Page 23 of The Royal Street Witch
“My brother. Okay?” He’s getting angry, and seeing him so distressed unsettles something inside me. I drop my hand and Bastian slides down the wall, immediately wiping the tears from his face.
“What happened to him?” I massage my hand to quell the aching.
He’s got blood all over his hands now, smeared across his face as he tries to wipe the tears away. “He died in an accident.”
Of all the places he wanted to go to the most, it was a memory with his older brother, his dead older brother.
“I need a napkin,” he says staring at his filthy hands, his head hung low.
“Wait a minute.” I free fall in thought, ideas bubbling faster than I can keep up with. Cassius wants to die and he’s the only brother Bastian has left, and not even a blood brother. Bastian is willing to risk his life—both of our lives—to save Cassius from death. From the pain of death he knows from losing his real brother.
A brother’s love.
My mind spitfires as Bastian stares at me dumbfounded.
Desire. Not the kind comprised of lust, but the covetous kind, the kind that makes you do things you wouldn’t usually do. The risks you are willing to take for it, the kind with a gut-aching need. I think of the baby’s tears in the Garden District. Tears of sorrow for protection…then…tears of blood...
Bastian scoffs and leaves the courtyard as all these thoughts are pummeling me, not making cohesive sense, yet growing inside. And I turn, following Bastian through my back door and into the shop kitchen.
He’s heading to the paper towels, and my heart about stops.
“Don’t wipe your face!” I yell, and he turns to me, eyes still bloodied on the inside, the red and green flashing like Christmas lights.
“What?” he says, irritation slick in his voice.
“Blood tears of desire and love…wait!” I huff and run to the closet, grabbing a muslin cloth and running back to Bastian, whose standing wide-eyed and shaken in the kitchen. He looks at the cloth as I approach him, breaths heavy with emotion, so I move slowly, not wanting to startle him, but I need to get close.
“May I?” And I’m raising the cloth to his face, unsure why I’m asking, but there’s something so vulnerable about him, how he’s standing, hunched shoulders, forlorn eyes, and I remember he just saw his dead brother for the first time in…I don’t know how many years.
“Yes,” he whispers as I move in, a low incantation leaving my lips.
“Madeo sanguis. Sanguis madeo.” I place the cloth on his cheek and wipe down, then up and down again, while the crimson liquid sullies the muslin. “Sanguis madeo. Madeo Sanguis.” Pressing the cloth to the other side of his face, I wipe up and down against his cheek. “Close your eyes,” I whisper, a pulling inside of me, having never seen Bastian—let alone a vampire—so passive, so broken. He slowly closes his lids, blood caked around his lashes, and I pull the cloth along his eyelids. Vampire blood is safe to touch. They carry no virus, no disease, yet I’m still surprised at how I’m not recoiling from wiping it. My mind is wandering, taking me from the spell, so I focus on his desire as I repeat the Latin words for blood and soak over and over until the muslin is no longer white, but a deep scarlet red.
“You’ve got an idea,” he says with closed eyes, and it sounds like the real him is coming back, the hopeful him.
“I do. You can open your eyes.” And they are no longer rimmed with red, the irises once again stark white, the skin around them slit. I think of the tequila, how it got us here, but I’m no longer feeling drunk. I’m feeling empowered, almost…optimistic.
Bastian plops on a stool with a sigh, exhausted, and I’m suddenly full of energy.
“Well, you showed me,” he says, rubbing his temples.
I spin, the bloody muslin feeling hot in my hands. “Your brother, huh?” I could get angry all over again, but I only have myself to blame.
“My brother died when we were young, and that moment, the first time we rode The Giant Dipper, is a moment I could live over and over again. And you made it happen.” His eyes glimmer as he pinches his lower lip between his fingers, contemplating. “You sure you’re okay?”
And the pain is still there but for some pathetic reason, I pity him, so I shrug. “I’m no weakling.”
“Yeah, I know,” he smiles warmly, and wings take flight in my stomach, and that’s when I tell him to get out.
MY FINGERS TINGLE AND IT’Sa sign. I feel it’s a sign down to the pit of my soul, but I’m cautious, I don’t jump to conclusions. I’ve been wrong before, I have. But this time feels different.
I pull my latest concoction from the fridge and give the glass jar a swirl. It’s red from Bastian’s blood tears, oily from my spell, spicy from the herbs, and ready to be test driven. I soaked the muslin in the oil for eight days and seven nights. I chanted over it, freeing the tears of Bastian’s desires. The desire for an unbroken brotherhood, the desire to salvage what he once lost. I spent countless hours pouring my own desires into the incantation and I sealed it with my own saliva, so the spell can only be mine and never stolen.
Bastian sits at the breakroom table staring at my hand as I swirl what he’s about to consume. It was still dark out when I called him, the words, “I’ve got it this time,” drawing him to my house immediately. And here he waited, hiding in my bathroom, sleeping in my bathtub while I worked at the shop, counting the hours until we could safely test it.
“It looks…oily,” he says with disgusted hesitancy.
“It is…oily,” I whisper back. “Beggars can’t be choosers.” I pop off the cork and give it a whiff. “It’s going to be quite disgusting. But I think it will work.”
