Magic In the Blood

    Maybe it was a creepy idea. Death makes people do creepy things. But I needed to acknowledge his life one last time. Maybe more than that, I needed to acknowledge the cold, hard reality of his death.

    Then hopefully there would be no more of this ghost stuff for me.

    I braced for the awareness of his flesh and bone, well on their way to decay and collapse. I braced for the sensation of a once-living man now reduced to an inert lump of tissue. I braced for the feeling of a body completely absent of life, of soul.

    What I did not brace for was to feel nothing.

    Nothing.

    I frowned. I could sense the weight of dirt and stone around the casket. I could sense the casket, made of wood, still strong and whole.

    And I could sense the emptiness within it.

    There was no body in that casket. No decay. Not even a single bug. Nothing but stale air.

    Was this the wrong grave? I glanced at the headstone, read my father’s name, his date of birth, date of death. This was the right grave. His grave.

    It couldn’t be empty.

    Wishful thinking? Delusional thinking? I closed my eyes, tipped my head down, and whispered a Seeking spell. My headache would last twice as long now, but I didn’t care.

    Magic jumped in intensity, spooled out of me, plunging deep into the frozen earth, brushing like hands around the casket. Wood and metal, smooth, whole. I sent it deeper. Soft, cushioned lining, silk casket dressing. I sent it deeper. Stagnant, stale air.

    And nothing more. Nothing.

    They told me he had not been cremated. They told me it had been an open-casket viewing. People-a lot of people-had seen him dead and had seen him lowered into the grave. This grave.

    So where the hells was he?

    Dad, I thought. Is this why you came to me? Were you trying to tell me something about being buried or not being buried?

    “You picked a cold day to say good-bye,” a man’s voice said from behind me.

    I’ll admit it-I jumped. I hadn’t seen anyone else in the graveyard, hadn’t heard anyone walk through the soggy, noisy grass.

    I spun where I crouched and pulled magic up into my fingertips, ready to weave an entirely different kind of spell.

    Black ski cap pulled tight over his head only made his golden brown eyes larger and warmer against the darkness of his skin. High-arched cheekbones, strong wide nose, and an undefinable cut to his features made me think Native or Asian flavored his family’s blood.

    Zayvion Jones, the man I might love.

    He wasn’t wearing a scarf, just that ratty blue ski jacket zipped up to beneath his jaw, jeans, and sneakers. Against the stark gray of the day, I found myself drawn toward him, toward a forgotten warmth.

    I couldn’t remember it, but I’d risked my life to save him once. Knocked myself into a coma. Still, emotional echoes of him remained within my subconscious. I remembered him being there when I found out my dad had put a hit on Boy in St. Johns. I remembered him following me to my dad’s office the day my dad was killed. And then, all I remembered was finding him a couple weeks ago at a diner and asking him why the hells he’d left me a Dear John note.

    We hadn’t seen each other since then. I thought he’d givien up on us. Or that maybe there was no “us” to give up on.

    Still, those echoes of emotional memory, of what his touch had made me feel like, resonated through me like a deep-tolling bell.

    Oh, I had it bad for him once.

    Maybe I still did.

    “What are you doing here?” I tried to sound annoyed but it came out a little breathless and husky. Hells, I wanted him. Wanted him to touch me. Needed him to touch me. Not just because I was feeling a little alone and a lot spooked right now.

    Okay, maybe just because of that.

    Zay shrugged. “Lucky coincidence?” he said in that damn voice of his, low and easy, delivered with that damn Zen calm. “I was driving by and saw you get out of the cab. I thought you might need help finding his grave. It’s out of the way over here.”

    I stared at his handsome face and didn’t believe a word he was saying. Oh, he may have seen me get out of the cab. Probably because he had been following me. Maybe he’d been following me since I saw him outside the bus this morning. I had a feeling nothing was quite as it seemed with Mr. Jones.

    If he’d told me he was stalking me, that I might believe.

    “Why don’t I think anything is a coincidence with you?”

    He tipped his head to the side, giving me a nod. “Because you have trust issues.”

    “I don’t think you know me well enough to say things like that.”

    He pulled his head back as if I’d just slapped him. His breathing changed, and I suddenly realized that Mr. Jones was a very dangerous man beneath that Zen calm.

    I stood up, not liking the dynamic of me crouched down with him towering over me. And besides that, magic was pushing in me, filling me again too full, and I was having a hard time keeping control of it.

    Even though I am six feet tall, Zayvion still had a couple inches on me. And standing this close to him, I could see he had width too. Though he managed to hide it, he was built like a brick wall under that ski coat-wide shoulders tapering down into a narrow waist, and all that relaxed body language doing little to conceal that that body knew how to fight, and did it often.

    “My apologies,” he said stiffly. “I see you didn’t need help finding it.”

    I had no idea what we were talking about.

    “Your father’s grave?” he reminded me.

    Right. He was talking about my dad’s grave. What I was doing was trying to figure out why he was here, and getting all frickin’ dizzy again. Magic was still filling me, filling me too full. I had tapped into it, used it to look for my dad’s body, and now I couldn’t seem to make it stop filling me up.

    This was something I’d been dealing with a lot since I came back to Portland. Keeping a close hold on the magic in my body so it didn’t just escape me and do something stupid like burn down a city block was getting to be a real pain.

    I was a walking time bomb. But I really was getting good at keeping my finger off the trigger.

    Well, except for right now.

    Maybe the whole weird morning was starting to catch up with me. Maybe the magic-sucking watercolor people had damaged me in a way I didn’t know. Maybe the price for the magic I’d used today was coming due.

    Whatever. I felt like hell.

    The gray day went dark at the edges, and the ringing in my ears harmonized with the thrum of my blood. Oh, hells. There was no way I could handle this much magic. Magic pulsed and slid, pulsed and slid, filling me full, too full, too tight.

    I held my breath against it, bit the inside of my cheek, and tried to think calm thoughts.

    I am a river. Magic pours through me and back into the ground. It does not shape me. I do not shape it.

    “Allie?”

    What were we just talking about? I blinked. It felt like my eyes stayed closed for a long time. When I opened them again, I was on my knees.

    Weird.

    “Allie?” Zayvion’s voice floated down to me from far, far away. “Don’t try to stand. Lie back and take slower breaths. It’s going to be okay. I got you.”

    That didn’t sound good. Still, I had apparently lost the ability to speak, or breathe out, or really do much else, so Zayvion’s suggestions were helpful in their way.

    Even more helpful were his hands.