Blood Like Magic, page 30
Luc’s eyes get that faraway look. He’s getting a message on his hijacker chip. “Justin says they’re impatient to cut into your dessert. We should go back inside.”
My throat is too dry to speak, so I bob my head in confirmation.
Luc walks through the balcony doors. I move to follow him, but stop when something catches my eye. I turn my head, and there she is.
Mama Jova.
In her nude glory, standing and staring out into the city.
“Coming?” Luc says, hand on the balcony door.
I whip my head back toward him. “Sorry… I just… I got a message, have to make a quick call.”
He tilts his head to the side for a moment before nodding. “Sure. We’ll be inside.”
After he leaves, I pull out my phone to look like I’m doing what I said I am. At the very least, it’ll explain why I’m talking to the air.
Mama Jova gives herself a second before looking at me. “Time is running out.”
Doesn’t she think I know that? “I’m working on it. It isn’t Caribana yet.”
“And do you think you’ll be ready by then?”
I tangle my hands together around my phone. “I—I can do it.”
“What confidence.”
I bite down on a sudden spark of anger. “Why do I have to do this? He could do so much in the world. Why do I have to… to destroy him?” My voice sounds weak. Pathetic.
Mama Jova stares at me with her sunken eyes. “What did I say to you about magic in that memory?”
“That it’s blood and intent.”
“So you do listen.”
I swallow and look down. “Listening isn’t the problem.”
“Yes,” Mama Jova snaps, “it is. My task is that you find your first love and destroy them.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I cry.
Mama Jova curls her lip. “What makes a decision hard?”
“I—I don’t know. It’s just… the choices, I guess. Knowing which is right.”
“Exactly.” For once, my ancestor sounds pleased with me. “You and I, we agonized over our options. Searching for the right one. Because that’s the thing, every decision you make has multiple choices.”
I stare at her. “I don’t understand.”
“I can tell,” she says with a grumble. “I gave you a task. You control everything else. The choice is yours.”
“I control nothing!” I snap back. “There is no choice. I have to do this. I can’t let Eden die.”
Mama Jova is still for a moment, staring at me down her nose, nostrils flaring. “You seem to have trouble understanding the reality of decisions, so I’m going to give you a lesson.”
My stomach clenches.
“Give me your hand.”
Shit. Heaping trash fire shit. The last time I gave Mama Jova my hand, she assigned me this horrible task. What will happen this time? I glance over my shoulder to make sure the others aren’t watching. They’re either clearing dishes off the island or looking for more disposable plates.
I give her my hand.
She guides me closer to the balcony and presses the back of my hand to the railing. There must be a loose piece of metal sticking out, because a sharp sting blooms just below my knuckles. Blood slips down the back of my fingers onto hers. I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out as a rush of heat soars up my arm, followed by coolness.
“You need to learn that everything—your task, and your life—is under your control. It’s your choice. No matter how much it seems to be otherwise.” She gestures out at the others. “Now, touch him.”
“Touch him… What? What will happen when I do that?”
“What happens is you stop me from cursing your family right here and right now. You need to learn.” With that, Mama fades into the wind, leaving only a lingering scent of smoke.
My throat clenches as I stare at my hand. I wish my windpipe would close. That I could pass out and wake up when everything is over.
Except it’s not that easy.
Touch him.
Who does she even mean? Luc would be the obvious choice. For all I know, this could mean the end of my task. Touch him and be done with it. But that feels too easy.
As I walk inside from the balcony, wiping the blood from my hand, I swear Maya’s eyes are on my back. She’s not human, and yet she’s somehow aware of how dangerous I am.
Touch him.
I doubt that my touch will bring anything pleasant.
Justin could be another choice, but… the way Luc spoke about him. No matter what Justin did to my family in the past, he means something to Luc now, and he’s the gatekeeper of Luc’s future. Of the sponsorship that seems to drive Luc’s entire existence. And more, what if touching Justin makes him remember, and he comes after my family again? But then again, what if I could avenge Auntie Elaine right here, right now, and stop my family from ever having to worry about him?
Touch him.
Juras is the only option left. He’s also the person who would make the least sense to go after. Except for the fact that he’s Luc’s competition.
I can picture Keis raising the most skeptical eyebrow at that thought. It’s like I can hear her saying, What? You’re going to take him out for Luc before you kill Luc yourself?
Even if I open a path for Luc’s future, I still have to be the one to take it away. Less competition won’t mean much if he’s dead.
Luc and his sponsor family sit ready at the table—each of them waiting for me to make the first cut into my sweet bread.
Touch him.
My feet carry me forward, and I keep my eyes on the tray of sweet bread so I can pretend that’s what I’m after as I brush my fingers against Juras’s bare hand so lightly he doesn’t notice, and then I pick up the tray.
The electricity of the spell takes hold, obvious in the way heat rushes from my fingers and leaves my body cold and shivering. My hand shakes as Luc gives me the knife. He frowns at my wrist where the monitor sits. I look at it too, but nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. I plunge the blade into the soft bread.
“Are you all right?” Justin’s stare is probing as he holds out his plate. For a moment, I think he looks at the monitor too, but I’m distracted by staring at Juras. He and Jasmine give me their own quizzical stares.
I push out a laugh. “I think I just got a little cold when I was outside.”
My hands methodically put the slices onto plates and give them out around the table. Compliments from my hosts slide through my ears.
The more time passes, the more my eyes follow Juras, until the spell takes shape. One half of his face slopes down, his eye droops, and one side of his lips falls. I clench my hands into fists in my lap to stop from covering my eyes.
I don’t want to see this happen. But I need to.
“Juras!” Jasmine screams. His head drops against her shoulder as he slurs out incoherent words. “I think he’s having a stroke!”
I didn’t want this.
But… I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t do it. I try to tell myself it was because there wasn’t even a guarantee that it would kill Luc, but I know deep down that I just couldn’t.
This was a mistake. I should have tried to refuse giving Mama my hand. This is worse than any vision I’ve ever seen because this isn’t me seeing visions.
It’s real.
Luc is talking quickly into his phone with a 911 dispatcher while I sit frozen in my seat.
The hair on my arms prickles, and I slide my gaze over.
Justin is staring at me. It’s like we’re the only two people in the room.
His forearms clench against the counter where he grips it, and his bionics swirl with a speed that makes me dizzy. It’s like he’s pinned me to the breakfast bar with nothing but his stare.
Sweat coats the back of my neck and turns cold in the same instant.
When my ancestors were being dragged from their homes and hauled onto boats, was that the face they saw right before? A face of discovery and a promise of pain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I’ve been staring at the same digital poster advertising the importance of regular physicals in the Mount Sinai emergency waiting room for the last fifteen minutes. I shift on the soft yet uncomfortable plastic seats. Despite them, I managed to fall asleep on the cushions long enough for a new day to start. There’s no way I could have gone home and faced my family. I don’t want to have to talk about what I’ve done to Juras.
There’s a couple huddled together in the corner over a boy whose cough is so bad I cringe every time he starts hacking.
I keep seeing Juras’s face in my head as part of it sloped to the side. Calm and collected Jasmine was screaming and clutching onto him. Justin had to physically separate them so he could ride in the ambulance with his sponsor son. The CEO’s face is still clear in my mind. He looked furious at me, like he knew it was my fault.
The rest of us took an ordered car to the hospital. Jasmine, in her shock and panic, never thought to ask why I was coming. Even Luc accepted my presence as he sat there, staring at nothing. Silent in a way so like himself and yet not like him.
I stare down at my interlaced fingers and the monitor on my wrist. I thought that Justin and Luc had looked at it, but now everything is so jumbled up in Juras’s face drooping and Jasmine’s screams. And anyway, we checked it. It’s not tracking magic. Maybe they saw I was freaked out and expected some sort of panic response from it. Or maybe I imagined the entire thing.
They all went upstairs when we arrived, and I stayed in the waiting room. Did Luc sleep uncomfortably on one of these seats last night like I did? I can’t manage to unroot myself from mine. It’s pushing down on me—the gravity of what I’ve done and what I still have to do. It’s so heavy that I don’t think I could leave even if I wanted to.
Not until I know Juras is okay.
I may have killed him with a barely-there touch on his arm. Snuffed out his life in seconds the way Mama likely wanted me to do to Luc.
Hack me.
Even though I know I should have touched Luc, after watching it all unfold, I’m happy that I didn’t. Even knowing that in the next week and a half, I’ll have to kill him with more than a brush against his arm.
I was born in this building, with its crisp white lobbies and rushing nurses and stressed doctors. Every single one of my cousins was too. Even Mom, Auntie, and Uncle Vacu came into the world here.
Now Juras is dead or dying in the same place. Because of me.
My phone vibrates with Mom requesting a video chat. It’s usually the time she would be consulting with Brian, one of her private investigator clients. But lately, she’s home more often along with Priya, Dad, and Auntie. They’re losing work as their magic wanes.
Just more people I’m hurting as this task goes on. I turn on my privacy settings so no one else can hear our conversation, and accept it.
“You better have a damn good reason for why you’re not home in bed! I had to drag Maise out to do a spell and see if you came home last night. Which you didn’t!” Mom is shouting at top volume, and the shrillness of her voice makes me cringe.
“I’m in the hospital.”
The anger leaks from her face. “What happened?!”
I grip my hands into fists. “Luc invited me to dinner at his place, and Mama Jova showed up. She put this power in my hand and told me to touch him. The boy I touched, Luc’s sponsor brother… He’s in bad shape. We need to help him somehow.”
Mom’s face isn’t upset, it’s confused. “She told you to touch him, and you touched… who?”
“Luc’s sponsor brother.”
“Is that who she told you to touch?”
“Well… no, it was vaguer, but I chose to—”
She presses her palms against her eyes and lets out a huge sigh. “She gave you an out, and you didn’t take it.”
“It wasn’t an out! I would have still been killing Luc.”
“Yes,” Mom says, taking her hands away. “And now you have to do it the hard way.”
“That’s not fair,” I croak, my throat aching from holding back tears.
“None of this is fair. Life isn’t fair.” Mom lets out a steups. “You think that I want you to do this? I don’t. None of us wants this for you. But you also can’t let Mama Jova haunt you forever. You need to finish this.”
Finish this. Meaning kill Luc. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I say softly.
“I know you don’t.”
I have whatever happened to Juras on my hands. A scum covers my body and spreads to everything I touch. “Will you help his sponsor brother or not? There must be something Granny can do. She’s a Matriarch.”
Mom’s eyes dart away from me. “This is one of Justin’s sponsor children?”
“Yes. And Justin doesn’t act like a guy without any memory of Auntie or us! He knows I did something to Juras.” And I still don’t know what he’ll do with that knowledge.
“Then why push it? If he thinks we can do anything close to what Elaine could, things will only get worse. We can’t risk the exposure.”
Get sparked. She’s so full of it. “We can use magic to murder, but we can’t use it to help people?”
“We aren’t supposed to use it to kill, either.”
“And yet here you are, encouraging me to finish it!”
Mom’s face twists. “Vo—”
“Save it. I get it,” I snap. “We can’t use magic to help Lauren, and we can’t use it to help Juras, but it’s okay to murder so we can keep it. Is that right?” I stare at Mom’s face. At the perfect curved eyebrows that match mine. The same full set mouth. So similar, yet so different.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Mom hisses. Her voice low and dangerous. “This task has made you so mouthy. I am trying to help you. This isn’t just about magic, this is about Eden—”
“I know about Eden! I know!” I shake my head. “It’s just, we’re only ever helping ourselves.” I rub my eyes, where tears are threatening to sprout.
It hurt enough to do that to Juras, but to take it further with Luc… I imagine his empty eyes staring up at nothing.
Dead and gone.
No more lip-biting smile. No more snappy barbs. No more grateful compliments about my food. Not from him anyway. And no more decomposing Fade Ink tattoos.
My memory sees fit to present the image of Luc with a knife pressed against Eden’s throat.
No matter what I want to do, I need to do this. Mama Jova was wrong. I don’t have any control here. “I’m going to go, okay?”
Mom makes a face that says the conversation isn’t over, but lets it drop. “You’d better be home in your bed tonight.”
“I will.” I end the call and flick a switch to set Mom’s number to Do Not Disturb.
I’ll get hell for it later, but I can’t listen to the hypocrisy.
A message from Luc flashes in front of my eyes: He’s stable.
I can’t get my fingers to move fast enough across my phone: I’m in the waiting room. Everything’s all right?
Minutes pass without any answer from Luc. I bounce my knee so violently the family with their coughing son gives me the eye, and I have to press down on my thigh to keep it still.
A set of doors off to the side of the waiting room slides open and Luc comes out. He’s got his beanie pulled so low that I can’t see any of his hair.
I scramble to my feet. “Is everything okay?” Hack me, why did I ask that?
“You didn’t have to stay overnight.”
I hunch my shoulders. “I didn’t want to leave.”
Luc gives me a long stare I turn away from. I’m a coward in every sense of the word. He slumps forward. “He’s okay. I said I would sit with him until Jasmine gets back from a meeting she has to attend. Justin left a couple of minutes ago.”
My brain is struggling to keep up with what’s happening while being relieved that Justin is gone. “He’s… okay?”
“He’s going to recover, eventually. You’ll see.”
I follow Luc out of the waiting room and into the elevator in the main lobby in a haze. Juras isn’t dead. I didn’t kill him… but I hurt him. Which means that even if I had decided to touch Luc, it wouldn’t have been the end of my task.
He looks at me and pulls that awkward teeth-biting smile I’m starting to crave. “Glad that I won’t have to sit with him alone.”
I tangle my fingers together. “I’m glad Juras is okay.” I mean it.
We walk out of the elevator onto the fifth floor. Luc makes a left, and I hurry to keep up. Nurses sit at their stations tapping on the computers and chatting with each other.
He pushes open the door on a room marked 5011.
I force myself to move my feet past the threshold.
Juras’s dark brown skin looks ashy and pale. There’s a massive bandage wrapped around his head and deep black smudges under his eyes. His face is uneven on one side. He’s sleeping, and yet it looks deeper than that.
“Did they put him under?” I ask Luc.
There are two chairs pulled up near the bed. He sits in one. “Yes. He got a blood clot and had a stroke. They put him in a coma to give his brain time to recover. We’re not sure how affected his speech or understanding of language will be. But that seems to be what they’re most worried about.”
I sink into the chair next to Luc. His face is stoic as he watches Juras. He probably wouldn’t be this calm if he knew he was sitting next to the person who did this. I clench my fists in my lap.
“Have you ever had a thought that made you realize you’re not quite who you thought you were?” Luc doesn’t turn away from Juras as he speaks.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve always thought I was a decent human being. I know I’m not popular, but I felt the essence of who I am is good. Today, I had a thought that I was wrong.”
If Luc is looking for some absolution of guilt, he’s talking to the worst possible person. Except, I understand what he means. I thought I was good. Then I put Juras in this condition. “I do. Not only thoughts, but actions. Things I felt were wrong, I’ve still done in the name of something better. The fact that I can do them at all makes me wonder if I was ever a good person.”
