Blood Like Magic, page 20
“Think of how to sell yourself. Maybe practice a bit of mind reading for the occasion.” The one advantage of what I’m 99 percent sure is her magic weakening is that she won’t be as distracted by the buzz of other voices. It would be easy to jump from my head to someone else’s.
Her eyes are sharp, but she doesn’t deny it.
“Use every advantage! This isn’t the time to get caught up in your protest that, frankly, isn’t doing you any favors. You want to show the family you can be more than just a witch, sure. But you can be a great witch and great in NuGene.”
I expect the same snap of refusal, but instead she says, “I’ll think about it.”
My face lights up with a grin.
Keisha opens the door to her room, and we file in. Unlike Alex’s room, her bedroom is in pristine condition because it’s where she does a lot of filming for her feed modeling. Her closet screen broadcasts images of women in bikinis posing. If she were someone else, I would think it was attractive women she liked looking at, but for Keisha, I know these are inspiration images. Bodies she wishes were hers, as if her own isn’t something to celebrate as is but a work in progress that never reaches completion.
Keisha bounces onto her bed and grabs her tablet. “What am I looking for?”
I sit down beside her. “Mama Elaine.”
“That lady you asked me about before? Who is she?”
“It’s Alex’s mom, but our memories of her are gone, so we need to see if you have footage of her.”
Keis steupses. “Stop saying ‘we’ like I’m involved in this mess. I still think researching Mama Jova would be a better idea.”
“Alex’s memories are gone too? Does she know you’re doing this?” Keisha says.
I shake my head. “Alex doesn’t even recognize her mom’s name. I think our memories were erased, and that’s why none of us remember her. Alex has so much going on with the fashion show and Caribana. I don’t want to mention it and then have almost no information to give her.” Honestly, knowing that I had almost nothing to share, I probably shouldn’t even have brought up Auntie Elaine’s name with her in the first place. “I don’t want her to get distracted wondering about her mom. Once I know enough, I’ll tell her.” I stare straight at Keisha. “Don’t blab before then.”
“Fine,” she drawls. “And how am I supposed to know what this lady looks like? Also, this reeks of impure magic.”
“We can’t remember her either,” I say. “That’s the whole point of this.”
Keis crosses her arms. “Just look for the one woman you don’t recognize. You make things so hacking hard.”
“Get sparked,” Keisha snaps back.
“For real?”
I roll my eyes. Keis and Keisha have been nipping at each other since they were kids. When they were eight, they had an epic battle over an ImagaModel. It was this doll that came blank, and you could customize the gender, face, hair, voice, and more. Auntie got one for them to share. They asked for two, to which Auntie responded by saying, “Am I made of money?”
Keis wanted the doll to be a studious political woman who moonlit as a spy and helped save the free world. Keisha wanted them to be a non-binary pansexual seducer who traveled the world having romantic escapades. Neither of them seemed to care what the doll looked like, which was the whole point of it—they fought over who the toy was meant to be. They had screaming matches that left them both red in the face and crying with rage.
In the end, Auntie burned the doll to a crisp, but that friction between them never seemed to go away.
“Ancestors help me, Voya, you remember that shit?” Keis groans.
“It was traumatic!”
They may have had a sisterly moment at Brown Bear, but it’s clearly over now.
“AI Search: entries with the word ‘Elaine.’ ” Keisha looks at us after issuing her command. “I don’t even care what you two are talking about.” She flips her tablet toward us as the AI speeds through her private feed entries and pulls up a list of precisely one.
“Only one?” I blurt out.
Keisha throws up her hands. “My private feeds when I was little were about random stuff I liked. I didn’t talk about other people unless they pissed me off.”
“Of course,” Keis mutters.
Her sister ignores her and presses play on the video.
A miniature Keisha pops up on the screen with her natural curly hair in two high pigtails. “Today, I was supposed to go with Mommy to get new hair ties, but now Uncle Vacu and Auntie Elaine are visiting with Alex, so I can’t. Which is SO unfair.”
Keis rolls her eyes. “Typical.”
“Shh!” I say. That confirms that we did know her at some point. The genetic profile checks out. And it’s clear now that our memories were taken.
Johan was wrong. I can miss what I don’t remember. There was an entire person in my life wiped out like they never existed. Just pulled from my memories without my permission. My family are the most important people in my life. I can’t imagine one of them just taken away from me in mind and body. A shiver crawls along my skin.
Tiny Keisha frowns. “Auntie Elaine wanted Granny, and Auntie April-Mae, and that other lady to talk about some fancy genetics thing at the hospital where she works. And Granny said she shouldn’t be telling people our business because Granny is SO bossy. And I said so, and she sent me to my room. That’s fine! I like my room!”
Little Keisha goes on at length about what hair ties she wants to get, and if her mom is still going to take her after Granny had to punish her. She doesn’t mention Auntie Elaine again.
“Okay.” I scrub at my face once the video is over. “The fancy genetics thing must have something to do with Justin. That’s why she’s in those genetic records from NuGene. And now we know Auntie Elaine worked at a hospital and wanted to show something to three people, Granny, April-Mae, and some other woman.” Johan said our two families were the strongest, but it seems like Rowen had the more legitimate information. She always does. There were three Matriarchs that Auntie Elaine needed to consult. And the third wasn’t someone who Keisha knew well. That means it couldn’t be the Carters.
“Why do we care about this?” Keisha collapses onto her bed.
I throw my hands up. “Do you not care that you have a relative who you don’t remember because those memories were purposely erased? With impure magic?”
“Why are you acting like you weren’t, like, best friends with an impure witch?” she claps back.
I force myself to ignore the past tense in her words about Lauren.
“And maybe they were erased for a reason. Impure rituals have pure intent.”
I screw my mouth up into a scowl. “I just don’t think this coming up as I’m doing my task is a coincidence. Besides, she’s our aunt, and whether or not the memories were taken for a good reason, shouldn’t we be the judges of that?”
Keisha twirls her hair around her finger. “I don’t know. I just can’t see Granny making a call like that without good reason. And she must have agreed to it, even if we obviously didn’t do the ritual since we’re still pure. I’m with Keis for once. Seems smarter to look up Mama Jova.”
“I can do both!”
“Classic Voya,” Keisha mutters, putting her tablet away to scroll on her phone.
I glare at her. For once, I understand why she pisses Keis off so much.
Fuming, I leave her room with Keis trailing behind me. Why does it matter if I look into both things? This isn’t as serious as deciding whether to accept my task or choosing how I’m going to do it.
“What are you going to do after you complete your task?” Keis says suddenly.
“I don’t know, why?”
She stops in the hall. “You really can’t imagine it.”
I stare at my cousin.
“In your head, what your future looks like, you can’t even see a hint of it?”
“I’ll know once I have my gift.”
“Will you?”
I turn on my heel and stalk to my room. It doesn’t matter. I’m sure Keis can hear my thoughts ringing loud and clear.
Keis is right. My future, what I want my life to be like beyond my task, is blank. But what I can do is focus on right now. And my next step will have to be making a trip to Dixie Mall and finding out who the third strongest Black witch Matriarch is. And when I track her down, I’m going to get the answers to what went on between Auntie Elaine and Justin Tremblay that no one in my family wants to give.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There are malls like the Eaton Center, huge downtown fortresses of shopping filled with shiny new stores and brand names everyone knows. Then, there are places like Dixie Mall. Located over the border of Etobicoke in the more western Mississauga, the mall has brand-name stores with dozens of SALE signs slapped over them, and it’s peppered with shops named things like Jeans 4 All.
I look longingly at the fresh juice stand. A lychee slush with boba would be amazing, but we have the NuGene tour tomorrow, and I’m going to want to grab something celebratory to eat downtown. Better to save my money for that.
Our family frequents Dixie Mall, partly for the outlet deals and partly for the reason I’m here today—the flea market. I keep my eyes straight ahead as I walk toward the gray entrance door. No one looks my way.
They never do.
Tucked into a small alcove is a foggy glass door with a witch mark printed in peeling vinyl. I go down the stairs into the flea market. I’ve never come here on my own, but Keis said, “I can’t just follow you around. I do actually have my own shit to work on,” before she took off to the library, so it’ll be a solo mission.
Plus, I think she’s still a little fried. Yesterday, a day after Keisha showed us her vlogs, we researched more about Mama Jova at Keis’s request and, as I predicted, didn’t find anything we didn’t already know. She’s one of the ancestors Granny taught us about. She’s not a mystery like Auntie Elaine or the third Matriarch. Or rather, in a way she is, but nothing in our family records could explain what would possess her to give me this task. Ancestors exist in a plane where bouncing from past to future to present and back again is normal. And explaining to the living how any of the things they do come together is abnormal. We’re the ones who record our history, not them. If they don’t tell us, we don’t learn. We can only make guesses.
As far as I’m concerned, Mama Jova and I have no special ties beyond being an ancestor and a descendant, no matter what she says. But Auntie Elaine, the third Matriarch, and Justin are three pieces that are at least connected to Luc and me.
What awaits me at the bottom of the stairs is a low-ceiling space that contains Canada’s largest witch-exclusive market—the Flea at Dixie. It isn’t like the swanky St. Lawrence Market downtown with artisanal cheeses and locally made moccasins, whose fresh bread smell compels you to buy expensive baked goods. And it’s definitely not like the Collective with its modded, youthful, artsy crowd.
The Flea at Dixie is an expanse of rickety tables seldom replaced and dust-covered antiques older than Granny. What wafts through the air is a mixture of curry spices from the many ethnic food kiosks and that indistinguishable old smell that sticks to objects and people.
There are more than two hundred booths in here, and I have to find this third Matriarch within them.
I walk toward the first booth at the foot of the stairs. It’s the length of at least three tables and covered in a shimmering purple cloth. The man there straightens as I approach, probably thinking I’m interested in the array of lighters on his table.
“Hello, sister!” he cries.
I cringe. Why some Black people think calling you a family name when you don’t even know each other will make you buy crap, I’ll never know. He opens his mouth to do his sales pitch, and I cut him off. “I’m looking for a Matriarch. The strongest one you know.”
He raises his bushy gray eyebrows. “You can’t say hello?”
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Hello.”
Now, with my apparent rudeness out of the way, he considers me. His eyes notch up and down my form, not creepy, but assessing. I’m tempted to tell him my name, but Granny and Uncle sell our products down here. I don’t need someone telling them I was poking around.
“April-Mae Davis,” he says finally.
I want to slam my head onto his plastic table. “She’s not here. I mean, the strongest Matriarch at this flea market.”
“Oh!” He nods in earnest. “Ava Thomas.”
I shuffle back from his table. “Okay, thanks.” I’m not going to get anything from this guy.
He gestures to the lighters. “You want one? Promises to never go out.”
“I’m good.” I walk away before he can redouble his selling efforts. Hack me. There’s no way I’ll find this woman if I have to question every person here and dodge their sales pitches.
A shock of blue-gray makes me whip around. I know objectively that Luc isn’t here. The door is enchanted so that non–magic users can’t get inside.
And yet my eyes find a boy who looks suspiciously like Luc, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, who ducks under the black sheet covering the back of a stall.
How is he here…?
Before I lose my nerve, I follow him. Inside the stall, it’s dark, and the ceiling is covered with bunches of stinging nettle. Granny uses the root to make a tea to help with urinary tract or yeast infections. Which, in our house, is common enough.
I shift my eyes from the shelves of jars and bottles along the sides of the room to the moving shadows at the back of the room, where another black cloth acts as a wall. With a hard double blink, my hijacker chip manipulates my ocular nerve to activate better visibility, and the once-dim lighting becomes clear.
What I see there almost makes me drop.
In front of the cloth-covered wall, Luc is holding on to a rope that’s hung along the stiff iron piping of the low ceiling that runs through the whole flea market. The end of the rope is looped around Keis’s neck. Her manicured nails dig into the noose, and her feet with their white tennis sneakers kick out frantically.
Luc can’t be here. Keis isn’t here. This isn’t happening.
But it is. I’m watching my cousin fight for her life. Her eyes bulging unnaturally.
“What are you going to do?” Luc says. It’s his voice, but he’s like a stranger.
A chill rises over my shoulders and makes me shudder. It’s the only movement I can manage. I’m frozen with shock.
Keis tugs the rope away enough to wheeze, “K—k—k—”
I shake my head. I don’t know what she’s saying.
“K—k—” Every vein in her neck is bulging. She keeps pulling at the rope. Luc holds it steady, not loosening it, but not making it tighter, either.
Finally, Keis gets enough breathing room to scream, spit flying, “KILL HIM!”
The dark space bursts with light as a woman whips aside the cloth behind Luc and Keis. I throw my arm up over my eyes and squeeze them closed, panting hard. When I open them, Luc and my cousin are gone. All I have are her words, so shrill, so unlike Keis, drumming through my head.
KILL HIM!
I did nothing. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t real. He was suffocating my cousin, and I stood by and did nothing. I wouldn’t even kill him to save her. I failed.
The woman watches me in silence. Her hair is in short, springy coils of gray and black, and her face has a stretched smoothness that speaks of surgical, genetic, or magical intervention. She’s Black, but the shape of her eyes seems to suggest some East Asian heritage too, and her skin is a few shades lighter than mine.
“I’m…” I struggle for an excuse.
She crosses her arms and examines my face. “You’ve been looking for me.”
“And you are?”
“Everyone calls me Lee.”
That’s not a family name. “Lee… what?”
She smiles in a way that makes me ashamed for asking. “They prefer I don’t associate myself with them. Just Lee.” She gestures up to the ceiling. “Grab some nettle for me.”
She disappears behind the cloth, and I scramble up a nearby stepladder to grab a bunch of nettle. The stingers slide into my skin, and I wince.
I walk under the cloth where Lee disappeared. Out the other side is a set of stalls arranged in a square with the same thick cloth hanging around the perimeter. The air is humid and heavy with the spiced scent of the incense she has burning. Some of the tables are stacked high with books while others house strange artifacts that are scrubbed clean, so different from everyone else’s dusty jugs and vases. In the space in the middle, there’s a single table with two folding chairs and a small teapot.
“Have you always had a booth here?” I hand the nettle to her.
Lee waves me off, so I set them on a nearby table. She collapses into a chair and adjusts her purple wrap dress over her legs. “I hate chitchat.”
Hack me, she’s worse than Granny. “You’re the strongest Matriarch here?” I ask, making a guess.
“Used to be.” Her voice holds no wistfulness or longing. Just statement of fact.
I shift in the chair. “I don’t understand…”
“I know you don’t. Too young to remember, maybe, and it’s not like anyone talks about me anymore. But at one time, I was stronger than your granny and April-Mae. And I did it without slitting a single throat. I was a big deal until I wasn’t.”
My shoulders go stiff.
She smiles, mirth dancing in her eyes. “Yes, I know you, girl. Eleven years hasn’t been long for me, though I know it’s probably a lifetime away in your mind. I remember you tottering around with braids in your hair, forever stuck to Maise’s girl. One of them, anyway.”
“Keis.” Saying her name reminds me of her thrashing against a rope. But Lee’s right. Forgetting someone who was a part of my family was far-fetched—that was clearly a magical intervention. But a Matriarch, however powerful, probably wasn’t something my child self would have hung on to. She would have been easy enough to forget if, like Lee said, no one wanted to talk about her. I swallow and push on. “Do you remember my aunt? Not Auntie Maise, Elaine.”
