Gifts of the Blood Page 3

  Part of my mind was filling up the car with gas. It was still warm enough to take a quick road trip to the ocean. Logan loved the sea. He wasn’t supposed to be around a lot of people, but I would get around that. I would pack all our food and pump all our gas so he wouldn’t have to go in restaurants or gas stations. I would personally chase everyone away from our spot by the waves, creating a people free zone of sand just for Logan where he could lounge under an umbrella while I read to him. I would just go up to people and politely say, “Excuse me, but would you mind moving a bit over there? My brother is sick, and the doctors say being around people might make him sicker, but he loves the beach so much, and I’m afraid that next summer he might… he might not… be here….”

  I couldn’t see the fat white envelope full of money anymore. I could feel it underneath my drumming fingertips, but I couldn’t see it. Everything was blurry and light. I was choking and someone was making a strange whimpering sound. The envelope underneath my fingers had torn into ribbons; someone had shredded it. Mrs. Alice was trying to take it from me, but I couldn’t see her. Something was wrong with my eyes. The whimpering sound continued, climbed higher in pitch, until I recognized a keening sound. I matched it to my own throat, to my own shaking body, just as surprisingly strong perfumed arms pulled me down to the sofa. “I know, dear,” Mrs. Alice said simply, rubbing the back of my neck in soothing circular motions. “I know.”

  “It’s too late,” I sobbed. “For money. Too late for it to make a difference. For him.” I clung to Mrs. Alice. I don’t know why the sight of all that money pushed me over the edge. It was money, after all. It meant, at the very least, that I could take a few days off from work. I could spend some more time with Logan. I could spend some time resting, relaxing. We could get take out and watch bad movies late into the night. But the thought of resting, of not driving myself like a machine, finally clicked the last puzzle piece into place.

  I was working myself ragged so I didn’t have to face up to how bad things really were.

  Nothing on earth would help my brother recover. No matter how hard I worked, no matter how much money or energy or effort I threw into making him better, it was out of my hands. I smelled lilacs and felt soft cotton beneath my cheek as Mrs. Alice rocked me and made soothing noises. I was beyond embarrassed, beyond coherent, even. I was losing him. He was too fragile for this world. All I could do was make my peace with him and try to make him happy and comfortable. I should be happy with that. It was more than we had with my parents, who had been taken so suddenly. It was more than most people got. I lost track of how long I let myself rest on Mrs. Alice’s lavender colored dress before I pulled away and scrubbed my raw, snotty face with my hands. I opened my mouth to apologize, and she opened her mouth at the exact same moment, probably to tell me everything was going to be fine or some other kind of grandmotherly advice.

  “Your grief,” a soft, wondering voice interrupted. “The depth of it... is shocking. I don’t know how you can bear it, and live.” The voice came from the depths of the store, preceding its owner into the light. It was low and quiet, but there was steel there, too. I thought of smoke and honey, of minerals and snow. It was a voice that beckoned and promised safety, even as it warned away.

  Then he stepped into the light and up to Mrs. Alice’s counter. He looked down and away, as if not quite daring to study me. His designer clothes marked him as someone who came from far away. His black leather jacket was cut like a blazer. His shirt and pants were soft heather gray. His hair was dark brown shot through with threads of gold, and it stuck up in all kinds of crazy directions, like he’d just clutched it in disgust or despair. His lips were tight and twisted. I wished he would loosen them so I could memorize them, so I could draw him later, this strange man with warnings on his lips and troubles everywhere else, this man whose thickly fringed lashes rested against smooth skin and high cheekbones.

  I scrambled away from Mrs. Alice, who had gone strangely quiet and still beside me. I was acutely aware of this stranger’s presence, of the way my body reacted to him even before his words registered in my mind. I felt pulled to him, like a magnet drawn true north or a starving person discovering a food so delicious it satisfied hunger simply by smelling it. My throat raw, I managed to croak, “I bear it because there is no one else. We only have each other.” My fingers curled around the edges of the butter-colored sofa; I balanced on the very edge, leaning towards this man with my entire body, straining for a closer look. But he kept his head down and away. “Is that why you did it?” I prompted when he remained still and silent. “Bought all my cards? Because you heard about the poor girl with the dying brother, and felt sorry for us?” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice then, although I tried. I worked hard not to be anyone’s charity case. The idea that a total stranger had heard about our predicament and felt sorry enough for me to buy all my decks and still want a private commission… whatever that entailed…

  His hands formed into fists against the glass counter and he closed his eyes tightly. Whatever heightened senses this man triggered within me flamed and roared. His body was taut, radiating anger; if his rage were a scent, I thought, it would be cinnamon and sour wine. The air around us became thick with faintly shimmering air and a sweet scent so heavy it was almost unpleasant. I had been shivering only minutes before. Now, I was hot even in my thin t-shirt. He kept his head bowed as he struggled for control. His words, when they finally came, were strangled thunder. “It is true I know of you and your… brother. But I did not buy your cards, nor do I have need of a private commission,” he snarled. He almost choked on the phrase, as if he found the idea obscene. My eyebrows shot up, and Mrs. Alice stirred uneasily beside me. My brain had time to wonder who had bought them, and what scandalous other thing might be wanted from me. I wondered if it paid well. He actually growled. “I had no idea, when I came, of the grief you carry, the depth of your love. It seems a sick, cruel thing, that your love for him tortures you, as well. I am not pleased.”

  Before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about, he finally looked at me. Lifted his head and really looked at me.

  I screamed. Coffee just short of scalding exploded from my hand and pooled on the floor. I had crushed my cup in my fist. I backed slowly away from the sofa, from Mrs. Alice, from the man with the light, glowing eyes. He stood perfectly still, watching me with a mixture of concern and despair. Dimly, through the roar of pounding blood and adrenaline, I heard Mrs. Alice calling my name, telling me to be careful, to take my money, but I ignored her. I ignored everything but the stranger’s eyes on me as my back hit the door, easing it open, feeling the cold rush in and wrap itself around my body as I inched backwards out of the store like frightened prey.

  He held out a hand as if he would stop me, but he didn’t move. “Caspia. Wait. Please.”

  My name from his lips was like white lightening straight to my brain. This had never happened before; it couldn’t be happening now. “How the hell do you know my name?” I heard myself screaming at him. “How are you even here?” I realized I was sobbing, screaming, falling. The door had opened behind me; my heel caught the doorframe, dumping me on the cold concrete. My head slammed into the ground but I kept going, kept crawling backwards. “How can you know my name when I only drew you a few hours ago?” I demanded.

  Then he was leaning over me, his warm hand on my forehead, his eyes the same intense light of my sketch. “Caspia,” he said again, as if repeating a name he had no business knowing would frighten me any less. “I didn’t come here to frighten you.” Could he read my mind? He was close, now. He was so close I could see the delicate arch of the eyebrows that had been so angry in my sketch. I could count each individual eyelash, had I wanted to; his eyes, nothing but light and fury in my drawing, were the lightest blue-green, more a tint than a color. I skittered backwards, scraping my palms and my side against cold concrete, desperate to get away from him. I heard something tear, but I kept going.

  My terr
or confused him, I could tell. I don’t remember seeing him move, but somehow, he knelt right beside me on the concrete. His hand encircled my wrist, a band of steel, and I whimpered at the strength of him. The bones in my hand twisted against each other as he held me. I pulled, but it was like trying to escape solid stone. Skin and tendons pulsed with hot pain against grinding bones, and still I tried to escape him. He looked beyond confused as I whimpered; he looked helpless, and finally, afraid. His fear grew as he realized I was whimpering in pain as much as fear. He looked at my hand in his, swollen, now, and red. He let go abruptly. With a fear in his light eyes that now echoed mine, he reached out with his other hand and brushed my eyelids with the pad of his thumb. I felt them grow heavy, so heavy.

  White. Everything was white and heavy and warm. I slept without dreaming.

  Chapter Three:

  In the Shadows

  I woke surrounded by feathers.

  Warm, soft, and slightly springy, I burrowed deeper into my imitation down comforter. I loved my bed with its rounded oak frame, its sheets with obscenely high thread counts, its piles of pillows and blankets that didn’t match. My bed was about comfort, not coordinating. It wasn’t even a bed so much as a nest; I sleepily wished I could spend a whole day in it, emerging only to forage for food and make brief treks to the bathroom. How much time did I have left before the alarm went off again and I had to get up or be late for school? Snooze button, I resolved drowsily, burrowing deeper into my cocoon of soft warmth. If it’s not Dr. Christian’s class today, I’ll hit snooze. He’s so uptight. Don’t understand why all the girls think he’s so… attractive… Next to the curve of my spine, the mattress dipped with someone’s body weight. I smelled familiar juniper and cedar aftershave. Logan.

  “Mmmph,” I objected halfheartedly when cold hands tried to dig me out of my burrow. “Too early for school, Logan. Go ‘way.”

  The hands paused before withdrawing entirely. I still smelled the aftershave I had given him last Christmas, so I knew he hadn’t left. Despite my best efforts, I was slowly waking up anyway. Some part of me suspected I really didn’t want to do that. “Caspia,” he finally said, patting where he thought my head would be underneath the comforter. He managed to bang my nose. “Hey. What time do you think it is right now?”

  The question was strange. Didn’t he know? Wasn’t there a clock? “Um. I’m not sure. Early?” The voice he used alarmed me even more than the question itself. He spoke with the careful, even cadences of someone addressing a child, or a crazy person. With a sinking feeling, I scrambled to get out of my self-inflicted wrappings, sitting straight up to stare at him in the pitch dark. I couldn’t see the clock. Logan looked deathly pale in the wash of moonlight through my big bay window. It was the only light in the room.

  His dark eyes glittered in deepest shadow under his baseball cap, making it difficult to see his exact expression. Only the slant of his mouth told me he was worried. He reached out long pale fingers and skimmed my hair back from my eyes. His touch on my cheek was slow, almost languid, like all his movements these days. His fingers were cold, but the gesture warmed me anyway. Even his smallest touches spoke volumes. Small gestures were really all he had left. “You don’t remember, then? What happened?” He lay back against the headboard with a sigh of frustration. The glitter under his baseball cap disappeared. He must have closed his eyes. “How about your hand? How does it feel now?”

  “My hand?” I echoed stupidly. I looked down at myself in the moonlight. The blankets had fallen away to my waist. My skin, pale and abraded in the moonlight, peeked through a gap in my t-shirt where the side had ripped from hem to waist. A bandage encased my wrist from knuckle to forearm. I tried to bend it, experimentally, and felt a sharp pain as my wrist met the resistance of bandages and a splint. I yelped. “Ow! Holy hells, Logan!” The entire evening came flooding back to me as I stared at my wrist. Caramel latte; Mrs. Alice; selling all five tarot decks; total stranger; me, screaming my head off, crawling backwards, trying to get away from…

  …from a total stranger with inhuman strength who knew my name and approached me in Mrs. Alice’s store who had come from a sketch I’d drawn earlier this afternoon. I exhaled like someone punched me in the stomach, and then grabbed my brother with my good arm.

  “Caspia?” he asked, alarm plain in his voice now. “Are you all right? Should I get someone? Amberlyn?”

  “No! Logan! Listen. This is very important.” I pulled him close, trying to keep my voice level and low. After the way I acted earlier, the entire town probably thought I was insane, but it was vital Logan take me seriously. “I was at the Riverwalk today, and I…”

  “I thought you were supposed to be in class,” he interrupted. I could hear the reprimand, barely suppressed by his concern.

  “Dr. Christian told us to go draw the St. Clare River. So we did. Except I didn’t. I mean, I did. I tried. At first. And then, it happened. You know. It.” I gave him a gentle poke in the ribs, expecting him to understand me. We didn’t talk much about how I sometimes drew the future. He knew it happened, but Grandmother had been the only person who seemed really comfortable discussing it with me. Since her death, I almost never spoke of it, and I was at a loss as to how to do so now. Logan shifted uncomfortably.

  “It?” he echoed.

  “Yes! It!” I finally exploded. I poked him again. He flinched away and I pulled back, angry that I might have caused him pain. “I drew someone,” I finally admitted, reluctant, afraid he wouldn’t believe me. I needed him to believe me. There was no one else.

  “You’re not making any sense,” he snapped back.

  “It’s not supposed to make any sense! It never does!” I flopped back down on my bed, frustrated that I couldn’t communicate with him. I couldn’t make him understand the significance of something I didn’t fully understand myself. I just knew it was important, and I had a bad feeling about it. I sat up, ignoring the scrape where my shirt had torn, and tried again. “Only it wasn’t an ‘it’ this time, it was a person, a guy, the very same guy from Mrs. Alice’s store, so when he walked up to us and started talking, naturally I freaked out.”

  Logan was silent for several long breaths. His slim pale fingers drummed impatiently against his jeans. It meant he was thinking, trying to digest. It meant he was trying to phrase his words carefully, using the good communications skills our dad, a therapist, had drilled into us. “I’m hearing you say…” he started. I gritted my teeth in annoyance. Logan threw up his hands. “Oh, to hell with it. I’m still confused. You freaked out because some guy started talking to you? And what does Amberlyn and the Riverwalk and skipping school have to do with it?”

  I leapt out of bed, infuriated. I was wearing the same outfit I’d left the house in, minus my socks. “I was not skipping school!” I yelled as my bare feet hit the carpet. “I was supposed to be drawing the river, but I drew…” Too late, I realized how wobbly I was. Too late, I realized I must have been given a sedative of some kind to make me sleep so deeply, at the wrong time of day. My legs buckled underneath me, pitching me into my closet on my side. I silently blessed my slovenly ways as a pile of clothes on the floor cushioned my fall. I followed this almost instantly with a scream of pain when I instinctively tried to push myself up with my injured right hand. Logan’s arms reached for me, pulling me up in the darkness, but I pushed him away. I didn’t want to strain him any more than I already had. Plus, I was mad at him.

  “Caspia,” he said, a note of pleading creeping in. “I’m worried about you. You went hysterical and passed out right on the square. You’re hurt and not making sense. You scared the hell out of me.”

  A familiar soft sigh floated into the room over his shoulder. “Me too, Caspia,” Amberlyn seconded. “No one could get any sense out of you. Mrs. Alice said you went from crying to hysterical in less than a minute, and after you got nothing but good news, too. Thank goodness she was there to dress your arm; you burned it when you crushed your coffee. And if that nice man hadn’
t been there to help carry you back here, I don’t know what we would have done.”

  I sputtered in my closet. I absolutely ached to tell Logan I had drawn a stranger standing in a storm of talons and blood and planes of light by the St. Clare River earlier today, but doing so would mean letting Amberlyn know all about my freakish ability. I didn’t need her to think insanity was a permanent condition of mine; bad enough she thought it a temporary one. I kicked a pile of clothes in frustration and tried another route. “What nice man? The one who just came up out of nowhere and knew all about me in Mrs. Alice’s store? That nice young man? He’s the one who upset me in the first place! He did this to my arm! Logan, I’ve been trying to tell you!” I fumed. Logan went rigid. Something in his face, his stance, even in the deep shadows of my darkened room, made my insides freeze and my body still. Logan looked more than shocked; he was hiding something. Years of silent communication between siblings warned me he had a secret. Well, I had one, too. I desperately needed to get him alone. I began to pace.

  “Oh,” Amberlyn said softly from over Logan’s shoulder. “Mrs. Alice didn’t say anything about that, Caspia.” She twisted a huge rose quartz ring on her delicate finger. “Are you sure? You were really upset, you know. Nobody blames you; we even kind of expected it, actually.” She and my brother exchanged quick, guilty looks. I suppressed a surge of annoyance. They’d been talking about me, then. “You’ve been pushing yourself so hard, and been under so much strain,” she began, her voice softening as she retreated underneath her curtain of spiral curls. “We were worried about you.”