2. Darkness in the Blood Master copy MS 5 (7 page)

Mrs. Alice had looked roughly the same age for as long as I could remember: over sixty but under ancient. For the first time, she looked tired. Worn out, even. “All of it,” she said heavily. “You are at the center of all of it.”

Well, that was massively unhelpful.

She smiled a little, as if sensing my frustration. “Your sleep has been disturbed.” It wasn’t a question. How had she known? “It will only get worse, I’m afraid.”

My throat was suddenly dry enough to tempt me into drinking cold tea. “I’m sleeping well enough. I’m getting enough rest. It’s just that I have these dreams.” Loose tea coagulated at the bottom of my cup. Was my future down there? Could Mrs. Alice tell me what it was? “Actually, it’s just this one dream,” I heard myself say. “There’s a boy. He’s like me. Of gifted blood, I mean. I was sick, really sick, in my dream.” She watched like I was her favorite soap opera. “I think I was dying, Mrs. Alice. I really do. He stopped it. Just like that.”

“It’s good he was there, then,” she said. “But now you’re worried. Who is this boy, and should you trust him? What would your brother or protector say?”

“Protector?” I repeated. “What does Asheroth have to do with it?”

Mrs. Alice looked at me like I was too stupid to draw breath. “I meant Ethan, dear. Don’t think that just because he gave up his powers he also gave up the post. In my Foretelling,” she continued smoothly, as if I had never spoken, “you are linked with two other souls. You are always caught between things. Worlds, forces, places.” She leaned forward, her voice Hollywood husky. “
Young men.”

I spewed out my tea.

“Three is a volatile grouping, my dear. Never balanced.” She patted my tea-soaked knee. “Which is why you need my womanly guidance.”

My face flamed; I searched for an excuse, no matter how implausible, to escape the pit of humiliation I had so blithely skipped into. “I have to… go wash my cat… now.”

Mrs. Alice ignored me. “You have no sisters. Your mother and grandmother have long since passed from this world. Were you a witch, you would have an entire coven to enlighten you about the mysteries of womanhood. But don’t worry. You have me, my dear.”

Please, God, let me die
, I begged as cold tea seeped into my jeans.

“I, uh, already know about…” I gagged. “
Those things
, Mrs. Alice. Really, I do.” I eyed the door. If I vaulted over the back of the sofa, I could probably make it. Then the lock turned by itself. Mrs. Alice smiled grimly. For the first time in my life, she really did look like a dark witch.

She still wasn’t done with me when the lock turned again. Mrs. Alice’s great-granddaughter Cassandra burst into the store. She took one look at my wide, panicked eyes and her heart-shaped face contorted with fury. “Grand’Mere, tell me you didn’t.”

“The child has no female relatives,” my torturer said defensively.

Cassandra turned several interesting shades of scarlet. “
The child?
Caspia is nearly my age, Grand’Mere!”

“Exactly my point,” Mrs. Alice sniffed.

“Caspia.” Cassandra slipped up beside me, wrapping her hand protectively around my forearm. “Tell me she didn’t have the ‘mysteries of womanhood’ conversation with you.”

“She did,” I whispered. “It was terrible.”

“Oh, sweet Goddess,” Cassandra moaned.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Mrs. Alice snapped. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“You underestimate the force of your personality, Grand’Mere,” Cassandra looked at me sympathetically. “I was coming in to start my shift early. But now I’m going to have to exercise some damage control.”

“So you won’t be working today?” Mrs. Alice asked, less surprised than I would have expected.

“Like you didn’t know already.” Her great-granddaughter rolled her eyes. “She’s got more than a touch of the Sight, you know,” Cassandra stage-whispered. “Probably planned this whole thing right down to the rescue.”

“Sss…sso she really can see the future?” I asked, terrified all over again, remembering Mrs. Alice’s Foretelling.

“You’ve scared her into stuttering.” Cassandra shot Mrs. Alice a dirty look before marching me out of the store.

I had never really liked Cassandra Blackwood. With her billowy skirts, waist-length blond hair, and profoundly New Age ideals, she always struck me as a privileged neo-hippie. That was before I’d discovered she was a member of the most powerful family of witches in Whitfield. Now that she’d rescued me from her great-grandmother and proceeded to pour strong red wine down my throat, I was ready to erect a shrine in her honor.

I hadn’t known there were different kinds of witches, either. We talked about the different kinds as Abigail sniffed her suspiciously. Cassandra called herself an Elemental with an affinity for earth. “That explains the patchouli,” I said, after one and a half bottles of wine. “And the dolphin music.” The words were already out before I realized I might have offended her. We stared at each other for a loaded minute before exploding into drunken giggles.

“I guess it does,” Cassandra sighed. “Grand’Mere thinks a lot of you, Caspia. She meant well. But at a hundred and ten, she’s a little out of touch sometimes. I’m sorry.” She crooked her index finger at a gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream. It flew three feet across the floor to rest right in front of us. She’d kept it in her backpack along with the wine, and it hadn’t melted all day. “We need more wine.”

“Yes we do,” I seconded. “Because I thought you said one hundred and ten. Mrs. Alice is eighty. That means I’ve had too much to drink, or not enough.”

Cassandra snorted. “Eighty. Hah. She wishes.” I watched as her backpack unzipped itself and a fresh bottle rolled out. A gold foil box of chocolates followed. Abigail, hiding under the couch, decided to attack it. “So. Did she talk to you about what happens when mortals and immortals…”

“Please, Cassandra,” I slurred. “No more. Not after that bizarre ‘Foretelling’ of your great-grandmother’s.” I sketched phantom quote marks in the air. “I can’t handle it.”

The bottle froze between us, hanging suspended in the air. “Grand’Mere had a Foretelling?” For someone on her second bottle of wine, she sounded remarkably alert.

“Mmm-hmm. Something about linked souls, and intimacy, and…” I could actually feel myself blushing. “It doesn’t matter because it made no sense and it’s not going to come true anyway.”

“If you say so,” Cassandra said doubtfully. Sighing, she pushed the bottle my way. “You need some more wine.”

“Definitely,” I agreed, sure my face was tomato red. We pushed the bottle through the air between us. I giggled to see it floating through space. Poor Abigail inched out from under the sofa to bat at it longingly.

“I was going to ask if she talked to you about the Compact between Light and Dark, or what makes Whitfield a refuge in the first place, or the four Guardian races. You know, the important stuff.”

“Um, no. We didn’t get much beyond Foretellings and my dreams.” Alcohol allowed me to say this without sarcasm.

Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Figures she’d fixate on the embarrassing parts.” She frowned in concentration. “Is your brother going to kill me when he finds out I got you drunk? No, he’ll pretend, but secretly he’ll think it’s funny. And he’ll give me a ride home. But Ethan…” Her head snapped up. She looked utterly shocked. “There’s nothing there. It’s like… he’s just a blank space, or something.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, alarmed.

The door flew open before she could answer. Ethan was first. It was very hard to read his expression, but perhaps that had more to do with my difficulty focusing on moving objects. Logan was easier. He carried a stack of Chinese take out and stared, open mouthed, as the two of us giggled maniacally and rolled on the floor. We lay surrounded by gold foil chocolate boxes, piles of records, never-melting ice cream, and floating bottles of wine. 

“She got me witch-drunk!” I managed to gasp, pointing at Cassandra through peals of laughter.

“I knew you were going to say that!” she laughed, curled on her side, shaking with mirth.

The two boys stared at us in shocked silence. “You got witch-drunk without us?” Logan finally asked. He sounded hurt.

“What do we do?” Ethan asked at last. I was eye-level with his boots. I gave them my most charming smile. From far above me, he looked more surprised than upset.

“Dude, I have no idea.” Logan sat the Chinese food down and came to perch on the edge of the sofa. “Torment them endlessly?”

Ethan finally cracked a smile. “I hear that shows you care.”

Chapter Seven:

Dreaming in Blue

Low haunting music woke me.

It came from the living room. Logan, I thought, aware of Ethan’s restless slumbering warmth beside me. My brother must be awake and playing records. I wondered why he couldn’t sleep. I buried my face in my hands and groaned, remembering my shameful behavior. “The witches made me do it,” I mumbled, trying out the excuse before I used it. It sounded pathetic, even to me. I groaned into my pillow. The least I could do was go apologize for my behavior. Dizzy and lightheaded, I forced myself out of bed and dragged myself into the living room with eyes at half-mast.

Someone stood over the record player, listening intently. He gave off a faint, unnatural blue light in the darkened room. “I love this song,” he said without looking up. “I think I miss music the most.” With a gasp, I backed away towards my bedroom. I don’t know why I didn’t scream. For a second, I thought he was a ghost. He must have been used to that reaction because he looked up sharply. “It’s ok. You’re dreaming again, but this time you’re not dying and we’re safe here.” I caught a glimpse of dark hair and eyes. His faintly golden skin was covered with tattoos from the waist up. Bare feet. Bare everything, in fact, except for a pair of loose black pants. He watched me through narrowed eyes, assessing.

The boy from my dream. The one who had helped me when I was Shadow-sick. I stared in shock, still inching backwards. “What are you doing in my living room?”

“Don’t you remember me?” He moved with Nephilim quickness; in an instant he was standing right in front of me. This close, his dark eyes held a sad urgency I’d missed before. I’d missed other things, too, like the cut across his lip and the bruise on his cheekbone, and the deep cut across his bicep. My blood throbbed, then roared at his nearness. This time it felt as if some deep part of me recognized him, rather than the searing heat of Shadow-sickness. I was as fascinated as I was alarmed.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I thought it was a dream.”

“It was,” he said.

“I mean a made-up dream. A not-possible kind of dream.” His face flared with reflected silver as I seized his wrist and looked at him, really looked at him: his tattoos, his minimal clothing, the way he prowled instead of walked. “You really are like me.” The first and only Nephilim descendent I’d ever met who was not a blood relative. I felt his blood calling to mine as surely as if he had spoken my name. I was excited, suddenly, but forced myself to remember how strange this was, that he was in my house and that he was injured. “You’re hurt. You weren’t before, in that other dream. Are you all right?”

He bowed his head. “I’m a Nephilim descendent like you, yes. This,” he indicated his face, his arm. “It’s not important right now.”

“Of course it is.” How very male, to ignore obvious injuries. “We’ve got a gigantic first aid kit in the bathroom. Ethan hurts himself all the time. It will just take a second.”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t do any good.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of peroxide,” I teased.

“No. I’d very much appreciate some medical attention, actually, because this,” he shoved his bleeding bicep in my face. It was really a deep cut, right across a circular tattooed symbol inscribed with strange markings. The blood turned my stomach. “Hurts like hell. Could probably use a few stitches. But since I’m not really here, and my physical body is asleep and bleeding in a place I wouldn’t take you in a million years, we’ll just have to deal with it.” He spun on his heel back to the record player, but not before I’d seen a mixture of rage and hurt and frustration on his face. “Don’t worry. If I bleed on your precious furniture, it won’t be there when you wake up.”

“I didn’t mean…” I began, and then clamped my mouth shut. Just what the hell did I mean, anyway? Tension and anger radiated off him like heat shimmers over the highway in summer. It was like having a wild animal in my living room.

And yet, he had saved my life. His blood spoke to mine. And he was hurting.

I tried again. “I’m sorry you’re hurt. I don’t care what you bleed on. I wasn’t sure if you were real, if what happened the other night was real.” I slipped up beside him, watching the record spin. I tried to ignore his steadily bleeding arm. The jagged slash had begun to coagulate around the edges. Maybe it would heal on its own soon. I hoped so.

“It was real. And you were very lucky.” He relaxed a little as I drew near. Strange. It was the exact opposite of what I’d expected. I thought he would lash out like any wounded wild thing. Instead, I was the skittish one. “I love this band,” he said. “No one listens to records anymore. You have good taste.”

 “They’re almost all Logan’s.” At his frown, I added, “My brother. He’s almost solely responsible for my musical education. Ethan and mine’s too. Ethan hasn’t been hu… uh, here… very long.”

His head snapped up. Stars flashed in his dark eyes. “Ethan. The one who made you Shadow-sick.”

As Mark Utley’s voice reached its whispery end, I reached around him and flipped the record over. “He meant well.” I started the B-side. Then, to distract him but also because I was interested, I asked, “Where are you, that you wouldn’t take me in a million years?”

The wild thing was back again; he looked at me with the desperation of a caged animal. “The Twilight Kingdom,” he said. My blood roared again when I accidentally brushed against him, as if the Shadows wanted to break out. “You were there.”

I remembered the endless expanse of twilit sky. I knew of two other worlds that brushed up against this one now. I wondered how many more I would come to know in my lifetime. “Why are you here?” I hugged myself, suddenly cold. “In my living room? Instead of that other place?”