Free The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) by Tessa Gratton

my face with my hands. It was just a dumb Internet doctor site, so I shouldn’t let myself get worked up. But I stuck in one more potential symptom: “hallucinations.”
    That was the scary one. More potential conditions popped up on my screen. Drug abuse. Three different kinds of epilepsy. Schizophrenia.
    I shoved away from the computer and rolled my shoulders. “Don’t get worked up,” I ordered myself, and clicked on my stereo. A heavy-metal mash-up blasted through my bedroom. It shook its way through my skull and overpowered the fear, making it hard to breathe.
    Forcing myself to sort of sing along, I hurried through the rest of my morning routine, ignoring the taste of blood poking at my tongue.

MAB
    First thing in the morning, I found Nick feeding the crows bits of burned bacon on the front porch. The sunrise was well under way, the morning air surprisingly cool on my bare arms. He fed them from his fingers, one piece, one bird, at a time.
    His bag leaned against the front tire of the SUV; Nick had only been waiting to say goodbye before heading out.
    “Morning, Mab,” he said, holding out the plate of bacon. Isat beside him on the steps and tied my hair into a knot at the back of my neck.
    “Did you sleep well?”
    “As I ever do on that sofa.” When I’d retired last night, Nick had stretched out in the parlor with his hat over his face. No wonder he was the first person up, when I remembered him sleeping until noon in the past.
    “No bad dreams?”
    “No dreams at all.”
    I glanced toward the garden, where the roses curled in tight knots. It had been a full day now since I’d released the curse from their roots, since it had gone careening away in my doll. Today, I supposed, I should go gather the pieces of it and give the perished curse a proper binding. It was certainly what Arthur had meant when he told me to destroy the roses: not the plants themselves, but the curse. Once the curse was dealt with entirely, the roses themselves would be only harmless flowers. I glanced around the house to where the garden sprawled in all its lush glory. The multicolored buds and the tangle of leaves made me think of Granny Lyn crouched beside them for hours, digging into the ground with her sharp trowel, plucking individual leaves and dotting others with her blood to keep away blight and bugs.
    “Are Donna and the kid still sleeping?” Nick asked, tossing the final crumbs of bacon into the grass.
    “Yes.” We’d been up late after I came home from the silo, watching an old Disney movie about a living car. Pan had fallen asleep in a mess of old quilts, and Nick had carried him up into Arthur’s bedroom. I’d peeked in this morning to find himcurled into a ball at the very foot of the bed, pillows entirely abandoned. “Where did you find him?”
    “Arkansas. I was driving up from New Orleans—you know, the Perrys?”
    I nodded. The blood kin scattered all over the country, in small pockets and family strings, and the Perrys were my cousins.
    “I’d gone down to pick up some stuff they had for Silla and was eating lunch at this antique market full of deer heads and porcelain raccoons, just off the highway, and that charm Silla made for warding against curses got hot in my pocket.” He paused, started to add something with a playful lift to his mouth, but stopped and sighed as if he was disappointed. “I asked around, found out there were lots of stories about witch-fire in the woods nearby and birds falling dead out of the sky. The usual stuff. I picked a spot, dove into the woods, and basically made a beeline for the kid, like I just knew where to find him. He was alone, holding fire in his hands, waiting for me. Said the trees told him I was coming and that I’d take him to his sister.” Nick eyed me. “Your mom have any other kids you know about?”
    The idea tightened my intestines but expanded my heart at the same time. “No,” I said. “But the Deacon is everybody’s family. Did he have