We arrived at the church, and I took the cowardly route of letting Gram Judy play nice instead of doing so myself.
I was only here for one reason.
I left Gram at the front pew, greeting people and shaking hands, and climbed up to the communion table, where I could stand before the coffin. The wood was shiny yellow. I touched its smooth finish. My hand was pale against it. I averted my eyes from the open half. I didn’t want to see him, even though I’d agreed to the open casket.
Yaleylah shuffled and murmured as it gathered behind me. There was sniffling and the slick clacking of heels on the floor. To my right, Mrs. Artley played a quiet tune on the piano.
Now was the moment.
Closing my eyes, I dug into my purse for the spell book. Such a small, old-looking thing to have caused so much pain. I pressed it to my stomach. Memories of it flashed through my head. Unwrapping it at the kitchen table, shoving it at Reese, holding it open on my lap, listening to his deep voice as he listed ingredients.
My stomach lurched. I’d never laugh with him again over grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, or yell at him when he left his sweaty running shorts on the bathroom floor, or accuse him of drinking too much, or make fun of his questionable girlfriend choices, or push him into getting an engineering degree instead of farming, for God’s sake. Reese, who was smart and took care of me and—
I couldn’t breathe. My chest pinched, and I leaned into the coffin. I wanted to slam my fists into it, to break it into a thousand pieces and fling them everywhere.
Finally I looked at him. It wasn’t him, not really. As unrecognizable as my own face had been in the mirror this morning. A waxy death mask. His hair was combed back, the stubble I’d teased him about gone. Face peaceful—but falsely so. It wasn’t like when he slept. It was empty.
I tucked the book against his chest. “I’m so sorry, Reese,” I whispered. I never should have made him try the magic. Never should have let myself feel the burn of its power, or believed it could bring any beauty into our lives.
All it had brought was death. And now I would bury the magic with my brother.
NICHOLAS
After the funeral (which sucked), I dropped Dad and Lilith off at home and walked back down the road to Silla’s house. I wanted to avoid the forest path and cemetery.
Cars flooded the street, and I had to pick my way around them. As I approached the house, an empty sort of dread settled in the pit of my chest. On the roof, about a dozen crows roosted. Watching everything. Not really doing anything. Not playing or squawking like crows usually did but sitting there. Chilling. Occasionally one flapped its wings.
I walked faster. Silla was probably going nuts. And tonight, after everyone was gone, we’d make those damn protection amulets, finally. So that bitch couldn’t hurt anyone else.
Silla was in the kitchen, dutifully accepting casseroles and Jell-O salads in her pink dress. A clunky silver bracelet pressed against the bones of her wrist. I’d never seen it before—but it made me realize that she wasn’t wearing any of her rings.
I stood at the door as she let church ladies hug her and shook men’s hands. Her lips barely moved as she spoke.
Wendy burst in, and hugged Silla. Her shoulders shook, and Silla just clutched at her back, eyes dry. The kitchen was invaded by drama club kids, pushing around and trying to get to Silla to tell her how damn sorry they were.
The whole thing was sorry.
I was about to force my way in, too, to rescue her from the swarm, when Silla rescued herself. She smiled tightly and said something. Wendy hugged her again, and Silla just pulled away, shoving through the crowd.
“Silla.” I reached out.
She blew right past me. For a second, I went cold, thinking she still wanted me to go away. But I’d seen that look on her face, the torn-up expression and her eyes not seeing anything or anyone.
I dashed up the stairs after her.
On the second floor, she pushed into a purple bedroom. I followed, and stopped suddenly. Masks covered the walls, staring at us with a hundred empty eyes. I don’t know how she slept under so many eerie faces. I barely managed not to frown at them.
Silla flung herself onto the bed, grinding her face into the pillow.
The empty eye sockets of a white and green checkered mask glared at me from over her head. It wore a jester’s hat.
“This is creepy, Sil.”
She flipped around and sat up, eyes wide. “Nick!”
I held up my hands. “I thought you could use a punching bag.” See, this is me, the new and improved Nick Pardee, available to girlfriends and crazy people in their time of need. I never would have been here for any of the girls I saw in Chicago. But I couldn’t imagine not being here for Silla.
Her lips pressed together, and she looked into her lap. “Nick. I can’t do this.”
I knelt at her knees but didn’t touch her. I wanted to, but wasn’t sure she wanted me to.
“Just look at me!” She spread her hands. “I’m a mess! I can’t stop crying, and it all just hurts so much. I can’t eat—I’m nauseated all the time, and my head aches, and it’s just awful.”
“Your brother died, babe.” I said it as lightly as I could, and gently touched her knee. “And you lost your parents just a little bit ago. There’s still a crazy bitch stalking you and crows covering your roof. You aren’t supposed to be okay.”
Her jaw dropped. She stared at me. For once, I had no idea what was whirling behind her eyes. I hoped she wasn’t going to ream me, or tell me to leave. I swallowed hard, forcing my hand to stay in place on her knee.
Then suddenly she slid forward and fell down into my arms. She wrapped hers around my neck and pressed her cheek against mine. I closed my eyes. The whole length of her fit against me as I knelt on the carpet. My arms encircled her easily, and her breasts pushed against me through her thin dress. I heard the blood roaring in my ears and held her tighter, smelling her shampoo, her delicate perfume. Tears made her cheek sticky, but I didn’t care. This was why I’d come. We needed each other.
A breeze ruffled the purple curtains at the window, letting in the muffled sound of conversations and the crunch of gravel outside. The masks on the walls ranged from happy, grinning faces to horrible demonic glares.
“What is all this stuff, anyway?” I murmured. “The masks?”
Without moving, she said, “They’re theater masks and Venetian masks. Most are from catalogs and stuff.”
“They’re watching me.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. She curled a hand up in the ends of my hair, tickling my neck. “Like guardians.”
Rubbing her back, I said, “They’re kind of creepy.”
I could feel her smile against my ear. “Yeah. I like that, too.”
I laughed a little. Of course she did. “You eaten anything today?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“I’m not ready to go downstairs again.”
“Okay, babe. I’ll go get something.”
“Will you tell Judy where I am?”
“Sure thing.”
I started to pull back, but she caught my shoulders and said, “I’m sorry for yesterday. What I said.”
I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too.”
She leaned onto her heels, looking tiny and desperate against the bed, with her feet tucked up under the pink dress and her hands limp in her lap.
“I’ll be right back,” I promised as I stood, feeling pretty damn good for a guy at a funeral.
For years, I convinced myself I had never been Philip but was only Robert Kennicot. I went away to the university, I met Emily, and I loved her effortlessly. Your mother was majoring in biology, always teasing me about my Latin, as if I were archaic and boring.
I will die now, for her. For all of you.
When you were born, Reese, I had never been so full of magic
as I was the first time you lay between Emily and me. When all our hands touched, when I saw my nose in your nose. You stared at everything, just watching, not reaching to touch or put it in your mouth. Just watching. It has always amazed me, the depth behind your eyes, even when you were barely a few months old. Emily always said you were as stubborn as I, and as thoughtful. Reese, son. I beg you not to pursue this. If you find these confessions because I have died, put them away and continue on your path. Become a great scientist, a farmer. Work the land, as your hands have always told you. Think no more on the mistakes of your father.
SILLA
When the only ones left were Gram Judy’s bunko buddies, Nick and I went outside. It was nearing sunset, and with the crows at our back, we followed my regular path through the forsythia. The prickly branches scratched at my hair, and I showed Nick the best way to duck and twist around the grasping thorns. On the other side, the cemetery was quiet, overgrown, as usual. Except for the backhoe hunkered down between rows of graves.
Reese’s grave was blanketed in loose sod just to the north of Mom’s and Dad’s. There was no headstone yet. That took a while—and I hadn’t picked an epitaph. Judy had put several before me, but I hadn’t been able to focus on the words.
“Why’d they leave it out here?” Nick asked, jerking his chin at the backhoe. “Eager to make another trip tomorrow?”
I just shook my head. “They probably borrowed it from Mr. Meroon. I bet the parish’s is over at the other cemetery.”
“So Meroon uses the same tractor for tilling land and burying the dead. It has a nice sort of circularity.” Nick picked up his flask and held it out over the fresh grave. “I have tainted the inside of my flask with beer. For Reese?”
“Yes.”
He tipped the contents out, and the yellow-brown liquid cascaded briefly onto the grass. The stream caught the dying sunlight and turned into a band of gold.
Crows hid all over the cemetery. They tucked themselves into shadows, some hunkered down like feathery fluff balls, and some stood with their necks stretched and tall. A handful, a dozen, I wasn’t sure. They didn’t move toward us or cry out to one another; they just watched. Silently, unnaturally.
I leaned against Mom and Dad’s headstone, drawing runes in the dirt and then scratching them out. A crow landed about fifty feet away. Nick picked up a rock and threw it, hitting the ground near the crow’s feet. The crow flapped backward, cawing angrily.
“Thanks,” I said. I dropped the stick and put my hands in my lap. “Do you ever wonder if it says anything about our relationship that we’re always meeting up in a cemetery?”
“That we’re eternal and peaceful?”
I smiled. “That isn’t what I was thinking.”
“You’re right. You don’t make me feel peaceful.” The little smile fell off his mouth, and some intense look replaced it. We watched each other for a moment, until I had to glance away. I fiddled with Reese’s bracelet, heavy on my wrist. My rings were tucked under my pillow, strung together on a silver chain. Reese’s blood was crusted in the setting of the emerald and the iolite. I couldn’t wear them.
Nick didn’t say anything, just stared down at my wrist, too, as the tiger’s-eye caught the light of the sunset. Until a crow cried out. Nick glanced at my eyes, tossing another rock.
I nodded, gathering up sticks and crumbled headstone marble into my skirt. Together we stood, and launched a volley. We were silent, arms swinging, rocks and twigs peppering the ground with tiny thuds and crunching into headstones.
The crows yelled at us and, in unison, broke away, flying off toward the forest.
Mauve-edged clouds swept past overhead, leaving behind a darkening night sky. I walked to the nearest headstone that wasn’t my parents’—a squat, rectangular tower—and picked at the green lichen hugging one corner. I wished it was so easy to chase away the memories of Reese’s heart’s blood spilling over my hands.
Coming up behind me, Nick said, “I think the cemetery is at the center of everything.”
“Huh?” I frowned at him and shivered. With the sun set, the cardigan over my summer dress wasn’t enough.
He put his arm around me. “The cemetery. It’s connected to the magic. All the dead bodies, they’ve got to have some power. Right? That’s why Josephine wanted your dad’s bones. For the magic. Why else? She wants his bones, and it must be because whatever makes our blood special makes our dead bodies special, too. Otherwise, why not dig up any old grave?”
“Yeah.”
“And you must know they say things about this place having been cursed for generations? Your family and mine have been here, have been buried here, for that long.”
The silence stretched out, but it wasn’t tense or brittle. More like dough. Thick and sticky, settling over us like a blanket. Then a crow called, and it was echoed by another on the far side of the cemetery.
My sigh was violent enough to expel every molecule of air.
Nick pressed his forehead into mine. We just stood there, heads together, hands on each other. Breathing his air was almost as nice as kissing him.
“We’ll figure it out, babe,” Nick said.
I tilted my chin and kissed him. My fingers curled into his jacket, and I tugged him against me easily.
Nick opened his mouth, and I grabbed his head. He tasted so good. The same—exactly the same, and I knew how to kiss him: where his teeth were and how he moved his lips.
I pulled, lifting myself up, and Nick grabbed my hips to boost me onto the monument. His fingers twisted at my thin skirt as I parted my legs so that he could get closer. Wrapped around him, pressed against him, I was warm.
For whole breathless minutes, we kissed. I unbuttoned Nick’s shirt, and he jerked as my cold hands touched his skin. But he sighed back into the kiss, holding me closer with his hands fisted in my skirt. The rough scrape of his jeans on my thighs made me dig my fingers into his back, wanting him more, needing harder than I ever had in my life.
His mouth tore away from mine, and he scoured down my neck with kisses. My head lolled back and I gasped, clutching at him.
He raised his hands up from my hips, his palms hot on my ribs even through the thin dress. I wanted out of it, I wanted everything between us gone. I tugged at the collar of my cardigan, twisting to get it off.
But Nick stopped. He caught my hands. “Silla,” he whispered.
I stared at him, but his eyes rested lower than mine, at my throat. Releasing my hands, he slowly, and very gently, unbuttoned the top button of the cardigan and unfolded it off my chest, like unwrapping a gift. His face was so open I thought that if I tried I could see into his thoughts. Wonder, fear, panic, tenderness shared space in his expression, and Nick drew one finger along the scar lining my throat, just over my collarbone. “God, Silla,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, touching his lips. “It’s okay.”
He ducked his head and pulled me close, hugging me.
I wound my arms around his neck and relaxed against him. Our breath evened out together, synchronized perfectly.
Nick said, “We should, uh, go get the spell book and all the rest of the stuff.”
“What?” I pushed away.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, then back up through his hair, leaving it mussed. “The amulets, babe. We have to finish the amulets. It’s been two whole days, and we’re just lucky she hasn’t attacked and apparently needed time to recover. There’s no way she’s really gone.”
“We can’t.”
“Why?”
“The spell book is gone.”
“What?” He grasped my hands. “What happened?”
“I buried it with Reese.”
His eyebrows lowered, and he frowned. It was fierce and angry, not confused. “Silla, we need it. How else can we stop Josephine?”
“We can’t, Nick! She’s stronger than us, and she’s killed so many people! We can’t fight her. So I buried the thing she wants so badly. Where she ca
n’t get it.”
“You’re giving up? Just like that? What if she comes after you again? She will, for the exact same reasons as before.”
I shivered and pulled my hands from his. I reached down for a jagged rock, and made a long, shallow cut through my palm.
“Silla!”
Nick snatched the rock away from me.
I held out my bleeding hand. “I don’t want this power. Look at it. Look how it bleeds out of me. What if all it does is bring death like this?”
“It isn’t the magic—it’s the person using it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do. The blood is what we make it.”
“Your grandpa knew; he said it was evil. That what your mom was doing was.”
“But we don’t know what she was doing!”
“Maybe it was just the magic itself. Maybe Mr. Harleigh knew it couldn’t be used for good.”
“But your dad, all his spells are good. For good!”
I shook my head. “But the price, Nick. The sacrifice is too much. My brother, my mom, they both died for it—and even a rabbit is too much.”
“It’s part of who you are, Silla.”
“I don’t want it.”
“That’s what my mom thought, and she tried to kill herself and then drug it out of her.”
“Maybe she had the right idea.”
Nick was in my face in an instant. “Don’t say that. Don’t say that.”
The air was warm between us. Cold on my back. I got off the monument, pushing around him. “I’ll say what I think is true,” I said quietly.
Lips pressed into a frown, Nick tore the bandage off his left hand. He put the rock against the stitches knitting his palm together, and sliced. Blood gushed. Hissing through his teeth, Nick dropped the rock, reached out with his unwounded hand, and grabbed my bleeding one. He jerked me forward and slapped our bleeding hands together.
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