Sorceress (15 page)

“I was trapped, too! I nearly drowned, too!”

Nobody was listening to Verlaine any longer.

Her world blurred and fractured, turning into a kaleidoscope of images each more horrifying than the last: angry faces, hands tearing at her hair and skin, fingernails actually digging into the flesh of her wrist, and above her only the gray sky and the relentless rain.

“Stop!”

Some of the men around Verlaine fell, tackled to the ground—by Mateo.

Verlaine could have wept for joy as Mateo wrestled his way through them to stand in front of her like a human shield. “This is our restaurant!” he yelled. “You’re trespassing on private property. Get out of here!”

Some of the men pulled back—not shamed, but unsure what to do. A guy in the back grumbled, “You’re the one who’s cursed. You should be with us, not against us.”

“You leave my friend alone.” Mateo’s hands were balled into fists. He was ready to fight for her, even when the odds were twenty-to-one. Verlaine thought that if she weren’t in love with Asa and Mateo weren’t in love with Nadia, she
might have fallen for him in that instant.

“She’s no one’s friend,” Mr. Bender said, and his broad meaty hand thudded against Mateo’s chest, trying to push him away.

Mateo slugged him.

Not hit. Not slapped. Slugged. His full fist, powered by the weight of his whole body, smashed straight into Mr. Bender’s nose. Droplets of blood sprayed into the air.

That seemed to get through to most people—they began backing off—but some other guy turned on Mateo then, and Verlaine had never seen a fight like this. Mateo lost it. He struck at anyone who came near, with all his strength, and he was so much angrier than anyone else that none of his attackers could match him. Every punch, every blow, seemed meant to kill. Verlaine began shaking, even though he was on her side.

“Verlaine!” Uncle Gary finally pushed through the crowd, too. She launched herself into his arms. When he hugged her close, she was safe and that should have been the end of it.

But Mateo didn’t stop.

It’s not just about me
, Verlaine thought in a daze.
Not anymore. He’s been so angry for so long that he can’t hold it back another second.

Mateo never stopped, not even when the police car drove up with its sirens wailing. Not when the cops shouted for him to “desist.” Not until the moment they grabbed Mateo, blood on his knuckles and face, and slapped the handcuffs around his wrists.

So, this was what jail looked like.

Mateo was the only guy in lockup—hardly surprising in Captive’s Sound, but he was still grateful. This way he could sit quietly on the long bench in this gray, cinder-block room and tell himself he didn’t mind being arrested.

He did.

The worst part had been his father. Hearing Dad plead with the cops, the one brush of his hand as he tried to draw Mateo nearer to him instead of letting the police put him in the back of their car: That had been awful. His father could be kind of oblivious when it came to what was really going on, but he’d always stood up for Mateo. Getting arrested felt like letting him down.

None of it had been good, though. Not seeing those jerks, in a frenzy of fear, going after Verlaine—Mateo knew he’d never forget that, the sight of people going crazy, or of one of his friends screaming and pleading for her life. Not the way Verlaine had cried when the cops cuffed him; she’d tried to explain to the police, but nobody was listening to her anymore (not that they ever had). Besides, her dads wanted to get her the hell out of there, which was definitely the smart move. Were they back at home? He hoped not. Mateo could easily imagine a mob forming there later on tonight.

Today. Whatever time it was—he’d lost track. The sky was always dark, and the rain was always falling. Day versus night didn’t seem to matter much any longer.

Mateo got to his feet; his entire body was aching and sore. He’d thrown more punches in that fight than he’d taken,
but he’d taken a few. A couple streaks of blood had dried on his shirt and jeans. He wondered what his face looked like. He walked to the bars and tapped on them, surprised at how thick and heavy they were—though he shouldn’t have been.

Maybe I should have gotten myself arrested earlier
, he thought.
It won’t matter if I have one of my visions when I go to sleep; no getting out of here.

Not much of a bright side.

“Perez!” A policeman came hurrying toward his cell, cloudy-clear vinyl raincoat over his uniform, and a plastic Baggie over his hat. “You’ve been bailed out.”

“Bailed out?” Mateo’s heart sank. His dad only had so much cash on hand right now—the closings of the restaurant were hurting them badly—and now he’d just had to lay out a lot of it to free his son.

“What are you so glum about? She’s got the money, so you don’t have to do the time. Besides, don’t know if you kids noticed, but we’ve got bigger problems right now than some juvenile delinquent case.”

There were so many things wrong with that, Mateo couldn’t even start listing them all. But he didn’t want to argue.
She
had bailed him out? Could that mean Nadia?

Heart full, he hurried to the door, walked out into the waiting area, and saw his grandmother.

Grandma virtually never set foot out of her enormous, gloomy mansion on the Hill. Mateo had never seen her anywhere else. She wore a long black coat that only emphasized the pallor of her skin, with the hood drawn up. Around her
head was wound a dark blue scarf, draped just so, intended to hide the terrible scars that warped one side of her face.

The scarf didn’t hide them completely, though. Nothing could. In his final insanity, Mateo’s grandfather had set a fire that had damaged their mansion—and very nearly killed Grandma. Left behind were the red, twisted creases disfiguring her face; they were burn marks but looked more like gashes left by the claws of some great beast. One of her eyes was forever milked over, though that couldn’t diminish the intensity of her disapproving stare.

“I see it’s come to this,” she said. “Your curse.”

Mateo glanced over at the cop, but he was paying no attention, already speaking into his walkie-talkie about yet another washed-out road. “What happened today had nothing to do with that. People were freaking out about witchcraft, and going after one of my friends instead of the actual evil witch in town.”

Grandma cocked her head, clearly interested despite herself. She had believed in some element of the supernatural all along—and knew that Mateo and Nadia understood the real goings on in Captive’s Sound, the ones hidden just beneath the surface. “The flooding—this is dark magic, too?”

When did Grandma become one of the few people I could talk to about this?
Mateo forced himself to focus. “Yeah. This is . . . the end, I guess. Either we stop the people behind this, or they’ll win.” Calling Elizabeth and the One Beneath “people” was stretching the definition a bit, but never mind. “We don’t want to see what it looks like if they win.”

“That girlfriend of yours, Miss Caldani—”

Mateo smiled even though his throat was closing up. “She’s on it,” he said. “She’s our best chance.”

Nadia was the only thing that mattered. Her safety—her ability to go on—that had to come first. When he put it like that, his path became very clear.

Grandma put one wrinkled hand in the purse she carried, then drew out a single key. She offered it to him, and after a moment Mateo took it. The old-fashioned brass was heavy in his palm. Was this the key to some secret chamber, some ancient treasure of the Cabots that might turn the tide?

Instead she said, “That opens the front and back doors. There is also a security system, which I have shut off. You may phone the security company to reset the codes if you so desire, although I doubt the occasion will ever arise.”

“Grandma?”

“The house is yours.” Her tone was brisk. “It always would have been, upon my death. I have no other living descendants, thank God, and I cannot imagine what any charity would want with the place. I always thought I’d live out my life there. I have had no use for life these many years . . . but I find I’m not ready to die either.”

Was she talking about committing suicide? Mateo flashed back to his mother’s death, the way she’d set out in a rowboat to surrender her life to the sea. His chest tightened. As weird and creepy a relationship as he’d always had with his grandma, there was no way in hell he was going to lose someone else like that. “You don’t have to . . . leave,” he said.
“Whatever it is you’re planning, it’s going to be okay.”

“Okay?” She parroted him, then gave a short, harsh laugh. “The darkness that has tortured your family for generations is about to burst forth and unleash itself upon the whole world. How is that okay?”

“Nadia can stop them. I know she can.” He knew he had a way to make sure of it. Once he’d done what he had to do, nothing else would hold Nadia back.

“I wish your Miss Caldani good luck. But if a battle is coming, and this is the battleground, I prefer not to wait upon it. I am leaving Captive’s Sound, and I do not expect to return. Therefore I give you your inheritance now. Make what use of it you can in the time you have.”

Mateo could only stare at her. Where would Grandma go? Presumably that antiquated butler of hers was traveling along. But if they ran to the far edges of the earth, and the One Beneath succeeded, she still wouldn’t have run far enough. Her escape was futile, but she’d always been driven by fear. That was the only emotion left in her, really. No hope, no curiosity, no love.

This is the last time I’ll ever see her
, Mateo thought. She was his grandmother, his only living relative aside from Dad, and he should have felt sad, or worried—something like that. Instead he only felt numb.

“Thanks for the house,” he said.

Grandma simply wrapped her coat more tightly around her. “The papers are signed over to you, in the desk of the upstairs library, should anyone ever get around to asking.”

She didn’t hug him, didn’t even say good-bye. Mateo’s grandmother simply turned away and took her tiny, wobbling steps toward the door. The butler waiting there opened the door and held a large black umbrella over her head as they set out in the rain. Mateo stood there, watching her dark shape until it vanished into the gray.

What had she been like as a young mother? What had Mom been like as a little girl? Had Grandma been able to love and cherish her, or had Mom turned out great despite being raised by a woman made of pain and ice? He’d never know.

“Gonna hang around here all day?” the policeman said, between squawks from his walkie-talkie. “Most people are kinda in a hurry to get out of jail once they’re free to go.”

Mateo realized he should find his father right away; Dad was probably worried sick, trying to get the bank to open up so he could bail out his son. (Grandma would never have called Dad to explain what was going on.) But he had another errand, even more important.

He’ll probably be at home
, Mateo reasoned as he set out through the rain, his only protection a cheap plastic poncho the policeman had grudgingly lent him.
Or at Elizabeth’s, but I can’t go to him there. If I do that, she might realize what I’m planning.
He didn’t intend to let Elizabeth stand in his way.

When Mrs. Prasad opened the door, she smiled and welcomed him into the kitchen and even gave him a snickerdoodle. “Jeremy! One of your school friends is here!”

Asa thumped down the stairs and looked into the kitchen
in bewilderment. When he saw Mateo sitting there, he raised an eyebrow. “Mateo! Hey. Uh—want to play video games in my room?”

Which sounded like something out of the cheesiest commercial in the world, but Mateo stifled a laugh. “Sure.”

Once they were alone, Asa muttered, “What are you doing here?”

“I need you to help me do something. Or—I guess, really, you only have to explain the details. After that, I won’t need any more help.”

Asa closed the door to his bedroom, to be sure Jeremy’s mother wouldn’t hear. “Help with what?”

“I have to free Nadia from her deal with the One Beneath. I can’t do that without giving the One Beneath another soul in return.” Mateo took a deep breath. “So I’m going to give him mine.”

AS ASA LOOKED AT MATEO, HE WONDERED WHETHER
reasoning would ever get through to him, or whether a punch to the face would be required. “You’re a fool.”

“This is what has to happen,” Mateo insisted. “My life for hers.”

“This isn’t as easy as self-sacrifice, you know.”

“
Easy?
Self-sacrifice. That’s your idea of easy?”

Asa took a step closer to Mateo, lest his “mother” overhear. “As heroic as it may be, the mere act of laying down your life for the one you love? Yes, it’s easy. The quicker it is, the easier it is. Virtually anyone would throw themselves in front of a train for their child or lover; many people would do it for a stranger. That impulse—that breathtaking leap out of yourself for someone else—it’s easier than we ever dare imagine. I think if humans truly understood they were capable of that, they couldn’t handle it. They’d never stop
wondering why they act like such moronic asses the rest of the time.”

Mateo looked confused. “This isn’t about jumping in front of a train.”

“No. As I said, that would be easy. Only a flash of pain, certainly messy, but also very, very quick. You make the decision. You leap. You die. Sacrifice made. But that’s not the bargain you propose to strike, Mateo. You’re planning something very, very slow. Certainly messy. And more painful than you can possibly imagine.” Asa pushed up the sleeve of his sweater, revealing the jagged scar left from one of Elizabeth’s spells last month. She had needed to cause someone immense agony to do her work, so she’d sliced him to the bone, and all his demonic powers had not yet erased the damage left behind.

Although Mateo blanched when he saw the scar, he didn’t waver. “You know Nadia is our only chance against Elizabeth’s plan.”

“I’m technically Team Evil. You remember that, right?”

Mateo ignored this. “Nadia’s not doing well. She’s cut off from her family, and she cut herself off from me and Verlaine. Being alone like that, with only Elizabeth to turn to, that can’t be good. It’s like . . . her soul is drowning. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

Asa could not bring himself to describe Nadia’s state of despair. He simply nodded.

“She has to be freed from that darkness, at least for a little while. That’s the only way she’s going to win. The only way for me to free her from that darkness is by trading something
valuable to the One Beneath. I don’t have anything else He wants. Only my soul.”

Why did his noble idiocy have to make so much sense? “The One Beneath—He keeps His deals, but He twists them. He always finds a way.”

“How much worse can He make it for me? Once I’m a demon, that’s as low as it gets. No offense.”

“None taken. But you’re talking about the powers and dimensions of hell. You don’t know just how low it can be. First of all, you’d still have to bear your curse, but now you’d have to endure it for eternity. Now add to that torments for the slightest disobedience, the guilt and the shame of it, having to plot against the girl you love—”

He’d said too much, Asa realized. But there was no taking it back.

“The girl you love?” Mateo stared at him in disbelief, then anger. “Are you telling me you’ve fallen in love with Nadia, too?”

Asa laughed out loud. “No, Romeo, lovely as your Juliet is, she has no hold over me.”

“Then you have to mean—who, Verlaine? Seriously?”

“You say it like that because Elizabeth’s magic keeps you from truly seeing her, or connecting with her,” Asa said quietly. “Which you know. That magic doesn’t affect demons. I see the true Verlaine—the only one that matters—and she is more beautiful than you can possibly imagine. And she is mine, or she would be, if I had the right to love her. I don’t. I never will again. Because I’m a demon. Do you see now what you’re about to do?”

Mateo paused, obviously torn. The first thing he said was, “You need to leave Verlaine alone.”

“I know, and I try. By the way, I heard about your valiant defense of her this morning. Thank you.”

It killed Asa to think about Verlaine persecuted—endangered—while he was powerless to help. This was as bad as anything hell had to offer. Surely Mateo had to see that.

He didn’t. Instead he said something Asa would never have expected. “Nadia’s mother gave up her ability to love, to try and keep Nadia safe.”

“. . . Yes, she did.”

“I love Nadia that much, too. I’m willing to give up just as much. If sacrificing my ability to be with Nadia is part of the price I pay for her freedom, then that’s how it is.”

Asa tried one last time. “Do you remember how that deal worked out for Nadia’s mom?”

Mateo insisted, “Tell me how this is done. Explain. Help me make the best deal I can make—and you can do that, right? Because it’s all about delivering another demon to the One Beneath.”

Sadness settled over Asa, heavy and hopeless. “As you wish.”

Elizabeth stopped midstep, then jerked her face up toward the sky.

Rain fell on her open eyes, but she didn’t blink. Absolute stillness would allow the message to take shape more clearly within her mind.

She stood at the foot of the Hill, in the center of the road. Although the Hill was of course the highest ground in town, nobody was driving there either—mostly because there was nowhere in town for them to go. The thick mud surrounding them all steadied Elizabeth; she imagined it as concrete settling, turning hard as stone. By now she had given up all pretense of normality. Without the need to maintain some presence at the high school, Elizabeth was free to let her body degenerate. Her dress was no more than rags now, her flesh mortified with cuts and bruises she had not bothered to tend. What bliss it would be if she died at the very moment of the One Beneath’s return, so that her mortal self perished along with the mortal world.

Still, those who should serve her defied her.

Nadia plotted against her? Yes, that was it. Earlier, Elizabeth had cast a sophisticated variant on Betrayer’s Snare, knowing that at any moment Nadia might turn on her. And it was Betrayer’s Snare twitching now, alerting Elizabeth to the possibility that her student—the beloved of the One Beneath—remained disloyal, even after losing all her ties to the regular world.

How disappointing, and yet how gratifying, too. Elizabeth’s chagrin at failing to fully convert Nadia was outweighed only by her pleasure that Nadia was not so perfect a student as the One Beneath had wanted her to be.

“I will give her to you, beloved lord,” she whispered up into the rain.

Yet there was more danger—more trouble, more disloyalty.

Her eyes darkened. Elizabeth walked out of the street, into a small patch of trees preserved in a copse halfway up the Hill, perhaps to make the fine houses upon it look even grander. Once she was surrounded by the trees, by life, she raised a hand to the sky and summoned one of her crows.

It flew to her without hesitation, perching in her hand even as she clutched it around the throat. “Transform,” she whispered.

The crow vanished. (Dead? Transported elsewhere? It was irrelevant to the spell and Elizabeth did not care.) In its place appeared Asa, wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, stumbling back in surprise—but she tightened her hand around his neck.

He went very still, and said nothing.

“You are not stupid,” she said. “You know you have been disloyal to me, yet you have not been returned to hell, so you have not been disloyal to the One Beneath. Therefore this is mine to learn and punish.”

The magic she wielded—raw and primitive—lashed out of her hand into his chest. He cried out as it closed around his heart, squeezing it so that it could hardly beat. Elizabeth smiled.

“You think you can hide things from me,” she whispered. “You think your soul is not mine to claim. Learn, beast. Learn what I am.”

And she reached inside his chest to tear out the truth.

Asa screamed. Her fingers plunged through skin and muscles; her hand embedded in the core of him so that she
felt his caged heartbeat against her knuckles, his panting lungs swelling against her fingers, the slip of his bloody liver upon her palm. His torn flesh gaped and puckered around her wrist. Elizabeth cocked her head, studying his face in its rictus of pain.

The truth was no tangible thing for her to pull forth, like one of his bones. Instead she felt it like the liquid run of blood within Asa’s body, somehow flowing into her to blossom red and certain within her thoughts.

“Mateo Perez,” she whispered. Then she pulled back her hand.

The demon fell to the ground, landing with a wet splat in the mud. He gasped feebly for breath. With amusement Elizabeth recalled that she had punctured his diaphragm, which made it impossible for him to breathe. She could have stood there and watched him suffocate within minutes.

Yet he was still a tool, and while work remained to be done . . .

Absently she cast a spell of healing, while meditating upon what she had learned. So Mateo wanted to trade himself as a demon in order to free Nadia? An interesting gambit—given Nadia’s own plans, an ironic one—and it might have worked, against a lesser opponent. Instead this, too, was a tool for her to use.

“Beast. Get up.”

“I don’t think I can yet.” Asa sat in the mud, one hand to his perfectly healed chest. His T-shirt gaped open, the tears in the cloth still bloody. He shook, either from shock or cold,
possibly both, and the raindrops on his face looked like tears.

“Your weakness does not interest me. Your service does.”

Asa looked up at her. “Let him make the trade. Let him do it. Then you’ll have two servants instead of one, and you can do the One Beneath’s work on your own. He doesn’t need Nadia Caldani, not really. He doesn’t need anyone but you.”

The flattery pleased her—as he had no doubt known it would, but that did not change the fact that Asa was correct. “Finally you pay me proper respect. In return, I’ll let you keep it.”

He sat there in the mud for a long moment before he asked, “Keep what?”

“Your love for the girl. Verlaine, the gray-haired thing. I was considering tearing it out of you, just like I tore out the truth. Then I could hold it in front of you so you could watch it die. Every feeling you had for her would crumble like ash.”

Merely telling him, and seeing his horror, was nearly as much fun as doing it would have been. He said, “Anything but that.”

Bold words, from a demon who knew precisely what “anything” could mean, from her. Elizabeth’s smile widened. “Or I could give it back to you just after I made you kill her. Maybe in time to watch her dying in your arms, betrayed by you, afraid of you—”

Asa prostrated himself in front of her. Kneeling in the mud, like the low, worthless slave he was: At last he was
learning. “Do you want me to beg you? I will. I’ll do anything you ask, if you spare her that.”

“I already said I would not steal your pathetic love . . . at least, not as of now. But your service to me must be worthy.”

“Name my task.”

“Mateo Perez just left your house after telling you he wants to become a demon.” Elizabeth leaned against the nearest tree; the leaves were so thick she was almost sheltered from the rain. “Help him. Make him swear it. Bring him over to our side. But do this at the hour I ask. The minute. The moment. Do you understand?”

Although Asa looked wary, he was too beaten down to fight—too desperate to protect his silly mortal love. He nodded, and Elizabeth’s plan was nearly complete.

Nadia didn’t know where Elizabeth was at the moment, and she didn’t care. More time alone in this house gave her more time to prepare for what she had to do next.

It wasn’t that she needed anything physical, not at this point. Nadia was as prepared for the task ahead as she was ever going to get.

But this required resolve. It required . . . giving up on her life completely, and that was a hard thing to do.

I walked away from Mateo. I told Verlaine good-bye. I left my family. There’s nothing else left.

Lies, and she knew it. Nadia still loved her dad and her brother so much that she felt hollow without them. Still worried about whether or not Verlaine would be able to stand up
to Asa, or would fall prey to him in the end. And Mateo—she hadn’t known you could hurt for someone, ache because of his absence, every single moment.

If I could only see him one more time . . .

No. If she saw Mateo again, it would just make her want her life back, so that she could spend it with him. That could never happen. Her old life was just one more thing she had to lay down in order to get the job done.

Nadia slipped on her raincoat. Water still beaded along its plastic surface; it felt like nothing ever got dry now. She shivered as she put it on and looked outside the window. Twilight, maybe? Hours and times of day made no sense to her any longer now that she had no schedule and the sun never shone.

On one wall hung the broken remnants of a mirror, its remaining glass in the oval frame spotted with age. Nadia stepped in front of it and looked at herself.

Could this—this wreck of a person—be her?

Her fingers ran through her tangled hair as she stared at her pale, disheveled reflection. She looked younger somehow. Like Cole after one of his nightmares, or like a little lost kid. Quickly Nadia combed through her hair with her fingers; it didn’t make much difference, but she didn’t want to go to her doom looking like total crap.

Now I know how Elizabeth ended up like this
, she thought.
How she became so disconnected from normal life, and human emotions.

Nadia’s only consolation was that she wouldn’t forget her
love for Mateo, her family or her friends. She would remember them for eternity—the eternity she spent in hell.

She would break the curse on Mateo as she offered herself to the One Beneath. Because Nadia had already sworn her loyalty to Him, all she had left to offer was her service as a demon.

Elizabeth’s Book of Shadows had made it clear that the more innate magical power someone had, the more powerful a demon that person could become. Nadia didn’t think the One Beneath had ever had a Sorceress demon before. Such a person would gain magic and abilities almost as vast and as dark as those of the One Beneath Himself, yet would be completely bound to Him, unable to serve any other, until the end of time.