Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton Read Free Book Online Page A

seeds, or, in one, gold shavings. In another, tiny, rough rubies.The jars were labeled in small, perfect handwriting:
carmot, iron, bone dust, nettle, blessed thistle, snake scales
, and more. In the three empty compartments were black squares of vellum, thin lengths of wax, and spools of colored thread. The tools of Mom’s trade. Her bloodletting needle was a sharp quill. I ran my fingers along the speckled brown feather. Turkey, I guessed. I’d never thought to ask her when she was around.
    I ripped down five brightly colored handbills from my walls and knelt on the floor again, tearing them into rough shapes. Triangles, squares, and jagged lightning bolts in yellow, red, and orange. I put them flat on the floor, then pulled the jar labeled
holy water
out and uncorked it. Dipping the quill into the water, I drew a circle in the palm of my left hand. I didn’t push hard enough to cut. Not yet.
    Mom and I had played this game a hundred times when I was small. She drew a circle on my hand with the water, then cut her finger and used blood to etch a seven-pointed star inside the circle. It tickled, and I always laughed but never tugged my hand away. Mom would kiss each of my fingers and tell me I was strong. Then she’d prick my palm quickly. A drop of my blood welled to mingle with hers, and my whole body was warm and tingling. She pressed her finger into the blood and anointed each of the paper shapes with a bloody fingerprint. Together, we whispered, “Paper shapes fly free, dance high, watch over me,” in a continuous round.
    I did it all, there on my attic floor. The water circle, then a seven-point star of blood. Water dripped down to dilute the blood, giving my star weak pink edges. It still tickled, but I didn’t laugh now. The laughter was trapped in my throat andsharp like a chunk of rock. I pressed fingerprints onto all my torn-up, ragged shapes and said, “Paper shapes fly free, dance high, watch over me.”
    For a second, it was all bullshit. The memories of Mom were these broken bones poking up through my skin. She’d deluded me, tricked me, made me believe in magic that didn’t exist.
    But then I thought of her delighted smile, and the paper shapes trembled against my carpet as if a light draft teased at them. They shook harder, several of them jumping up to dance a foot in the air.
    I scrambled back. My palm smeared across the floor, breaking the spell, and the paper fluttered back down.
    I jammed the holy water back into the box and slammed it shut, shoving the whole thing back under the bed. Gathering the shreds of paper, I tried not to think of being a little boy and going to sleep with dozens of rainbow-colored paper stars shaking over my head as they clung near the ceiling. They’d been better than any night-light, better than a blankie or stuffed bear or Power Ranger toy. Because nothing had kept them up there but the power of my mom’s love, she said. As long as they hung up there, her blood and mine were connected. Nothing could hurt me.
    Now I crumpled my aborted paper spell in my fist and threw the pieces into the plastic bag I’d been using for trash.
    Because I’d only been eight when the first bright-yellow star, shrouded with dust, had slowly fallen to the carpet.

March 27, 1904
    This is how I found out about the Magic:
    I had been with him for nine months, and all he had me do was read and read and read, and write and write and write. I copied pages from Mrs. Radcliffe’s Romances and Mr. Twain’s silly book, and at night Philip would read Whitman or Poe, and I would write down what I heard as he read, until I could write as quickly as he spoke. I preferred the rhyming, because it was easier to predict the direction in which the words would flow. Philip’s Library is small and cramped, but the books pile on top of each other until I feel their Weight will bring down the very house around our heads. One entire wall is these creaking old books with pictures in them of Dead bodies