Sorceress (4 page)

As the rain pattered comfortingly against her bedroom window, Verlaine sat on the floor, her cat curled next to her, and flipped through Goodwife Hale’s Book of Shadows. She’d been trying to outline the thing—even opened a file for it in Scrivener—but had given this up as futile about half an hour before. Now she was just scanning each page, looking for any mention of the word
demon
.

And there were lots.

Lists of demons filled the pages, too many for Verlaine to have any reasonable guess as to which one of these (if any) Asa might be. (At least ten of the names started with the letters
A-S
. Didn’t narrow it down lots.) These demons were blamed for any number of weird events: blights on crops (whatever a blight was), sick livestock, sudden turns in the weather, that kind of thing. Verlaine would have written this off as the superstition of ye olden days if she hadn’t personally known a demon—though Asa didn’t seem interested in blighting anything.

Still, there was no doubting that demons played a role in black magic, and Goodwife Hale had been very, very
interested in how to stop them.

“
The demon’s name has more power in hell than on earth, but even here it can be used against him
,” Verlaine read in a whisper, leaning forward as she traced the scrawled handwriting. Time had faded the ink to sepia brown, and deeply yellowed the page, but she could make it out. “
Mark him in the Word of God. Mark him in the words of the Craft. And Mark him in that which he himself possesses. Pierce these and the demon will perish, returning to hell forevermore.
”

Mark him? Pierce these? The demon’s name?

“What is any of that supposed to mean?” she asked her cat. Smuckers blinked up at her, then stuck one leg in the air and began to lick his privates. Verlaine sighed. “Helpful
and
classy. Way to go, Smuckers.”

“Honey?” Uncle Dave called. “There’s a roll of slice-and-bake cookies in the fridge calling your name.”

Verlaine loved cookies as much as the next right-thinking human being, but . . . “I’ve got homework!” This ought to count as an assignment, right? Analyzing “historical documents”? Maybe she could get extra credit.

“I hear that, but you’re a seventeen-year-old girl, so if you bake cookies on a weeknight, you’re just being a normal kid. If I bake the cookies, as a supposed adult person, then I’m a pathetic slob with no self-control.”

She laughed despite herself. “Okay, hang on, I’m coming.” Cookie emergencies couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t like she could transcribe the entire Book of Shadows tonight anyway.

But quickly Verlaine flipped open Mrs. Walsh’s spell book, because she could have sworn she’d seen something about “the demon’s true name” in there when she’d scanned it the first time.
Where is it, where is it . . .

There.

With his name and with this you will conquer him.
The words were written beneath a wickedly edged drawing of an ornate dagger. There was no explanation of what the dagger did, but—come on, it was a dagger. Pretty obvious what that was for.

I couldn’t hurt Asa in any case,
she thought. The relief that settled over her went deeper than she’d known it would be.
That is definitely a very specific kind of dagger. Not just some knife at your local Walmart. So Asa’s safe, because I don’t have a dagger like that or any idea how to find one . . .

Which was when she realized she’d seen a dagger exactly like that. It was the knife Mateo had taken from his grandmother’s house, the one with an intricate design set into the hilt.

Just like in this drawing. Exactly like it.

The tool to kill Asa was at hand, and it had been all along.

“The same knife?” Nadia said the next day in gym class, as they waited for their turn on the leg-press machine. “Are you sure?”

Verlaine gave her a look and breathed out sharply, blowing aside a lock of her silver-gray hair that had escaped from its PE bun. “What, based on my expert knowledge of
demon-killing magical weapons? I don’t have any idea if it’s the same one. But—it looked like it to me. Do you still have the knife?”

Nadia nodded. Mateo had promised to return it to his grandmother eventually, but he hadn’t yet been able to face returning to her grand house on the Hill, or her unending disapproval. “It’s in the attic.”

Their eyes met, and then neither of them knew what to say.

“Laughton!” Coach Pang called. “You’re up!”

It took Verlaine a moment to follow the coach’s instructions. Nadia hugged her arms around herself as she thought about what they were doing. It was one thing to research ways to kill a demon—another to take hold of a real, literal knife and think about murdering Asa.

Verlaine seemed to feel it even more.

And when did the dagger become consecrated to white magic? A long time ago, Nadia suspected—witches hadn’t used the term white magic much in the past couple hundred years. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so surprised that at least one of Mateo’s cursed ancestors had figured out what was happening and at least tried to defeat the supernatural and break the curse.

After Verlaine got done, Nadia took her own turn on the weight machine—hamstrings burning as she pushed through the reps—then joined Verlaine in the line for the bench press. Nadia muttered, “I’m not sure you’re just supposed to stab Asa with it.”

That won her a raised eyebrow. “I’m supposed to use a
dagger to kill a demon, but not to stab him?”

“I said, not
just
to stab him. You said—let me get this straight—that the Book of Shadows said to mark his name three times and pierce him.”

“Um, pierce means stab.”

Nadia shook her head. “I think it means to pierce his name first. The book said the name had power, right?”

“How am I supposed to pierce the name?”

Ever since Verlaine had texted her the info late last night, Nadia had been thinking about this, and finally she thought she had it. “Remember, in witchcraft, books are powerful. The written word matters. I think you’re supposed to write his name three times, then pierce the three papers with the dagger. Once it’s been anointed with whatever the hell Elizabeth was talking about. Then the knife is ready.”

Verlaine’s eyes widened. “Marking means writing? And on the Word of God—that means in a Bible, right? Or a Torah, or a Koran, or any other religious text, because holy is holy, right?”

“Probably.” The gears were turning now, showing Nadia more and more. “The ‘words of the Craft’ obviously means writing his name in a Book of Shadows. That which he himself possesses—probably that’s anything belonging to him here. A notebook, even.”

“Not hard to get.” Verlaine looked so sad.

“We still don’t know what ‘the blood of the sea’ is—”

“Seawater.” When Nadia stared, Verlaine just shrugged. “It’s obvious.”

“It’s too bad you’re not from a witching bloodline. You’d have been great at the Craft.”

For the first time that day, Verlaine smiled.

Now it was bench press time. Nadia gritted her teeth as she managed to pump the bar upward. Usually she hated gym class, but right now, the distraction was welcome. It felt good to only exist in her body for a few moments, where she couldn’t worry about anything but how freakin’ heavy this was.

When they moved on toward the free weights, Verlaine muttered, “I can’t believe we’re supposed to worry about building muscle tone while we’re fighting the apocalypse.”

“Don’t get distracted. If we head to my place after school, do you think you could remember the drawing well enough to tell for sure if the Cabot family dagger is the right one?”

Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Verlaine didn’t quite meet Nadia’s eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe I should go get that Book of Shadows from my house. It would be okay as long as I’m the only one who touches it. But then, maybe it shouldn’t get wet?” The heavy rain hadn’t stopped, not once.

Nadia said, “I know you don’t want to think about—hurting Asa.”

“Killing.” Verlaine finally looked straight at her. “Let’s skip the euphemisms. We’re talking about killing him.”

“Excuse me?” Kendall Bender glanced back at them. She was Rodman High’s one-girl gossip amplification system; while she wasn’t actually all that bad, Nadia thought,
there was no such thing as keeping a secret anywhere in her vicinity.

So she improvised quickly. “We’re talking about a—role-playing game. Online. Multiplayer.”

“With orcs.” Verlaine caught on right away. “Tons of orcs. Plus dwarves and elves and fighting unicorns.”

Kendall rolled her eyes as she turned from them. “You guys are such geeks.”

Although Verlaine grinned, like,
That was close
, Nadia knew they needed to stick to the subject. “You realize there’s no reason for you to go after Asa, right? Not yet, anyway.” In the final battles to come, there was no telling what any of them might be called to do. “If Asa gets killed, Elizabeth might summon another demon to take his place, and that one might be even worse. So I don’t know why you’re so fixated on taking Asa out right now.”

“I have to be ready. That’s all.”

That couldn’t be all.

Nadia had taken comfort from Verlaine’s determination to kill Asa, assuming that meant she wasn’t too attached. But what if it was the exact opposite?

They aren’t—they can’t be—

“Uh, Coach Pang?” Kendall piped up. “Is it, you know, flooding in here?”

People giggled and skittered to the far side of the room as water began pooling in one corner of the weight room. Coach Pang looked more annoyed than anything else. “I told them building in the basement was—never mind. Come on,
guys, get some towels. Let’s keep this contained if we can.”

Before Nadia could say a word, Verlaine hurried for her locker.
Probably to get some pictures of the “news story” for the
Lightning Rod, Nadia thought. Most of her classmates ran for towels. Nadia remained where she was, watching the gray puddle swell on the concrete floor, its curved outlines slowly, inexorably expanding outward.

It was just a puddle, now. But later . . .

Nadia’s eyes widened as she realized the rain Elizabeth had called down wasn’t just some random trick, or cover for something else she meant to do. The rain was the whole point.

No, not the rain
, Nadia thought.
The flood.

USUALLY MATEO LIKED THE OCCASIONAL RAINY NIGHT
, because it meant fewer customers to deal with. (Of course, that meant fewer tips, not to mention lower profit for Dad, which was why he only liked them occasionally.) Also it gave him a chance at free salsa and chips, and tonight he got to share them.

“People are crazy,” Gage said as they hung out in the corner booth, just beneath the faux–Frida Kahlo mural on the wall. “I say, anybody who lets a little falling water keep them from Mexican food? They don’t
deserve
Mexican food.”

“Agreed.” Mateo glanced out the nearest window at the still-heavy rains. Honestly, he could see why people wouldn’t want to go out in this.

Between crunching chips, Gage added, like it was no big deal, “Might run by and see Elizabeth after this. That’s another thing this rain’s not going to keep me away from.”

“Okay.” Had that come out calmly enough?

Apparently not. Gage leaned over the table, his forehead furrowed. “Are you sure you’re all right with this?”

Mateo was definitely not all right with this, but he couldn’t tell Gage the reasons why. “I’m not jealous. I’m not interested in Elizabeth that way. Bring me a Bible; I’ll swear on it.”

“We don’t have to go dragging Bibles into this. But I know I violated the Bro Code pretty seriously here.”

Why can’t we tell him the truth?
Mateo pushed the frustration aside. “We’re cool. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Surely there was some way to warn Gage about Elizabeth without either revealing witchcraft or sounding jealous—but before Mateo could think of one, he realized table eight was finally ready to pay their ticket and go home. “Be right back.”

Then it was all
how was everything, glad you enjoyed it, see you back at La Catrina soon
—but while Mateo was running the credit card through, he saw Gage suddenly stand up from his booth. His movements were jerky, and too fast, as he started for the door.

For one moment Mateo thought Gage still felt awkward about their conversation, but no, that wasn’t it. The glazed look in Gage’s eyes, the way his body didn’t even seem to be wholly under his own control: That could only be Elizabeth’s work.

She had taken Gage under her thrall again.

The last time this had happened, Gage had tried to kill Mateo. Apparently this time Gage had been programmed with another agenda, but what?

Mateo hurriedly finished up with table eight, then went to his father. “Can I leave?”

“You’ve got another hour and a half on your shift.”

“Dad, nobody’s coming in. Nobody. I mean, look at the weather out there. And if anybody did come in, which they won’t, Melanie could handle it.”

“Fine, fine,” Dad said, giving Mateo a look. “But you give me back an hour and a half this weekend, all right? We need to do inventory.”

So much for his Saturday morning, but a deal was a deal. “Got it.”

Mateo threw on his waterproof gear and went outside; Gage was still visible, barely, a dark shape moving farther down Captive Sound’s main street. He had no umbrella, no raincoat, not even boots; Gage trudged through the downpour and the puddles, oblivious. Elizabeth’s thrall outweighed anything else.

Although he hated to leave his motorcycle behind, Mateo decided to follow Gage on foot. As he ran along the sidewalk, trying to catch up, he noticed how fat the gutters were with rain; already the puddles rippled over the sidewalks in some areas. A few of the lower-lying roads would wash out by morning if the rain didn’t stop . . . and if Nadia’s suspicions were correct, the rain wouldn’t stop anytime soon.

What does Elizabeth have to gain from this?
Mateo wondered. By now he knew very well that Elizabeth did nothing that wouldn’t benefit her, or at least the One Beneath. But he couldn’t see how rain did anything except make everybody wet.

Finally he got within a dozen feet of Gage, and Mateo stayed back, watchful and cautious. Probably the thrall wouldn’t let Gage notice Mateo any more than he noticed the rainfall, but Mateo was in no hurry for a repeat of their last brutal fight. Gage was a big guy, and only luck had saved Mateo before.

Luck and something else
, he thought. When he and Gage had struggled, something had flashed through Mateo—something related to magic, though he didn’t know how. That was what had snapped Gage out of the thrall, turning him back into himself once more. What was that? Mateo still didn’t know. He kept meaning to ask Nadia, but they’d had bigger things to deal with. Like Armageddon.

Gage suddenly turned away from the main street, up toward one of the town’s smaller hills. Through the gloom, Mateo could just make out a broad, cast-iron gate in the distance, and he shivered.

They were walking directly toward the cemetery.

He pulled the hood of his waterproof jacket more firmly around him and followed Gage up the slope, along the winding path that led into the graveyard. Although the gate indicated that, once upon a time, the town had tried to keep visitors out except at certain hours, the fence around the
perimeter had fallen into disrepair decades ago. It existed now mostly as a trellis for ivy, all of which was brown and dead now in wintertime; the small shriveled leaves shook from the raindrops, making whispery sounds Mateo hoped would cover his footsteps.

Not that Gage seemed to be listening, or paying any attention to his surroundings at all. He weaved through a gap in the ivy, then kept on straight toward the graves. Mateo trailed several steps behind him.

Should I try to wake him up? They say if you wake up a sleepwalker they’ll die—which is probably fake, but I don’t know—and I don’t know if this is anything like sleepwalking.
Was there anything constructive he could do? Finally Mateo took his cell phone and started recording Gage; whatever this was, he wanted Nadia’s take on it.

Gage’s halting steps ceased when he found what he’d apparently been looking for—a tombstone, one of the older ones, small and thin, curved at the top, tilting to one side. Mateo crouched down low behind the newer tombstone of a
Tiffani Montgomery
and kept recording, even as Gage dropped to his knees and started . . . digging in the mud?

Even the mud against Mateo’s knees was sharply cold—just above freezing—so he could only imagine how cold Gage’s hands must be. But Elizabeth had put Gage in a state where he couldn’t feel it even if he got frostbite. Gage dug deeper and deeper, and Mateo’s stomach turned as he realized the goal was the dead body beneath.

Not a dead body. Gravestones like that—they’re usually
at least two hundred years old. Bodies rot long before that. There won’t be anything left but—

Gage stood up, clenching slivers of white in his hands.

Mateo swallowed hard. Nothing left but bone.

His errand not yet complete, Gage began to walk toward Elizabeth’s house. No doubt, tomorrow, Gage would think he’d had another hot date with the girl of his dreams. He wouldn’t have any idea what he’d done, or what had been done to him.

Mateo stopped filming and watched Gage go; if he couldn’t bring Gage out of his enthralled state, then there was no point in following him farther. Besides, he wanted to investigate the old grave. Once Gage was out of sight, Mateo walked to the tombstone and used the flashlight app on his phone to shine a light on the aged granite. The carved letters had been worn down by wind and rain over the years until they were almost nothing but shadows on dark stone. But as Mateo leaned close, he was able to make out the name:

Eleanor Anne Cabot
.

One of Mateo’s ancestors—and another bearer of the Cabot Curse, to judge by the brief lifespan noted there. He shuddered as it sank in: Elizabeth was collecting his family’s bones.

Mateo couldn’t help wondering whether she wanted his, too.

That night, Mateo dreamed of Nadia.

She stood wearing a cloak of flame; her skin seemed as brilliant
and soft as molten gold. Nadia’s dark eyes blazed as she came close to him, slid her warm arms around his body. His hands clasped her beneath her cloak, and felt only bare skin.

“No one will stop us now,” Nadia whispered. She kept kissing him—his lips, his throat, the exposed skin at the V of his T-shirt. Mateo shuddered as she pressed her body against his. Laughing softly, she continued, “No one will ever stop me again.”

Mateo wove his fingers through her thick hair. It seemed to be floating around her, as though they were underwater, but he knew they weren’t. Where were they? Alone together in some vast darkness where there was no up, no down—nothing else but the two of them together.

Why did she look so strange to him, and yet so familiar? Nadia smiled, even more radiant in the gold and the flame—and Mateo remembered.

This is what Elizabeth looked like the first time I saw her as a Steadfast. This is what a Sorceress looks like. What evil looks like.

Nadia’s grin only widened. “Wait until you see what I do to anyone who tries to take you from me.”

Then she kissed his mouth, and Mateo knew she was evil, that she was going to consume him alive, and still he didn’t want to pull away.

When he awoke—in his own bed for a change—Mateo couldn’t stop shaking. He didn’t think that had been a vision, just a plain old nightmare.

He hoped so, anyway. If he were wrong, then Nadia was walking down the same path Elizabeth had, and she
wouldn’t stop until she was as cruel and twisted as Elizabeth had ever been.

And still, still, he wanted her.

Vintage clothing stores never carried raincoats. And retro umbrellas? Forget it. As long as the rains kept coming, Verlaine would be stuck hiding her red floral ’40s swing dress under a raincoat and galoshes that made her look like the Gorton’s Fisherman.

They held a meeting of Team Not Evil at lunchtime, even though the cafeteria was overstuffed and loud. With the outdoor picnic tables useless in the rain, everyone had no choice but to cram themselves in.
Cliques collide with cliques
, Verlaine thought, providing color commentary in her head.
Will the jocks survive their proximity to the mathletes? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, only our valiant heroes are trying to save the lives of mathletes and jocks alike.

What made it even weirder was that the school counselor had come to sit with them.

“Lots of spells require bones,” Faye Walsh said. “Not just black magic, either.”

Mateo made a face. “You mean, good witches dig up people’s bones?”

“It’s not like that,” Nadia explained. “Well. It’s like that, but usually it’s one of your own ancestors; in every spell I learned, you looked for the bones of another witch, someone in your own bloodline. It was a way of drawing on your family’s strength. Any witch would be fine with her
descendants doing that. I mean, they’re just bones.”

“They’re ‘just bones’ until it’s your own family,” Mateo insisted. “Anyway, the spells you’re talking about—that’s not what Elizabeth is doing.”

Nadia shook her head. “No, but I have no idea what it is.”

Oh, come on.
Verlaine just managed to hide her impatience. “I thought the whole point of you going to work with Elizabeth was so you could find out what she was up to.”

This won her a sharp look. “Actually, the point of my working with Elizabeth was saving everyone in the hospital.”

Which was totally true, and one of the lives Nadia had saved was Uncle Gary’s. Sheepishly, Verlaine said, “Sorry. It’s just—I didn’t think Elizabeth would keep hiding things from you even after you signed on to destroy the world.”

“The world won’t be destroyed,” Nadia said, “just completely overrun with demons under the rule of the lord of hell.”

Verlaine rolled her eyes. “Same difference. Anyway, why would Elizabeth still be hiding things from you? I mean, yeah, really you’re on Team Not Evil, but Elizabeth doesn’t know that—does she?”

Nadia tugged at the end of her ponytail. “Elizabeth’s not stupid. She understands I’m only working with her because I have to. I think she trusts me only because there are a lot of ways I can’t defy her—not while I’m sworn to the One Beneath.”

“Then that means—” Mateo’s eyes widened. “That means
anything she’s hiding from you is something you have the power to prevent. Or work against, defeat, whatever. If you were powerless to prevent whatever it is she’s doing with my ancestor’s bones, she wouldn’t bother hiding it at all.”

“Maybe,” Nadia said, brightening.

“So, all you have to do is get the info from Elizabeth,” Faye said. Verlaine’s eyes widened in surprise, because Ms. Walsh was talking like that would be so easy, instead of potentially fatal.

Nadia went very still. Despite the roar in the cafeteria, Verlaine almost could have believed everything around them became hushed. “It’s not as easy as asking Elizabeth. Her answers aren’t—straightforward. She teaches by example.” Slowly Nadia added, “But—maybe I could try her Book of Shadows.”

Mateo and Verlaine shared a look as Faye said, “Didn’t her Book of Shadows try to kill you?”

“Not kill,” Nadia said. “It tried to trap me, with cobwebs and all the—all the spiders.” A tremor passed through Nadia, and Verlaine didn’t blame her. She had refused to shower in her own bathroom for two weeks after she’d seen a cockroach in her tub; if she’d been Nadia, literally cocooned in webs spun by hundreds of spiders, she probably would have had to go into therapy afterward. “Elizabeth would’ve killed me after she found me there.”

“That’s not reassuring.” Mateo took Nadia’s hand. “I told you about Gage just to find out what was going on. That’s all. I don’t want you to do anything dangerous on my account.”

Nadia shook her head, her dangly earrings swinging. “All of this is dangerous. We have to do what we have to do. That’s all.”

“Wait, okay?” Mateo pleaded. “Let me watch Gage a while longer. Maybe it was a coincidence that it was one of my ancestors. Maybe she just needed bones.”

Nadia gave him a look. “Mateo. Come on.”

Mateo gripped Nadia’s hand tighter, and his eyes were wide. To Verlaine, he looked less concerned, more . . . desperate. “Maybe you shouldn’t have Elizabeth’s book.”