The Devil Makes Three

by Tori Bovalino

  So the writing was gone. This he could deal with.

  He had a magnifying glass somewhere in his desk, and he rifled through the drawers until he found it. Eliot opened the first page and examined it through the glass.

  He waited for something to stand out, for something to set this book apart from all others. Sometimes, he had to wait for a book to speak to him, for the clues to come out and start knitting together into a story, for the facts to make sense. A book was so much more than the words it contained: it was the texture of the page, the size of the paper, the type of the binding, the material of the cover.

  A splotch of red dripped onto the page.

  Eliot jumped back. He set the magnifying glass aside and examined the paper. It was blank. There was no red seeping onto the page. Had he imagined it? No. He could see the image over again in his mind’s eye, the drip of red, like blood.

  But the page was white.

  He hadn’t imagined the drip.

  Eliot ran a hand along the paper. Was it damp? Had he missed something? Then he flipped to the next page. In his peripheral vision, he saw his magnifying glass.

  A perfect circle of red liquid rested on the center of the lens.

  He ran a hand along his face and looked at his palm, searching for the source. Nothing. Next, he craned his head up to the ceiling. He’d seen enough horror movies with bodies leaking blood through the ceiling. But it was blank and white, just like always. Blank as the book itself.

  It wasn’t blood. At least, Eliot was pretty sure it wasn’t blood.

  He lifted the magnifying glass and tilted it this way and that, examining the liquid. It behaved like it should, running over the surface of the lens, leaving a beaded trail of red behind. Nothing out of the ordinary, except he had no idea what it was.

  More out of impulse than any real scientific process, Eliot dipped a pinky into the liquid, then streaked it across a blank space in his notebook.

  He was relatively certain the drop on the magnifying glass was ink.

  Eliot examined it closer. He wasn’t familiar with ink, even though he used it every day. He knew a thing or two: what pens he liked to use, that he preferred gel ink, that he reserved red ink for corrections.

  None of his cursory experience explained the appearance of the drop of ink.

  Eliot had too much work to do to spend the day ruminating over this phantom ink, but he couldn’t think of anything else. He got up and checked the window. It was shut and locked, like usual. Nothing was out of place on his bookshelf. There was nobody hiding in the nooks and crannies, nefariously waiting to drip ink over Eliot’s shoulder.

  He was at an impasse, which was his most and least favorite place to be. As a boy who valued answers above all else, Eliot loved having them and he loved searching for them. It was the beginning, the questioning, that he hated.

  Here was the question: How did the ink appear out of nowhere?

  But that wasn’t the question, was it? It was less about how. There were technical reasons for the how.

  It was maybe a why question: Why did it drip onto the glass?

  A where question: Where did it come from?

  A what question: What kind of ink was it?

  There were a million questions, a million directions. The issue was settling on one. Eliot hated trying to decipher which question was the most important.

  A knock sounded on the door, timid at first and then more confident on the second go-around.

  He considered ignoring it, but he also realized the person on the other side could know something about the ink, and then he considered the person on the other side could be Tess.

  “Come in,” Eliot said, though the invitation physically pained him. Eliot didn’t like inviting other people into his space. Especially since most of them saw the artifacts of his magic lined up along the wall, and it was like he was stripped bare. Unless, of course, that person was Tess, who was present enough in his mind that he might’ve willed her into his physical space on his own, and that made the intrusion worth it.

  It was lucky, then, that the door opened and it was Tess standing on the other side. Her eyes were blazing, which didn’t surprise him in the slightest. He rarely saw her when she wasn’t looking at him with some kind of fervor, angry or otherwise.

  “Tess,” he said, stepping lightly around her mood. “Please, come in.”

  She did as she was told, even though she made it seem like he hadn’t invited her and she was barging in of her own accord. Eliot wasn’t certain how she managed this effect, but even with his invitation, it made him feel vaguely like she was trespassing.

  “Yesterday. Were we on fire?”

  Eliot froze. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about the day before. Not yet. He loved encountering things he couldn’t explain, but Eliot hated when he couldn’t decipher the line between imagination and reality.

  The truth was this: he knew Tess had no magic abilities. It was something he was able to sense in his mother and her circle of friends. Tess had none of the affectations that he connected with a witch. And yet, when she’d read the words in the grimoire, something had happened to the two of them. Some sort of working that didn’t require magical blood.

  Eliot had never heard of such a thing. He worried it was a darker power, not like the rooted earthbound magic he himself used, but he did not know how to address the question with Tess without getting into a discussion of sorcery. That was a topic he was not comfortable broaching with anyone.

  “I’m not burned,” he said, rather than answering the question directly. “Are you?”

  “No,” Tess said, but she looked disappointed.

  “Then I suppose we couldn’t have been on fire.”

  She studied him. Perhaps she didn’t believe his answer. Eliot himself wasn’t sure what he believed. Had he been in pain? Madly. Had he seen the flames blistering and blackening his skin? Undoubtedly.

  Was he fine now? Undeniably.

  “We have to take the book back,” Tess said.

  After the mysterious drip on the lens, there was no way Eliot was taking the book back. It would disrupt his scientific method. Even if it meant risking the imaginary flames again. Eliot could stomach them, he thought, for the purpose of understanding. Luckily for him, the alarm on his phone went off. Eliot glanced down at the time.

  “Oh!” he said. “It’s time for class. First one of the term. I have to go.”

  “Eliot,” Tess hissed. “It’s summer. There are no classes.”

  He smiled, because for once, he had a real excuse. “I’m taking summer classes at the university.”

  “You can’t just walk out like this.”

  But he could. His class was only a block and a half away and really, he had more than enough time for a conversation, but he hadn’t thought up a good enough way to convince Tess to let him hold onto the book yet. He blew out his candle and slipped his messenger bag over his shoulder, whisking Tess out of his office with him as he shut the door and locked it.

  “You’re welcome to walk with me,” Eliot said, but he had the impression she wasn’t at liberty to leave work so easily, and the uncertain look she cast at the girl behind the desk confirmed his suspicion. “But I can’t be late on the first day.”

  Tess crossed her arms over her chest. Her lips twisted into a frown. He was close enough to see the edge of her contact lenses, and he wondered how she’d look with glasses on.

  Foolish, Eliot, he chided himself.

  “I’m not going to forget about this,” Tess said. “We’re taking that book back.”

  Eliot didn’t think she’d forget. She didn’t seem like the type. But forgetting wasn’t something Eliot needed—he just needed to buy a couple of hours to figure out a plan.

  sixteen

  Tess

  ELIOT STAYED AWAY FROM JESSOP THE NEXT DAY. TESS waited for him—not really, because she wasn’t wasting away expecting him to appear—until Mathilde appeared from the back offices and asked why she hadn’t star
ted locking up yet. She thought about the book and how it was still in Eliot Birch’s office while she shuttered the library windows and covered the display cases in velvet.

  She was still thinking about him when she rounded the corner and saw a slim form sitting on the steps of her dorm: Nat, book balanced on her knees, head resting on one of her thin wrists.

  “Hey,” Tess said, nudging one of Nat’s knees with her foot as she dug through her backpack for her key. “Aren’t they weird about letting you guys out of the dorms at night?”

  Nat scrunched her nose. “It’s only 5:00,” she said.

  Tess shrugged, but her point still stood. For the underclassmen stuck at Falk for the summer, there was a program that was notoriously close to camp. Minus all the music parts of the camps that Tess was used to—so, minus all the fun parts.

  She opened the door and Nat followed her up the stairs to her dorm. “Did you at least get permission to leave?” Tess asked.

  “Yeah. Aunt Mathilde wrote me a note. We’re having dinner.”

  Tess pulled down a package of ramen, plunked it in a bowl of water, and stuck it in the microwave. “And did Mathilde write the note to let you come here first?”

  Nat bit her lip. She didn’t say anything. Tess sighed, watching the microwave tray revolve. “Natalie, you know the rules. You aren’t supposed to leave campus without express, detailed permission. You could really, really get yourself in trouble.”

  “I missed you,” Nat said, voice small. Tess closed her eyes. She hated this, acting like Nat’s parent when really she could barely even take care of herself.

  “Listen,” Tess said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to hang out. I’ve been working a lot.” The microwave beeped and Tess took out her dinner, draining some of the water and adding the seasoning packet. She took a scalding bite and immediately regretted it. Tess carried the bowl into the living room and settled on the floor, nudging her shoulder against Nat’s knee. “Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

  Nat still looked down at her hands, playing with the frayed edge of her library book’s cover. “Well,” she said, “we’re all learning how to play soccer. I’m not very good. And they put us in groups based on what we want to do when we’re older.”

  “Oh?” Tess asked, swirling noodles in her bowl. It was still better than dining hall food.

  Nat nodded. “I’m with the biology group. We get to go to the hospitals a lot. Watch cool stuff.” Her hands didn’t stop moving over the cover.

  Tess’s stomach clenched. “One step closer to med school, huh?” she asked.

  Nat nodded. It was all she’d ever wanted to do, be a doctor. She had a reputation for being something of an amateur nurse, patching skinned knees and escorting kids to the nurse’s office with guessed diagnoses, taking care of kids with a fervor Tess never understood.

  It wasn’t that Nat needed Falk to succeed, but it surely made her future easier. It was worth the sacrifice, she told herself. For Nat to get the future she deserved, it was worth it.

  After Nat left to meet up with Mathilde for dinner, Tess went to her room and got out her cello. She played an experimental note, feeling it in her arms, in her chest, in her stomach. As she warmed up, she let her mind wander.

  She was barely paying attention when something dripped on her arm. Her first thought was that the ceiling was leaking, but a cursory glance outside revealed it was not raining and another look at the ceiling showed there was no spot of damp. Tess looked down. There on her thigh, black against her pale skin, stood a perfect circle of something dark.

  For the briefest of seconds, she was back in the burning, melting forest. Goose bumps rose on her arms and legs.

  It’s not real, Tess reminded herself. It was only a dream.

  Frowning, Tess set aside her cello. She rubbed the liquid away, and the smear stained the lines of her skin. Tess examined the stain on her fingers, the way the liquid filled the cracks of her fingerprint.

  Another drop fell, bleeding down her arm. Tess glanced around and realized that the drops were coming from her music stand. Liquid pooled on the flat side of it and dripped through the grated cut metal. She ran a finger through it. The liquid was the same dark color as the drops on her body.

  There were no excuses this time. No open bottles she could’ve pushed over in her sleep, no cracked or leaking pens anywhere nearby. The ink was coming from somewhere else.

  With shaking hands, Tess opened her music folder. The notes on the pages were bleeding, soaking through the papers, sharps blending into flats blending into lines and notes and rests, ink running down the paper onto the carpet below.

  She gasped, pushing the stand away. Another drop fell to the carpet and she went to rub it but as soon as she did—

  It was gone.

  Tess’s fingers came away clean.

  She looked back at her music. The notes were in place. The pages were dry. There was no stain of ink on her skin. There was nothing.

  “Tess,” a voice said, near the window. She looked up only to see Eliot Birch. Instantly, a flare of anger burst within her. Why was Eliot here, now? She took a step closer, putting her music down, and noticed his eyes. The sharpness of his cheekbones. The waviness of his body, as if she was not seeing the lines of him at all, but the suggestions of them: a blur of a sweater, a block of a tie, but not the actual realness of it. As if she was staring at a ghost.

  No—not Eliot. The devil.

  “I know what you want,” he said.

  Tess swallowed hard. “You know nothing about me.” But even as she spoke the words, she knew they held no truth.

  The devil laughed, terrible and loud, and the pages around her disintegrated into ink, into nothing. She saw words flashing across the white, empty walls—not in English, not in any language she knew—all of it swirling around her and breaking down and she was alone, but she was not—

  She was in her room. She was in the forest. The music stand was down and pages were flying, ink bleeding down and soaking through all over again.

  When she breathed in, she tasted smoke.

  She reached for the devil and touched only air. He was not there. He was watching her from everywhere.

  “Tess!”

  She jolted awake. She was curled up on the floor, one hand resting on the body of her cello, the other pillowed under her head. Anna stood in the doorway.

  “Well,” Anna said, looking around. “This is … a lot, even for you.”

  Tess sat up. The stand was knocked over, and music was scattered all over: on her bed, across the floor, a few pages sticking out of her closet. She grabbed a sheet for inspection, heart still pounding. It was perfect, untouched.

  “Holy shit,” Tess muttered. She got up and clambered over her bed to the place where the devil was. “Anna, I swear there was someone here.”

  “I think you had a nightmare,” Anna said, leaning against the doorjamb. “You were yelling.”

  Tess stared at Anna for a moment, then back at the destruction of the room. Music everywhere. Dust in places where there had been no dust before, streaking the walls. Her skin was unstained, as if there had never been ink on her at all.

  Her knees were weak. She sat on the bed, hard. “I … I don’t remember falling asleep.”

  Anna frowned. She stepped carefully over the wreckage and pushed aside sheet music to clear a space for herself on the bed. “You’re working a lot, you know,” she said, stroking a hand through the knotted length of Tess’s hair, smoothing out the tangles. “Too much, probably. Is there any way you could cut your hours?”

  Tess thought of it, but then she thought of being stuck in central Pennsylvania forever, and the depressing amount of money in Nat’s college fund.

  “No.” She leaned over to pick up her cello, examining it for damage. If the devil touched her cello, she’d actually be incensed. It was flawless as ever. “No, I’ll be okay.”

  Anna’s frown deepened. “You said someone was in here.” She got up and checked the wind
ows—all locked. Not that it mattered. They were on the third floor, after all. “What did they look like?”

  She could not say he looked like Eliot Birch. Anna would tease her relentlessly if she thought Tess was hallucinating the headmaster’s son. And she could definitely not say he was the devil, no more than she could say the devil looked like Eliot. “Just a boy,” Tess said.

  “A nightmare,” Anna said. She threw a small grin in Tess’s direction, crawling back over the bed. “Or, knowing you, a ghost.”

  “A ghost,” Tess repeated.

  Anna ruffled Tess’s hair. “Hey. Ghosts and nightmares can’t hurt you, right? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  It had to be a mix of paranormal activity, anxiety, exhaustion, and residual fear from the tunnel the other day. She shuddered, thinking of Eliot Birch and his grimoires.

  Anna nudged her shoulder. “Why don’t you take out your contacts, watch some TV, and go to sleep? I’m sure you’ll feel better then.”

  “Yeah,” Tess said, but she couldn’t fight the growing unease in her stomach. She felt oddly like she was forgetting something. “You’re probably right.”

  But she knew Anna wasn’t right. There was no ghost in her room. And there was no way she’d been dragged into a nightmare, not like that.

  It felt real. But that was impossible.

  Tess lingered in her room for a moment. There was a piece of sheet music on her desk, and she felt drawn towards it. A page from the concerto she’d been working on, but scribbled all over. With a start, Tess realized the handwriting on the page was her own, yet she had no recollection of writing it. An uncapped fountain pen was on the desk, dripping pale blue ink onto the wood.

  We are one and the same. One body, one soul, one blood. I want what you want. I am what you wish to be. Variations of it were crammed into the page, small handwriting and large, all of it hers. She traced her fingers over it, feeling the places where the nib had broken through the paper.

  And there, at the very bottom, over and over: I will have you I will have you I will have you I will have you.