Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock)

It was a weird design, with two earpieces and two flat chest pieces. Near where a doctor’s chin might go, the two pieces were connected with a metal tube that had been wrapped in a circle, like a trumpet’s body, and, like a trumpet, the connecting part was clearly designed to increase and maybe modulate sound waves. The dangling pieces seemed longer than most stethoscopes, and the little circular chest pieces were decidedly old-fashioned.

Green magics emanated from them and were climbing Jane’s arm and wrapping around her body. Before she reached the doorway, and before the magic reached her head, she dropped the device and swatted it, just like an irritated cat. The spell instantly went still, into stasis, and Jane crawled out of the room, shaking her head, muttering, “I know. I know. I don’t like it either.” She crossed the entry to the room and stood, brushing off her clothes, scowling. But with Jane a scowl meant nothing; an expressionless face meant even less. At her best, Jane was inscrutable, and I’d always put that down to her being found in the mountains by park rangers, with no memory of anything, no language, no people, no nothing, and then being raised in a children’s home and learning how to socialize—or not socialize—in an artificial “family.”

Now that the amulet was closer, I knelt and studied it. From upstairs the creaks of the old house increased, but when I looked up, nothing had changed. Outside the windows, the wind picked up and buffeted the house. I shrugged and went back to studying. The chest pieces were made of some kind of plastic, maybe like that Bakelite stuff that was so popular in the early nineteen hundreds. If so, then that dated the device to that era. My grandmother had Bakelite jewelry, and it was quite collectible. The stethoscope was in fairly good repair, even the rubber parts, which one might have expected to disintegrate.

I heard clicks to my side and looked up to see that Jane had pulled a small digital camera out of her boot and was taking pictures of the house and the amulet. I made a small mmm of approval, but the photos might be blurred. Magics did that to photos sometimes.

From upstairs the creaks of the old house increased again, and developed a distinct rhythm. “Molly!” Jane shouted. Suddenly she was standing over me, her arms lifting high. She caught a wooden headboard as it roared down the stairs and slammed at me. “Out!” she shouted again, as she tossed the headboard and caught the flying footboard, using it to deflect a flying drawer or three from a bedroom upstairs.

Crouching to make a smaller target of myself, I raced for the front door, which flung itself open to allow me passage. Jane followed and the door slammed behind her. She pulled me to the street fast, the winds I had noted only moments before dying when we reached the curb.

“Is that the spell or is the house alive?” she demanded.

It might be a dumb or bizarre question to most people, but not to me, and clearly not to Jane. “I don’t know,” I said. I needed to ask Evangelina, my older sister and our new coven mistress since Mama retired and moved two towns over to take care of Grandma.

“Great. Just ducky.” Jane scowled as she brushed more dust off her clothes. “Fine. One thing I can tell you. A vamp owned that stethoscope. I could smell him all over it.”

? ? ?

Back in Asheville, I picked up my daughter, Angelina, from the family café, where my younger sisters were watching her, and arrived home, to our new house, before Big Evan did. My girl was worn-out after playing with my wholly human sisters, Regan and Amelia, which meant she went down for a nap while I fixed supper. I put Angie Baby in her bed and covered her with the blankie that Evangelina had crocheted while Angie was still kicking my insides out in the last horrible month of pregnancy.

When we painted the new house—after we lost the mobile home—I had chosen the soft sage green color for Angie’s room based on the blankie, which my daughter loved. Darker green leprechauns and earth brown brownies sat on huge calla lily leaves beneath a magical spreading oak tree. Unicorns pranced in the background and rainbows crossed the horizon beyond the tree, all painted by Regan and Amelia. What they hadn’t gotten in magical abilities they had made up for in artistic ability and talent. It was a room of love.