The Blood Keeper Read online

  “Mab?”

  I blinked. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

  She watched me from the stove. “You looked like Arthur for a moment.”

  Hearing her say it helped me free myself from the sudden stupor. Mother used to tell me that Arthur could rule the world if he wanted to. I believed her because of the way he whispered to trees so that they would weave their branches together and shelter us from sudden rain, how he carried me on his back to check the wards every day, found broken birds and gave them life again, put a hand on Mother’s wrist and all her anger drained away. Anyone who could take Mother’s shaking and transform it into peace could surely tame the whole world. So I walked like him and practiced his gestures, frowned when he frowned and memorized everything he said. I listened to my blood and the secrets it told my heart, and I promised myself I would someday be as inseparable from nature as Arthur was. That I could hold the keep as strongly and peaceably as he did.

  I hadn’t expected to have to prove it so soon.

  But as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, I smiled. Donna had seen him in me, and for once I hadn’t even been trying.

  WILL

  No matter how much gum I chewed, seconds after spitting it out the taste was back. Mud monster. I might as well have been sucking dirty pennies all morning.

  As soon as we got home from church, Mom began ordering us around as if she was the drill sergeant instead of Dad. I didn’t see any clutter or dirt, but Mom pointed at shelves to be dusted, stairs to be vacuumed, ceiling fans with tiny cobwebs between their blades. I said Ben wouldn’t notice a spotless house if it bit him on the ass.

  Dad clapped me on both shoulders and told me to man up. To stop aggravating my mother. That Ben had been in arid mountains for a year and yes, by God, he would definitely appreciate some clean floors. Then Dad disappeared into the kitchen and returned with an apron. He threw it at my chest, ruffles and all. I tied it around my neck and watched the flowery folds spill down. Mom tied it around my waist. A tiny smile brought out the dimple in her cheek. She brushed her hands down the material and arched her eyebrows at me.

  A sweaty hour later, we’d done everything we could. I discovered that dusting the ceiling was a great way to ignore unbelievably weird memories.

  Mom still stood in the center of the living room with a pinched forehead. I took her hand and sat her down in the breakfast nook. Dad made her a mimosa. He didn’t make one for himself, and I half wished he would. He hadn’t had a drink in over a year. Mom offered me a sip to calm my nerves, but a quick glance at Dad had me grinning and promising I wasn’t nervous at all.

  Dad’s phone rang just then.

  Mom and I paused as he slid it from his pocket.

  His tight mouth stretched into a smile as he answered. “Afternoon, Marine.”

  Mom came to clutch my hand. We’d stood right here in the middle of the kitchen almost a year ago. While Dad talked on the phone to the police about Aaron.

  But now Dad laughed. The sound rolled through Mom, tightening her fingers. “I’ll get in the car in about forty-five minutes, son. How’s spaghetti sound?” He nodded, still smiling, and when he hung up he turned to us. “Ben sounds great. He’s boarding his connecting flight in Cincinnati, and”—Dad stepped forward and took Mom’s other hand—“spaghetti sounds great.”

  We’d all known it would. Ben had emailed from Kabul two months ago saying he was craving it.

  “Maybe we should all go, greet him the moment he gets off the plane,” Mom said.

  I groaned.

  Dad snapped a glare at me but only said, “Let’s have our reunion here in our home.” He walked into the living room, and we heard him fiddling with the CD player. A moment later, the low-key Sinatra that Mom loved followed him back into the kitchen. He bowed formally to her, shoulders sharp and hands folded like he was wearing his dress blues. Mom laughed and put out her hands. He swept her into a gentle dance.

  It was nice to watch. Really nice.

  I started pulling out spaghetti ingredients and stationed myself at the chopping board. And used every chance to pop small chunks of onion into my mouth. Raw onion was pretty nasty, but it got rid of the mud monster longer than gum.

  The sauce was simmering when Dad left for the airport. Mom took off my apron. She hummed along with Sinatra and pulled me into a dance with her. She’d taught all of us to dance a little bit, so it was no chore keeping up. I took over the lead, swung her out. Mom laughed and said, “You’re not nervous, are you?”

  I spun her. In the tight kitchen, it wasn’t easy. The spaghetti sauce needed stirring, smelling up the room with tomatoes and fennel. When she turned back, Mom put her hands on the sides of my face. “Will. You don’t need to be.”

  “He’s my brother. I’m not nervous.” I removed her hands. “But I should stir the sauce.”

  Her smile tilted a little. Enough to make it sad and proud at the same time. “Everybody’s hero,” she murmured as I backed away and turned to the stove.

  MAB

  I fell asleep in the bath and dreamed of the doll. It squished its clammy wax fingers around my throat and squeezed. I bit my lip, but no blood spilled out. I scratched at my arm, and when the skin peeled back under my nails, it was dull and yellow and bloodless. The doll’s jagged mouth pulled into a smile.

  I jerked awake, sloshing water out of the claw-foot tub. It was tepid, and my skin was wrinkled and waterlogged. There was a strange scraping sound, and I turned to find a crow crouched on the tank of the toilet. He hopped down onto the pale green tiles and walked stiffly over them, his head bobbing as his claws slid gracelessly over the slick floor. When he reached the wall below the window, he flung himself up to the sill. Warm, humid air blew in, ruffling his feathers and tangling the thin curtains. He squawked at me, flipped his tail, and jumped into the sky.

  I heard him yelling at his brothers, and then the slam of a car door. We had visitors, and the crows had come to wake me.

  As I stood, water streamed down my back from my hair. This wet, it fell past my waist, all snarled and heavy. I hadn’t meant to get it wet before picking out the tangles, but I’d slipped down in my sleep. I toweled off and wound my hair up into a messy knot, then stepped into my room and found a clean summer dress that was yellow like the sun. Granny Lyn had pieced it together last year from bits of an old sunflower flag.

  A voice called from outside, and I walked to the open casement window. In the pebble driveway, covered in crows, was a moon-silver SUV shiny enough to attract them even if they hadn’t known the owner.

  Donna’s son, Nick, stood next to the driver’s side of the SUV, hands on his narrow hips, staring down at the splatters of mud that caked the entire bottom of his car. A few enterprising splashes streaked all the way up to the door handle. He slid a thin cell phone out of his rear pocket and snapped a photo of the dirty SUV.

  Leaning out over the casement, I called down, “Nick!”

  Twisting in place, he grinned up at me. He wore his standard tight T-shirt with a vest, jeans, and his favorite porkpie hat, which he tipped in my direction. “Hey there, babe.” An exaggerated grimace instantly followed the epithet. “I mean Deacon, ma’am.”

  I smiled. “We weren’t expecting you! I’ll be right down.” I waved and spun away before he could respond.

  And in the middle of my bedroom, I paused to take a huge breath and pray that his girlfriend, Silla, wasn’t with him. After the parting we’d had last month, I couldn’t bear to think of her finding out I’d sacrificed one of the crows this morning.

  In moments I was down the stairs, dancing barefoot over the creaky spots. As I passed the kitchen arch, I gathered myself up, remembering I wasn’t a kid anymore, I wasn’t just rushing to say hi to an almost-brother. I was the Deacon, welcoming a wandering blood witch home.

  The day had spun up into a hot one, with sheer clouds pulled across the bold blue sky. As I stepped down off the front porch and walked smoothly toward Nick, I let my smile reflect the brightness of
the day.

  He’d moved to the rear door of his shiny SUV. All the crows landed on top of it, clutching at the metal runners on the roof. I drew nearer, saying, “What brings you to Kansas?” because he never, ever came only to visit his mother.

  The look he cast me was grim, and I froze. Nick was also never grim: he teased you even when he was yelling at you. He pulled open the rear door and reached inside. A boy fell out with a startled grunt, landing on the warm grass at my feet.

  “I’ve brought you a curse to lay in the ground,” Nick said, resting his fingers in the boy’s hair.

  WILL

  By the time Ben and Dad drove up, I’d decided the mud monster and the taste of blood that came with it were all in my head. There was no other possible explanation. I was letting this taste get to me because I’d rather have the huge fantasy of a mud monster distracting me from what was really about to happen: my family sitting down for our first dinner without Aaron.

  Mom and Dad and I had gotten used to the dynamic, to eating at the bar in the kitchen so that it wasn’t quite so obvious. But with Ben coming home, finally, we had to sit at the dining table. Had to eat at place mats and pretend to be fine.

  We’d set the table with the presidential dishes—for when the president visited, of course—and real silver. Mom had made a salad, and I’d concocted a lime and pineapple punch that probably nobody would drink but me, but it looked fancy in the crystal pitcher.

  The dogs started barking in the backyard, scrabbling at the wooden side gate. We heard the car door slam. Mom went to stand in the hall, and I waited just behind her. When they pushed through the front door, I thought, suddenly, what if it wasn’t Ben who walked through but Aaron?

  But then there was Ben, who I hadn’t seen in the longest year of my life.

  He swept in and picked Mom up so she could hug him right. His eyes pinched closed and his fingers bleached out where he pressed them into her back and shoulders.

  She kissed him and smoothed back his hair. She wiped tears off her cheeks and smiled at him so brightly I could see it reflect off his face.

  I hung back, feeling like a kid. Trying not to think about Ben in his uniform at the funeral last summer. Better this, now: just my older brother in jeans and a shirt, seabag hanging off one shoulder. Looking at me.

  “Hey, Will,” he said.

  His skin was different, darker, maybe. His hair the same buzz cut that always made me want to grow mine out. He was skinnier and bulkier at the same time. My brother and not my brother. It took me a second too much to react. His outstretched hand hung there too long.

  Dad pushed in and said, “Are you hungry? Dinner’s ready.”

  Ben grinned. “Smells amazing, Mom.”

  “Will made the sauce.” She squeezed my shoulder and I nodded fast. We piled into the dining room before anybody could be more uncomfortable. I went to the kitchen and grabbed the sauce. Dad said the blessing. Mom thanked me for such a lovely meal. I managed to say, “I’m glad you’re home, Ben.” And I meant it, too. We sat opposite each other, and if I ignored the empty place next to me, it was almost like everything was normal. I could throw peas at him, and he could reach under the table to kick my shin if he wanted.

  Dad asked how his traveling had been, and Ben said smooth. I was pretty sure they’d had this conversation in the car already and only repeated it for our benefit.

  While we ate, Ben launched into a long story about one of the NCOs in his battalion at Camp LeJeune, who, during boot camp a few years back, had bribed his fellows for their leftover brass off the shooting range to make into a sculpture for his mother. He’d been caught with it all, of course, and lost leave privileges to visit her. Among other things. Ben hedged around those other things, knowing Mom didn’t like to hear all the details.

  I laughed at the story, which got a frown from Ben. “Wasn’t it supposed to be funny?”

  “It’s ironic,” he answered.

  “Irony is funny.”

  “Boys,” Dad said, before we even had a chance to argue.

  I shrugged an apology at Mom. She smiled at me, hiding it from Ben with her mimosa glass. Dad and Ben swapped a few more stories, eying me frequently with this look that promised it was my turn next. That soon I’d know about spitting constantly but never getting the grit out of your teeth, about kill blossoms and kill zones. The more they talked the more the air seemed to get heavy, pressing in on my shoulders and souring my stomach. Mom noticed I’d only been swirling my noodles instead of eating them and said, “Maybe we should talk about something more pleasant.”

  Ben and Dad shared a mysterious look and fell silent.

  Although I could hear Sinatra floating in from the sitting room and the tick-tock of the old ship’s clock hanging behind Dad at the head of the table, now it was too quiet. Silverware tinked against plates, and I could hear myself chew. It was weirdly like the sound of the mud monster’s face dissolving.

  Into the silence I said, “Do you believe in … supernatural things?”

  Ben looked at me like I was flat-out insane. Dad frowned. Mom stared at the table next to me, where Aaron used to sit. My breath exploded as I realized what they all thought I meant.

  I started to backpedal, but Ben mouthed at me, Shut up, asshole.

  Dad cleared his throat. “Will. We all …” He frowned again. One of his hands was flat against the table.

  “Yes.”

  It was Mom. She smiled sadly at me and repeated herself. “Yes, I do.”

  Even though I’d been thinking about a girl holding a heart in her hand and a monster falling apart, I pretended I’d only been thinking about my dead brother. To make everyone feel better, I slid a smile toward Ben. “He’d have laughed at your shell casing story, too.”

  “That doesn’t mean it was funny,” Ben said caustically. But then he smiled a little back at me.

  The tension bubble popped, and we all managed to finish eating.

  MAB

  Nick sat at the table with his legs sprawled and kept running his hands over his head as if determined to rub out all traces of hat hair. Donna poured tea into glasses, her hand tight around the pitcher’s handle. Whenever Nick was here she drank so much tea I expected the whites of her eyes to wash brown. The tiny cracking sounds of rapidly heating ice filled up the kitchen, and they reminded me of the snap of the doll’s wooden bones.

  I flattened my hands against the table, put my chin on my wrist, and stared over the expanse of polished wood at the strange little boy. His knees were drawn up to his chest and his shins pressed against the edge of the table. Right there beside him were the gouges my cousin Justin had cut into the wood with a fork. The boy’s eyes were drawn low, and his hands covered in tiny burn scars.

  “I’m Mab,” I said quietly. “Do you have a name?”

  “He won’t tell me,” Nick put in.

  I ignored him and focused on the boy. I’d asked Nick not to tell me anything about him, preferring to hear it from the boy’s mouth. He was perhaps ten or eleven, with skin the color of fallen oak leaves. Dirt crusted his ears, and his curling hair needed a good wash. I said, “I was named after a tiny fairy queen, and my mother used to tell me a story wherein Queen Mab met a boy named Peter who had thought he was a fairy. And when he learned he was not, forgot how to fly. But he asked Mab to return his magic to him, and she agreed. May I call you Peter?”

  The boy looked up at me with startling green eyes. “Pan,” he said.

  My grin peeled away from my teeth before I could stop it. “Pan is a more magical name,” I agreed. “It’s like mine, only upside down and backwards.”

  Pan flashed a smile there and gone so fast I wouldn’t have seen it if the echo of it hadn’t hung about between us.

  Donna set down a glass of tea. “There’s water if you prefer, Pan, and I can make eggs or toast or even soup,” she said, as if it had always been his name.

  “I definitely brought you to the right spot, partner,” Nick drawled, running his fingers th
rough his hair again.

  “We’re always the right spot for lost things,” I reminded him.

  He glanced at his mom’s long sleeves, then back at me. “Right.”

  “How long are you here, Nick?” Donna asked as she hunkered down to dig her favorite skillet out from under the oven. Her voice was swallowed by the cabinet, likely on purpose so that she didn’t have to meet his eyes.

  “Only through the night. I’ve got to get back to Columbia to help Silla get ready for graduation. Right after, we’re packing up and heading for Oregon, where she got into some master’s program for folklore studies.”

  “You’re going with her?” Donna shut the cabinet, her voice dry as old paper.

  “You bet.” He shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was to everyone but his mom.

  She stood beside him, her brow furrowed in a way I recognized from when I used to paint blood runes on all the kitchen drawers to keep the ants away, no matter how often she told me she found it disturbing. “All the way to Oregon, Nicholas?”

  He twitched at his full name. “I’m not staying behind.”

  “What will you do? You still don’t have your own degree.”

  “No worries, Silla’s gonna keep me barefoot and pregnant.”

  “This isn’t a joke. You’ve spent so long just traveling around.”

  Nick leaned forward, and his lips performed a fascinating little curl full of disdain. “Don’t pretend like you have a say in my life, Donna.”

  She stared at him, and I wondered if he noticed the way her fingernails cut into her own palms. “I only want what’s best for you.”

  “Now you do,” he said. His voice was more casual when he added, “When Mab goes to college, you can use all those mothering skills you finally decided were worth putting into action.”

  I tapped a finger on the table to get Pan’s attention. His eyes were round as he stared at Nick with a hint of anger in the corners of his mouth. “Want to meet some friends of mine?” I whispered.