Sorceress (24 page)

They were the ingredients for every spell Nadia could ever have cast. She could draw upon her whole life, all the richness and pain and weirdness and love, and use all of it to draw her back to the world she knew.

It was like making that world all over again, even more beautiful than before.

They were arguing over who would die by Elizabeth’s hand. They would all die by her hand, this moment, because now she was free of Mateo’s battering and able to collect herself.
Now she would be able to cast a spell to destroy them—

Elizabeth screamed.

The pain was like nothing else she’d ever known. She had seen men burn, watched women starve. She knew death both fast and slow, had memorized the way each anguish worked, but Elizabeth had never once sensed anything as terrible as the pain that had her now.

The worst wasn’t the intense, crushing pressure upon her whole body. It was feeling her magic dry up and leave her.

No
, she thought, staggering one step forward through the water.
That’s impossible. I am sworn to the One Beneath, and His fury and His power sustain me.

Elizabeth sought the One Beneath in her mind, and found only silence.

This could not be true. It could not. His darkness underlay the entire world; He was mightier than any earthly force. How could she call for Him and hear nothing in return?

Only one answer arose in her mind, a terrible slow kindling like the bonfire around a stake. Elizabeth tried to hold back the knowledge—to turn away from what her witchcraft told her, for the only time in her life—but she could not. She knew.

Her beloved lord had been destroyed.

Every spell Elizabeth had ever cast with His power—the waters to flood this house, the curse against the Cabots, the binding of Mateo to her with the chains of demonhood—the spell to extend her own life—

All of them were burning out.

The water began to drain from the great house so quickly
that Elizabeth almost instantly felt her feet make solid contact with the floor. As the water went down to her waist level, she looked toward her opponents to find them staring at her in horror; only then did she realize she was still screaming.

She wanted to claw at them, to take Mateo Perez’s eye, or the other Steadfast’s throat, as some small measure of vengeance—but as Elizabeth held out her hand, she saw that it no longer looked like her own. Before her eyes, the flesh withered, exposing bones that became weaker by the moment. Her wet hair against her shoulders paled from chestnut to a dull, brittle white. Spots and blotches marred her skin, and her voice changed from one scream to the next, becoming more feeble. She even felt her teeth loosening in her gums, falling out with every shriek, until she could taste blood.

The water fell beneath her hips. Only then did she realize it had been holding her up.

Elizabeth fell forward onto her knees. The fragile bones shattered, sending pain spiking up through her legs. That didn’t matter, though. Worse was the pain of knowing that the One Beneath was gone forever.

Mateo took one halting step toward her. Apparently the rapid aging of her body had shocked him out of hatred into unwilling pity. “Elizabeth?”

Better to be dead than to be pitied.

Elizabeth let herself fall forward into the shallow water, thinking she would drown.

But her skull shattered against the floor, and everything she’d ever been or known floated away. Lost in the flood.

Shaking, Mateo leaned down and turned over Elizabeth’s body. If he hadn’t watched her transform in front of his eyes, he would never have been able to recognize this ancient crone as the girl she’d been moments before. Now she was old—older than human beings ever actually got, wrinkled to the point of obscuring her features. Toothless. And very, very dead.

She looked more like a mummy than a corpse.

What could kill Elizabeth from within like that? And make the waters go down? Mateo had an idea, but he almost didn’t dare to hope.

He looked over his shoulder at Faye. “Does this mean what I think it means?”

“I’m not sure. But at least Elizabeth’s dead.”

Faye’s smile was weary; she’d braced herself against the wall, and was visibly trembling with exhaustion. Only once he’d seen her did he realize he was shaking, too. Fighting in the water had taken more of his strength than he’d realized. Without his anger at Elizabeth to fuel him, Mateo felt emptied out.

Mr. Caldani had already gone halfway up the stairs to check on his semiconscious ex-wife. “Did Nadia win? This means she won, right?”

“I don’t know.” Mateo looked down at Elizabeth’s dead body—crumpled up like so many wet rags—then walked away from her without looking back.

Faye cocked her head. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Mateo could only think,
What now?

“It’s not so much what we do hear as what we don’t.” A slow smile dawned on Faye’s face. “It’s stopped raining.”

The enormous room was still draining water, which welled and puddled in strange ways. Elizabeth had broken the laws of nature to get it in here, and the last evidence of her magic was the strange way the water flowed out again. Mateo’s side of the room was completely clear, while the far corner was still a couple of feet deep. Falling fast, though . . .

And as he stood there watching, the water went down just enough to reveal three forms huddled together in the corner.

Mateo’s eyes widened. Hope stole his voice, so that he could only stare.

That was enough, because that let him see Nadia—and Verlaine and Asa, too—all of them, gasping as though they’d been underwater a very long time.

“Nadia?” he whispered. She tugged her wet hair away from her face, saw him, and smiled.

Then he was running toward her, and she rose to meet him so he could swing her into his arms. They were both soaking wet, with their clothes stuck to them and their hair in their faces, but Mateo thought he’d never felt anything better. Never seen anything sweeter than Nadia smiling again.

“You made it,” he said. “Oh, my God, you made it.”

On the floor, Asa seemed completely dazed. He still looked just like Jeremy Prasad. “Did that just happen?”

“Did we just kick supernatural ass?” Verlaine grinned as she helped him sit up. “Yeah, that happened.”

Mateo never wanted to let go of Nadia again, but then Mr. Caldani was there, too, and suddenly they were all sort of hugging one another at once.

“It worked?” Faye said through tears. “Your weapon was able to stop the One Beneath?”

“We didn’t just stop Him.” Nadia shook her head, as if in disbelief. “We—we killed Him.”

“More like annihilated,” Verlaine said cheerfully.

Asa, who had one hand on Verlaine’s shoulder and another against the wall, looked like he was ready to fall over again. But his smile was as devilish as ever. “The demonic realm collapsed. Completely. That hasn’t happened in millennia.”

“Does that mean it’s gone for good?” Mr. Caldani said. “The, uh, ‘demonic realm’?”

“Oh, hell will restore itself. It always does.” Asa managed to stand on his own, and started to wring water from the tail of his shirt. “And eventually there will be another lord of hell. But that’s going to take a long time. Eons. I mean, literal eons. The forces of darkness will be fighting among themselves for quite a while now.”

“Which means they’ll leave us alone?” Verlaine said.

“It also means all the bonds, oaths, and other verbal contracts with the One Beneath are null and void.” Asa frowned. “Maybe I should go to law school.”

Relief washed through Mateo. “You mean—we don’t have to become demons anymore?”

“That’s what it would mean. Maybe your curse is gone, too.” Nadia took his shoulders and leaned close, her joy
seeming to flow into Mateo along with her touch. Then she went tense. “Elizabeth—where is she?”

Mateo didn’t bother pointing; he just looked at the crumpled form on the floor. What remained of Elizabeth looked like a pile of rags on the wet parquet wood.

Although the sight of Elizabeth’s corpse clearly shook Nadia, she didn’t look at it long. “A mirror. Mateo, we have to find a mirror.”

“Why?” Mr. Caldani asked.

Mateo knew why. He looked around the room, cluttered with debris—bits of broken vases, a waterlogged curtain torn free from its rod and a lamp that lay halfway through a window. Near the stairwell, on the floor, a cracked mirror was tilted on its side against the wall.

He ran to it, Nadia by his side. When he lifted it with shaking hands, he saw his reflection, splintered by the cracks in the mirror glass.

His Steadfast abilities let him see magic, and had always shown him the curse as a black halo of thorns—twisting and terrible, as much a part of him as his skin. Now the halo was gone.

“The curse is broken,” he said, turning to Nadia. “It’s gone. Everything Elizabeth did to all of us—it’s over.”

Nadia’s eyes welled with tears, but he knew she was crying for joy. She whispered, “We’re free.”

AS HE STOOD IN THE BROKEN, WATER-LOGGED ROOM,
Simon Caldani thought he’d put together the basics. Elizabeth Pike had been a bad witch, in league with something very like the devil. Nadia was a good witch. There had been an epic battle, during which his daughter had managed to destroy Elizabeth’s black magic, plus the devil.

This definitely called for an increase in her allowance. More to the point, it meant everything was going to be okay. All the old scars would be healed. Which meant . . .

He looked at the stairs, where his ex-wife sat, rubbing the side of her head. As thin as she’d become, as strange as this whole scenario was—even knowing Kim had lied to him throughout their marriage about being a witch—all Simon could think was,
She’s come back.

While everyone else hugged and talked, and Nadia and Mateo made out in a way that made Simon think they’d have
to have A Talk soon, he walked toward the stairs. Kim’s eyes flicked toward him for a moment before she closed them and went back to rubbing her head.

“Hey,” he said softly. “You all right? Do we need to take you to a doctor?”

Kim shrugged. “I never actually went unconscious. So I guess not.”

“You were pretty out of it for a few minutes.” It was all Simon could do not to brush back her wet hair and check for himself. He wanted to take her to the hospital, have them make her well, so that they could go back home together.

“I feel fine,” she said. “Just pissed off I didn’t give that Sorceress the beat-down she deserved.”

Simon had spent most of the last year of his life trying to cast his wife out of his heart. Every memory they’d made together—even their wedding, even the births of their children—had been changed for him. Every proof of their love now seemed like an illusion; every word Kim had ever spoken to him seemed to have been translated into another language, one he didn’t know.

He’d done well at moving on, but now he had to try to come back to her again.

“Then we’ll go home,” he said to her gently. “You’ll like the house here. And Cole—he’ll be so glad to see you.”

Kim frowned. “I’m going back to Chicago.”

“But the black magic ended. That means this thing you did—giving away your ability to love—that’s over, too. Isn’t it?”

She smiled at him, but that smile had none of the warmth he remembered. “It’s not like the One Beneath put it in a safe-deposit box and hid the key. He consumed my ability to love. Destroyed it, for good.”

At first Simon couldn’t make sense of the words. “That can’t be undone now? Or—or we could bring it back in some other way—”

“You don’t understand how magic works.” Kim got to her feet. Although she was slightly unsteady, she never reached for him for support. “When I gave it up, I gave it up forever. That’s why we call it a sacrifice. Why sacrifices have power in the first place. Because they do what can’t be undone.”

Simon nodded, because he was unable to speak. Why should it be so much harder to watch her leave the second time?

Kim walked toward the door, and Simon couldn’t even tell her not to go. But Nadia called out, “Mom! Wait!” She jogged toward her mother, but she didn’t try to hug her, like Simon had expected. She didn’t even ask Kim to stay. Nadia said only, “Thanks for coming when I called. You made the difference. Your sacrifice—it really did save me after all.”

“Good to know,” Kim said. There was that strange smile again, the one harsher and colder than Simon could ever have imagined. “I’m going to go. I can drive out of town, fly home in the morning.”

Nadia nodded. Now Simon could see how moved his daughter was—the faint glistening of tears in her eyes—but he also saw that she knew nothing would do any good, that
the mother she’d known was gone forever.

As Kim opened the door, Simon said, “Can I say one thing?”

“Sure.” She didn’t even seem interested to hear it.

But Simon had to get this out, not for Kim but for himself. “Thank you for protecting our daughter.”

It was the single most important bond between them: the children they’d created and loved, and put before anything else. All this year he’d been so angry that Kim hadn’t lived up to her end of the bargain spouses made to each other—but he’d been wrong. Kim had come through after all, and in the long run, it would help to remember that.

“Okay,” Kim said. Then she walked out of the house, and their lives, for good.

Simon sank back down onto the stairs and put his head in his hands. After a moment, Nadia sat beside him, and he slung one arm around her. He didn’t know if he was comforting his daughter or she was comforting him. All Simon knew was that they’d made it through the worst. So they’d make it through the rest.

Asa slumped in the passenger seat of the land yacht; after the Caldanis had dropped them off at Verlaine’s house, she’d immediately gotten him into her car and started to drive him home.

The Prasads’ home. Not his. But it was the only place he had to go.

“Are you all right?” Verlaine kept looking over at him,
like she was afraid he’d disappear at any moment. “What you went through down there—”

“Let’s not talk about it. Not now.” He put his hand on her knee and managed to smile. “Right now I just need to know it’s over.”

“Okay.” Verlaine bit her lower lip, then blurted out, “How are you still alive?”

“You rescued me. Remember?”

Asa would never forget it. Hearing his true name, seeing Verlaine appear in the darkness, impossibly beautiful, made of light—and suddenly being in this body again, wet and cold but instantly free from pain: It was the single most glorious moment of all his centuries.

Verlaine persisted. “I mean, black magic put you in Jeremy’s body to begin with. So when Elizabeth died, you should have . . . left it, I guess?”

“The demonic realm still exists. So do my powers.” Though at the moment, Asa was too tired even to stop time. “Elizabeth put me here, but I keep myself here. For now, anyway.”

“What do you mean, for now?”

“I can’t live this lie.” Asa thought again of Jeremy’s mother smiling at up at him. “The Prasads lost their son. He was murdered. They deserve the truth.”

Verlaine was silent as she considered his words. The only sound in the car was the soft splash of tires through puddles. Asa was grateful that he didn’t have to hear rain anymore.

Then, very quietly, Verlaine said, “You can’t tell them.”

“I have to. They’ll be upset—they’ll hate me for it—but at
least I won’t be cheating them any longer.”

“Think about this.” Verlaine pulled the car onto the gravel shoulder of the road, put it in park, and turned to him. “Are you seriously going to tell the Prasads you’re a demon who’s moved into Jeremy’s body? They’re not going to believe you. They’re just going to send you to a psych ward.”

So many people in Captive’s Sound had learned the truth in the past few weeks that Asa had almost forgotten that everyone else still had no idea how the supernatural worked. “Maybe—maybe Nadia could cast a spell.”

“Then you’d leave Jeremy’s body? Can you even do that?”

“Yes,” Asa said, but already he could see the problems. “I don’t have the power to put myself in another body, though. I wouldn’t do it even if I could. I’d have to return to the demonic realm.”

Which now was pure chaos. Which would be riddled with the battles of evil versus evil, the struggle to be the new lord of hell, for eons to come. Not anyplace he wanted to be.

Verlaine took his hand in both of hers. “I know it sucks, lying to the Prasads. But I feel like they’d be happier with you as their son. If you take care of them, and love them, and see them through old age and all the rest—that’s really the only way you can pay them back.”

Like anything made up for the murder of their child. Elizabeth was the one who had murdered Jeremy, but Asa was the one who’d benefited from it. If he deceived the Prasads about this, he would keep feeling terrible about it, probably forever.

Maybe . . . maybe that was the price he had to pay for
taking over Jeremy’s body. The rent, so to speak.

He imagined the Prasads finding their son’s dead body, mourning him—no. They deserved to be spared that pain. There was nothing else he could do for them any longer, and nothing else he could do for the late Jeremy Prasad, to whom he would always owe a debt.

So he would bear this terrible knowledge alone, and be the best son he could possibly be.

“Besides,” Verlaine said, “if you went away, I’d miss you like crazy.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Asa pulled her into his arms.

“You mean—you’re staying with the Prasads?”

He nodded. “And I’m staying with you.”

She breathed out, a sigh of exhaustion and relief. For a while they simply held each other, as Asa tried to wrap his mind around the idea of . . . a future.

He’d go on from here. Graduate from Rodman High, go to college. Finally find out what it was like to grow up, grow old. He could think ahead to days and months and years to come—the luxury of it stunned him.

Best of all, he could stay with Verlaine as long as she still loved him, and he intended to do whatever it took to keep her in love with him forever.

“So it’s over,” she murmured. “You gave yourself away to avenge your sister, and now you got yourself back again.”

That was correct, as far as it went, but Asa wasn’t able to tell her so. Instead he was overcome by a flash of memory—another moment from his first mortal life, given back to him
at last. His eyes widened in wonder, and joy.

“Not just to avenge my sister,” he whispered.

“What? I thought that was why you said you’d become a demon.”

“It was. But that was only half of it.” Slowly he started to smile. “I asked for my sister to be avenged, but I also asked—I asked to be there on the day darkness fell. My sister was killed by the One Beneath’s black magic, so I wanted to see Him fall. To witness His death. He made the deal, probably because He thought He couldn’t die until the end of time.”

Verlaine grinned. “Instead, it’s today. The joke’s on Him, huh?”

For a moment, Asa could almost imagine his sister’s face again. His love for her came back to him, and he thought he’d never known a moment more beautiful than this, when he knew she’d been avenged—and Verlaine was here with him. This was as good as it got.

After as much kissing as Asa could manage, exhausted as he was, Verlaine dropped him at his house. He tried to come in quietly, but as he trudged up the stairs, Jeremy’s mother appeared on the landing. “Jeremy! There you are. You haven’t been answering our texts.”

“I lost my cell phone,” Asa said, which was technically true, if you considered burned in the fires of hell as lost. “Sorry, Mom.”

Mr. Prasad walked out of his bedroom, too, knotting the tie of his bathrobe. “Did everything go well at Mateo’s house?”

“Everything went great. It’s stopped raining, too.” Asa reached the top of the stairs. No doubt his parents could see how exhausted he was, but they’d chalk it up to his helping with sandbags and such.

Mrs. Prasad’s smile grew mischievous. “That pretty girl who came by for you—Verlaine, with the lovely silver hair—she seems to like you quite a lot.”

“I like her, too.” Asa thought of Verlaine’s lips against his. “You’ll be seeing her around.”

“Oh, will we?” Mr. Prasad shared a pleased glance with his wife.

Dad
, Asa thought.
Mom. That’s who they are to me now. That’s who they’ll always be.

Despite the guilt he still carried, he couldn’t help but be glad.

On an impulse Asa said, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Dad said. Now his parents both looked worried.

Hastily Asa said, “It’s not a big deal. It’s just—Verlaine, and my friends at school, they’ve given me a nickname. Asa.” He thought fast. “From the middle letters of Prasad. I like it, so I was wondering—would you guys call me that?”

“These phases you go through!” Mom giggled. “It’s just like when you were five and wanted me to pretend you were a dog, and you’d only eat when I put your food in a bowl on the floor.”

“Not exactly like that,” Asa protested.

“If that’s what you want,” Dad said. “Come on, let’s all get back to bed. Good night, Asa.”

“Yes, Asa. Good night.” Mom was still giggling as his parents went to their bedroom.

Asa smiled at them as he quietly said, “Good night, Mom and Dad.”

Mateo helped his dad with inventory all morning. Since the rain had stopped a few days ago, the water had subsided, and now finally trucks could get into town. Which meant La Catrina would soon be open for business again.

“Glad to see people acting like normal,” Dad said as he double-checked the manifest. “Can you believe it was just one week ago they were talking about witches?”

“Weird.” Mateo shook his head, like,
Those idiots
.

Dad folded his arms as he leaned against the storage room wall. “By the way—the sheriff told me he’s dropping the charges against you.”

His life had become so bizarre that Mateo had almost forgotten about getting arrested. “Whoa. Okay. Good to know.”

“Mass hysteria was setting in. The sheriff knows that as well as anyone else. So you got lucky this time, buddy.”

“Dad. Come on. I jumped in there because those guys were harassing Verlaine.”

With a raised hand, Dad said, “I know. I know. Let’s just hope we never have to deal with anything like that again.”

Mateo turned back to the crates of diced tomatoes to hide his smile. “I have a feeling we won’t have any problems like that for a really long time.”

“Hey, have you decided what to do with the house on
the Hill?” Dad got back to work, too. “It’s your place, so it’s your decision. But I warn you, property taxes are a bitch.”

“I’m going to put it up for sale.” The misery of all his cursed ancestors seemed to cling to the place. “Which means you don’t have to worry about paying for college anymore.”

“Oh, you’re Mr. Moneybags now. Well,
jefe
, does the place need fixing up before it goes on the market?”

Mateo thought of all the broken objects, the curtains ripped from the walls. He’d gone back there just once, with Gage, to bury what was left of Elizabeth—but by then her corpse had turned to so much ash. In the end Gage vacuumed her from the floor, and then they’d burned the bag in an alley.