A moment later, she came into the bedroom with a beautiful glass of pink vodka. There was a lemon twist and cherry. I guessed the cherry was to hide the real source of the pink. Alice was as clever as she was bouncy.
In a chipper tone, she announced, “I made it myself!”
I held out a hand. I knew that the pink tint to my martini was a result of additives she took from her vein.
Truth be told, I’d considered trying blood, but it felt wrong. I had moral qualms about drinking from anyone, and I was fairly sure I shouldn’t have to do so. I’d existed for most of my twenty-nine years with a mix of vodka, green smoothies, and assorted herbs. Never sick. Rarely tired. Since the venom injections, I was always tired, and no amount of liquor made me feel satisfied.
I took a tentative sip of my blood-tini. “This tastes different.”
Alice looked at Eli. “I made it just the way he said to.”
“Hmmm.” I drank half of it. “It’s good. Spicy, though.”
She folded her arms and looked at Eli before blurting, “That’s the blood. He made me. I wasn’t going to lie, but--”
“Okay.” I drank the rest.
Eli rolled his eyes at me, and Alice stared at me in surprise. It was sweet that her loyalty to me made her unable to lie.
Honestly, it didn’t have much taste. Vodka. Touch of spice. My blood martini was surprisingly unexciting, despite the anxiety that I’d felt even considering it. The reality was far less exciting than my fears, and I felt like my stress was washing away—or maybe that was my hunger fading.
I wanted to be normal, whatever that was. I wouldn’t ever be human, so my normal was a little different. I didn’t mind the witch part, mostly didn’t even mind necromancy. I minded my paternal DNA. A lot. I was terrified of being a draugr. I grew up as the equivalent of a rose garden to every bee in range—but instead of bees, I attracted the dead. They were drawn to me, and I responded as well as anyone would when dead things popped up everywhere.
I killed them.
What did it mean if I was like them? If my genetic soup was more dead than witch? Necromancy worked by pressing life into the dead, and apparently, it worked on draugr, too. I shoved life into them, and suddenly, they functioned as if they were a century old. Coherent. No longer slavering toddlers. What would happen if I was changing? Would I be unable to kill them? Would I be unable to heal? To summon the natural dead? Maybe it wasn’t that I wanted normal. Maybe I wanted to control who I was, what I was. Define myself.
“How do you feel?” Eli took the glass, unfolding my fingers from the stem, and I realized I’d licked up the last drops of my blood martini.
“Embarrassed.” I paused. “Better though. Energized.”
Alice tossed herself at me. “You do need me! I knew it. Like it’s our destiny!”
“I . . . umm . . .”
She straightened up. “It has to be fresh, but I’ll be right here whenever you need me.”
It had to be fresh? That was news, and not the good sort. Questions popped around like manic bunnies in my brain. How fresh? How often? How much? Was it all the same? Should we test the theory?
But Alice was already gone, and I doubted she had the answers I needed. I glanced at Eli.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, undoubtedly seeing my worries and questions. Obviously, the answers weren’t ones he knew or he’d tell me.
I swallowed my panic and nodded. One crisis at a time.
When Alice returned, she had a cocktail shaker in her hand. “I made more. Just in case.”
Eli held out my glass, and Alice filled it. “I’ll mix up another batch before I go.”
She gave me a little finger wave like she was in a parade, and then she was gone again.
“Hey, Alice?” I called after her. “I like your singing.”
Her squeal, presumably a happy noise, was all the answer I got. Okay, maybe she was growing on me. The whole attempted murder thing was still a factor, but she was so damnably cheerful that I couldn’t entirely resist.
“We’re friends, aren’t we? Alice and I are friends,” I whispered to Eli. “I . . . like Alice.”
“You were too hungry to think clearly,” he offered. “Like a duckling imprinting on a food provider . . .”
Alice’s voice rang out, louder this time, as she presumably was mixing up another batch of blood and vodka for me. She was singing an old blues song, again managing to make it sound like it ought to be on a stage.
“I’m doomed if she keeps feeding me and singing.”
Eli laughed. “Drink up, butter cream. You sound more like yourself already.”
I hated how right he was, but I felt alert. I felt focused. Alice had just rescued me.
Although Eli didn’t point out that I’d been off since my attempted-murder, we both knew it. And it wasn’t just the appearance of fangs now and then or the weird energy. My necromancy had been erratic before I was injected with draugr venom. Since then, it was all over. Some days, my blood was calm. Other days, I could feel it thrumming inside me like war drums. I could summon anything. I felt sure of it.
But energy required balance. Magic always had a cost. And I wasn’t sure what the fee was—or if I was ready to pay it.
Chapter Nine
By evening, I was feeling more alive than I had since my attempted murder in the fall. I vacillated between thinking that there was something energizing about blood and that my heritage had finally caught up with me. Either way, my cocktail hours throughout the day were revitalizing.
By the end of the week, though, blood martinis, murdering “best” friends, and machete-wielding dead men were the least of my troubles. I’d started to suspect that without regular blood I was going to flag. Eli and I set out to see Mama Lauren, closely followed by Jesse, Christy, Sera, and for reasons I’d never admit, Alice. Chanukah wasn’t a major holiday for Jews, not a high holy day despite the fact that it was one of the only ones Christians knew we had. Still, my mother was keen on any excuse to cook for my friends.
It was a topic we rarely addressed, but my peculiar diet was a challenge for her. I was fairly liquid based, and the few solid things I ate were a choice not a need. Honestly, it was a testament to her cleverness that she discovered that I needed alcohol of all things. To her, I was a hummingbird, existing on some sort of water with additives.
Technically, we were there for the holiday, lighting a candle and sharing prayers and food, but in truth, I also needed maternal insight on what was wrong with me. She could tell. She had always been able to tell what I needed, as far as I knew, so if anyone in the world had answers, it would be Mama Lauren.
In some ways, driving into the Outs for this was not that different than driving to see Beatrice. The primary distinction was that I rarely had the chance to do this of late.
The Outs were dangerous for me in a way that they weren’t for most people. I was tempting to the dead, and my childhood included waking too often to desperate monsters trying to peel off the rolldowns.
Mama Lauren coped, but she always just shrugged and asked what else was she to do? The sort of people who lived here were peculiar. The cities were where folks clustered, and the immediate space outside that—the ghost zones—were where draugr gathered. The Outs were their own thing. No utility services. No sheriff. No law. A special sort of madness drew folks to live out in nature.