The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (9 page)

I tried not to think about that. Couldn’t have been real. It was only dreams. A new twist to my Holly nightmares. But I barely bothered drying off before pulling my lips back to check my tongue and gums for cuts. Maybe I’d actually been bleeding just slightly since yesterday morning? But there was nothing cut that I could see, and no tender spots as I poked around.

Maybe it was a head injury.

What if I had a tumor or something and it was making me taste blood and imagine crazy girls fighting off mud monsters? I turned away from the mirror and took deep breaths.

Back in my bedroom, I powered up the computer while I pulled on clothes. The Internet wouldn’t be the most accurate place to find medical info, but it could give me an idea.

I started on one of those symptom tracker sites and put in “metallic taste” and “furry tongue,” which felt true. The site told me I might be constipated. I laughed, because that definitely wasn’t the case. Other options: medical reaction (no kidding), antibiotic use (not that I knew of), or poisoning.

I scrubbed at my face with my hands. It was just a dumb Internet doctor site, so I shouldn’t let myself get worked up. But I stuck in one more potential symptom: “hallucinations.”

That was the scary one. More potential conditions popped up on my screen. Drug abuse. Three different kinds of epilepsy. Schizophrenia.

I shoved away from the computer and rolled my shoulders. “Don’t get worked up,” I ordered myself, and clicked on my stereo. A heavy-metal mash-up blasted through my bedroom. It shook its way through my skull and overpowered the fear, making it hard to breathe.

Forcing myself to sort of sing along, I hurried through the rest of my morning routine, ignoring the taste of blood poking at my tongue.

First thing in the morning, I found Nick feeding the crows bits of burned bacon on the front porch. The sunrise was well under way, the morning air surprisingly cool on my bare arms. He fed them from his fingers, one piece, one bird, at a time.

His bag leaned against the front tire of the SUV; Nick had only been waiting to say goodbye before heading out.

“Morning, Mab,” he said, holding out the plate of bacon. I
sat beside him on the steps and tied my hair into a knot at the back of my neck.

“Did you sleep well?”

“As I ever do on that sofa.” When I’d retired last night, Nick had stretched out in the parlor with his hat over his face. No wonder he was the first person up, when I remembered him sleeping until noon in the past.

“No bad dreams?”

“No dreams at all.”

I glanced toward the garden, where the roses curled in tight knots. It had been a full day now since I’d released the curse from their roots, since it had gone careening away in my doll. Today, I supposed, I should go gather the pieces of it and give the perished curse a proper binding. It was certainly what Arthur had meant when he told me to destroy the roses: not the plants themselves, but the curse. Once the curse was dealt with entirely, the roses themselves would be only harmless flowers. I glanced around the house to where the garden sprawled in all its lush glory. The multicolored buds and the tangle of leaves made me think of Granny Lyn crouched beside them for hours, digging into the ground with her sharp trowel, plucking individual leaves and dotting others with her blood to keep away blight and bugs.

“Are Donna and the kid still sleeping?” Nick asked, tossing the final crumbs of bacon into the grass.

“Yes.” We’d been up late after I came home from the silo, watching an old Disney movie about a living car. Pan had fallen asleep in a mess of old quilts, and Nick had carried him up into Arthur’s bedroom. I’d peeked in this morning to find him
curled into a ball at the very foot of the bed, pillows entirely abandoned. “Where did you find him?”

“Arkansas. I was driving up from New Orleans—you know, the Perrys?”

I nodded. The blood kin scattered all over the country, in small pockets and family strings, and the Perrys were my cousins.

“I’d gone down to pick up some stuff they had for Silla and was eating lunch at this antique market full of deer heads and porcelain raccoons, just off the highway, and that charm Silla made for warding against curses got hot in my pocket.” He paused, started to add something with a playful lift to his mouth, but stopped and sighed as if he was disappointed. “I asked around, found out there were lots of stories about witch-fire in the woods nearby and birds falling dead out of the sky. The usual stuff. I picked a spot, dove into the woods, and basically made a beeline for the kid, like I just knew where to find him. He was alone, holding fire in his hands, waiting for me. Said the trees told him I was coming and that I’d take him to his sister.” Nick eyed me. “Your mom have any other kids you know about?”

The idea tightened my intestines but expanded my heart at the same time. “No,” I said. “But the Deacon is everybody’s family. Did he have anyone at all?”

Nick edged closer to me. “I asked him, and he said his father lived in a cabin next to the river but that we should please just leave. I didn’t like it, but when I tried to go for his dad, the kid lifted up his shirt and …” He wiped his hands on his jeans and then got off the porch. He walked through the gathered
crows, causing them to flap and bark at him, to hunker down in the pebbled driveway. “Here, Mab.”

I joined him, enjoying the massage of the tiny smooth stones on my bare feet. Nick used his finger to draw a complicated symbol into the pebbles. “This was carved into the small of his back.”

“A black candle rune.”

“Whatever you call it. I know what it’s for.”

I could tell Nick wished he didn’t know. Two years ago, Faith’s husband, Eli, had known a woman being stalked in Kansas City, and so Arthur and I had spun together a powerful charm to turn the man away, to bend his desires off of Eli’s friend. We’d used a black candle rune on an old walnut tree, tying the charm to its life instead of our own, and within nine days the leaves had fallen dark and twisted and dead.

Tracing my finger over Nick’s rune, I said softly, “His father did it?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never heard of a witch using another person for a familiar like that.”

“Glad to hear it, because I was a little afraid you’d say it was no big deal.”

I glanced sharply at him, the words pinching. “You were?”

Nick winced. “Just a little. Sorry.”

“It’s good you brought him,” I said, standing up and walking farther out into the yard, where the morning sun was high enough over the caps of the trees that it hit me full and warm in the face.

“It’s what you do.” He joined me, tipping his hat to shade his eyes.

“What
we
do,” I corrected. “And we won’t stop even if we’re in Oregon, will we?”

Nick laughed, sharp and loud. “No, I guess not.”

“Good.” I faced him and put a hand flat on his T-shirt, just over his heart. “Our family spreads all across the continent, Nick. Donna might think distance changes that, but I know better.”

He squinted down at me, brow furrowed under the brim of the porkpie. Once, he had told me,
You’re nothing like your mother
, and even though I knew he was completely wrong, his saying it made me love him. “Okay, Mab.” He took my hand off his chest but held it as he pulled me back inside to avoid further sensitive talk. “Maybe we should go make some bacon fit for human consumption before they wake up.”

As we went, I glanced up at the window over the kitchen, where Pan slept, and sent up a silent prayer that the magic of the black candle rune was already broken.

The first days I lived with you, I helped prepare for winter. You and Gabriel repaired the fence around the horse pasture, though you had no horses, and took turns summoning winds to blow through the barn in order to find and plug all the leaks. There was plenty of cleaning in the house, and I mended several blankets as well as marking out the boundaries of what would be my garden in the spring. I chipped away at the cold earth to plant a few winter bulbs, and helped you clean the chimney
.

When you took me into town to purchase stockpiles of feed for the chickens, I became Gabriel’s niece, because he looked almost old enough for it. I suggested buying up all the late autumn fruit we could find, because I knew how to can it so that we’d have sweets for Christmas. “You’ll be indispensable,” Gabriel said, fingers pressing into my shoulder as he hugged me against his side at the grocer’s
.

I used the last of my money to buy a wool dress and sweaters, as well as a strong pair of boots. Things more suited to a farm than my pleated skirts and ankle shoes. Gabriel insisted on a pair of seed pearls for my ears, and when I demurred, he said loudly enough for others to hear, “Let me spoil my poor niece in her time of tragedy.” I was trapped and gave in
.

It was you I watched, always, for cues. I paid attention to the men you spoke with for more than two words, and was sure to introduce myself
to their wives. You tended toward the simpler men, the farmers, while Gabriel haunted those with watches in their pockets and thoughts on the latest movies
.

At times I could not understand how you and he shared a life. You seemed so different from his brazen ways. Voice quiet, eyes steady, hands reaching out only when you knew what you wanted. Gabriel laughed and shouted greetings to those he knew, touched everything, flitted about like a boy—or like a king. You both seduced the town—he with charm, and you with certainty
.

But one afternoon that first week, I stomped down toward the barn to ask one of you to kill me a chicken because it was about time I learned to use the old iron oven. And there the two of you stood in the meadow beside the barn, facing one another. Both of you shirtless despite the cold, slate sky above. You focused intensely on each other, hands forward and palms out but not quite touching
.

There I saw Gabriel’s tattoos: magical patterns of intricate stars-within-stars ranging from his neck down his back and chest, swirling around his arms. Some were gray and old, others sharply black and red, completely new. They layered over each other as though he’d had different sets done and redone every few decades of a very long life. It was my first clue that you were both older than you seemed
.

And you, you took my breath away. Your skin was pale from the elbows up to your collarbone, and pink from the cold. Long muscles shifted with every motion, and I put my fingers to my lips because I wanted to touch you, to discover if you were hot or cold, smooth or rough. My whole body flushed, and just then the two of you opened your mouths and said
, Bind.

Magic leapt from the earth, snapping through me and all the air. I
swayed with the immensity of it, reached out and gripped a tree to remain standing
.

The hill trembled and all the forest danced. The burn of magic swept around, tingling under my skin
.

It settled down, sudden and fast as hail. My ears popped. Gabriel grasped your hand and tilted his head to the sky with a wide-open laugh
.

You closed your eyes and shuddered so violently I saw it from my distance. The land was bound with your magic, safe and secure from—I did not know. Anything? Everything? The overwhelming sense of security made me smile
.

Until I realized that a great spell had just been performed, yet neither one of you had spilled any blood. You two were connected in ways more intimate than magic, and together your power dimmed the sun
.

On the third morning Pan woke up in Arthur’s bed, I waited on the threshold. He’d had three days to sort us out, to decide if he could trust me, to learn the dialect of our trees. I hadn’t asked him any questions about his past, about his magic or his father. I had only let him be a boy in a new house, eating and drinking and sleeping, touching all the walls and getting his feet under him. Nor had he volunteered much.

But last night, Donna had tucked him in and come slowly back down the stairs. “Those burns on his hands are self-inflicted” was all she said to me, her eyes focused on the wallpaper over my shoulder.