Night World 1 (47 page)

Is that good enough? Close enough to whatever you believe? Will it make you leave me alone?

Apparently so. “I just don't want to be responsible for you and Eric—well…” Eric's mom exhaled nervously, almost a laugh.

“Breaking up?” Thea made a sound that was also almost a laugh. “Don't worry. I'd never want that.” She turned a smile on Eric, looking down because she couldn't meet his eyes. “I'm sorry if I got—touchy. I was just—embarrassed, I guess. Like you said about your grandpa.”

“Will you come back with us? Or let us take you home?” Eric's voice was soft. He wanted her to go back to his house.

“Just home, if you don't mind. I've got homework.” She lifted her eyes, making herself smile again.

Eric nodded. He didn't look happy, but he wasn't as upset as he had been.

In the backseat of the jeep, Rosamund pushed up against Thea and squeezed her hand.

“Don't be mad,” she hissed, fierce as ever. “Are you mad? I'm sorry. Want me to kill somebody for you?”

“I'm not mad,” Thea whispered, looking over the top of Rosamund's shaggy head. “Don't worry about it.”

She had reverted to the strategy of any trapped animal. Wait and watch for your chance. Don't fight until you see a real opportunity to get away.

“See you tomorrow,” Eric said as she got out of the jeep. His voice was almost a plea.

“See you tomorrow,” Thea said. It wasn't time to get away yet. She waved until the jeep was gone.

Then it was time. She dashed inside, up the stairs, and straight to Blaise.

“Wait a minute,” Blaise said. “Go back. So you're saying they
didn't
believe any of it.”

“Right. At worst Eric's mom thinks Gran's bonkers. But it was a close call. For a while there I thought she might want to get Gran declared unfit or something.”

The two of them were sitting on the floor by Blaise's bed where Thea had collapsed. Blaise was eating candy corn with one hand and scribbling on a yellow legal pad with the other, all the while listening attentively.

Because that was the thing about Blaise. She might be vain and self-centered, quarrelsome, hot-tempered, lazy, unkind to humans, and generally hard to live with, but she came through for family. She was a witch.

I'm sorry I said you might be a little like Maya, Thea thought.

“It's my fault,” she said out loud.

“Yes, it is,” Blaise said, scribbling.

“I should have just found some way to keep him at a distance in the beginning.”

But of course, it was because of Blaise that she hadn't. She'd thought Eric was safer with her than he would have been with Blaise. She'd thought that somehow…somehow…

Things would work out. That was it. There had always been some secret underlying hope that there could be a future with Eric. Some little hiding place where she'd kept the hope that things could be all right.

But now she had to face reality.

There was no future.

The only thing she could give Eric was death. And that was all he could give her. She'd realized that, all in one terrible explosion of insight when she'd seen Eric's mother in the room.

There was no way for them to be together without being discovered. Even if they ran away, someday, somewhere, the Night People would find them. They'd be brought before the joint Night World Council, the vampire and witch elders. And then the law would be fulfilled….

Thea had never seen an execution, but she'd heard of them. And if the Harmans tried to stop the Council from killing her, it would start a war. Witches against vampires. Maybe even witches against witches. It could mean the end of everything.

“So it doesn't look like we have to kill the mother,” Blaise said, frowning at her scribbles. “On the other hand, if we kill the kids, the mother's bound to be unhappy, and might make a connection. So to be safe—”

“We can't kill any of them,” Thea said. Her voice was muted but final.

“I don't mean
ourselves.
I'm going to call one of our friendly vampire cousins. Ash—he's supposed to be out on the West Coast somewhere, isn't he? Or Quinn, he likes that kind of thing. One quick bite, let the blood run out—”

“Blaise, I am not going to let vampires kill Eric. Or anybody,” she added as Blaise opened her mouth. “It's not
necessary.
Nobody needs to die.”

“So you have a better idea?”

Thea looked at a statue of Isis, the Queen of Egyptian Goddesses, on the desk. “I…don't know. I thought of the Cup of Lethe. Make them forget everything about me. But it might look suspicious—this entire family with a gap in their memory. And kids at school would wonder why Eric doesn't remember my name anymore.”

“True.”

Thea stared at the moon held between Isis's golden horns. Her brain, which had been working so coldly and logically, helping her to survive, was stalling now. There had to be a way to save Eric and his family—or what was the point of living herself?

Then she saw it.

“What I really think would be best,” she said slowly, because it hurt like a physical pain, “would be for Eric to stop caring about me. To fall in love with someone else.”

Blaise sat back. She stirred the candy corn with long, elegant nails. She ate a piece.

“I admire you,” she said. “Very sensible.”

“
Not
you,” Thea said through clenched teeth. “You understand that, right? A human. If he falls in love with another girl he'll forget about me without any Lethe. Nobody will disappear or have amnesia; nobody will get suspicious.”

“Okay. Although I would've liked to try him. He's got a strong will—I think he'd have held out for a while. Been a challenge.”

Thea ignored this. “I still have some of his blood. The question is, do you have something you've been holding back, some love spell that will completely blow him out of the water?”

Blaise ate another piece of candy corn. “Of course I do.” She narrowed her gray eyes. “Also, of course, it's a forbidden spell.”

“I figured. Blaise, I'm now the princess of forbidden spells. One more doesn't matter. But I'll do the actual working, I don't want you to get in trouble.”

“You won't like it. It involves the bezoar stone from the stomach of an ibex—which I just happened to pick up while we were living with Aunt Gerdeth.”

Ibex were an endangered species. But this one was already dead. “I'll do the working,” Thea said stubbornly.

“You really care about him, don't you?”

“Yes,” Thea whispered. “I still think we're soulmates. But…”

Would you give up everything?

“I don't want to be the reason he dies. Or the reason a war starts between the Harmans and the rest of the Night World. And if I have to give him up, I'd rather do it myself, make sure he's safe with somebody else who loves him.”

“Have you got somebody picked out?”

“Her name is Pilar.” Thea looked at her cousin suddenly. “Blaise? When Luke asked you what you wanted, and you said nothing you could have…what did you mean?”

Blaise tilted her head back and examined the ceiling. Then she looked down. “Does anybody ever want anything they can have? Really?”

“I…don't know.”

Blaise clasped her knees and rested her chin on them. “If we can have things, we don't really want them anymore. So there's always something out there that we're wanting and not able to get…and maybe that's
good.
”

It didn't sound good to Thea. It sounded like one of those terrible lessons in Life 101 that were supposed to make you more mature.

“Let's do the spell,” she said.

“
Y
ou know, he probably only loved you because of the yemonja,” Blaise said.

Thea looked up from her seat in the empty chemistry lab. It was morning break, and this was the most private place they could find at school. “Thanks, Blaise. I needed that.”

But maybe it was true. She'd almost forgotten that she'd used a spell to get him in the first place.

That should make a difference, she told herself. If it was all artificial, I shouldn't even miss it.

She still felt as if she were encased in ice.

“Did you get it?”

“Sure.” Blaise tossed a ring on the high table. “I asked her if I could look at it, then pretended I dropped it in the bushes. She's still out there searching.”

Thea pulled the binding spell out of her backpack.

Two anatomically correct dolls, both made with the blue wax Blaise used for her jewelry. Beautiful little creatures—Blaise was an artist. The male one contained the Kleenex with Eric's blood and a single sandy hair Thea had found clinging to her shoulder.

Thea put Pilar's turquoise ring around the feet of the female doll and tied it with a red thread to keep it on. She held out a hand.

From her backpack, Blaise produced a corked hexagonal bottle. The liquid inside was made up of all sorts of disgusting things, including ground bezoar stone. Thea held her breath as she poured it over the two figures, which immediately began to smoke.

“Now bind them together,” Blaise said, coughing and waving a hand to clear a space to breathe.

“I know.” Thea took a thin scarlet ribbon seven feet long and patiently began winding it around the two figures. It wrapped them like mummies. She tucked the loose end into a loop.

“And there they are,” Blaise said. “Bound till death. Congratulations. Let's see, it's ten fifteen now, so he should have forgotten your existence by about…say, ten sixteen.” She reached up and her hair ran like black water through her hands as she stretched.

Thea tried to smile.

The pain was bad. It was as if some part of Thea's physical body had been cut off. She felt raw and bleeding and not at all able to deal with things like French or trigonometry.

There must be more to life. I'll go somewhere and do something for other people; I'll work in third world countries or try to save an endangered species.

But thinking about future good works didn't help the raw ache. Or the feeling that if the ache stopped she would just be numb and never be happy again.

And all this for a human…

It didn't work anymore. She couldn't go back to her old way of thinking. Humans might be alien, but they were still people. They were as good as witches. Just different.

She managed to get through the schoolday without running into Eric—which mainly meant scuttling around corridors after bells rang and being tardy for classes. She was scuttling after the last bell toward Dani's U.S. government class when she almost collided with Pilar.

“Thea!”

The voice was surprised. Thea looked up.

Deep amber-brown eyes, framed by spiky black lashes. Pilar was looking at her very strangely.

Wondering at your good luck? Thea thought. Has Eric proposed to you yet? “What?” she said.

Pilar hesitated, then just shook her head and walked off.

Thea ducked into the history classroom.

Dani said, “Thea!”

Everybody sounds the same.

“Where've you
been
? Eric's looking all over for you.”

Of course, I should have realized. Blaise was wrong—he's not just going to forget about me and walk away. He's a gentleman; he's going to
tell
me he's walking away.

“Can I go home with you?” she asked Dani wretchedly. “I need some space.”

“Thea…” Dani dragged her to a comer and looked her over with anxious eyes. “Eric really wants to find you…but what's wrong?” she whispered. “Is it something about Suzanne? The old gym's still closed, isn't it?”

“It's nothing to do with that.” She was about to suggest they get moving when a tall figure walked in the door.

Eric.

He walked straight to Thea.

The kids hanging around the teacher's desk were looking. The teacher was looking. Thea felt like a freak show.

“We have to talk,” Eric said flatly.

She'd never seen him look quite like this before. He was pale, glassy-eyed, hollow-cheeked. He somehow managed to look as if he'd missed a week's worth of sleep since that morning.

And he was right. They had to talk to end it. She had to explain that it was okay, or he'd never be able to go.

I can do that.

“Somewhere private,” Thea said.

They left Dani and walked through the campus, past the old gym with its yellow ribbon of police tape hanging limp and still. Through the football field. Thea didn't know where they were going, and suspected Eric didn't either—they just kept moving until they were out of sight of
people.

The green of the tended grass gave way to yellow-green, and then brown, and then desert. Thea wrapped her arms around herself, thinking about how cold it had gotten in just a week and a half. The last trace of summer was gone.

And now we're going to talk about it, she thought as Eric stopped. Okay. I don't have to
think,
just say the right words. She forced herself to look at him.

He turned the haggard, haunted face on her and said, “I want you to stop it.”

Funny choice of words. You mean end it, break it off, put it quietly out of its misery.

She couldn't get all that out, so she just said, “What?”

“I don't know what you're doing,” he said, “but I want it stopped. Now.”

His green eyes were level. Not apologetic, more like demanding. His voice was flat.

Thea had a sudden sense of shifting realities. All the hairs on her arms were standing up.

Caught without a working brain, she said, “I—what are you talking about?”

“You know what I'm talking about.” He was still looking at her steadily.

Thea shook her head no.

He shrugged. It was a you-asked-for-it shrug. “Whatever you're doing,” he said with terrible distinctness, “to try and make me like Pilar, it has got to stop. Because it's not fair to her. She's upset right now because I'm acting crazy. But I don't want to be with her. It's you I love. And if you want to get rid of me, then
tell
me, but don't try and foist me off on somebody else.”

Thea listened to the whole speech feeling as if she were floating several feet above the ground. The sky and desert seemed too bright, not warm, just very shiny. While her brain ran around frantically like Madame Curie in a new cage, she managed to get out, “What could I possibly have to do—with you liking Pilar?”

Eric looked around, found a rock, and sat on it. He stared down at his hands for a minute or so. Finally he looked up, his expression helpless.

“Give me a break, Thea,” he said. “How stupid do you think I am?”

Oh.

“Oh.” Then she thought, don't just
stand
there. You bluffed him before. You talked him out of knowing he'd been bitten by a snake. For
Earth's
sake, you can talk him out of whatever he's thinking now. “Eric—I guess we've all been under a lot of stress….” “Oh, please don't give me that.” He seemed to be talking to a clump of silver cholla, eyeing the halos of awful spines as if he might jump into them. “
Please
don't give me that.”

He took a deep breath and spoke deliberately. “You charm snakes and read guinea pigs' minds. You cure rattler bites with a touch. You tap into people's brains. You make up magical potpourri bags and your insane cousin is the goddess Aphrodite.” He looked at her. “Did I miss anything?”

Thea found another rock and backed up to it blindly. She sat. Of everything in the universe, right then what she was most aware of was her own breathing.

“I have this feeling,” Eric said, watching her with his green eyes, “that you guys are in fact the descendants of good old Hecate Witch-Queen. Am I close?”

“You think you win a prize?” Thea still couldn't think, couldn't put a meaningful remark together. Could only gabble.

He paused and grinned, a wry and painful grin, but the first one she'd seen today. Then the smile faded. “It's true, isn't it?” he said simply.

Thea looked out over the desert, toward the huge, bare cliffs of rock in the distance. She let her eyes unfocus, soaking in the expanse of brown-green. Then she put her fingers to the bridge of her nose.

She was going to do something that all her ancestors would condemn her for, something that nobody she'd grown up with would understand.

“It's true,” she whispered.

He breathed out, a lonely human figure in that vastness of the desert.

“How long have you known?” she asked.

“I…don't know. I mean, I think I always sort of knew. But it wasn't possible—and you didn't want me to know. So I
didn't
know.” A kind of excitement was creeping into his haggardness. “It's really true, then. You can do magic.”

Say it, Thea told herself. You've done everything else. Say the words to a human.

“I'm a witch.”

“A Hearth-Woman, I thought you called it. That's what Roz was telling me.”

At that, Thea was horrified out of her daze of horror. Stricken. “Eric—you can't talk about this with
Roz.
You don't
understand.
They'll
kill
her.”

He didn't look as shocked as she might have expected. “I knew you were scared of something. I thought it was just that people might hurt
you
—and your grandma.”

“They will; they'll kill me. But they'll kill you and Roz, too—and your mom and any other human they think may have learned about them—”

“
Who
will?”

She looked at him, floundered a moment, and then made the ultimate betrayal of her upbringing.

“It's called the Night World.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, half an hour later. They were sitting side by side on his rock. Thea wasn't touching him, although her whole side was aware of his presence.

“Okay, so basically, the descendants of Maya are lamia and the descendants of Hellewise are witches. And together they're all this big secret organization, the Night World.”

“Yes.” Thea had to fight the instinct to whisper. “It's not just lamia and witches, though. It's shape-shifters and made vampires and werewolves and other things. All the races that the human race couldn't deal with.”

“Vampires,” Eric muttered to the cholla, his eyes going glassy again. “That's what really gets me, real vampires. I don't know why, it follows logically….” He looked at Thea, his gaze sharpening. “Look, if all you people have supernatural powers, why don't you just take over?”

“Not enough of us,” Thea said. “And too many of
you.
It doesn't matter how supernatural we are.”

“But, look—”

“You breed much faster, have more children—and you
kill
us whenever you find us. The witches were on the verge of extinction before they got together with the other races and formed the Night World. And that's why Night World law is so strict about keeping our secrets from humans.”

“And that's why you tried to hand me over to Pilar,” Eric said.

Thea could feel his eyes on her like a physical sensation. She stared at a patch of rock nettle between her feet. “I didn't want you dead. I didn't want me dead, either.”

“And they'd really kill us for being in love.”

“In a
minute.
”

He touched her shoulder. Thea could feel warmth spread from his hand and she had to work to make sure she didn't tremble. “Then we'll keep it a secret,” he said.

“Eric, it's not like that. You don't understand. There's nowhere we could go, no place we could hide. The Night People are everywhere.”

“And they all follow these same rules.”

“
Yes.
It's what allows them to survive.”

He breathed for a moment, then said in a voice that had gone husky, “There's got to be a way.”

“That's what I let myself think—for a while.” Her own voice sounded shaky. “But we have to face reality. The only
chance
we have of even living through this is for us to just go our separate ways. And for you to try as hard as you can to forget me and everything I've told you.”