Dead Ice

The bowl didn’t look so big in Nicky’s hands. He carried it easily; now all I had to decide was, did he walk backward or beside me as I dipped the machete in the blood and sprinkled the circle into being. I chose beside me, because walking backward carrying a big bowl of blood seemed to be asking for a mess.

I was used to using a beheaded chicken to walk the circle—that sprinkled blood along my blade—but when I dipped my machete in the bowl it came out black, coated like some kind of evil candy apple. The last time I’d tried dipping into a bowl half this size I’d ended up sprinkling myself as much as the ground, so I was cautious as I dripped the blood onto the grass.

“Hmm,” Nicky said, more an involuntary sound.

“What?” I asked, glancing up at him.

“You usually use more flourish.”

“If I do my usual body English we’ll both be wearing cow blood. Trust me, when there’s this much blood on the machete you have to be careful swinging it.”

“Yeah, you can get really messy when you use a machete,” he said.

I studied his face for a second. “You’re not talking about using a machete for casting a circle, are you?”

“No,” he said.

We looked at each other for a few seconds. He gave great blank face, but then most sociopaths do. I debated whether to ask, or how, and finally said, “Animal, or person?”

“Person,” he said.

“Defending your life?”

“No,” he said.

“Mine was.”

“You bothered that mine wasn’t?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Either way, this isn’t the time or place to discuss it.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Okay then,” I said.

“Okay then,” he said.

“Is anything wrong, Ms. Blake?” It was Mr. MacDougal, patiently standing behind the worn tombstone.

I shook my head. “No, nothing wrong, just filling in my assistant on a detail or two. I usually walk the circle alone.”

“It’s a big bowl,” he said.

“It is that, Mr. MacDougal, it is that.” I dipped the blade back in the cooling blood and started walking the circle like I had a purpose.

14

WE WALKED THE circle together, Nicky finding just the right height to hold the bowl so that I could dip the machete in without spattering us, or even hesitating as we moved. He anticipated me in this as he did when we had sex, so that we fell into a rhythm that was almost a dance. It made it more of a ritual, some sort of liturgical dance, but with more blood than I assume the monks use during theirs. It was so smooth, so . . . something I had no word for that I was shocked when I looked down and saw blood on the grass ahead of us. One more sprinkle of blood and we’d close the circle. It didn’t seem like we’d walked that far. Nicky offered the bowl to me one more time; I dipped the long blade in, pulled it slowly out, and let the thickening drops fall to touch the blood already on the grass. The moment the fresh blood hit the first drop we had cast down, the circle closed. It closed with a rush and a roar of power that left every hair on my body dancing. It pulled a gasp from my throat.

“Oh, my God,” Nicky whispered. I looked into his face and found his eyes wide and his own skin reacting to the power.

It was hard to breathe through the power. My chest was tight with it. What the fuck?

Nicky whispered, “That’s more power than I’ve ever felt when you’ve put up a circle.”

I nodded, swallowing hard to be able to whisper back, “I haven’t used a death as big as a cow in a while. I think it was more battery power than I needed.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means this is going to be a really kickass zombie.”

“What?”

I shook my head and it wasn’t until a sound came from inside the circle with us that I turned and saw MacDougal. He was standing behind the tombstone where we’d told him to stand. He looked a little pale in the moonlight, mouth open and gasping as if he’d been running. I hadn’t thought to ask if he was psychically gifted. He couldn’t be very gifted, or I would have sensed it, but his reaction said clearly he wasn’t a null. They felt nothing when you did magic around them. Mac Dougal sure felt something.

I started walking toward him, and Nicky stayed at my side as if we’d planned it. “You okay, MacDougal?” I asked.

He nodded, but he was still pale, eyes too wide.

“I have to smear blood on you, remember?”

He nodded again, but he wasn’t looking at me.

“MacDougal.” I said his name sharply, almost a yell. He jumped, then looked at me. “Oh, my God,” he said, and it was almost a yell, too.

“Mr. MacDougal, can you hear me?”

He nodded, and then coughed sharply, as if he were having trouble breathing. “I hear you, Blake.”

“Do you remember what I said I had to do with the cow blood?”

“You smear it on my face, heart, hands, correct?”

“Yes, very good. How psychically gifted are you, MacDougal?”

“I’m not, I mean . . . I can feel ghosts, but I can’t see them. They’re what made me want to study history, so I could hear what they were trying to tell me.”

I had to take a deep breath and let it out slow, or I would have yelled at him. “You can sense ghosts? But you can’t see them?”

“No, just feel them. Gettysburg was so thick with them it was hard to breathe.”