Blood Magic Read Online Free PDF

When she reached the tables where the food was set out she saw that there was still some chicken and sausage left, but no ribs or brisket.
    She breathed a sigh of relief and made a beeline for the desserts. Two brownies weren’t excessive, she decided, considering how hard she’d worked.
    A hand landed on her shoulder as she selected the second one. “Give me chocolate,” a woman demanded.
    Lily smiled over her shoulder at a tall woman with cropped blond hair. “How much?”
    “Heaps of chocolate. Huge heaps.” Cynna thrust an empty plate at her. “I can’t drink, so chocolate has to do the trick.”
    Lily piled three brownies on Cynna’s plate. “What’s up?”
    “Did you know I’m supposed to make the baby’s food myself?”
    At nearly seven months pregnant, Cynna could have stood in for a fertility goddess—if that goddess doubled as an Amazon and liked to cover her skin in arcane symbols. She had the sculpted arms and shoulders of a warrior accustomed to drawing a bow. No lopping off of a breast for this Amazon, though. Cynna’s breasts were large and expanding along with her vanished waist, as was easy to see in the stretchy red top she wore with loose linen trousers.
    “From the look of things, you could feed half a dozen babies,” Lily said.
    Cynna waved an impatient hand. “I’m not talking about milk. That will be easy—my body just does it.” She crammed half a brownie into her mouth, closing her eyes as she chewed. “Ah. That helps. I mean the actual baby food.”
    “Oh, I see.” Lily nodded. “You’ve been talking to my sister.”
    Lily had invited some of her own family to the baby shower so there would be more guests present; most of the gifts had been mailed in. Her mother had made some excuse, which Lily had expected; Grandmother had intended to come, but her companion, Li Qin, had gotten sick, so she wasn’t here. But both Lily’s sisters had come. To Lily’s amazement, Cynna seemed to have hit it off with Susan.
    “Well, she’s a doctor, isn’t she?” Cynna said. “She knows about this stuff. Only I can barely cook for me! Eggs. I can scramble eggs now. And make macaroni and cheese that isn’t from the box, and Cullen’s chili is great, and so’s his pot roast, but a baby can’t eat chili or pot roast, can it? I thought I’d have months and months to get up to speed on the cooking thing, but—”
    “Susan is a dermatologist, not a pediatrician. She’s also perfect. No one can live up to Susan’s standards, not even Susan.” Hard as it had been to grow up with a perfect big sister, Lily had finally realized it was even harder being the perfect big sister.
    Cynna snorted. “Pot and kettle, Lily.”
    “Oh, come on. I’m nowhere near as bad as she is.”
    “Are you kidding? You wore a white dress to a barbeque, and—”
    “Cream. It’s cream, not white.”
    “—and didn’t get a spot on it. You hang up your clothes by color and type. I’ve seen your closet,” she added darkly. “You line up your jackets according to the spectrum—red to orange to yellow to—”
    “That’s anal, not perfect, and besides, I don’t have any orange jackets. Orange makes me look sick. The point is, you’ve got to stop taking everything Susan says as gospel.”
    “I don’t, but additives are evil, right? Organic is good. Fresh and organic is really good.”
    “This is California. You can buy organic baby food.” Lily was pretty sure it was available in the rest of the country, too, but it had to be available here. You could buy organic rope in California, for God’s sake.
    “I can?” Relief warred with doubt on Cynna’s face. Relief won. “I could buy a bunch of it. I could buy a blender, too. See, the Rhej gave me this steamer thingy. It’s for vegetables, and all you do is dump them in and put water in the base and set the timer, and they cook. It’s real easy. It probably wouldn’t be a big deal to blenderize steamed veggies if I ran out of organic baby