Spells of Blood and Kin Read online

  Lissa moved about the room in the dimness, setting out a row of tea lights. She couldn’t see the floor in this light, the stain where Baba had lain, which wasn’t even there anymore. She groped in a drawer for matches, felt a knife blade slide silken over the ball of her thumb.

  The first match crumbled. The second fizzled. The third caught. She touched it to the wicks of the tea lights, and the unsteady light made the dark look darker. She licked at the cut on her thumb.

  Next came the loosing of bonds. All the kolduny agreed that magic could not be done if the koldun wore anything knotted or clasped. Lissa unfastened her bra and wriggled it out through the armholes of her tank top and opened the clip that held her hair, letting the mass of it down over her shoulders.

  She laid out her gear on the kitchen table: Baba’s wooden spoon, the last thing her hand had touched in life; a Pyrex mixing bowl and a tiny spice-toasting pan; mortar and pestle; an assortment of flasks and test tubes, mostly purchased when Brunswick Collegiate closed its doors and sold off the contents of its classrooms.

  From the cupboard over the refrigerator, the shoe box full of old baby food jars, some labeled in Lissa’s hand, some in Baba’s. From the fridge itself, a fresh dozen eggs.

  The most recent orders from the church ladies were written on a magnetic shopping notepad. For children, Baba had written, in deference to Lissa’s poor Russian. For bones. For sleep.

  Lissa tugged strands of hair from her mouth and bent over the grimoire. Fertility was hard; she hadn’t done it before. She would have to learn.

  For the base, Anatoliy Ievlev suggested wine, but Stella seemed to have finished off the bottle of pinot grigio from the refrigerator; Baba had often substituted plain white vinegar, and Lissa did so again, splashing a cup into the Pyrex bowl.

  Rabbit fur. Anatoliy Ievlev explained, “For they of all the animal kingdom are the best known for their increase.” In one of the baby food jars was a rabbit’s-foot key chain, some of the fur already scraped away for an earlier ritual. Lissa razored off another tuft and placed it in her tiny cast-iron spice-toasting pan upon the stove.

  Baba’s old gas stove was of the avocado-colored variety and had no automatic lighter; Lissa had to slide a lit match up to the burner to catch the gas.

  Soon the rabbit fur twisted and charred. Another moment and it sprang into flame, and Lissa wrinkled her nose against the stink.

  The ashes went into her mortar to be ground fine, and from there into the Pyrex, where they floated atop the vinegar. Lissa had asked once why so many ingredients had to be burned and put into the mortar before going into the recipe: was it something to do with the mortar the witch in the story used to ride around in? Baba had chuckled at that and said it was only that otherwise the texture would end up uneven.

  Next, Anatoliy Ievlev directed her to add the more pedestrian clover and raspberry leaves, without explaining in what way they related to fertility. Both herbs toasted crisp and ground to powder, she passed on to the final item on the list: mother’s milk.

  From the refrigerator, she withdrew the baby’s bottle she’d stolen during the funeral. You didn’t pass up a chance like that. Anatoliy Ievlev had the right sense of it. The fluids of the body were always, always potent in spells.

  She trickled the milk into the vinegar mixture and used Baba’s spoon to stir it all together. She tilted in a few drops of red food coloring until the mixture achieved a dull pink color.

  Lastly, the hokey part. When she was younger, she would blush at the sheer weirdness of it, especially the way Baba did it, intoning the words in a voice of drama and mystery.

  She knew by now that the manner didn’t matter so much. You didn’t have to shout, either. The spirits would hear you, even if you spoke English, even if you stammered, even if you spoke in a whisper because your father slept upstairs. So long as the moon was full, or near full; so long as the speaker asked politely; so long as the speaker was a witch.

  She took up the first egg in her left hand and dipped her right in the vinegar mixture.

  “As the seed grows to flower; as the egg grows to chick; as the moon grows to full; so, I ask you, grant healthy increase. Riders of dawn and day and dusk, I ask you. I, Vasilissa, granddaughter of Iadviga, ask you this.”

  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 beli
eved 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 e
ven 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.

  East was the way he’d entered the alley, and Maksim had not smelled the young man’s scent on the way in. But he backtracked, anyway, slow and thickheaded, tracing and retracing, and sure enough, there was a hint of it, a trace of blood on a wall where he might have rested his hand.

  So Maksim had managed to track the two young men a whole fifty feet. What next? He sat down on the hood of a parked car to think about it. Queen Street? Where there were streetcars and taxis and—wait, yes. He had already thought about this part. Surely Queen Street would be correct. He would just stroll down that way and keep scenting.

  In a moment.

  He started violently awake to a brush of warmth over his hand. He reached, snatched, caught nothing. Peered about, breathing hard.

  On the roof of the car, behind him: a yearling cat, thin and hunched, peering back. When he stood up, it skittered away, paused, jumped down, and vanished into the alley.

  Maksim braced against the drowsy slackening of his limbs. He did not sit back down on the car. He pushed off toward Queen Street.

  A few steps down the sidewalk, he realized his hands were empty. That was wrong.

  He turned around and saw his eggs, abandoned on the hood of the car. The little cat had come back and was sniffing at the carton.