Spells of Blood and Kin

by Claire Humphrey

  “You must keep at it,” Maksim said, “but if you are good, I will squire you out after the house is abed.”

  “I will be ready for a bacchanal at this rate,” Augusta said moodily, fidgeting with her coverlet.

  “It takes us all so,” Maksim said. “But I had not expected it to come over you this early. Hold tight, and have your maid send for me if you have need.”

  Augusta made it through the day without issue, or so Maksim inferred from the absence of any message, but that very evening, as soon as her father’s lamp was snuffed, she was scratching at Maksim’s bedchamber door, already dressed and bearing a flask of her father’s finest.

  She knew Cadiz scarcely better than Maksim did; she and her father had come from London only after the siege had ended, pursuing some business. Augusta waved her hand impatiently at Maksim’s questions and said, “Does it matter? You promised me a bacchanal, not a polite conversation. I expect you to deliver.”

  As it turned out, Augusta made a splendid maenad: fire-eyed, flushed with whiskey and exercise. Maksim watched her from the corner of the public house he’d chosen.

  She led another girl down the floor, a dusky girl with wild curls tumbled from her scarf. Both of them were laughing, their skirts kilted up to display immodest ankles.

  Around them, a circle of men applauded, clapped, and stamped. Maksim scanned the faces: enthusiastic, lascivious, drunk, keen. Rough men, the kind of men he assumed Augusta had not had cause to meet before now.

  Her father seemed to have kept her on the shelf, dressed in white, pouring tea for his associates. Maksim thought it a great waste.

  The fiddler in the corner struck a triumphant finish. Augusta and her partner spun apart to curtsy to the room and back together to salute each other. Augusta kissed the girl’s hand, laughing up at her with mocking eyes, and they parted—the girl to pour wine and wipe the bar, Augusta to stand beside Maksim, chest heaving, hand pressed to the spot where the knife had nearly gored her heart.

  She fixed a pale curl behind her ear and looked expectantly to Maksim. “Well? Are you going to stand here like a great looby all night?”

  “I do not dance.”

  “That much is apparent.”

  “I do not mind watching you dance, however.”

  “No one does,” Augusta said. “I had an excellent dancing master. It seems a bit passive for you, though. I do not believe you to be possessed of a passive character.”

  “No, I am not.” He covered a smile and poured her a tot of whiskey.

  “My, this stuff is delicious,” she said, knocking it back. “I often help myself to my father’s, you know. It’s fine, but I like it rougher.”

  Maksim bit his lip on the crude thing he could have said.

  “I think it is time you told me what you’re about,” Augusta said. “I know you are healed, as am I, and you needn’t linger. Yet here you are.”

  Maksim found himself bending close, the better to hear her; Augusta’s voice was low and cultured, and the room loud with the voices of fishermen and soldiers.

  “I would follow you,” she said. “I know you will not stay in Cadiz forever, and I would follow you when you go.”

  “Of course,” he said. “The world has much to show us.”

  “You’ve already seen a great deal of it, I know. I hope you will not mind a protégée.”

  “On the contrary.”

  “I fear I have already made myself the subject of a bit of talk here. It would be best for my father if I did not stay to make more.”

  “He will miss you sadly,” Maksim said.

  “He cannot miss me, for he does not know me.”

  “I would know you, Augusta.”

  She smiled, wide and bright. The fiddler had struck up again, and Augusta unconsciously rocked her foot in time and looked away. She was blushing, or maybe it was only the whiskey; she smelled heated and honeyed, and in her smell was a thread of Maksim’s own, her blood tuned to his now and forevermore.

  She filled him with wonder, this thing he had saved. He touched a fingertip to her cheek.

  She leaned into the touch a little, but her gaze was elsewhere, on the girl with whom she had been dancing.

  “Look at her,” Augusta said, just above a whisper. “Have you ever seen anything so fine? Look at the way her skin blooms in the light.”

  “Oh,” said Maksim, understanding.

  He took Augusta by the elbow with one hand, the whiskey bottle in the other, and shouldered his way to the door.

  “I want to stay,” Augusta said.

  “Not now.”

  She tugged at his hand and then wrenched at it. “But Mónica said she would dance again.”

  “I am sorry,” said Maksim. And he was. “I am sorry, but she is not for you.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you understood. I thought you were like me.” Her eyes were black in the moonlight, all pupil, as she stumbled with him down toward the harbor.

  “I am. Or you are like me now.”

  “Mr. Volkov,” she said, throwing her weight back to slow him down. “Perhaps you do not take my meaning. I hope I have not led you to think I would accept a kind of companionship from you which I … which would be … indelicate.”

  Maksim stopped in the street and loosened his grasp, gentling her, smoothing her sleeve where his hand had creased it. “I do understand,” he said.

  His hopes, he did not mention. They had not been strong hopes, in any case. He had known for many years what it was to be alone, and now he had a friend.

  He would endure. He knew what life held for him.

  What he had done to her was another matter.

  “I am sorry,” he said again, very softly. “Come down to the water with me, and we will sit where we cannot be overheard. I have many more things to tell you.”

  APRIL 30

  WANING GIBBOUS

  Hannah wrapped her hand around Nick’s wrist, fingertips hooked over the tendon to count his pulse.

  “Gold,” she said, shifting back on the love seat and patting Nick on the cheek.

  “So you’ll get off my fucking case now?”

  She sighed. “You’re so healthy it’s freaking me out. I’d kill to have your blood pressure. Your cut’s healing beautifully. I’m still mad you didn’t tell me about your ribs, but I’m almost over it. You got up early to run 10K, and you left Jonathan in the dust. Your resting heart rate is half what mine is. Half. That’s practically pro-level fitness, Nick. And what do you want to do with it? Get hammered with my boyfriend.”

  “What? We’re just going to the Cammie. I said we wouldn’t go back to that other place again.”

  “Admirable restraint.” She flicked Nick on the forehead. “Just, seriously, Nick, you’re not going to have this forever. I hate to see you piss it away.”

  “You sound like my mom. Wait, is that it? Are you, like, practicing?” said Nick, arrested. He looked around the room: it was Jonathan’s name on the lease, but there was plenty of evidence of Hannah’s taste, given the couple of nights a week she spent there. An Audubon print over the nook table. Cushions on the armchair, printed with stenciled birds. Did people put birds on things when they were nesting? Was that a thing?

  “Sure, I guess,” Hannah said, completely comfortably. Did that mean it wasn’t a thing or that she didn’t care if it was a thing? “Don’t you want to be a dad someday?”

  “Jesus,” Nick said, taking refuge in humor. “This is sudden, but I guess we’ll just have to tell Jonathan—”

  Hannah fished an ice cube from her water glass and threw it at him. “Seriously, you’ll be a fine dad, Nick. If you ever stop being a kid.”

  “Jonathan!” Nick called. “Your girlfriend’s being all grown up again. Make her stop.”

  Jonathan didn’t answer. Nick, suddenly unable to sit still, jumped up from the couch and hammered on the bathroom door. “Want to jog over there?” he called.

  From inside, Jonathan groaned. “We already jogged. My legs
are still sore. And I just got out of the shower, asshole.”

  “Walk, then? It’s too hot for the streetcar.”

  “Doesn’t that mean it’s too hot to walk?” Jonathan said, coming out in a fresh shirt, combing his damp hair with his fingertips.

  “I don’t feel like sitting still,” Nick said, pacing. He felt like running another 10K and then jerking off again, but a walk sounded okay too, if it was followed by about ten drinks. He jittered back and forth by the door until Jonathan had located his wallet and keys.

  “Bye, Hannah,” Nick said, waving his fingers.

  “Bring him back in one piece,” Hannah said.

  She was muttering something to herself as she got up and stuck her head in the refrigerator, but Nick didn’t want to hear it.

  Jonathan had to stop and kiss her, though, and then he kissed her again.

  “Bye, Hannah.” Nick pulled Jonathan away by his shirt collar.

  “Bye,” Jonathan said softly. “Hang out here as long as you want. I won’t be late.”

  “Yes, he will,” Nick called, already dragging Jonathan down the hall.

  CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: 1814

  Augusta left him for the first time as soon as they docked in Cape Town. She sat quietly enough in the cutter, though Maksim could feel her heel tapping the carpetbag beneath his seat. Once they had said their farewells to the captain, though, she began walking, fast and jerky, hands jammed in the pockets of her waistcoat.

  “You have been warning me of this forever, and I am bound to say you were right,” she said furiously, not looking at him, kicking at the cobbles.

  “Handsome of you,” Maksim said, laughing rather, though he too was affected with restlessness and appetite after the tedium of a sea voyage.

  “It is not,” Augusta said. “It is very grudging, and having said it, I feel even more as if I would like to throttle you and leave your body right here in the middle of the street.”

  “You may try,” Maksim said.

  She whirled on him. “Do not joke!”

  “I do not. You will not win over me, not yet, but you’ll find few other opponents to give you satisfaction.”

  “But I don’t want to hurt you. You’re my friend,” Augusta said, wrenching at her own hair.

  “That is why we may trust each other with this,” Maksim said as gently as he could.

  “You don’t understand! I need to wreck someone—with my hands—”

  “Run it out,” Maksim said. “Tire yourself until you collapse. And if you must hurt someone, make it someone who heals—or someone who will not be noticed.”

  “How do you do this? How do you do this?” Augusta said, fingers tearing at her cuffs.

  Maksim sighed and groped in his pocket and handed her the money he found there. “Go figure it out. I will take a room at the Two Sisters for some weeks,” he said. “Find me there when you are ready.”

  She closed her fist over the money and ran from him.

  Maksim found, at the Two Sisters, a clean bed, a stock of half-decent wine, and a young man whose skin bruised deliciously. He kept himself busy for a few days in this way until the young man began to complain of his roughness, and Maksim sent him off. Without company, the Two Sisters did not hold his interest; the mountain overlooking the town, however, proved a worthwhile excursion to occupy Maksim for a couple of days.

  When he came down from the mountain, footsore and filthy and as satisfied as one of the kin could be, he still found no Augusta awaiting him, and he discovered his temper was not as quelled as he had wished.

  The young man, bruised afresh, brought him bread and cheese and hot water to wash in, and he kept his eyes down. Maksim thanked him guiltily and promised not to break anything else, a promise he broke the next day.

  Two full weeks, and finally Augusta returned. She had messily shorn what remained of her hair, and the inch-long crop looked bleached with sun and salt, shockingly pale against her newly browned face.

  She would have looked savagely healthy, in fact, were her eyes open and her limbs properly arranged, but some boys brought her laid out on an old door and told Maksim she was not ill but only dead drunk and that she had promised them a British guinea if they would deliver her to Maksim Volkov at the Two Sisters.

  Augusta did not so much as murmur when Maksim shook her. He paid the boys and carried Augusta up to his room, where she cast up her accounts all over his pillow.

  She did not wake until after midday, and even then, she was stupid and sick for some hours; but she told Maksim she had done with her fit of temper and would like to explore the country with him now if he would be so good as to lay in a supply of victuals and drink.

  “And the money I gave you?”

  “Gone,” she said. “Was I meant to husband it? I am sorry.”

  She looked sorry, all sallow and sore-eyed and thinner than she had been, tucked up in Maksim’s dressing gown, sitting next to his window with the sun across her lap.

  Maksim struck her, anyway, because he had not yet done so, and she was come into her own strength now and must learn the way of things.

  “I apologized,” Augusta said, blocking his fist with her raised forearms, cowering back. “I apologized.”

  “I am not punishing you,” Maksim said, slapping Augusta’s arms aside and grabbing at her throat.

  “Yes, you are,” she gasped, clutching his wrist. “Stop it; I said I was sorry.”

  “I have no one else,” Maksim said, and he punched her in the side of the head. “Hit me back. Hit me back.”

  She shook her head, tears flying from her eye on the side where she’d taken the blow, but it wasn’t a denial. She gave up trying to pry Maksim’s hand off her and instead hammered him in the floating rib in an untutored but sturdy attempt.

  Maksim chuckled low and tossed her bodily onto the floor. “Again. You can do it. Get up and hit me again.”

  And she did, and she did, and she did, and Maksim thought there was a smile starting on her swelling lip.

  MAY 5

  WANING CRESCENT

  Stella seemed to be trying. She wasn’t around in the evenings—working, Lissa assumed. Her suitcase was neatly stowed behind the sofa, her clothes folded on top of it.

  Lissa could only tell she was eating in the house at all by the occasional misplacement of a clean salad plate or cereal bowl; the reappearance of a fat, thorny brown pottery mug that Baba hadn’t used in years; and the lowering level of milk in the carton. Stella replaced what she used too; the new milk was a different brand, but still 1 percent.

  Stella left a little envelope of her tip money beside the grocery list. She cleaned the bathroom, right down to the grout. She didn’t touch Baba’s room or any of Baba’s things; she might have dusted the shelves in the kitchen and living room, but she did it without changing the arrangement of the objects on them, so that Lissa was not even sure it had happened.

  Lissa heard her in the shower late at night and smelled her shower gel and her expensive scent. Found a couple of her long hairs on her towel or in the sink. Saw her spare shoes neatly side by side on the mat.

  Barely saw the girl herself, though. If Stella was just washing up her tea mug when Lissa came in to make coffee, she ducked her head and hurried out. One night when she wasn’t working and Lissa had been out, Stella was still awake when Lissa came in: curled on the sofa under a light blanket, with her face scrubbed clean and her hair tied up for sleep. She had a magazine and a pencil, and Lissa thought maybe she was doing crosswords. She saw Lissa in the hallway and smiled shyly and waved good night.

  Lissa couldn’t remember whether she’d waved back.

  The problem wasn’t in anything Stella was doing or not doing. She seemed sweet. Well raised. More than Lissa would’ve expected, considering it was Dad doing half of the raising.

  The problem wasn’t in the idea of having a roommate, either. Lord knew she could use a bit of help with the household and the bills. Having to keep her rituals secret would be a pain,
but she could invent something—a church meeting to pretend to host, something like that.

  The problem was that Stella was family. Stepfamily, sure. Still too close for Lissa to pretend she was just some friendly but distant connection sharing a financial arrangement and alternating turns with the washing machine.

  Family went one of two ways. They ruled you, or you ruled them. You couldn’t be equal; you couldn’t be neutral. If you didn’t want to play, you had to go. Dad went: first overseas, then into a whole new marriage. Mama went too; exhausted and irritable at the end, she didn’t seem sorry to be going. One of the last things Lissa remembered hearing from her mouth was a vindictive comment to Baba, that now she’d have Lissa all to herself, just like she wanted.

  And Baba had wanted. As soon as Mama died, she began training Lissa in earnest. She put away all the photos of Mama and Dad with Lissa and had one taken of just the two of them at the portrait studio at Sears: Baba in her best gray dress, with her hair coiled around her head, and Lissa in a purple skirt and a blouse with purple kittens on it, hair in two long braids. She was nearly ten, and the other girls in her class were starting to pay attention to fashion and steer away from things that looked too childish, but Baba did not hold with fashion and thought children should be children.

  That photo was still on Baba’s dresser.

  After a few days of tiptoeing, Lissa left Stella a note on the refrigerator.

  They met at an organic-food café on Queen Street, which Lissa had picked because it was affordable but sounded trendy enough for Stella to appreciate. Stella was a few minutes late, which gave Lissa time to find a seat on the patio with a wall at her back. The air was humid and smoggy, but with the sun down behind the buildings, the heat was starting to lift; the smell of toner still lingered in Lissa’s hair, and she unbraided it and shook it out, inhaling, instead, the fragrance of the blooms in a nearby garden and the café’s aroma of toasting cumin.

  She ordered a juice made from beet, ginger, carrot, apple, cayenne, and lemon, which arrived, capped with brilliant pink foam, just as Stella slid into the opposite seat.