Steadfast

by Claudia Gray

  “. . . What do you mean?”

  “The One Beneath doesn’t always give His servants a choice.”

  A chill swept over Nadia as she remembered Asa. Once upon a time, he’d been human, like her; he’d been turned into a demon against his will, so that he might be the One Beneath’s slave. She’d despised him for that, knowing that little good remained in demons after their transformation . . . but that had been before she’d realized the exact same thing could happen to her.

  Mom kept talking. “I knew He’d find a way to tempt you one day. But I could keep Him from controlling you. From forcing you to serve Him.”

  “Mom? What did you do?”

  “I cast the only spell that could protect you. A spell of sacrifice.”

  Her mother had tried to protect her? The same one who had left without a backward glance? Nadia didn’t want to believe it. Believing that could even be possible—it would rip off the bandages on her wounds, leave her bleeding and in agony about Mom’s abandonment all over again. She whispered, “I don’t know that spell.”

  “It’s very advanced magic. Rare. The sort of thing a witch hopes never to cast once in her lifetime. Sacrifices have their own power, and only become stronger when mixed with magic. A spell of sacrifice will protect someone from being enslaved by the One Beneath, always and forever. But in order to cast it, a witch must give up the most important thing in her life.”

  Nadia whispered, “You mean . . . us?”

  “I mean my love for you, for all of you. My very ability to love. That was the only sacrifice powerful enough to keep you safe. All the love I’d ever felt or could ever feel—I tore it out of my heart and laid it down.”

  Memories of those last few weeks they’d lived together as a family came flooding back. Mom had stopped smiling. Stopped laughing. She’d forgotten to sing bedtime songs to Cole, to come shopping with Nadia for a prom dress, even to kiss Dad hello when he came in through the door. Nadia had always known that was the beginning of the end—the moment when Mom’s love ran out. She had never imagined that Mom had actually given that love away.

  For her.

  “I thought—afterward—I’d be able to go on like I had before,” Mom said, forehead furrowed in concentration. “I’d just do everything I used to do, and none of you would ever have to know that my heart wasn’t in it any longer. But you did know, all of you. You knew it right away.”

  “Not this—”

  “No, not about the spell, but you knew I didn’t love you. The way you all looked at me with those wounded eyes—I couldn’t stand it. And you have no idea how irritating it is to live with people you don’t love in the slightest. Like a college roommate, but worse.” Mom laughed at her little joke; Nadia didn’t.

  Mom didn’t even seem to realize that would hurt.

  “That’s why you left?” Nadia managed to say.

  “More or less. I’d been emptied out. I was of no more use to you, and I thought it would at least be easier to live somewhere else.” Her mother shrugged, like it was no big deal. “I didn’t realize all the repercussions then.”

  “You mean, how it would affect Cole.” Her little brother was the easiest one to talk about, the one most obviously betrayed.

  Mom gave her a look, like she didn’t know what Nadia was talking about. “How it would affect me,” she said. “I don’t love anymore. Not anybody, not anything. Once, I know, I used to take pleasure in my appearance, in my home. Now I don’t even know what that would mean. And I used to have favorite foods, too. These days I only remember to eat when I get extremely hungry, and even then—what’s the point?” Mom shook her head. “Sometimes I try to recall what it was like to feel love. To have that kind of joy in other people, in food or friends, or even in just existing. But I can’t even remember it clearly. All I know is that it was the only thing that made life worth living.”

  Their eyes met. Nadia knew she must look stricken; Mom only looked annoyed. She couldn’t even understand what this moment meant to her daughter. Not even that was left.

  Finally her mother said, “I gave all that up forever to keep you safe, and make sure your choices were your own. So I suppose I must have loved you very much.”

  Nadia nodded. By now her vision wavered with unshed tears, and Mom was just a blur, nothing more.

  “I can’t help you with your Sorceress.” Mom rose from the couch, and Nadia realized that she was about to be asked to leave. “And I’ve done as much as I can do to shield you from the One Beneath. He could still trick or coerce you into serving Him; all I’ve done is keep Him from enslaving you. Now that He sees what you are, He won’t stop until you’re His.”

  “There has to be something I can do,” Nadia insisted.

  “If you want my advice? Don’t go back.”

  “What? You mean, run away? Just leave my family?” How could she ever think Nadia would do that? Then again—Mom had left them, and she no longer even possessed the part of her soul that would have told her why that mattered.

  “They’ll manage. I have to say, your father’s stronger than I thought.” Mom stepped closer, and for the first time all afternoon, Nadia felt some flicker of intensity from her. If she couldn’t feel love, she could still feel fear. “Nothing else will save you. If you return, the One Beneath will claim you. No matter how hard you fight, no matter what magic you try to perform.”

  Nadia swallowed hard. “You can’t know that.”

  “Believe me or don’t,” her mother said, opening the door so Nadia could leave for good. “But mark my words. It can’t end any other way.”

  22

  “HOLD OUT YOUR ARM,” ELIZABETH SAID.

  Asa did it without hesitation. Though she could see in his eyes the foreknowledge of pain, he still obeyed instantly. That was what it meant to be the slave of the One Beneath.

  The demon needed reminding of that. Besides, the next step required blood.

  They stood together on the small scrap of island that surrounded the old lighthouse. Sun shone down brightly, making the day feel more like early autumn rather than November’s end. Elizabeth pushed up the sleeve of Asa’s black coat, exposing his tawny skin.

  In most ways, her body had once again become like that of any other human being, but a few aspects of her ancient, once-immortal power remained. For instance, her fingernails remained far harder than they should have been, less like any aspect of the flesh and more like steel.

  So Elizabeth was able to use her thumbnail to slice into Asa’s flesh.

  He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as she drew her nail up the length of his inner arm, splitting his skin along the middle, just above the veins. Blood welled from the wound, dripping down either side of his arm to fall on the shell-strewn ground beneath their feet. Asa pressed his lips together and adjusted his stance; Elizabeth knew he was bracing himself for what was to come.

  She dragged her nail back along the cut to deepen it, then took both hands and pulled the flesh apart. Despite the heavier bleeding, she could now make out the very structure of the arm: muscle, nerves, veins, and arteries quivering. No need to delve all the way to bone.

  Only a small cry escaped Asa, and that he stifled as best he could. Elizabeth wondered whether she should punish him for it regardless.

  The spell was punishment enough, she decided. Quickly she brought to mind the ingredients for the summoning:

  A call to war.

  A fire at night.

  A cry of purest pain.

  “Hold,” she murmured. Asa had begun to waver on his feet.

  “Quickly,” he said, voice shaking. “I might black out.”

  A rider on a horse, shouting about Fort Sumter, and stupid, ignorant boys dashing out of their houses to fight in a war that would shred their arms and legs and souls, take their lives before they really knew what living was.

  The church blaze she’d created to consume that upstart coven, flames licking at the steeple, the screams of women whose attempt to defy her had been
their final mistake.

  Lauren Cabot, trembling at the shore before setting out to die, thinking of the little boy she left behind and unable to keep herself from screaming in misery.

  Power lanced through Elizabeth, a shock as great as being struck by lightning. She felt the crackle of it all throughout her body and deep into the earth, high into the sky. There was no illumination, no outward sign of its strength, but she knew it was enough.

  She had laid the foundation. Now the bridge was coming into being. Soon the One Beneath would travel to the very brink of the mortal world.

  Asa stumbled to one side. “We have to stop.”

  “Beg.”

  “Please,” he whispered. With his wound held open, blood pulsing from him with every heartbeat, his demonic pride could hold no sway. “Please stop. My mistress, I only wish to obey. Let it end.”

  “For now.”

  Elizabeth released his arm. Asa fell to his knees, clutching at the wound. She thought idly of infection, of the possibility of losing him to illness, but mortal concerns were distant to her, especially now that the end was so very near.

  Mateo felt the change even before he saw it. The sensation was like static electricity crackling along his skin, but only on one side of his body. He turned into it and felt it grow stronger.

  “Looks like our last night for a while,” his father was saying as he surveyed the nearly empty freezer. “Not that anybody’s coming in these days.”

  La Catrina had turned as ghostly as the rest of Captive’s Sound. Fearing infection by the mysterious “disease” that had struck down so many, most people stayed home as often as they could. Rumor had it school would be canceled after Thanksgiving.

  Right now, though, Mateo’s main concern was that strange, flickering energy he felt—the one he knew wouldn’t be evident to anyone who wasn’t a Steadfast. The magical forces at work had shifted yet again.

  If only he could ask Nadia . . . but he couldn’t, and he had to begin to rely on his own new powers instead of always leaning on hers. Mateo squared his shoulders, ready to take control. “Dad, I need to head out for a little while. Is that okay? If anyone comes in, Melanie can cover.”

  “Big if,” his father said, never looking away from the empty stores. “Go ahead. Take the whole night off. No point in both of us wasting the evening.”

  Mateo nodded and hurried out of the kitchen, taking off his black apron as he went. Just as he went out the front door, he nearly ran into someone coming in—Verlaine.

  “Hey.” She managed a smile for him, but it was clearly a struggle for her. “Listen, I’m kind of driving myself crazy at the house, and right now I don’t think I can deal with the hospital, so I was wondering if I could just hang—”

  “Drive me to the ocean.”

  Verlaine blinked. “Huh?”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her out with him. “Something’s going on. I don’t know what, but—it’s by the beach. That direction. I can tell. When we get closer, I can see it.”

  “Oh, yeah, Nadia has your motorcycle.” Verlaine’s steps quickened to match his. “I was able to gas up the car today. So let’s go.”

  For the first part of the drive, Mateo wasn’t able to see anything out of the ordinary—at least, for a Steadfast. The same strange magical flickerings that marked the town were still there, though it seemed to him they burned more feverishly than before.

  Really, if anything was unusual, it was Verlaine herself. She was back in vintage mode with her leopard-print coat and a white silk scarf tied around her hair, but the attempt at glam didn’t disguise how exhausted she looked. Yet something had energized her, too. It reminded him of the way he felt when he was cramming for exams and drank coffee all night long. “You okay?” he said.

  “I’m questioning the nature of love. I don’t know whether I’m strong enough to do all the things I have to do. Also I’m wondering whether it’s worth breaking into one of the houses on the Hill to get something to eat that’s not canned beets. How are you?”

  Mateo thought about that for a moment. “Uh, the same, actually.”

  They rounded a hill that brought them within sight of the sea, and then he couldn’t think about anything else any longer, because something was taking shape beneath the water. Something vast, immeasurable, and awful.

  “Can you see that?” he said, pointing at the darkness beneath the waves. It looked so substantial that he wondered whether it could be made only of magic.

  “The lighthouse? The water? What?”

  “Never mind. It’s something only a Steadfast can see: this weird, huge shape under the water,” Mateo said. “But trust me. It’s not good.”

  “Crap crap crap crap,” Verlaine muttered, flooring it.

  They pulled up alongside the beach, not that far from Mateo’s house. Together they dashed onto the sand, as if getting any closer would help Mateo understand what was going on. It was low tide, and they were well out into flat, drying sand before he stopped running.

  Verlaine came to a stop beside him. “Tell me what you see,” she said. “Describe it.”

  “It’s like—like video you see on TV of whales. You know, this huge, huge shadow in all the blue. But this isn’t alive. It’s solid; I’m sure of that. But it’s also like a hole. A hole so deep there’s no bottom.”

  “We’ll just pretend that made sense,” Verlaine said. The wind whipped the edges of her white scarf, which was brilliant in the deepening night. “Magic. It’s weird. Okay. Where is this thing?”

  “Underneath the sound. Almost the entire sound.” The strange glimmering of energy he could see under the surface illuminated the outline of this shape. It came very close to shore, and went very far out to sea.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb here,” Verlaine said. “Are we talking about the bridge the One Beneath crosses to get into our world?”

  “No idea. But yeah, that would be my first guess.” Nadia, I need you. When didn’t he need her? Right now, though, Mateo felt it so sharply it was an almost physical pain.

  Then a woman’s voice came from farther down the shore: “Steadfast.”

  He turned to see Elizabeth striding toward him. She looked even more ragged than before; it was as though she didn’t remember how to brush her hair, or maybe even bathe. Her gray cloak whipped in the cold wind. Behind her was Asa, who followed haltingly, as if it was difficult for him to walk. His arm was wrapped in something, and clutched to his chest.

  “Are you here to witness my handiwork?” Elizabeth said. Her lovely face betrayed no hint of the evil that lurked within. Her eyes sparkled with the deepest happiness.

  “Go away.” Mateo didn’t feel like he had anything else to say to Elizabeth, now or ever.

  Elizabeth went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “I should have known you were near. Your strength makes me more powerful.”

  He hated this—the fact that being a Steadfast meant he gave more power to any witch he came near. Though he was Nadia’s Steadfast, bound to her and able to give her more energy than he would anyone else, Mateo couldn’t prevent Elizabeth from feeding off it, too, like a leech. “I’d stop it if I could.”

  “There is one way,” she said. “You could die.”

  Ignore her, he told himself, and he might have been able to, except that Verlaine stepped past him, heading toward Asa. “Are you okay?” she said, then turned to Elizabeth. “What did you do to him?”

  Asa shook his head, and he smiled, though it was only a shadow of his normal smirk. “Verlaine, don’t.”

  Verlaine didn’t listen. She shouted at Elizabeth as though she was outraged. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing that is not my right,” Elizabeth replied. The lilt in her voice made him wonder if she was trying not to laugh.

  She’d tortured Asa. Mateo understood that now. As little as he liked the demon, he hated the idea of torturing anyone or anything. “Every time I think I’ve learned just how disgusting you really are, I realize I haven’t even see
n the half of it.”

  Elizabeth didn’t reply. For a few moments she gazed at Verlaine, who stood there with her fists clenched at her sides in impotent fury. “You’re irrelevant. You—” She turned to Mateo, expression hardening. “It’s been useful having a Steadfast around. But as you’re sworn to Nadia, and she refuses to swear herself to me, you’re simply a tool she can use to oppose my plans. And I think she’s had use of you nearly long enough.”

  Mateo froze as he realized that, for Elizabeth, killing him would be no more than swatting an irritating fly. He had no magic to use against her, nothing, and in that split second he decided just to rush her—at least hurt her before she took him out.

  And the night sky lit up all around them.

  Verlaine screamed, and Mateo jumped, but instantly he realized Asa was as startled as they were, and even Elizabeth looked surprised. The brilliance coalesced into a sphere that surrounded him and Verlaine both. He’d seen this before, but where?

  This was what he’d seen Halloween night, in the fire that had nearly killed him. This sphere—this protective spell that shielded them completely—that was how he’d been rescued by Nadia.

  He turned, knowing where he would see her even before he heard her voice.

  Nadia walked closer to them, her features becoming clearer as she stepped closer to the light. Her dark eyes focused intently on Elizabeth. “Mateo’s mine,” she said. “Don’t ever forget it.”

  “You’re back.” Mateo couldn’t stop grinning. “You’re back and—you’re you.”

  Nadia probably thought he was talking nonsense. But he knew that whatever dark magic Nadia had learned about on her trip hadn’t changed her; if anything, it had only made her stronger.

  “We should talk, you and I.” Elizabeth’s voice sounded strange. If she weren’t so damn powerful, if she hadn’t been holding every one of the cards, Mateo would have sworn she sounded . . . desperate.