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

in
.
    It was you I watched, always, for cues. I paid attention to the men you spoke with for more than two words, and was sure to introduce myselfto their wives. You tended toward the simpler men, the farmers, while Gabriel haunted those with watches in their pockets and thoughts on the latest movies
.
    At times I could not understand how you and he shared a life. You seemed so different from his brazen ways. Voice quiet, eyes steady, hands reaching out only when you knew what you wanted. Gabriel laughed and shouted greetings to those he knew, touched everything, flitted about like a boy—or like a king. You both seduced the town—he with charm, and you with certainty
.
    But one afternoon that first week, I stomped down toward the barn to ask one of you to kill me a chicken because it was about time I learned to use the old iron oven. And there the two of you stood in the meadow beside the barn, facing one another. Both of you shirtless despite the cold, slate sky above. You focused intensely on each other, hands forward and palms out but not quite touching
.
    There I saw Gabriel’s tattoos: magical patterns of intricate stars-within-stars ranging from his neck down his back and chest, swirling around his arms. Some were gray and old, others sharply black and red, completely new. They layered over each other as though he’d had different sets done and redone every few decades of a very long life. It was my first clue that you were both older than you seemed
.
    And you, you took my breath away. Your skin was pale from the elbows up to your collarbone, and pink from the cold. Long muscles shifted with every motion, and I put my fingers to my lips because I wanted to touch you, to discover if you were hot or cold, smooth or rough. My whole body flushed, and just then the two of you opened your mouths and said
, Bind.
    Magic leapt from the earth, snapping through me and all the air. Iswayed with the immensity of it, reached out and gripped a tree to remain standing
.
    The hill trembled and all the forest danced. The burn of magic swept around, tingling under my skin
.
    It settled down, sudden and fast as hail. My ears popped. Gabriel grasped your hand and tilted his head to the sky with a wide-open laugh
.
    You closed your eyes and shuddered so violently I saw it from my distance. The land was bound with your magic, safe and secure from—I did not know. Anything? Everything? The overwhelming sense of security made me smile
.
    Until I realized that a great spell had just been performed, yet neither one of you had spilled any blood. You two were connected in ways more intimate than magic, and together your power dimmed the sun
.

ELEVEN
MAB
    On the third morning Pan woke up in Arthur’s bed, I waited on the threshold. He’d had three days to sort us out, to decide if he could trust me, to learn the dialect of our trees. I hadn’t asked him any questions about his past, about his magic or his father. I had only let him be a boy in a new house, eating and drinking and sleeping, touching all the walls and getting his feet under him. Nor had he volunteered much.
    But last night, Donna had tucked him in and come slowly back down the stairs. “Those burns on his hands are self-inflicted” was all she said to me, her eyes focused on the wallpaper over my shoulder.
    “I’ll take him with me for the seven-day binding in the morning,” I said.
    And so I did. “When you’re ready,” I said to him as he stretched out of the roll of blankets stuffed at the foot of the bed, “come outside. I want to show you what we do here.”
    He came out with a bag of frozen blackberries, wearing only a thin boy’s T-shirt and a pair of drawstring pants I’d hemmed Monday evening. He looked at my bare feet and wiggled his toes in the grass. “Donna said the crows like these berries best,” he told me, scanning the gray sky for the birds.
    “She was right.” I held out one hand and he took it. Together we plunged into the forest, making