Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 31

Lissa whispered, "You're welcome." Her hair lay in a wet tangle over her shoulders where she had not bothered to comb it all out. That, and the fragile little voice, would make her seem childlike if Maksim was not what he was and could not smell the heavy thunder on the air.

It made the hair rise on him, even now, with the thing safely sealed up and buried.

He watched Lissa stifle a yawn and pad toward the stairs and turn to wave good night, and he flashed back to the memory of her soft hands gloved and black with ink, a few hours ago, maybe, the memory cloudy and dreadful. The night had gone blurred, everything before the moment when the spell had taken and he'd come to himself, with his own blood pooling in the palm of his hand from a gash in his thumb he did not recall receiving.

He had a pink Band-Aid over it now, and it still hurt: a proper, sharp hurt. A lot of things hurt. Bruised ribs and scabbed-over skin and the knitting bone in his wrist, which had begun to ache when he was digging under the tree.

He relished it. Too many days of smeared-out numbness, burying himself down deep so that he could not do harm, could not do anything at all.

"So," said Stella.

Maksim spun. He'd forgotten her; the new, darker thunder scent covered everything else. And he was tired.

"She didn't want me to see it," Stella said. "It was a bit of a pain, really, not being able to come home. I had to go to an after-hours club with a couple of the girls from the pub and dance to house music. Which I hate."

Maksim raised his eyebrows.

"Well?" said Stella. "Aren't you going to fill me in?"

"If she did not want you to see it..."

"Someone's got to look out for her while she looks out for you," Stella said. "Or are you just fine with letting everyone else take the heat for your mistakes? Because I know you've made some, and so far, it looks to me like Lissa's the one who's been cleaning up after you."

"Her grandmother made a promise," Maksim felt compelled to point out.

"Her grandmother was a horrible old hag who kept her away from the rest of the family," Stella said.

Maksim remembered Iadviga, young: all pride and temper, almost like one of the kin. He had shepherded her across half of Europe, because kolduny were rare and his home was long gone. He'd been glad when he realized she was with child, thinking there was a husband somewhere to whom he could restore her; but she only said fiercely that there was not and kept her head up, glaring.

Sometimes it was hard to remember it had been more than fifty years since he'd found Iadviga in the grip of the Gulag and thirty since he'd asked her to repay that debt. And perhaps the things he admired in Iadviga, the fury that had kept her alive in war and the honor that had urged her to help Maksim, had not made for an easy legacy.

"Her grandmother gave her the spell," Maksim said now, "to give to me. I do not know more than that."

"You know it worked? For sure?"

"Yes," he said, feeling the truth of it: his nature leashed, with a choke leash, barbed enough to hurt if he strained against it.

"Her voice was all shot."

"She prayed for a long time," Maksim said; he was not sure how long, but he had a recollection of the husking whisper continuing in a long broken stream while he sat, struggling slowly and dumbly with himself, at the bottom of a sticky well.

Stella frowned. "I just don't know enough about this yet. But it seemed like the other ones only took a moment."

"The other eggs were only to give sleep for a few hours. This one was to bind a piece of my soul."

He'd meant it figuratively, but it sounded right, now that he said it. The dark piece of his soul matched with the black-stained egg.

"That sounds a bit sinister," Stella said, s.h.i.+vering a little. "Lord, why's it cold in here? It's going to be ninety degrees again by noon."

"You are tired," Maksim said. "You waited up all night. Go, rest. It is enough for now."

He spoke to her as he would to a fellow soldier, and she must have taken the tone correctly, for she straightened and nodded and rose easily.

She stopped and leaned toward the window, though.

"Gus," she said, and both of them stepped quietly to the front door.

Gus stood on the front walk. She had taken a bit of care with herself, Maksim saw: clean, damp hair curling in the warming dawn, two layers of white tank top, bare shoulders dotted with freckles and old scars. He could see her nostrils pinching. If she'd been an animal, her ears would have been laid flat. He realized she did not want to approach any closer to the house.

"Come out to me," she said, voice pitched low.

Maksim did. The sun warmed his bare skin; dew lay heavy on the gra.s.s. Gus stood very still until he was within reach, and then she embraced him tight, strong arms about his shoulders, cheek against his.

He felt her look up over his shoulder after a minute and draw breath to speak, but she said nothing.

She let him go then. "Are you ready to come home?"

"I promised to tidy the kitchen. Come inside."

She glanced at Stella on the porch.

"Come," said Stella. "I think there's still tea."

Gus came, though Maksim could see how much it bothered her. She took her tea black and stood in a corner while Maksim balled up his soaked and stained T-s.h.i.+rt and put it in the trash and wiped the bacon pan.

Stella tidied away the fruit peels and toast crumbs and stacked the dishes beside the sink. She kept looking at Gus, quick flashes of her long-lashed eyes. Finally, she said, "You're his sister. Right?"

Gus barked out a laugh. "Close enough." She grinned at Maksim, daring him to offer a different word.

He did not. He was the elder by a century, give or take, but not by enough to gainsay her, not any longer.

JUNE 9.

WAXING CRESCENT.

The night after the new moon, Lissa went to bed very early.

She'd fallen asleep in front of the television with a gla.s.s of water in her hand and only realized when it slipped to the floor and spilled. She left it there.

With Stella out at work, she hadn't bothered to make dinner. Her stomach felt tight and hollow; she only gulped more water and crawled between her sheets.

She dreamed of a ma.s.s grave in Greenland. She'd seen it in National Geographic, maybe, when she was a child.

The grave contained bodies preserved by the ice: several adults and a baby. The baby had been wrapped in a s.h.i.+eld of hides, securing it to a carrying frame, as its mother or father would have used to tote it around in life. The baby's skin and hair, the wool of its swaddling, had all been tanned by the earth to the same palette of browns as the wrapping of hides.

The mouth, gaping open, showed a single brown tooth. The eyes had withered away, leaving empty sockets.

Lissa knew exactly how the baby felt.

She woke with her mouth open on a soundless howl. Her voice had worsened. She could not make a sound at all.

The thin cotton of her sheet rasped her skin as she turned over. The air in her room had gone cold and flat while she slept. She groped for the water gla.s.s on her bedside table.

Empty, and her throat ached.

She sat up, knuckling at her eyes. Without her sheet, the cold bit deep. She reached for the switch of her lamp.

No power. The room stayed dark.

It was still on her, the feeling of the dream. Dread and despair. She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back from the lightless lamp and huddled as close to the center of her bed as she could get.

In the dimness, the shape of her doll, lying on the bedside chair, reminded her of the mummified baby. And of the chill in Baba's voice, when she spoke, from wherever she was now.

Wherever she was, Lissa would be there too, eventually. Maybe it was the price. She'd made a binding at the dark of the moon. How had she thought this could ever be forgiven?

Then the clock ticked over.

Outside, a bird called.

Lissa raised her head. Warmer air breathed in through the window.

Beside her, the bedside lamp bloomed to light.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," Lissa croaked.

Her face was smeared with tears and snot, her hair pasted to it. She put on a light nightgown and went to the bathroom to wash. In the mirror, under the fluorescent light, she looked puffy and too pink; she could not meet her own eyes.

The wrongness had left her, whatever it was; but she felt the bruise of it still. She wished Stella was home and was then violently thankful she was not. Lissa was afraid to go back into her bedroom.

She ended up drawing a bath and fell asleep in the warm water, with her head propped up by an inflatable neck pillow.

She woke up chilly again, but only because the water had cooled around her; and downstairs, she heard Stella's key in the lock.

"This house smells funny at night," Stella said when Lissa came down, hair wrapped in a towel.

"Does it?"

"Like a cave," Stella said. "You know. Stone and cold water."

Lissa's skin p.r.i.c.kled.

"What are you doing up, anyway? You look like the dog's breakfast, quite frankly," Stella continued. "Why don't I make you some tea?"

Eleven.

JUNE 9.

WAXING CRESCENT.

On the first day, they built bookshelves. Gus proved to be handy.

Nick was not, but he liked carrying lumber; he ferried over several loads of it from the nearby shop, delighting in the chance to use his strength. He sawed where Gus measured; he did the coa.r.s.e sanding.

Maksim cleaned up the wreckage of the previous shelves and the books they'd held. He smoothed bent covers, taped torn pages, arranged t.i.tles spined alphabetically across the bedroom floor.

Around nightfall, Gus brushed sawdust from her jeans and stood back. "Not half bad," she said.

She helped Maksim carry the books in. Shelved, they covered up the scars in the plaster where Maksim had hammered the wall with broken chair legs-or Nick with his fists.

On the second day, they cleaned.

Nick swept up the sawdust and then vacuumed. He swept the balcony and washed off the alb.u.men stains of two broken eggs. Then he took everything out of the refrigerator and washed the inside of it.

He threw away the rest of the eggs, but he figured the mustard and beets were okay, and he knew he and Gus would drink the beer, even if Maksim didn't.

He cleaned the kitchen cupboards. He mopped the floor and then dried it.

When he looked up from buffing, he saw Maksim and Gus sitting on the balcony outside. Not helping. Bristling, he approached.

"-until you figure out what to do with him," Gus was saying.

"It is not up to me," Maksim said. "I wish it was."

"And? I don't remember you giving me much of a choice about leaving Cadiz."

"It was not the same. Those days were not the same."