Magic in the Blood by Devon Monk Page A

tucked away out of sight, out of the attention of the masses. It made me wonder if there were things about my father that I would never really understand. Maybe his brutal business persona was not all the man he was. I hadn’t attended his funeral or burial. I hadn’t seen his ex-wives do the “grieving widow” show for the press. I hadn’t seen Violet, who might be the only woman at his grave who actually cared for him, cry. I hadn’t even had a chance to wonder why my own mother, overseas, had refused to attend the service.
    I might not have loved my father, but for a long time, I wanted to.
    My chest hurt. I swallowed against the tight feeling of tears and sniffed. I was not going to cry over this. Not out here in the cold and wet. There was no way I could change any of my father’s choices, and no reason to change mine now. We had lived our lives as well as we could in regard to each other, arguments, hatred, and all. I had to accept that. Dead is dead. And my dad was definitely dead.
    The modern flat-faced gravestones punched rectangular indents into the ground in long, orderly rows to both sides of me. The sound of traffic was muted by distance. I trudged along between graves, toward the older part of the cemetery where headstones carved of marble, granite, and metal stood like bittersweet poems against the cold sky.
    Somewhere in this world of carved sorrow was my father’s grave. I squinted against the horizon. The graves seemed to reach out for miles, though I knew that wasn’t true. Up a little farther rose a thin forest of trees beneath which headstones were planted like stone flowers, melancholy angels resting among them like earthbound birds.
    Magic stirred in me, this time gently, stroking beneath my skin with soft, sensual pressure. It offered release, respite, anything I wanted. With little more than a strong thought, the right words, and a gesture or two, I could make magic do anything I desired.
    My right arm itched, and I scratched at it—rubbed it really—with my stiff left hand. Magic here pooled deep beneath the ground, much deeper than the graves. Ever since I’d changed, ever since magic had decided to use me as a vessel, an open channel, I felt like the tables had turned.
    I didn’t struggle to use magic. I struggled not to use it.
    And it was possible it was affecting my mind too. Like seeing the watercolor people, the magic on the wall. And my dad’s ghost.
    I tipped my face to the sky and took several calming, deep breaths as rain flicked wet against my exposed skin.
    Magic was not as strong here, despite, or perhaps because of, the graves. But it felt slightly different, old with the scent of heavy minerals, like rich soil. Grave rich. I wondered if using magic left a residual in the flesh. If perhaps, even after we died, the scent of magic lingered within our bones or leaked out of spent flesh to flow back to the natural reservoirs deep in the earth.
    I wiped rain off my cheeks and headed toward the trees.
    I knew my father’s grave before I was near enough to read the headstone. For one thing, the headstone was the tallest and most elaborate thing on this side of the cemetery. But mostly I knew it was his because it resembled a spindly, rune-carved Beckstrom Storm Rod more than a proper monolith. In a way I was relieved. Even in death he had to show the world that he alone had mastered the way to pull magic from the earth and sky. Total ego case, my father. He would be appalled at a humble marker above his head.
    However, he might also be disappointed that the Storm Rod headstone was positioned so it was hidden from the majority of the graveyard. Blocking it from the rest of the graveyard was an old bare-leafed oak, trunk black as an artery, roots sunk into the soil, venous limbs spread against the gray flesh of the winter sky.
    I tromped around the tree and stood at the foot of my father’s grave.
    I tried to get it into my head that my dad was dead. Gone. Buried. Murdered. And