Steadfast

by Claudia Gray

  Being walked to her house was as much of a favor as she was ever likely to get from him. Verlaine decided to take it.

  They went together side by side, through a town so still and shadowed that it might as well have been the middle of the night, though really it was only just after noon. Asa matched the speed of his steps to hers, and they were close enough that the unnatural heat of his skin warmed her slightly against the cold.

  Verlaine knew she should thank him. Yet he remained a demon, and Elizabeth’s servant. She would thank no one working for the Sorceress who was even now torturing one of the people she loved most in the world.

  When they reached the front step, Asa stood by her as she unlocked the door. It swung open, bathing them both in soft light; Uncle Dave must have left a lamp on. Verlaine was grateful for the illumination on this dark, weird day—until she saw Asa’s face looking down at her expectantly, and wished she hadn’t.

  Because there was something about seeing him so . . . wistful, so eager, that turned her inside out.

  “Help me put this stuff up,” she said. Was it rude, to just order him around? He didn’t seem to think so. Instead he just came inside and made himself busy beside her in the kitchen.

  Wait. Should I not have done that? Is there something about not inviting demons inside your house? Or is that just vampires? Oh, crap, I hope there aren’t vampires. I have to ask Nadia about that. Also about asking in demons, but I’ve already done it, so—okay.

  Smuckers came and twined himself around Asa’s legs, tail curling along his ankles and knees. Asa glanced over and saw Verlaine watching them. “Cats love demons,” he said.

  “Why is that not even remotely surprising?”

  He laughed. He had a beautiful laugh—nothing like Jeremy Prasad’s. Sometimes it was hard for Verlaine to remember that this was still Jeremy’s body; everything about Asa’s speech and laughter and movement was so different that he seemed to have transformed.

  Asa wasn’t all bad. He couldn’t be. He deserved a chance. But could he be given one?

  “Is there—” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Asa, is there any way to free you?”

  His hand froze, still holding a bag of rice, halfway to the shelf. “. . . Free me?”

  “From Elizabeth.”

  “Only the One Beneath could do that. I serve at His pleasure.”

  “Then, from the One Beneath.”

  Asa turned to her then, his gaze impossibly sad. “Nothing any mortal could ever do.”

  “It’s not fair, that you got—stolen into this. Kidnapped. Shanghaied.”

  “Shanghaied. An old word. I like that.” Asa shook his head. “No. It’s not fair. But it’s the only existence I’ll ever have. I’ve accepted it.”

  “Does that mean accepting everything that’s going to happen here? Everything that’s happening to my dad?”

  “Don’t you know I’d change that if I could? Most of this world—this stupid, corrupt world—who gives a damn what becomes of it? But I’d save the lot if I could, just because you live here.”

  It was too much. Verlaine stepped back from him. “You’re toying with me. Again.”

  “I’m not. I wish you could believe that. Not that it makes any difference, I suppose. But we can’t help wishing, can we?”

  Their eyes met, and once again Verlaine felt it—that unmistakable surety that she’d finally been seen, that one person in the world could really, truly look at her and see the truth. That had to be some kind of demonic magic, like the burning of his skin or the voodoo he’d worked on her besotted cat. And yet she couldn’t not revel in that unfamiliar feeling.

  “Give me one thing,” she said. “One truth, and I’ll believe you.”

  Asa blinked. “What?”

  “Tell me one thing that will help us against Elizabeth. Anything real. Give me that.”

  He stepped closer to her, until they were very nearly face-to-face. “All right,” he said. “One truth.”

  “Say it,” she whispered.

  “You know that Elizabeth’s responsible for the deaths of your parents,” he said. “For the fact that no one else can see you. But do you know why?”

  She hadn’t expected his truth to be about her. Verlaine blinked, suddenly unsure. “No. I don’t know. I’ve never known.”

  “Everyone in town loves Elizabeth, don’t they? They adore her. She’s only a dim shadow in their memories, a vague impression of the perfect girl.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s her magic at work.”

  “But what part of her magic?” Asa reached up and brushed a lock of Verlaine’s silvery hair from her cheek. “Elizabeth’s not that lovable on her own. So she steals the very ability to be loved. She steals it whenever she feels she needs more, and who do you think she steals it from? The very people who have the most. The ones whose hearts would be pure, whose joy in living could be unbounded, the ones who nearly every single person would find themselves drawn to as if by the gravitational pull of the stars. In other words, she stole it from you.”

  Verlaine shook her head. “That’s not me.”

  “It is you. Or, I should say, it ought to be. Who can feel joy when everyone else overlooks them? Whose heart can stay pure when they’re tormented by loneliness, and by jealousy for the simplest human connection? No one. Though you’ve come closer than anyone else I’ve ever heard of. There’s so much good in you, Verlaine—so much light, not even Elizabeth could take it all.”

  “Stop,” she said, stepping back from him. “Please stop.”

  “The theft is an illusion, really.” Asa’s voice was desperate now. “You still possess it, this ability to be loved, but the light shines on her instead. Like a candle that’s only visible in a mirror, do you understand?”

  Verlaine shook her head. She was dangerously close to tears. “I don’t understand any of it. You have to stop.”

  But Asa kept going. “The illusion doesn’t work on demons. I know you, Verlaine. No one else in the world does, but I do.”

  “You could be making all of this up.”

  “You know better.”

  She did. But Verlaine had learned to deal with a hard world. She had learned to hold on to what she knew was true even when faced with hatred or indifference. She could hold on to it now, too.

  “You’re a demon,” she said. “You’re helping the person who’s ruining my life. Whatever you feel doesn’t matter. Whatever I feel doesn’t matter. You’re here on this earth to do evil, and I’m here on this earth to stop you. So—that’s that.”

  Asa straightened. He looked even sadder than she felt, and Verlaine had the absurd urge to comfort him.

  Or maybe that was only the urge to put her arms around him.

  “That’s that,” Asa said, and he turned and walked out into the cold. The door shut behind him, untouched.

  21

  NADIA SAT ON THE 22 BUS, HEADING NORTH ALONG Clark Street, cell phone clutched in her hand. Texts from Verlaine kept scrolling along the screen, one after the other, each of them explaining what Elizabeth had stolen from her, and why. Although Verlaine’s misery was clear even through textspeak, Nadia couldn’t bring herself to feel anything—and for once, she didn’t think dark magic had anything to do with it.

  She was only ten blocks from her mother’s new home. Nine blocks. Eight. A powerful numbness had settled over her, which Nadia knew was an attempt at self-preservation.

  Only a few minutes remained before she faced the person who had hurt her more than any other. She couldn’t afford to have feelings right now.

  When she alighted at her stop, her boots sank down into days-old snow, already gray and crusty. Nadia had missed so many things about Chicago—Ann Sather, the “L,” real pizza. But she’d forgotten about some of the sucky parts, like snow that never melted and only became grimier. Or cold that bit through your coat and your flesh to make your bones quiver. Days like today: Nadia had managed to blot those out.

  It was amazing, the things you could
make yourself forget.

  She double-checked the address as she walked along the street. Stupid, she told herself. It wasn’t like she hadn’t memorized this from the moment she’d first seen it. But her hands had started trembling, and despite the cold, sweat made her skin sticky beneath her thick coat and socks.

  What else can Mom do to you? Nadia told herself savagely. How could this get any worse than it already is?

  The apartment building was a nice one, but there was no doorman, and Nadia was able to slip in as someone else was walking out. As the aged elevator shuddered its way upstairs, Nadia clenched her fists, spread her fingers, clenched them again. She was ready for this. She had to be.

  Finally she stood at her mother’s door. Only then did it occur to Nadia that Mom might not even be home; despite the ample settlement Dad had paid out in the divorce, she might have taken a job. Or just gone out, to shop or visit the Art Institute, something like that. Her mother had a life now, a life that didn’t include her at all. Nadia hadn’t thought of it because she couldn’t imagine it. Their lives still had that jagged hole torn in the center, the place where she had been. Maybe Mom had moved on.

  But she still knocked on the door.

  Mom answered it.

  They stood staring at each other for a long moment. Nadia didn’t feel as though she could speak. All she could think was that Mom looked awful—even haggard. Her soft brown hair, which she used to always wear braided back in complicated, impractical, romantic styles, now hung lank around her face. She’d lost weight, though she’d been thin to start with. Instead of one of her rich cowl-neck sweaters in plum or rust or gold, she wore a plain T-shirt that didn’t look very clean. Even though this was the first time she’d seen her daughter in more than half a year, her mother’s face showed no reaction save a great tiredness.

  Finally Mom said, “You shouldn’t have this address.”

  “Don’t blame Dad. I snooped through his things.”

  That should have earned her a scolding at minimum, but Mom merely shrugged. “I suppose it was inevitable. What do you want?”

  What do I want? What do I want? For you to explain yourself, you worthless, miserable, hateful—

  Somehow Nadia held back the angry words. “I want to know why a Sorceress says you traded me away.”

  “Dammit.” Mom ran one hand through her hair. “A Sorceress?”

  “Her name’s Elizabeth Pike. She happens to be in the same town we moved to—in Rhode Island—” Did Mom even know that much, or care?

  “Happens to be? There’s no ‘happens to be’ about it.” Her mother sighed and stepped into her apartment. “You might as well come in. I’m only going to explain this once, and it’s going to take awhile.”

  The apartment was nothing like Nadia would have expected. Mom loved color and texture, making things beautiful; she always spent enough on decorating and redecorating their condo that Dad sometimes got annoyed. But this space was bare and joyless. The furniture seemed to have been purchased from secondhand shops almost at random, because nothing matched, and while everything was in good condition, none of it seemed pretty or even cozy. Her walls were bare, the floor uncarpeted. Her witchcraft materials lay out in the open; apparently her mom didn’t expect anyone to come in, ever.

  It was strange not even to feel comfortable taking a seat. Nadia had been more at ease in a doctor’s office.

  For her part, Mom didn’t seem to care whether Nadia sat or stood. She made herself comfortable on the sofa, hardly even glancing at her daughter. “It’s no coincidence that you’ve been confronted with a Sorceress. The One Beneath has more influence in the mortal world than we’d like to think. Probably He . . . aligned the forces. Smoothed the way. Made it more likely your father would wind up there, dragging you along.”

  “I was brought to Captive’s Sound? On purpose?”

  “You’ve been put in the way of temptation. I expect they’re tempting you now; that’s the only thing that would bring you here.”

  “I’m not tempted,” Nadia insisted.

  “They’ve offered you power, though, haven’t they?”

  Nadia’s temper snapped. “They offered to teach me. I don’t have anyone else, not now that you abandoned our whole family. You know that. I won’t ever turn to Elizabeth—never. But it would be nice if I could actually learn everything I need to know about witchcraft. You walked off without thinking about that, didn’t you? Left me half-trained, forever. Do you have any idea how much that sucks? No, you don’t. Mom, do you even know that Cole has nightmares, all the time, and Dad—he doesn’t—”

  “Stop this,” Mom said. “No, Nadia, I didn’t know any of that. And I don’t care.”

  It felt like rage could actually make her head explode. “You don’t care?”

  Mom held up one hand. “You can scream at me pointlessly. Or you can get the answers you came for. Which do you want?”

  Nadia took a deep breath, then another, then another. “Answers.”

  “I broke one of the First Laws.”

  So, she could still be shocked. She’d never thought her mother would do something like that—even after leaving her family. Yes, Nadia had broken one of the First Laws herself when she told Mateo about witchcraft, but that was different; she’d had to tell him when he became her Steadfast. “What—why did you—”

  “I didn’t know I was breaking it, you see. But it turns out there are good reasons for the law that tells us we must never bear a child to the son of another witch.”

  “Wait. You mean Dad?”

  “Normally witches know enough of each other to warn people away from relationships they shouldn’t be in. Witches learn to recognize one another; you must have picked up on that by now.” Mom sighed. “There are female relatives and coven members around to provide warnings if a mother has died, usually. But if that mother emigrated far from her native country, if she passed away long before she could find a new circle of witches, and she had only male relatives to survive her, men who could never have been told anything about the existence of witchcraft . . .”

  Her father had told them the story. His mother had never really recovered after being uprooted from her native Iran. The political situation made it impossible for her to go back and visit, and both Nadia’s pedarjoon and Dad believed her grandmother’s sadness had robbed her of the fighting spirit she would have needed to recover from the sudden infection that had killed her.

  Covens were secretive. Several existed in a major city like Chicago, but even those were wary of one another and unsure whether more lurked in the shadows. The likelihood that any American witch would have strong ties to a coven from Tehran in the 1970s—it was beyond remote. It was impossible.

  “It’s so stupid,” Nadia said. She still stood in the center of her mother’s living room, like the unwelcome guest she was. “The secrecy about witchcraft. It cuts us off from knowing even the most basic things we should know about each other.”

  “That secrecy has kept us alive,” Mom replied.

  Nadia would have liked to argue that; at this point, secrecy was creating more problems than it solved. But she had to get her answers first. The rest could come later. “Okay, so, you broke one of the First Laws. It’s not like there are Witch Police who come and shut you down.” She paused. “Are there?”

  “No. But these things carry their own penalties. Have you never asked why that would be one of the First Laws, Nadia? Why it’s forbidden for witching bloodlines to intermarry?”

  “I always figured it was so we wouldn’t die out. So there would be more witches instead of fewer, like there would be if we intermarried all the time.”

  “A good guess, but it comes from a modern understanding of genetics. The First Laws are far older than that.”

  Something in Mom’s voice was familiar now in a way it hadn’t been before. She was in Teacher Mode, which Nadia had sometimes found frustrating, but now it encouraged her. Maybe, instead of the vacant-eyed shell who had greeted Nadia at t
he door, her mother would start acting like herself again. “Well, then, what?”

  “A child born with the blood of two witches is—special.”

  “You mean, I’m more powerful?”

  Nadia’s fragile hopes faded with the shake of her mother’s head. “No. You’re immensely powerful, Nadia. You have so much potential—but my mistake makes you better suited for a specific kind of magic.”

  “What is that?”

  “Dark magic.” Horribly Mom smiled, as if she could say that and only think of it as a bad joke. “Witches like you are the perfect servants of the One Beneath. His evil fits into your witchcraft like—like a key in a lock. No wonder He’s using this Sorceress to tempt you, Nadia. Almost no children are born of two witching bloodlines, and they haven’t been for centuries. He’s been waiting for a servant like you for a very long time.”

  She wanted to tell her mother she was wrong, and yet Nadia knew instinctively, bone-deep, that this was the truth.

  Quickly she turned from her mother and walked to the lone window in this long, thin, cramped room. She blinked against the thin, watery sunshine, stifling her tears. Elizabeth’s desperate efforts to persuade her—the way Nadia’s power had developed when she moved to Captive’s Sound, where the One Beneath was at His strongest—even Asa’s smug evasions of her questions, the ones that would have led her to understand this: All of it added up.

  Nadia had been made to do evil. To be evil.

  Did that mean she was doomed to follow in Elizabeth’s footsteps, no matter what? No. Nadia refused to believe that her fate was already determined, out of her hands.

  “Were you ever going to tell me about this?” She kept her voice from shaking somehow. “Or is that one more thing you decided I didn’t need to know?”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  Nadia turned to glance at her mother over her shoulder. “You had to abandon us? You had to leave Dad, never even see me and Cole again?”

  “I had to keep you safe.” Mom’s expression had become—lost, somehow. Her eyes stared past Nadia, through her, trying to see something that wasn’t there any longer. “That was the most important thing to me then. I know that much.”