Devon Monk - Magic In the Blood

How could I say good-bye when he never gave me the chance to say hello?

I sniffed even though I couldn’t feel my nose, and blinked hard until I could see the grave clearly again. Finally I stepped up next to his grave and knelt.

“Good-bye, Dad.” I pressed my palms against his grave, pushing through the scrubby grass to the wet soil.

Magic shifted in me, maybe responding to the connection between my hands and the ground, and I realized I could use it, use a small bit of magic to reach out to my dad one last time and feel the physical presence of his life in this world. I could connect with him before finally and totally letting go of him.

I whispered a mantra and spoke the words of a Disbursement. I’d have a bigger headache later today or tomorrow, but that was okay with me. I traced a glyph for Sight and for Touch. I put only the smallest hint of need behind my action. I still didn’t have the best control over all this magic, and I did not want to suddenly find myself feeling as though I were actually in the coffin with him.

A light touch was all I was looking for.

Magic responded with an almost sexual tingle, lifting into my senses, heightening my sight and sense of touch. Faded colors, like Christmas lights through fog, moved at the corners of my vision. I looked around me, looked at the graves. A watercolor haze lay over them like an aura. I expected watercolor people to pop up out of that haze, out of the graves, but nothing. And more important, no one moved.

Weird. I mean, if there was ever a place I expected to find a ghost, it would be here, in a cemetery. The hazy, faded colors shifted a little, as if an unseen wind stirred them. But that was all.

Good.

I directed the magic into my hands, into my tactile sense. I felt rather than saw magic wrap around my hands like liquid ribbons of warmth. I sent those ribbons down into the earth where my father’s body lay at rest.

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.