Under a Winter Sky

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “She’s not a take-out meal.”

  He leaned in the doorway, giving me enough space that I figured I must be looking less like death. He was polite when I was healing, pushy when I was well or bleeding.

  “Do we even know that blood would help?” I tried to stand, not quite pushing to my feet but sitting upright and swinging my feet to the floor. I was preparing.

  Eli came to my side as I stood, not infantilizing me but near enough to catch me when I tumbled—which I would’ve if he wasn’t there. He’d swept me into his arms, cradling me for a moment. “You are the least obedient patient I’ve met, Geneviève.”

  “I waited for you before trying to stand.” I rested my head on his shoulder.

  He said nothing, and we stayed there listening to singing from elsewhere in the house. Eli and I exchanged a surprised look. It was the sort of voice that should be immortalized, twangy enough to burn up country music charts and soulful enough to make sinners repent.

  “That’s Alice?”

  “I had no idea.”

  We stayed there, listening. Perhaps it sounded a little better because the acoustics were so phenomenal here, but either way, she could sing. I enjoyed it. Eli obviously did, too. He began to waltz, as if we were at a ball.

  “Can we not experiment on you? And can we avoid death, excessive bleeding, or dismemberment until the new year?”

  “Yes . . .?”

  Eli smiled and added, “And what if we just put a little of Alice’s blood in a martini? Beatrice suggested that it might aid your health.”

  I scowled at him. “Fine.”

  “Alice?” Eli called. “Could you bring Ms. Crowe’s breakfast?”

  A moment later, she came into the bedroom with a beautiful glass of pink vodka. There was a lemon twist and cherry. I guessed the cherry was to hide the real source of the pink. Alice was as clever as she was bouncy.

  In a chipper tone, she announced, “I made it myself!”

  I held out a hand. I knew that the pink tint to my martini was a result of additives she took from her vein.

  Truth be told, I’d considered trying blood, but it felt wrong. I had moral qualms about drinking from anyone, and I was fairly sure I shouldn’t have to do so. I’d existed for most of my twenty-nine years with a mix of vodka, green smoothies, and assorted herbs. Never sick. Rarely tired. Since the venom injections, I was always tired, and no amount of liquor made me feel satisfied.

  I took a tentative sip of my blood-tini. “This tastes different.”

  Alice looked at Eli. “I made it just the way he said to.”

  “Hmmm.” I drank half of it. “It’s good. Spicy, though.”

  She folded her arms and looked at Eli before blurting, “That’s the blood. He made me. I wasn’t going to lie, but—”

  “Okay.” I drank the rest.

  Eli rolled his eyes at me, and Alice stared at me in surprise. It was sweet that her loyalty to me made her unable to lie.

  Honestly, it didn’t have much taste. Vodka. Touch of spice. My blood martini was surprisingly unexciting, despite the anxiety that I’d felt even considering it. The reality was far less exciting than my fears, and I felt like my stress was washing away—or maybe that was my hunger fading.

  I wanted to be normal, whatever that was. I wouldn’t ever be human, so my normal was a little different. I didn’t mind the witch part, mostly didn’t even mind necromancy. I minded my paternal DNA. A lot. I was terrified of being a draugr. I grew up as the equivalent of a rose garden to every bee in range—but instead of bees, I attracted the dead. They were drawn to me, and I responded as well as anyone would when dead things popped up everywhere.

  I killed them.

  What did it mean if I was like them? If my genetic soup was more dead than witch? Necromancy worked by pressing life into the dead, and apparently, it worked on draugr, too. I shoved life into them, and suddenly, they functioned as if they were a century old. Coherent. No longer slavering toddlers. What would happen if I was changing? Would I be unable to kill them? Would I be unable to heal? To summon the natural dead? Maybe it wasn’t that I wanted normal. Maybe I wanted to control who I was, what I was. Define myself.

  “How do you feel?” Eli took the glass, unfolding my fingers from the stem, and I realized I’d licked up the last drops of my blood martini.

  “Embarrassed.” I paused. “Better though. Energized.”

  Alice tossed herself at me. “You do need me! I knew it. Like it’s our destiny!”

  “I . . . umm . . .”

  She straightened up. “It has to be fresh, but I’ll be right here whenever you need me.”

  It had to be fresh? That was news, and not the good sort. Questions popped around like manic bunnies in my brain. How fresh? How often? How much? Was it all the same? Should we test the theory?

  But Alice was already gone, and I doubted she had the answers I needed. I glanced at Eli.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said, undoubtedly seeing my worries and questions. Obviously, the answers weren’t ones he knew or he’d tell me.

  I swallowed my panic and nodded. One crisis at a time.

  When Alice returned, she had a cocktail shaker in her hand. “I made more. Just in case.”

  Eli held out my glass, and Alice filled it. “I’ll mix up another batch before I go.”

  She gave me a little finger wave like she was in a parade, and then she was gone again.

  “Hey, Alice?” I called after her. “I like your singing.”

  Her squeal, presumably a happy noise, was all the answer I got. Okay, maybe she was growing on me. The whole attempted murder thing was still a factor, but she was so damnably cheerful that I couldn’t entirely resist.

  “We’re friends, aren’t we? Alice and I are friends,” I whispered to Eli. “I . . . like Alice.”

  “You were too hungry to think clearly,” he offered. “Like a duckling imprinting on a food provider . . .”

  Alice’s voice rang out, louder this time, as she presumably was mixing up another batch of blood and vodka for me. She was singing an old blues song, again managing to make it sound like it ought to be on a stage.

  “I’m doomed if she keeps feeding me and singing.”

  Eli laughed. “Drink up, butter cream. You sound more like yourself already.”

  I hated how right he was, but I felt alert. I felt focused. Alice had just rescued me.

  Although Eli didn’t point out that I’d been off since my attempted-murder, we both knew it. And it wasn’t just the appearance of fangs now and then or the weird energy. My necromancy had been erratic before I was injected with draugr venom. Since then, it was all over. Some days, my blood was calm. Other days, I could feel it thrumming inside me like war drums. I could summon anything. I felt sure of it.

  But energy required balance. Magic always had a cost. And I wasn’t sure what the fee was—or if I was ready to pay it.

  ~ 9 ~

  By evening, I was feeling more alive than I had since my attempted murder in the fall. I vacillated between thinking that there was something energizing about blood and that my heritage had finally caught up with me. Either way, my cocktail hours throughout the day were revitalizing.

  By the end of the week, though, blood martinis, murdering “best” friends, and machete-wielding dead men were the least of my troubles. I’d started to suspect that without regular blood I was going to flag. Eli and I set out to see Mama Lauren, closely followed by Jesse, Christy, Sera, and for reasons I’d never admit, Alice. Chanukah wasn’t a major holiday for Jews, not a high holy day despite the fact that it was one of the only ones Christians knew we had. Still, my mother was keen on any excuse to cook for my friends.

  It was a topic we rarely addressed, but my peculiar diet was a challenge for her. I was fairly liquid based, and the few solid things I ate were a choice not a need. Honestly, it was a testament to her cleverness that she discovered that I needed alcohol of all things. To her, I was a hummingbird, existing on some sort of
water with additives.

  Technically, we were there for the holiday, lighting a candle and sharing prayers and food, but in truth, I also needed maternal insight on what was wrong with me. She could tell. She had always been able to tell what I needed, as far as I knew, so if anyone in the world had answers, it would be Mama Lauren.

  In some ways, driving into the Outs for this was not that different than driving to see Beatrice. The primary distinction was that I rarely had the chance to do this of late.

  The Outs were dangerous for me in a way that they weren’t for most people. I was tempting to the dead, and my childhood included waking too often to desperate monsters trying to peel off the rolldowns.

  Mama Lauren coped, but she always just shrugged and asked what else was she to do? The sort of people who lived here were peculiar. The cities were where folks clustered, and the immediate space outside that—the ghost zones—were where draugr gathered. The Outs were their own thing. No utility services. No sheriff. No law. A special sort of madness drew folks to live out in nature.

  Your energy was via solar or wind power, and your liquids were well water, septic, and leach fields. Law? Well, that was a combination of firepower and the judicious use of roll-downs for every window, door, chicken coop, and greenhouse on her farm. In the Outs, you didn’t go outside once the sun set—which made the sunset candle lighting a challenge.

  We’d always made do. Our “sunset” was noon for the purposes of holidays with friends. The alternative was staying over, and that was complicated sometimes with the way I beckoned to dead things. Mama Lauren could cope, but I didn’t want my friends to wake up to draugr clawing at the walls to get in.

  We crawled down the pitted lane, and Eli’s steering managed to avoid pits that seemed likely to swallow his car whole. Maybe it was nerves, but I wasn’t feeling like talking. I clung to the “oh shit” handle on the door as we bounced along.

  Mama Lauren was expecting me, so she stood outside watching for us. Her hair was starting to gray, and she’d pulled it back into a long braid for a change. It was almost always tied up in a knot, but today it was bound in a braid that reached past her hips. My tresses might be blue-dyed, but the thick coils were obviously from her genes.

  She had on her usual tall boots, dress, and a pair of pistols holstered at her hips. Today an apron covered the dress. Her hand rested on the butt of one of those guns until she saw me step out of Eli’s car.

  I flowed toward her before anyone else was out of the cars.

  “Eli’s here,” I said. “Alice, too. Please, don’t hex either of them.”

  Mama Lauren laughed and swept me into a hug that reminded me that she was strong for her age. Honestly, she was strong for my age. “You worry too much, bubeleh.”

  Then she was off to greet my friends. “No Yule log, my darlings! I do have the menorah in the window, but . . .” I tuned her out and watched Eli.

  I think she enjoyed the confusion her mix of Yiddish, Hebrew, and pagan terms caused a lot of people, but honestly, none of my friends blinked at it today. I’m not sure they ever did.

  I wondered, though, what Eli would think.

  He waited until everyone had greeted her, and then he bowed so deeply you’d think she was royalty. “It is my honor to meet you. I am not nor will I be worthy of the gift that is your daughter’s attention.”

  “True.” Mama Lauren nodded at him. “Not even a prince is worthy of Geneviève. She says you are helpful, though.”

  Jesse snorted in laughter.

  “I do attempt to be of use,” Eli said with not a hint of laughter in his voice.

  Then, my mother patted his cheeks. “That’s all any of us can do.” She looked over at Jesse and swatted him. “You! You haven’t visited your family.”

  “Yes, Mama Lauren,” he said, laughter vanishing. Jesse had been my childhood bestie, so he was well aware of my mother’s temper—and her stinging hexes.

  But then my mother looked down at Jesse’s hand, holding on to Christy’s. “At least you figured that out.”

  She shooed us into the house, where she’d set a table that no city restaurant could match. That was the not-so-secret truth of life in the Outs: there were things aplenty that might kill you, but there were also benefits. For someone so bound to the soil, someone who grew her own food and herbs, there was no contest.

  Later, when I had fewer witnesses I’d ask my mother about the blood. For now, I simply asked for a “pick-me-up” and downed whatever concoctions she handed me during our visit. I wasn’t typically this compliant, but I wasn’t ready for my mother or friends to discover how much I needed the blood martinis that Alice made me.

  And Alice was, for all her cheery remarks, looking tired. So, I was without my martinis for a few days. Maybe I lied to her that I was fine, but I wasn’t going to leech away her energy when she was clearly donating too much.

  We all tucked into our odd version of a holiday, knowing that I would much rather stay for several days, and no one remarked on the way that Sera and Christy both kept track of the time. Holiday or not, the draugr would come if I was out here after hours—and after my run-in with Harold, I’d really rather have a draugr free event.

  ~ 10 ~

  Sometimes I thought that every single time I believed things might go well, there ought to be a laugh track in my life to remind me that was never the case. I’d been shot at for being a witch, had my arm flayed open by a pissy draugr, discovered a need for blood, and accidentally entered a courtship that was supposed to result in marriage in a matter of weeks.

  I might have managed to avoid the conversation, and loudly argued that we weren’t actually getting married, but fae customs were better understood as laws than traditions.

  The only thing that had gone well was introducing Eli to my mother. Our trip to the Outs was good, and it drew me closer to him.

  Okay and dating Eli as a whole. That was going really well.

  And so was my resolve at the not-having-intercourse with Eli. Honestly I tried not to think about it, but Eli was as damnably perfect for me. I felt treasured, but also satisfied. It was enough to make a rational woman beg to marry him. A lifetime of that? Yes, please.

  Unfortunately for both of us, I like Eli far too much to marry him.

  I spent a few hours resisting the urge to see him, but I failed over and over—which is why I was sitting at the bar watching Christy free a tourist of the burden of his bank roll. Honestly, if he hadn’t been flashing it around, she would’ve gone easy on him, but flash a thick roll of twenties, and someone will have it by the end of the night. At least Christy’s method wouldn’t involve bloodshed.

  When I received a festively-decorated package that was delivered to the bar on ice, I had the good sense to carry it into the back room. Maybe it was fine. Maybe it was edible. But it was delivered by a draugr.

  When I saw that it was from Beatrice, I had my doubts that anything good would come of it.

  “Butterdrop?” Eli asked.

  “Draugr delivery.”

  We closed the door and exchanged a look. I held up an envelope. That was easier to make sense of: cash. Beatrice paid me well for my services. I set it aside. I knew it was more than I’d charge, but I wasn’t too proud to accept it. No one else could do the things I did. Sometimes people who realized that paid extra—which meant that when they needed me again, I’d make time for them.

  I plopped the silver foil-wrapped box on the counter and untied the bold blue ribbons. “Maybe it’s a toaster or pressure cooker? Rare liquor?”

  Eli gave me a look. “And maybe you’ll take up macramé.”

  “It could happen. I have hidden depths.” I loosened the lid, not quite ready to face the contents. Nothing involving Beatrice was ever simple.

  “You’re stalling.” Eli pointed at the box on the wooden table beside us. It looked festive, and whatever it was, I doubted that it would explode or injure us.

  Tentatively, I opened the box. To exactly no one’s surpris
e, there was no pressure cooker, salad bowls, or even macramé supplies. There, surrounded by ice packs, was the head of Weasel Nuts, the man who’d shot at me at the Cormier job. On top of his severed head, jabbed into the meat of his forehead, was Harold’s ornate broach.

  “There’s a letter.” Eli unfolded the paper that had been in the envelope and read: “‘Hunters ought to be rewarded. Harold employed miscreants to discover your abilities. This human expired before sharing further knowledge.’”

  “Is it me or are there a lot more brushes with death lately?”

  “It is far more frequent than I’d like.” Eli tucked the cash and letter in a pocket.

  We’d long ago realized that I’d misplaced far too many things for me to be the one handling deposits. Eli, along with being my partner in the field, had begun to handle my accounting. I trusted him more than myself on this.

  “Do you know what to do with that?” I nodded at the garish jewels jabbed in Weasel Nuts’ forehead.

  “Sell or store it.” Eli shrugged. “Antique, obviously.”

  I wasn’t squeamish often, but unpinning the broach from the dead man’s head was not terribly appealing. I put the lid back on it for now.

  “I have a woman who handles gems. I brought a cache with me when I moved here,” Eli said in that uniquely Eli way that was somehow downplaying his connections and wealth. “They covered the bills of a life here—until I established the tavern—and then I sell one now and again.”

  He looked at me and stressed, “Bonbon, I would suspect the ruby alone will be between six and thirty thousand, simply due to size and clarity.”

  I swallowed. Who in their right mind wore jewels like that? And who pinned them to the head of dead men?

  Obviously, Beatrice was not wanting for funds, but her proclamation of familial ties was said so carelessly. I was starting to think my dear, dead, many-times-great-gran truly liked me. It was, in truth, a bit disconcerting.

  I shuddered. “Do whatever you think best with it.”