Blood Like Magic, page 9
Matriarchs are powerful. If they really got into it, they could create a rift like the one I’ve noticed between the families. But I’ve never heard of anything like that happening, and it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing they could hide, even if the adults want to pretend there’s no tension in the community.
And that’s without even getting into this outsider betrayal that Rowen’s talking about.
Granny sits down and looks between me and the Huang Matriarch. Rowen is all innocent smiles. I can’t get my lips to twist the right way to pretend like everything is fine.
“How was my aunt?” Rowen asks.
Granny’s expression is neutral. “Good. I’ll have Voya drop off some elixirs for her when they’re ready.”
“Not my special one, I hope.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. That’s an exclusive item just for you.”
Rowen presents her secure card, and Granny pulls out her phone to arrange the payment.
I can’t see the amount but know it’s enough to cover our hydro and gas bills for the month. Which, when you have more than ten people living in a house and using every manner of electronics, isn’t a small amount.
My glee from finding Keis an internship lead is overshadowed by Rowen’s words and the money collected from her. It’s like I’m being shown what we’ll lose if our magic is gone. If I fail. Granny didn’t bring me here as a distraction. She brought me to see this transaction.
I need to take the risk to keep our magic flowing.
Or maybe Granny’s telling me that I shouldn’t take the risk, because if I fail, we’ll lose everything.
The sharp ping of the successful money transfer rings in my ears long after we leave the shop.
And as much as I tell myself to ignore Rowen’s words, I can’t stop wondering about “your three Matriarchs” and the betrayal that split our community.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Later that day, Granny and I walk in the front door just as Mom comes rushing down the stairs. The staircase in our house has the sort of scale and look that make any entry or exit from it grand and dramatic. Like the kind of feed shows that Mom, Auntie, and Granny love. Sometimes I think that’s the only reason Mom ever rushes down it at all. For the drama.
“What took you so long?” Her hair is piled high on her head in an elegant twist of braids that she didn’t have this morning.
I gesture to it. “Did you get your hair done?”
“It’s cute, right?” She strikes a pose to show off the chalk-white and dark strands plaited into braids no wider than my pinkie finger. “I needed a new video for my feed, so I did a quick box-braiding tutorial.”
When she’s not recording, she can use magic and get a six-hour style done in one. Usually she does use magic and just edits the video so it looks sped up.
Mom told me that when she was a teenager, she wanted to do hair, but when her object-reading gift came, she realized using it meant avoiding a competitive and ultimately low-paying intern position. Now the bulk of her money comes from helping private investigators. They don’t have access to the kind of genetic data the police do, so they operate more on informed tips, which when given the right object, Mom can provide. None of them know she has magic. They just think she does great detective work.
If I fail, she’ll lose that. The only silver lining would be her getting to do what she originally wanted. Financially hacked for personal freedom.
I cut my eyes to Granny, thankful that she doesn’t have Keis’s gift. I doubt she’d appreciate those thoughts.
She steupses at Mom. “You could have done a reading in the time you did that.”
“I would have, but I had a cancellation,” Mom snaps back.
“You and Maise love to go back and forth about which of you is going to take over for me, and I’ve yet to see the responsibility from either of you.”
I shift in place. Nothing is more uncomfortable than the way Mom and Auntie argue about being Matriarch. Sometimes I worry that whoever doesn’t get the title will be so upset they’ll leave the house altogether.
“Are you serious?” Mom gasps. “I’m constantly helping you with the business. And who else are you going to pick besides one of us? The girls are too young. And none of them want to be Matriarch anyway.”
“Voya?” Priya calls, and we turn to her. She hovers near the front door of the house, dressed in a long sundress made out of several different types of fabric. Preferring to make her own clothes but disliking purchasing things brand-new, my stepmom collects scraps from whatever Alex has been working on and constructs her own creations. My designer cousin calls them “retro boho chic.”
Eden peeks out from around her mom’s legs, some sort of juice pouch shoved between her lips. She dislodges it to cry, “We’re going to the park!”
“Cool!” I say, using a high-pitched happy voice that comes out exclusively for my baby sister.
Priya makes eye contact with Granny and Mom with a twitching smile. I won’t pretend the whole living-with-your-ex-husband’s-new-wife thing isn’t strange. Mom alternates between complimenting the positive changes that Priya has made with Dad and griping about why he wasn’t able to make those changes before. If she’s sparked with Priya about anything, it’s because Mom’s actually pissed at Dad.
“Why don’t you come with us, Voya?” Priya asks. Though the way she says it makes it sound less like an ask and more like a tell.
“Right now?” Mom jumps in without letting me respond. “Can’t she go to the park later?”
Priya presses her lips into a thin smile. “I think now is best.”
“Why don’t I come with you? I just need to get rea—”
“I think it’s best if only the three of us go.”
Mom snaps her head to look at Granny, her expression going from light and happy to a twisted mouth and sharp eyes.
“Um…” I look between the three of them, standing in the hall and staring at each other with looks a lot more intense than necessary for a visit to the park.
“Go,” Granny says to me. To Mom she says, “I thought you were doing something with your hair?”
Mom gives me a long look and lets out a little sigh. “Yeah. I guess I’ll do that.” Except she’s already done her hair, so I don’t know what else she’s planning to do. She pushes her lips into a smile for me. “I’ll see you when you get back. I have a surprise for you.”
I perk up. “What?”
“Didn’t I just say it was a surprise?” She gives Priya one last look, nostrils flaring. “I’ll see you later.” With that, she walks across the entranceway to Auntie’s room.
Granny shuffles up the stairs to her room without saying anything to me or Priya.
My stepmom smiles at me as she clutches my sister’s hand, the three of us alone in the hallway. “Ready to go?”
“Sure.” It’s still the early afternoon. Technically, I have more time before I need to make my decision. Not that I feel any closer to knowing what to do than I did this morning.
Outside, the sun is as brilliant and shining as it’s been the entire day, with zero regard for the seriousness of my impending future. We make our way down the street on the short block-long walk to Marie Curtis Park.
Eden spends the time alternating between slurping on her juice pouch and chatting about a recent episode of her favorite feed show, Jaws Journey. It’s this immersive and interactive hybrid cartoon where they follow a shark on his journey through the real world, and kids learn about marine life and that sort of thing. Apparently, the latest episode was scary because the shark went into a deep underwater tunnel, which Eden enthusiastically mimes with waving arms.
Priya hums along and asks questions while her daughter chats, nearly missing getting smacked with Eden’s gesturing limbs, and adjusting Eden’s sun hat at the same time as she rubs extra sunscreen on her face.
To avoid the horror of SPF protection, Eden runs over and holds my hand instead, streaks of white caked on her brown skin.
Priya watches us with an expression that’s half smile and half grimace. The two of us have always gotten along all right. We don’t go shopping together or anything, but sometimes we’ll cook alongside each other in the kitchen, me making something for the family while she whips up something vegan for her little section of it. On special occasions, like my Bleeding dinner, she’ll even let Eden eat some of whatever I have. I like to think of our relationship as comfortable. Easy.
Today is different. Priya’s jittery and staring at me a lot more than she ever has. It’s making me as twitchy as she’s acting. I hope this isn’t some weird bonding exercise. If she were anyone else, I would assume this was about my Calling, but it shouldn’t affect her in any way.
We arrive at the park, walking down the slope of asphalt that brings us from the road to the main bike and strolling path. The area spreads out in a stretch of short green grass that starts at the rocky shore of the lake and extends northwest toward the different trails around the park. Me and my family have been coming here since I was little. I played in the splash pads with my cousins, went on bike rides that Auntie aggressively led while Granny would sit at a picnic table with Grandad, waiting for us to get back.
There are so many of my childhood memories filled with him. My quiet grandpa, always ready with some sort of candy in his pocket and a magic ability to make Granny less grumpy than usual. He had the power of our Chinatown trips wrapped up in a person. He died when I was seven, but there are still so many moments where I’ll think back and see his hard-jawed face full of moles and his chipped-tooth smile.
Eden takes a huge gulp to finish off her drink, and her little eyes roam around the space, looking for a garbage can.
I hold out my hand. “I’ll throw it out, go play.”
“Thank you!” She gives me the empty pouch and, with a grin, runs off toward the giant play structure to another girl who I’ve seen her play with a handful of times. The whole colorful mash-up of slides, monkey bars, and interactive feed screens is overrun with kids playing and screaming.
“Shall we walk?” Priya asks with that same pained smile.
“Sure.”
If Mom brought me to the park, it was never alone. She would drag out Auntie or Granny and they would sit at a picnic bench with snacks while me and my cousins ran around on our own. Which often meant playing some game that would eventually devolve into Keisha and Keis arguing while Alex and I did our own thing.
But Priya likes to stay busy. Even if we come as a whole family, she’ll insist on walking around the playground on a loop, antsy about the idea of sitting still for hours and passionate about staying active. Sometimes I would even walk with her because I was so full of whatever we packed to eat that not walking would just make me sick.
I scramble for something to say. Usually, we could chitchat about whatever Eden’s up to. We have Dad in common too, but I don’t even know what I would talk to her about when it comes to him. “What’s Eden’s friend’s name again?”
“Lola.”
“Ahh.”
Our walk continues in an awkward silence. The opposite of our usual settled-in comfort.
Eden squeals as she runs from her friend in a game of tag. She’s such a purely happy kid. Maybe because she’s the only one. Me and my cousins grew up together, and were running around, screaming, playing, and fighting nearly 24/7 basically from birth. By the time Eden came around, we were almost preteens, and treated her like she was our collective baby sister. Meaning, we were actually nice. Maybe that’s why she’s so ridiculously pleasant. Or maybe it’s the effect of a newly soft-spoken Dad and seemingly always quiet and calm Priya. Mom and Auntie aren’t exactly zen, after all.
“Do you know that I have an older sister?” Priya says, staring at Eden as she walks.
I shake my head. “No.” I don’t know much about the Jayasuriyas in general except that their ancestors emigrated from Sri Lanka to Canada at some point. I think Priya is third- or fourth-generation. That and they’ve been pure witches back to their first ancestor with magic.
“We were close when I was younger. Did everything together.” A little smile tugs at her face, one with a smaller edge of pain. “We would braid each other’s hair the same and make lip-syncing videos that we’d posted online. Priya and Rani here for your entertainment.”
It’s hard to know if she’s telling me this to make conversation, or if this is part of the weird bonding exercise.
“She failed her Calling,” Priya says. “And I passed mine the next year.”
I almost stop walking, but my stepmom keeps going, so I force my legs to move. Is that what this is about? A pity pep talk in case I fail? “She… How…?”
Priya shrugs. “She never wanted to explain it, though my parents asked her incessantly. Every conversation revolved around how she could have failed. What did she do? Who Called? What happened? They were forever trying to figure out how they could fix it. My auntie is our Matriarch, but she didn’t have any answers either.”
My throat is dry. I want to ask every question but also don’t. People don’t like to talk about family members who fail their tasks. It’s as if the failure wipes the person away. Erases them. And bringing them back up just unearths the shame.
“She decided to travel the world,” Priya continues. “I was jealous, actually. She stopped listening to my parents and had these cool pictures on her feed of her adventures. When I turned eighteen, I got an opportunity to go to Sri Lanka and do some volunteer work while studying our family history, and we met up.”
Eden crashes face-first on the ground, and Priya and I both tense. Her friend comes to help her, and they both laugh, back on their way to running around, and we relax again.
“I made the mistake of telling her how jealous I was about everything she was doing,” Priya says. “Of her life.”
I swallow, and it hurts going down.
“She was furious. Jealous? How could I be jealous? Our parents wouldn’t speak to her, wouldn’t look at her. No one in the community could interact with her without it reeking of pity. She couldn’t see our ancestors at our festivals; they wouldn’t show themselves to her. She hadn’t had magic before, but she had potential. Now she had none, so even the ancestors didn’t want anything to do with her. She wasn’t off having a good time, she said, she was trying to find a place to belong.”
Priya stops, her feet rooting to the coarse grass. “My sister hasn’t talked to me since. She blocked me on feeds too. Blocked the whole family. She doesn’t even know Eden’s name.” Her voice catches on the last sentence. “And I can’t blame her, because being in our family just reminds her of everything she doesn’t have. She can’t belong with us anymore, and it’s painful for her, and yet she kept a feed that pretended like everything was okay because the pity is even worse.”
Her eyes fill, and she takes a deep inhale. Eden, as if sensing her mom’s distress, pauses and looks over at her. Priya forces a smile onto her face. “Are you having fun?” she shouts. Or as much as she can shout. Her outside voice is like Mom’s lowest indoor voice.
Eden squints for a moment, but then her own smile comes back. “Yup!” She turns away from us and runs up the jungle gym stairs after Lola.
“I want to be a good mother. I really do.” Priya turns to me. “That’s why, when my pregnancy went south, I let Will take me to your grandma instead of a hospital, because we both knew that was the best chance we had. And that’s why, when she said that she needed to tie my baby to the house, to make her a Thomas for the ancestry in its walls to recognize her as their own and protect her, I said yes.”
“What?” The word slips out of my mouth, weak and limp. None of us kids ever understood how Granny helped, though we speculated. We assumed she used some sort of special Matriarch power to save Eden. Not tying her to the house or making her a Thomas.
Eden is a Thomas.
But… that means that if I don’t accept the task, not only will I be denied magic, but Eden won’t get it either. “I don’t understand.”
Priya adjusts her dress like it’s suddenly not fitting properly. “Will and I pledged to choose Ava as our Matriarch, to accept giving her control of our magic without the benefits of her blood or name. Because I have always done my best to be a good mom and give my daughter the life she deserves.”
Dad and Priya pledged to Granny. Not only did I not know the truth about Eden, I definitely didn’t know about that. If Granny wanted, she could pull from or suppress their magic like the rest of us, but they don’t get the benefit of taking our powerful family name, and our ancestors wouldn’t recognize their blood as belonging to a Thomas. Servitude in exchange for help. Granny probably only did it because she needed to pull from their magic to have the bandwidth to save Eden. Back then, Alex, Keis, and Keisha weren’t witches yet. There may not have been as much magic to go around. She doesn’t like Dad, so there’s no way she would tie him to her and the family if she didn’t need to.
Mama Jova said that every single witch tied to the Thomas blood would lose magic. That means if I accept the task and fail, if we lose magic, that Dad and Priya’s pledge to Granny will leave them without power like the rest of us.
“Does this have something to do with why Eden needs to be in all our Amplifying ceremonies?” It’s a painful thing for someone her age, but Granny has always insisted on her participating.
“Yes. Ava said that involving her in them would help solidify her connection to the house and ancestors if she continuously contributes to their blood and they see her with some degree of regularity.” Priya swallows and speaks again, her voice even smaller than usual. “Do you know what makes your ancestral home so strong?”
I shake my head. I’ve never thought of our house as anything but our house.
“Good bones. That’s what they say about strong homes, in the magic and non-magic worlds. Strong houses have good bones. And the ones in your house are powered with the magic of every living Thomas. As long as there is a living witch of your blood who resides there, its power will care for anyone who calls on it. That’s what’s keeping my daughter alive.”
