to you then, then.”

“Okay, Will,” she said, wincing at my face. She covered her mouth, but I saw the smile in her eyes.

It was Gabriel I asked, because you still called me Miss Sonnenschein, even two months into my stay, even when it was the longest, darkest time of the year and we were trapped, the three of us, together in the house
.

I followed him into the blisteringly bright snow an afternoon in January, tears streaking down my face from the glare of sun on the brilliant white landscape. “Gabriel,” I called, air sharp as needles in my throat, so that he might slow down. My boots held out the cold, but in six inches of snow I couldn’t keep up with his strong strides
.

He did stop, and held out a gloved hand for me. Mine were encased in mittens I’d knitted myself. The freezing wind pulled out red even in his face, and his hat was pulled down low to shield his dark eyes. I gripped his hand and walked with him down toward the barn
.

“How old are you?” I asked
.

Gabriel laughed. “You have a guess, do you not?”

“Old,” was all I said, pulling his arm so that he would let me stare up into his face
.

His mouth slid into half of a smile, and he shrugged one shoulder. “Yes, darling Evie. Very old.”

“And so is Arthur.”

“Nearly as old as me, but not quite.”

“Tell me.” I reached with my free hand and put it against his cold cheek. “Tell me, Gabriel, everything.”

Gabriel tilted his head so that he kissed the rough palm of my mitten. I felt his hot breath seep through the wool and shivered. He said, “Not everything, my pet. But some.”

Together we continued to walk, keeping our blood warm, through the trees. Snow whispered between the naked fingers of the forest, cold kisses on my cheeks, and Gabriel told me that both of you were more than three hundred years old. That he’d met you when you were my age, in a place called the Mohawk Valley in what is now, but was not then, New York State. You’d traveled together for decades, teaching each other magic, hunting out other men with your power in order to trade knowledge with them, discovering alchemy and everlasting life. You taught him to turn leaves into silver and draw rubies from the mountains; he showed you how to possess living creatures and to grow fruit from a barren tree
.

Gabriel told me that even when you spent years apart, always you returned to each other, like geese flying south in November. He mentioned adventures he’d had without you, in the Indian Wars, during the Gold Rush, in Alaska and Florida, along the Mexican border, and when Las Vegas was only a fort in the desert. He told me about your various apprentices in the last century—Philip the doctor, Laura Harleigh who transformed herself into a swan, the sister and brother Jessica and Deitrich who traveled the South with you, healing during the Civil War
.

And your wife. Who died in 1908, just before you came here to Kansas. Her name was Anne, he told me, intimately, too, as if he’d been there for all of it. As if he offered me a secret
.

It was an hour or less that we walked together, down the deer path toward the barn, but his every word, every new bit of story buried me, making the snowflakes that tumbled down from the sky into heavy lead. My shoulders ached, my nose was dry and freezing, and my eyes cracked with the effort of holding back tears
.

What hope did I have to win just your attention, much less affection? I was a silly little girl, and there was nothing I had to tempt you, who had lived so long, into loving me
.

That night when I brought you a cup of hot cider with honey, your finger brushed mine and I nearly spilled it all down your shirt. You smiled absently and thanked me. Going to the sofa, I curled up under a blanket as Gabriel read to us an article about Cyd Charisse in
Parade
magazine. Your sketchbook rested on your lap, and you drew images of women dancing. I could barely focus on Gabriel’s voice or the flickering fire or the needle in my hand as I tried to sew up a hole in one of your shirts. All I could think was that the faces of your dancing women must be faces you’d known, women you’d loved decades before I’d even been born
.

I’d never have believed the truth
.