Chapter 9 Blood Recognition
BLOOD RECOGNITION
MICHAEL
Cal was already elbow-deep in a Toyota’s engine bay when I walked in, singing along to something that sounded like Linkin Park turned up just loud enough to feel like a personal attack.
Mason stood at the adjacent workstation sanding a dented fender with the kind of focused precision that suggested he was actively pretending Cal didn’t exist.
“I’m telling you,” Cal said, not looking up, “this thing’s got at least another fifty thousand miles if the owner would just stop driving it like she’s auditioning for Fast and Furious.”
“You said that about the last three cars,” Mason replied, voice flat.
“And I was right about the last three cars.”
“The Civic caught fire.”
Cal emerged from the engine bay like a grease-streaked prophet, wiping his hands on a rag that was already more oil than cloth. “That was operator error.”
He spotted me and his face changed into the exact expression people got right before they said something that would ruin your morning.
“Hey, Michael,” he said brightly. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks, Cal. Really appreciate that.”
“I’m just saying.” He waved at my face like it was a caution sign. “You’ve got that whole ‘haven’t slept in days’ thing going on. Very haunted Victorian child.”
Mason finally looked up. He didn’t smile, but his eyes softened in that quiet, unsettling way he had. Like he could see the bones under your skin. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I said automatically.
The lie came out smooth. Practiced. A reflex so old it barely felt like lying anymore. It felt like breathing.
“Mm.” Mason didn’t argue, which somehow made it worse. “You here for the electrical supplies?”
“Yeah. The stuff I ordered.”
“Back office,” Mason said, jerking his thumb toward the rear of the garage. “Gideon’s got it. Fair warning.”
“What.”
Cal made a face like he’d just tasted something bitter. “He’s in a mood.”
“When is he not in a mood?”
“Fair,” Cal admitted. “Man’s got exactly two settings: cryptic and grumpy. Sometimes both at once if you’re blessed.”
“That’s not true,” Mason said mildly. “He also has disappointed.”
Cal’s eyes lit. “Right. Cryptic, grumpy, and disappointed. The Holy Trinity of Gideon Ward Emotional Expression.”
I heard myself make a sound that might have been a laugh. It surprised me—like a muscle I hadn’t used in a while had twitched and remembered it could.
“You two ever think about doing stand-up?” I asked.
“Every day,” Cal said solemnly. “But Mason refuses to be my straight man.”
“I’m not your anything.”
“Hurtful. After all we’ve been through.”
“We’ve been through me covering your shifts when Ty has soccer games,” Mason said without looking back down. “That’s what we’ve been through.”
“And I appreciate it deeply.” Cal pressed a hand to his chest. “You’re the Watson to my Holmes. The—”
Mason lifted the hose in one hand. “I’m going to spray you if you don’t stop.”
I left them to it, the bickering following me like background music as I headed for the back office.
I passed the Wall of Regret—bent parts and destroyed components mounted like trophies, each one labeled with a marker and a lesson learned.
The office door was open.
Gideon sat at his desk surrounded by invoices and parts catalogs, reading glasses perched on his nose, silver hair tied back like he was any other small-town mechanic trying to keep a business alive.
If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t see it. The edges. The way the air felt different around him. Like the room had rules.
“Michael,” he said without looking up. “Close the door.”
My stomach tightened.
I did it, and the garage noise dulled to a distant hum. The office instantly felt smaller. Like the walls leaned in.
“Supplies are on the shelf behind you,” he said. “But that’s not why you’re here.”
“I came to pick up electrical supplies,” I said, because if I didn’t cling to something normal, I was going to unravel on the spot.
Gideon finally looked up.
He didn’t blink much. It was one of the things that made him hard to read. Like he didn’t waste movement on anything that didn’t matter.
He removed his glasses slowly, folded them, set them down with care that felt deliberate.
“Daniel told me what happened at the clearing.”
Of course he did.
I swallowed. “He shouldn’t have.”
Gideon’s mouth tightened. “He was worried.”
“I’m alive,” I said, too sharp.
“Barely,” Gideon replied, and there was no cruelty in it. Just blunt truth. “The fact that you walked out of there at all is impressive.”
“I had help.”
Gideon’s gaze flicked over me, sharp and still. “You had Daniel showing up at exactly the right moment. Which, knowing him, wasn’t coincidence.”
I hated how my throat tightened at that. Hated the way my chest ached when someone said Daniel’s name like it mattered.
Gideon leaned back in his chair, watching me the way people watched storms on the horizon.
“But that’s not what’s eating at you,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
It was the worst kind of knowing.
I should’ve grabbed the supplies and left. Should’ve walked out before my mouth betrayed me.
Instead I heard myself say, very quietly, “I went there to talk to Anna.”
Gideon didn’t react like a man hearing something strange.
He reacted like a man hearing something inevitable.
“Mm,” he said, nodding once. “Makes sense. That clearing holds memory. Weight. It’s a thin place.”
“Thin,” I repeated, because my brain snagged on the word.
“Between here,” he said, “and elsewhere.”
My hands were shaking. I realized it only when I curled them into fists and felt my nails bite my palms.
I forced the next words out before I could swallow them back down.
“Did she hear me?” I asked.
It came out wrong. Too raw. Too desperate. Like I was sixteen again and begging the universe not to take something from me.
“When I talked to her,” I said, voice cracking, “when I asked her if it was okay to… to move on. Did any of it reach her? Or was I talking to dirt like an idiot?”
Gideon didn’t answer right away.
Outside, Cal laughed at something. A bright, careless sound. It felt obscene in the face of what I was asking.
Finally Gideon sighed—soft, like the air left him reluctantly.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The honesty should’ve been comforting. It wasn’t. It felt like the floor vanishing.
“That’s it?” My voice rose. I couldn’t help it. “You don’t know?”
Gideon’s eyes stayed on mine. “That’s the honest answer.”
I laughed, short and ugly. “Honest. Great. I’m glad you’re honest while I’m—” I cut myself off, because the rest of the sentence tasted like blood.
While I’m falling apart. While I’m drowning. While I’m standing in your office asking you if my wife is gone-gone or just… far away.
The silence swelled.
“You’re not the first person,” Gideon said carefully, “to go to a thin place looking for answers from someone they lost. And you won’t be the last.”
The words were supposed to make me feel less alone.
Instead they made me furious.
Because I didn’t want to be a statistic. I didn’t want to be part of some universal experience.
I wanted Anna.
I wanted my wife.
I wanted her voice, her warmth, the way she used to say my name like it was something worth keeping.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “You could find out.”
Gideon didn’t move, but something in him changed. A subtle tightening. Like a door had been touched.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You’re a witch,” I said, and it came out bitter, because I didn’t know what else to do with the pain. “You bargain with spirits. You know things about death and what comes after that most people don’t. You could—”
“No,” Gideon said immediately.
The sharpness of it startled me.
I blinked. “You didn’t even let me finish.”
“I don’t need you to finish.”
My pulse hammered in my throat. “You could.”
Gideon’s jaw flexed once.
And that’s when I realized something I hadn’t wanted to admit.
He wasn’t refusing because he didn’t understand.
He was refusing because he understood too well.
“You could let me talk to her,” I said, slower now. “Really talk. One last time.”
Gideon stared at me for a long moment, and in that stare I saw something I didn’t usually see in him.
Fear.
Not for me.
For himself.
“That’s not something I do,” he said, voice quieter.
“But you can,” I pushed. “You can do it. I know you can.”
Gideon stood, abrupt enough that his chair scraped. He moved to the window and stared out into the garage like he needed distance to breathe.
Outside, Cal was holding an air filter like it was a microphone, doing some dramatic reenactment for Mason, who looked like he wanted to be swallowed by the earth.
The ordinariness of it made my chest hurt.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Gideon said.
“I do,” I snapped. “I’m not asking you to bring her back.
I’m not asking for a miracle. I’m asking for minutes.
Two minutes. One minute. Let me hear her voice.
Let me—” My voice cracked. I swallowed hard and kept going anyway.
“Let me ask her if I’m allowed to want something else.
If I’m allowed to… to look at someone and feel something without it being betrayal. ”
Gideon’s shoulders rose and fell, slow.
When he spoke, his voice was rough, scraped raw. “Death magic isn’t a phone call, Michael.”
I flinched at my name in his mouth. It sounded too personal.
“It’s not,” I insisted, because my brain was a mess and my grief had teeth. “It’s not like that. You’ve done it before. You’ve called things. You’ve—”
Gideon went perfectly still.
So still the air felt thick.
Then, quietly: “Don’t.”
The single word carried history. Warning. Pain.
My anger faltered.
I swallowed. “You have.”
Gideon turned from the window slowly, and his eyes were old in a way that had nothing to do with the silver in his hair.
“I’ve done a lot of things,” he said, “that I will carry until I die.”
My throat tightened. “Then do one more.”
His laugh came out like something broken. “You think it’s one more.”