Sorceress (11 page)

She kept holding the dagger out, and finally, Verlaine took it. The metal felt cold in her hand.

Nadia’s expression became closed, forbidding. “It’s only going to get harder if you wait. And Elizabeth’s only going to get stronger. If you intend to stop Asa, you’d better do it soon.”

With that, Nadia slung her backpack over her shoulder again and walked out into the rain. Verlaine didn’t even shut the door. She just stood there, frozen, watching her friend go and feeling the weight of the heavy knife in her hand.

In her memory, Asa’s voice whispered,
Kill me if you can.

“You guys broke up?” Gage said.

“We’re not broken up.” Mateo’s fists were jammed in the pockets of his waterproof parka as he and Gage walked along. Gage had offered him a ride to the restaurant after school; Mateo, sick of riding his motorcycle through unending rain, had agreed. But nobody was allowed to park anywhere near the town square during the flooding, so they still had to go the last few blocks on foot. “Nadia and I just—aren’t seeing each other right now.”

From beneath the hood of his raincoat, Gage gave Mateo
a look. “To me that sounds like being broken up.”

“You don’t understand. She’s got a lot to deal with. That’s all.”

“Whatever you say.” They trudged on another few moments in silence, during which Mateo stared miserably at the gray, wet world around them. Down the streets he could see wooden barricades painted with yellow reflective tape, weighted down by sandbags in case the water there got higher than two or three inches. Half the businesses were closed again. La Catrina would soon have to follow suit. He knew Dad was careful with money, and saved a lot, but two closings in two months: They’d take a hit.

Worry about money later—after you worry about surviving the end of the world, okay?

Gage cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m just asking this, okay? Don’t get offended.”

“Uh, I’ll try. What?”

“You and Nadia breaking up—does that have anything to do with your feelings toward Elizabeth?”

“No. It has zero to do with that.” Mateo tried to keep his voice level. Merely hearing the name Elizabeth now had the power to make him want to put his fist through a wall.

“Not that I don’t trust her,” Gage said. “But I didn’t want you to be—I don’t know. Jealous.”

Jealous? Jealous of the way this crazy evil witch turns you into her zombie whenever she wants? You’re so stupid, Gage, you don’t even see—

Then Gage finished, “I’d hate for anything to mess it up
for our friendship, you know?”

Mateo took the anger, reminded himself that it belonged to Elizabeth, and pushed it away from Gage. “Yeah, I know.”

They parted ways just before Mateo walked into La Catrina for the dinner shift—which promised to be as dead as virtually every other shift since the rains had begun. He put up his stuff, waved to his dad in the kitchen (who was getting the refried beans started) and headed out front to start setting up the tables. Just as he did, someone rapped on the front door.

“We’re—” Mateo called out, but as he looked up, he recognized who stood there, and the final word choked off.

Beyond the glass panels of the door, beneath a turquoise umbrella, stood Faye Walsh. She was one of the only people in town who knew what was really going on, and the only adult, so far as Mateo could tell.

More than that—she was a Steadfast, just like him.

Dad was busy enough that Mateo was able to let her in and sit with her for a while near the bar, talking in a low voice. Given that Faye was faculty at the high school, maybe it should have felt weird to vent to her about what had happened with Nadia. Then again, a guidance counselor ought to have the listening thing down pat.

“So what do you do?” Mateo finally said. “When the witch you’re bound to pulls away from you? I’m supposed to be her strength, and right now Nadia needs all the strength she can get.”

He didn’t mention the darkness within Nadia, and how
powerfully it had drawn him. Mateo liked Faye and everything, but there was no way he was going to talk about his sex life with a faculty member.

Faye considered that for a moment before she answered. “Well, you know I was Steadfast to my mom. She pulled away from me only when she realized Alzheimer’s was getting her. That was when she turned away from witchcraft entirely.”

Insert foot in mouth. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

Faye shook her head. “No, it’s okay. You made me think. The fact is, Mateo, as important as it is to stand Steadfast to a witch, we can’t solve all their problems for them. We can’t fight their battles. I did everything in my power to support my mother in the Craft, but ultimately we came up against an enemy neither one of us could defeat.”

“I get that, but you were dealing with a disease. This is about dark magic. This is about exactly the kind of thing a Steadfast is supposed to help with, right?”

“You said Nadia feels compromised by the darkness. That she feels like the magic she’s casting with Elizabeth is getting to her.”

Is it ever.
He remembered the heat between them, the way they’d almost made love right there, up against her wall. Mateo ran one hand through his hair, wondering why nobody understood this the way he did. “Yeah. But that’s just another reason Nadia and I should be together.”

Faye’s full lips pursed; she looked a little like his mother had before she’d told him bad news. “As Steadfasts, we make
our witches stronger. We enhance their magic. That means you strengthen the darkness in her just as much as the light.”

“I can’t believe that. I won’t.” Once again he found himself struggling to hang on to his temper. “Loving people—caring about them—that’s just what black magic doesn’t allow, right? Or being loved back. If that’s true, Nadia needs me to love her more than ever.”

“Maybe so,” Faye admitted. “I thought Nadia never should have taken this on. I still doubt her judgment.”

“She had to,” Mateo reminded Faye, though he knew they’d all gotten in over their heads, so Faye wasn’t totally wrong.

“Still, this is where we are now. Nadia has to fight that darkness, and for now she feels like she has to fight it alone. If you love her, trust her. Believe what she says. And you have to accept that sometimes—sometimes, a Steadfast can’t save their witch. Sometimes it’s your job to stand against her. To stop her, if you can.”

That was exactly what Nadia would have said. But Mateo shook his head. “It’s my job to save her. And I will.”

Now he just had to figure out how.

Asa sat at his computer at home, scrolling through Verlaine’s Tumblr. For the most part it seemed to be dedicated to coverage of under-reported news stories, K-pop, vintage fashion, and
Doctor Who
. Every post felt like a peek into her thoughts, a way of snooping around in the soul of this girl he had to stay away from, but wanted so much.

And some of the posts were moodier—deeper glimpses than the others. Melancholy black-and-white portraits. A GIFset of a girl from some television show saying, “I try and I try—and I am never the one.” And a bit of love poetry from Pablo Neruda:

Maybe she just thought they were pretty words. Maybe she hadn’t been thinking of him when she posted this.

But maybe she had.

He closed his eyes, thinking of the way she’d kissed him this afternoon. If only Nadia hadn’t come in—they could have had hours together in her house, in her room. Oh, for a couple of hours in Verlaine’s arms . . .

“Jeremy!” his father called.

He turned, confused. Dad sounded alarmed. Scared?

Asa went down the stairs two at a time, loping to the front door to see his father zipping up his parka. “What’s up? Where are you going?” It was almost dinnertime; he could smell his mother’s curry simmering.

“I just got a call—the river’s overflowing its banks. Every able-bodied man needs to go out and start helping with the sandbags. That includes you, if you’ll go.”

“Of course I’ll go,” Asa said. He was offended by the
suggestion that he wouldn’t—until he remembered that his parents still judged him by the real Jeremy’s actions, sometimes, and Jeremy probably would have refused to so much as get his shoes wet.

“Women are able-bodied, too!” his mother called from the kitchen. “Let me put this up and I’ll come with you!”

Asa would have liked to argue. His mother was a tiny woman, barely over five feet. And yet he knew better than either of his parents could just how serious the situation really was. Captive’s Sound needed all the help it could get.

They drove together to the forests on the outskirts of town, where a crowd had gathered. Headlights from various cars illuminated the scene: a couple hundred men and a few dozen women, all of them wearing raincoats and boots, forming a sandbag assembly line. Huge dump trucks of sand were parked farther up from the river, where their tires wouldn’t sink too deeply into the gooey mud that now covered most of town. People shouted orders, not out of anger, but to be heard over the rumble of truck motors and the omnipresent rain.

“You there!” one of the men yelled at Asa. “We need young knees and backs at the riverbank.”

So he ran down to join the others at the rapidly forming wall of sandbags. The intense mood caught Asa so powerfully that he’d worked for several minutes—catching the heavy sandbags tossed to him, bracing them against his chest, then settling them into the wall—before realizing he was working alongside Mateo Perez.

“You’re allowed to do this?” Mateo panted.

“My parents are here, too,” Asa said. In the distance, he could see Alejandro Perez helping fill bags with sand in one of the big trucks.

“I didn’t mean that. I meant—isn’t this the One Beneath’s work? Are you allowed to undo it?”

Nobody around them was paying any attention. Why not be honest? “This is more indirect. He wants chaos here, generally, but the flooding of this one river? Probably an afterthought. If it’s a problem for demons to help sandbag, trust me, I’ll know.” The burning straps across his chest were barely there, just a hint of something amiss, at the very edges of his consciousness.

For a few minutes they worked together in silence. Asa’s demonic strength made the labor easier—but not easy. Pillow-sized bags filled with wet sand turned out to be tremendously heavy. He did not complain nor let himself slack for an instant. If frail humans could keep up this punishing work, no demon would fall behind.

Finally Mateo said, “How did you become a demon, anyway?”

“I traded my soul and my service to the One Beneath for something I wanted very badly.”

“What was it? What could be worth serving in hell forever?”

“I wanted revenge.”

“Revenge?” Mateo paused for one moment before resuming his work, slapping another heavy sandbag onto the wall.

“Drop it.” It had been hard enough to tell Verlaine how foolish he’d been, how much of his sister was lost to him.
He didn’t feel like saying it all over again for Mateo. “Let’s just say, I understood I was dealing with dark magic. And I knew—I knew the only weapon against dark magic was more dark magic. Fire must be fought with fire. So I called to the One Beneath.”

“How?” Mateo was staring now, fitting the sandbags into the wall almost without glancing at his work. It didn’t matter; the sodden weight of them settled into the others just the same.

“You were hoping for some pagan ceremony? Fire and nudity and chanting? For that, you’ll have to throw a beach party.” Asa smirked. “No, if you want to give yourself to the One Beneath, He knows. He always knows.”

“Did He keep His word?”

So many of the details were lost. He only knew that it had been late at night, and he had been looking up at the stars—so much brighter than they were now, unfiltered by electric light. What had he been wearing? Had he been alone? All he held on to were the stars, his fear, and his conviction.

But no time in hell, no magic in any realm, had the power to make Asa forget the way the Sorceress had screamed when her own dark power had been turned upon her. If only he could hear Elizabeth scream that way, just once.

“He did,” Asa said. “The One Beneath kept His bargain. He always does.”

“You mean the devil lives up to His promises?” Mateo asked. He had never stopped hauling sandbags.

“Of course. You don’t understand Him yet, do you? He
always keeps His promises. He’ll twist them against you if He can—and He usually can; He’s talented in that way. But He keeps them. Ironically, the lord of hell is as trustworthy a partner as you’ll ever find. In the end, you always learn you damned yourself more completely than He ever could.”

Asa knew his sister would never have wanted to be avenged at the cost of the entire world’s damnation. Yet here he was, sworn to bring it about, because of his love for her.

When he’d made the bargain, he’d believed . . .

What had he believed? It seemed to Asa there was something important about that bargain he was forgetting. That memory was lost, like so much of his mortal life. How any of it could be more important than being sworn to eternal service to the One Beneath escaped him.

“Was it worth it?” Mateo’s face was closed off, unreadable. Maybe he meant to taunt Asa; maybe he genuinely wanted to know.

With a shrug, Asa said, “An act like that—it goes beyond regret or remorse. I’m transformed now. Not the human being I was. It’s impossible for me to say what it’s worth.”

If he had not sworn himself as demon to the One Beneath, he would never have been forced to live in the body of a dead boy and make a mockery of his parents’ love. He would never have had to help destroy the world.

He would never have met Verlaine, or fallen in love with her.

Beyond regret
, Asa thought.

The river rushed over its own banks, widening and deepening, swallowing mud and trees.

At its edges, the water bubbled and moved. The mud writhed. From it rose the figure of a woman, soaked to the skin.

Elizabeth opened her eyes. She could feel the river rushing around her now—and experience the power she had unleashed in the most primal way. By now the currents were so strong the mud itself flowed; Elizabeth thrust her hands into the muck so that she could feel it oozing between her fingers, moving inexorably forward.