Blood Like Magic, page 2
Living in Toronto isn’t cheap, and we’re only managing to break even while other witch families thrive. Our homemade beauty products appeal to the types who want non-modded handmade products, but modded beauty supplies are more popular by far, and we sure as hell can’t afford genetically modified ingredients. That’s the thing about modded stuff. Some of it is cheap and costs much less than something non-modded, and some of it is so hacking expensive you could never hope to afford it. Which means that most of our customers are witches and a small amount of non-magic families who know our powers are real and our products are the best, even without mods.
If we had money, real money, we could rub elbows with the sorts of people who hire for the exclusive and frequently elusive internships or can afford the expensive university education reserved for company-funded and rich kids.
Sure, we all went through the government-mandated minimums. Got our elementary school credits with Johan, whose witch school was accredited and able to give them. And then we got our minimum high school credits, which was really only two years of work, half online and half in person. I just finished mine a little while ago.
Keis is the only one of us who takes classes beyond the minimum, and that’s solely in defiance of being pigeonholed into using her gift to make a living. She still goes to high school to get extra credits, mostly online but sometimes in person, with the same stubbornness that drives her refusal to use or hone what should be a strong gift to get ahead in life.
She scowls at that thought.
“You’re doing amazing for someone fueled by spite. Your grades are higher than any of us have ever gotten.” For real. She does at least a dozen courses every year and aces them. Sometimes, I’m sure she has a bigger ambition, something she’s trying to achieve, but she pretends like it’s 100 percent to piss off the family.
“It’s not spite, it’s a protest of this family’s insistence that your worth is determined by your gift.” She gnaws on her lip. “Not that it matters if I can’t do anything with my education. I have no connections for the sort of internships that send you to university and no money to go on my own.”
She’s echoing everything her parents and the rest of the adults have said before. High school credits are well and good, but if you can’t get an internship at a good company, the amount of high-paying jobs available drops way down. Not to mention, the chance to go to university is basically zero. We could never afford it. Keis would need to find a company willing to pay for her to go. The barrier between having and not having a legitimate internship has always been too huge for the rest of us to bother. It’s why we rely on magic. But Keis is different.
“You need to put yourself out there.” I don’t get why someone with the potential of a gift like she has wouldn’t want to use it, but I support her. “There are a ton of internship Q&As out there. I’ll help you find stuff.” I scroll through my phone and sign up for notifications from places I know have great placements.
My cousin raises her eyebrows. “Why can’t you do that for you?”
“Do what?”
“Find courses and internships. Create a backup. Stop being so worried about your gift and focus on something you can choose.”
“Because I’m so fantastic at choosing.” Mom wasn’t wrong. I’ll do anything to help my family, but I’ve always been terrible at making decisions for myself.
“Vo.”
“And do what? Fight with hundreds of applicants to get a minimum-wage internship that goes nowhere? I could never land something with a good company.” I don’t know why she hits me with spam like that. If you’re not good enough to get into a major corporation, you’re wasting your time.
A strong gift is all I have to hope for. It’s the special sauce we witches have to turn plain potatoes into gourmet mash. And right now, mine aren’t anything more than dirt-covered russet.
I glance at Keis. “Nothing to say about that?”
She crosses her arms. “You don’t need me to pump you up. Your Calling will be fine, and you’ll end up with a great gift.”
Doubtful.
I stare at myself in the mirror, finger curling the odd piece of hair into a springy twist.
When I asked my cousins what the ancestors who Called them gave as a choice for tasks, they were all different. Papa Ulwe had Keisha watch two identical ancestors he brought along from beyond the grave named Sara and Sue for five minutes. She closed her eyes while they mixed themselves up, and she had to choose which one was Sue. Keisha’s always been unnervingly intuitive, so it worked out for her. And she ended up with a gift along the same lines, specific and uncomfortable intuition.
Mama Deirdre laid out a dozen outfits and demanded that Alex choose the perfect one for her. My cousin, in a move that is so her, decided that none of the clothes were good enough and sewed something brand-new for Mama Deirdre, who, of course, adored it.
Mama Nora bombarded Keis with the memories of ten ancestors and told her to choose the single false one or be forever trapped in their minds until her body died. Her Calling didn’t follow the rules and had higher stakes than it should have. It was unpredictable in a way that’s terrifying.
Because that’s the thing about a Calling: it depends on what ancestor you get. Whoever Calls me will not only set my task, they’ll also decide what gift to give me at the Pass ceremony once my Calling is complete. One ancestor will choose me based on whatever secret system they use, though some people say they pick descendants who are similar to them or who they feel prepared to help in some way. However they decide to pick me, I’ll be thrown into a Calling inside my head that I’ll need to pass. Sometimes the transition from real life into your Calling is so seamless that witches don’t even realize it’s happening. I’m not sure if that would make things better or worse for me. On one hand, I wouldn’t have to think about it so much, but on the other, I could fail with almost no effort.
No matter what ancestor I get, no matter how they choose to do my Calling, it’s supposed to be a simple choice between two options. If I pick right, I get magic, and if I don’t, then I’ll never get to be a witch.
But what if I get an ancestor who changes the rules like Mama Nora did for Keis? One who wants to up the stakes. The tasks they give are meant to help us become the best version of ourselves. Though sometimes I think they just like messing with us.
The afterlife must be boring.
“Maybe I’ll be lucky and get Mama Lizzie for my Calling,” I say. She was a baker from Alabama who gathered a bunch of other women in the area to help feed people in the march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. Her Callings usually involve spending hours baking something and deciding who to give it away to—the answer always being someone in need. A task so easy that it would be impossible to fail.
Keis shakes her head. “Mama Lizzie has the easiest Callings in the world. You don’t want her. Harder Callings mean better gifts.”
“I feel like that’s a myth.”
“It’s not!”
I scowl and tuck my towel tighter. “Let’s go find a suitable dress that Uncle won’t like.”
My Bleeding is officially over. There’s no more stalling now.
No one in our family has failed a Calling in almost a hundred years.
A Thomas not getting magic has become something so rare it seems impossible to do.
But then again, I don’t think the ancestors have ever seen someone as apt at failure as I am.
CHAPTER TWO
I keep my towel tucked around me as I walk along the hardwood floor to my room. They’re original. My several times Great-Granny was particular about their upkeep. Her name was Mama Bess, though she wasn’t made a Mama until she died. She was a slave in this house in 1811 during the revolts in what was then called the US Territory of Orleans. She was also the one who organized its mysterious disappearance from Louisiana. The ground where it once stood was considered both blessed and cursed.
It took twenty-five of our ancestors to transport the house from the bayous of New Orleans to the plot of land off Lake Ontario in Toronto where we live now. Only, it was called Upper Canada back then. Led by Matriarch Mama Bess to what was supposed to be the promised land. Except when they got here, they saw slaves in houses, on farms, and in shops. Brought over by masters alongside those allowed to call themselves free. Mama Bess learned to read and write, and in her very first journal entry she wrote, “It was better, but it was not good.”
It wasn’t the freedom the family wanted, but our power had freed them all the same.
Blood and intent.
Two simple ingredients that make up the recipe for magic.
If only passing my Calling were that simple.
Keis trails behind me as I walk down the hall where she, Keisha, Dad and his new wife, Priya, my half sister, Eden, and I all have our rooms in a straight line.
I know it’s weird if your parents are divorced and still cohabit, but when you live in a place as big as ours, it’s uncharitable not to share. Plus, we needed the extra numbers to help pay for the taxes, utilities, and general upkeep of the house on top of Granny and Grandad’s loan.
My room is between Keis’s and Keisha’s to avoid conflict. Keisha’s room is closest to the bathroom we just left because she huffed up a big stink about it and no one in the family wanted to deal, so she got her way.
Mom and Granny have their rooms just around the two corners of the hallway. Granny, as Matriarch, has her own little bathroom that no one else is allowed to use. Alex and Auntie Maise have their rooms on the first floor with a bathroom they share plus the guest bathroom next to the kitchen. Uncle is in a micro-living shed in the backyard, since Auntie kicked him out there five years ago.
Granny always says they got together too early. They were eighteen when they had the twins. “Both babies of their families, and both eager to prove they were grown,” is one of her favorite mutterings about it. Auntie usually snaps back that Granny was eighteen when she had Uncle Vacu. That usually leads to Granny detailing the ways in which she and Grandad were more mature, independent, and responsible at that age than Auntie and Uncle Cathius. Then it turns into a big blowup.
I look back at my cousin. “You can go downstairs if you want. You don’t have to help me.”
“You think I want to hang out down there with everyone’s hunger thoughts while they wait for you? Nah.”
Keis says that the more emotional a thought is, the louder it becomes until the soft irritating buzz of voices turns into a painful shouting match inside her head. If she didn’t refuse to practice, she could learn to block out any unwanted ones. Instead, she focuses on my thoughts to help with the noise.
I can’t say I was delighted when she decided to spend extra time probing in my head instead of just learning how to control her gift, but I guess I’m used to it now. Sometimes I even forget that she’s in there, but I remember pretty quickly when she pulls something out that I hadn’t planned to say to anyone.
I shuffle into my room and make a beeline for my closet, whose screen doors light up as I tap my fingers against them and select some underwear. While I change into them, Keis swipes through my clothes.
“What do you think my gift will be? If I get one, I mean.” My mind circles around the subject like the way my family hovers when I bake brownies and say they can’t eat any until they’ve cooled for ten minutes. “I’ve been able to compare my DNA to a few online feeds and DIY sequence it. It said I have a high aptitude for gardening.”
“You’ll get a gift. And you’ve never gardened in your life. Those things are from second-rate genetics companies, and your genes will shift after your Calling anyway. There’s not much point in guessing now.”
“Not everyone gets a gift,” I mutter. “You can fail the Calling.” The last Thomas to fail was Wimberley, who by her name alone seemed destined to have her shit sparked up. Mama Jova gave the task. Wimberley was supposed to walk across this huge canyon on a thin bridge. Not a normal task at all. There was no choice between two items, just a terrifying action. She refused to do it. Her diary entries in the almanac where we store our family history say, “Because magic isn’t worth my life,” though everyone else said she was too scared.
They kicked her out of the family home, and she disappeared somewhere, never to be heard from again.
“Get those trash thoughts out of your head. No one’s going to kick you out of the house if you fail,” Keis groans. “And you’re not going to.”
Everyone keeps pretending like me failing my Calling is something impossible, but it’s not. I might never become a witch, never have magic or a gift. Fade from history until I’m just a footnote in the almanac. I cross my arms over my stomach and cringe.
Keis narrows her eyes at the closet screen and presses her finger harder than necessary. She points at a strapless one that looks like a tube. “This isn’t yours. You would never wear this.”
“Keisha gave it to me.”
Keis lets out a rough grunt and keeps swiping.
Sometimes, I forget that Keis and her sister are twins because they’re so separate. Not just different people, but they never actually spend time together outside of things we do as a whole family. Keis is more like my twin.
“Oh, wait!” I stop Keis from swiping past a white cotton dress with a blue seahorse pattern. “I love that. But it’s not pure white…”
Keis groans. “Voya, stop.”
“He’s going to get annoyed. Maybe let’s look through more?”
“No.” She selects the dress, grabs it from the drawer at the bottom of the closet, and thrusts it into my arms. “Sometimes you just need to pick something and go with it. You always get so wrapped up in being afraid to be wrong that you don’t do anything at all.”
I scowl. “Sorry that I’m such a loser who doesn’t do anything.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Keis rubs her palms against her eyes. “Just go with this dress, okay? You like it, right?”
I grip the dress in my hands. Alex made it for me. That’s her gift. She can stare at a swath of fabric and find the perfect way to put it all together, her seams always straight, impeccable almost without effort. Sure, there are probably non-magic people out there with the same “gift,” but Alex has always seemed extra special.
“Uncle’s not gonna like it.”
“Good!”
Sometimes I feel the tiniest bit bad for Uncle Cathius when Keis says things like that, but he brings it on himself. He’s forever trying to tell his daughters how they should live their lives. His way, of course, being the correct one.
I pull the dress over my head, and Keis zips it up in the back.
She looks me up and down. “Not bad.”
I bump her out of the way to look at myself in the mirror. The dress hugs my waist and flairs out in an A-line that’s a fantastic complement to my wide Thomas hips and butt. It’s a great length, not too long or short. Which at five feet is hard to get right. Alex made a beautiful dress, but I make it look good.
“Dinnertime?” I ask Keis.
“Yes! Finally!”
Now we can sit with the family, who will, no doubt, spend the whole meal discussing my Calling. We could be talking about other things, like where Keis should intern.
“Don’t you dare try and deflect to me,” she says.
“It’s a more interesting topic.”
“No one is going to think my internship is more stimulating than your Calling. If Granny had the magic to force me to use my gift to make money instead of going to school, she would. Mentioning interning would give her a damn heart attack.” The skin around Keis’s eyes goes tight. I can’t tell if her doing that is going to cause or prevent wrinkles later on.
“She thinks you’re making it harder for yourself,” I say with a shrug. “The companies that pay interns a livable wage have huge competition, and they’re the only ones with the money to send you to university.”
“Encouraging.”
I turn toward Keis, but she won’t meet my eyes. “I’ll help you find something. You’re amazing enough to do what the rest of us can’t. You can be something without magic.”
“That’s the attitude that makes me worry for this family. For this community.”
I’m not going to see eye to eye with Keis on this, so I don’t try.
The second we hit the first-floor landing, the perfect spicy aroma from the food I was making hits us. It’s my Bleeding, and I’m still the one cooking. Though if I’m honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
At the foot of the stairs, I spot a sheet of paper lying in front of the door, as if someone poked it under on their way past. I squat, pick it up, and turn the sheet over. The face that smiles up at me from the page is dark brown–skinned and hazel-eyed, and wears a custom lilac wig.
Lauren.
The back of my throat goes dry, and I struggle to swallow. When I think of Lauren, I picture long, swinging curls, a high-pitched laugh that makes you warm inside, and that indescribable rush of being pulled on an adventure. Where I try to plan everything, to struggle over what to do and where to go, Lauren lives without any maps, going wherever she feels like whenever. She was like that even when we were kids. Her poor mom always came by to ask if we’d seen her, and she would never be in the last place we’d played together—she’d already be halfway across the neighborhood, doing ancestors know what.
We were at a party to celebrate her successful Coming-of-Age what felt like barely a week ago, though it was much longer by now. It was a big deal since she’s set to be her family’s next Matriarch. Though Granny gave me and Keis hard side-eye for going. The Carters aren’t a pure family like us, whose magic comes only from our own blood. The strength of impure magic comes from the pain and suffering of others—stealing people in the night, carving them up, and fueling your magic with their blood, then wiping their memories, healing their wounds, and tossing them back out onto the streets like you haven’t spent the last few hours listening to their screams.
