The Devil Makes Three

by Tori Bovalino

  “But it’s a holiday,” Nat said.

  “It’ll be fine. We’ll do something ourselves, here, if we have to. Fireworks. A picnic.”

  “It won’t be the same.”

  No, it wouldn’t be the same, but there was nothing she could do about that. Tess was already breaking, trying to save money for college and pay for her lessons and still have enough to put money into Nat’s account while sustaining herself. It was a miracle she hadn’t already broken.

  “We’ll make do.”

  Nat sighed and Tess hated the sound of it.

  “Do you have time to get dinner this week?” Tess asked. She barely had time herself, but she hadn’t seen Nat in a few days and desperately missed her.

  “I can go tomorrow.”

  “What about next Friday? After my lesson?”

  Nat sighed. “I’ll miss crepe night, but I guess I can go then.”

  Nat and her food preferences. “We can get crepes,” Tess said. “I could make them.”

  “Fiiiiinnnnnneeee.” There was the murmur of voices in the background, and then Nat’s muffled answer to some unheard question. “I gotta go. It’s time for soccer.”

  It would’ve been a challenge to get Nat to play soccer at home, but at Falk, there was an endless stream of activities for the kids stuck here over the summer to participate in. And if Nat hated anything, it was being left out.

  “Have fun, kid. Love you.”

  “Loveyoutoo!” Nat said, voice hurried and far away from the phone before the line went dead.

  Tess closed her eyes. Theoretically, she could pay for the tickets, but the house they grew up in would be a shell of what Nat remembered. Tess didn’t want to expose her to the fighting or the reality of their financial situation.

  Tess rolled over onto her side. Her face was dry and the mask was cracking. She needed to get up and rinse it off, but it was so nice here on the couch. With her eyes closed, it was easier to forget about the devil, about Nat, about anything other than the slow rush of the air conditioner and the exhaustion weighing heavily in her bones.

  She had not been here before, and she had no memory of how she had come to be here.

  Tess stood in a large room. The walls were white and ceilings were high, with windows set far up into the walls. Light streamed through, but the time of day was indeterminate.

  Tess turned in a slow circle. She was surrounded by shapes shrouded in sheets. Some of them were stained—maybe with blood.

  “I wondered if you’d visit tonight,” a voice behind her said.

  The devil.

  She turned. He was there, amidst the shapes and stains, wearing Eliot’s face and ink like blood. He hadn’t been there just a moment ago, she was certain.

  He moved closer, fanning out his fingers and taking hold of her elbow. His skin was cold. His fingertips grazed her ribs.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?” Tess snapped. She wanted to step away from his touch but fear held her in place.

  “You always have a choice,” the devil said.

  Tess doubted that greatly, but she sensed that fighting would get her nowhere. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours. What should I call you?”

  “Call me Truth.”

  Tess nodded. She glanced around again, unsettled by the grayness of the light. She felt leached of color herself. “Where have you brought me now?”

  Truth turned around in a circle, examining the place just as Tess had. She watched his face closely. It was odd, seeing the differences between him and Eliot. Though they were nearly identical, their expressions were not.

  She couldn’t be sure, but Truth almost looked hopeful. “I haven’t brought you anywhere. You’ve conjured this place up yourself, but I have filled it.” He glanced back at her, his eyes morphing between gray and blue. Here, in this light, he looked … well, human. Substantial. Not like the suggestion of a person, not like a ghost she could reach through, not like a demon sent to torment her.

  Tess hugged her arms to herself. It was dangerous to think of him like that, as anything other than a devil.

  “What did you fill it with, then?” Tess asked.

  The devil walked through the sheeted objects, and Tess had the feeling he wasn’t fully focused on her. He seemed just as caught off guard as she was. He stopped at one of the shapes and, with a flourish, swept the sheet off.

  A blank canvas stood on an easel. Truth’s face fell.

  “Is that not what you expected to find?” Tess asked.

  The sheet slipped from Truth’s fingers. “It is exactly what I expected to find.” He turned back to her, eyes ever shifting. “Do you know what hell is, Tess Matheson?”

  She bit her lip. “I …” It was a question she’d considered, in odd ways: she decided she believed in it, but she also figured she’d never truly be awful enough to go there. “I imagine it’s quite a bit like burning.”

  Truth smiled wryly. He reached for a sheet, revealing another empty canvas. Another, and another. Sheets fluttered to the ground like falling leaves. It was a forest, in a way, just like the burning forest of her last nightmare.

  “Hell,” Truth said, gesturing around them both, “is a lot of nothing.”

  She didn’t think a room full of empty canvases was scary enough to be hell, but she didn’t want to directly question the devil.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Hmm.” The devil shuffled through the sheets and walked along the edge of the room, looking for something. “I thought you would. Perhaps I’m mistaken.” His eyes lit up, flaring blue, as he unearthed a full palette from underneath one of the sheets.

  Tess watched in silence as he chose a canvas. He considered it for a moment, looking almost as if he was building up bravery. There were no brushes, so when Truth painted, he used his fingers.

  Bold strokes appeared at the touch of his hand. Clearly Truth had been accomplished, as he knew intuitively how to create shapes and dimension even without tools. An image began to take shape: a forest, burning.

  But as Tess watched, the edges began to soften. Paint from the top of the canvas, paint she thought was drying, dripped down. As the devil worked, the paint undid itself, dripping and pooling on the floor, moving more rapidly with every stroke until each slash of color ran down immediately.

  The devil stared at the white canvas. Tess stared with him.

  “Hell,” the devil said, “is failure. It is unbecoming. It is undoing. It is an empty canvas, a song with the notes reversed, until nothing remains. Do you understand now?”

  Tess swallowed hard.

  She did understand. Hell was an empty and dusty stationery shop with eviction notices and no customers. Hell was a cello unplayed, maybe never played again.

  This time, when the devil came close, she did not flinch. He ran his hand up her arm, over her shoulder. Fingertips traced her cheek. Cupped her face. Lined the shell of her ear. His head dipped close.

  “You think you know hell, but I can show you the opposite. I can show you what I can give you.”

  She just wanted out of this moment, out of this awful studio. “Okay,” she agreed.

  The devil twirled her, and Tess’s vision went dizzy and uncertain. She wore a gown of blood, beautiful and alive, like hot silk against her skin. It rose up, warm against her body: a high neck, as if she were being strangled, a full skirt. The studio around them faded to black, came to light once more, and it wasn’t a studio at all.

  Tess and the devil stood on a stage. He was still Eliot, still midnight, still darkness, dressed in a coat with tails. He no longer held her. Instead, he presented something: the most beautiful cello she’d ever seen. Shining black, like it had been carved from onyx.

  “Take it,” the devil said.

  Tess’s hands shook, but she wrapped her fingers around the neck. There was a seat behind her then, and she adjusted the cello between her legs. There was a bow—of course there was a bow—and it wasn’t just the devil and Tess anymore.


  He slunk behind her, daring as a promise, and swept the hair away from her neck. His breath was warm against her pulse point as he dipped low towards her.

  “Play for me. For us,” the devil pleaded.

  How could she refuse? His hands did not leave her shoulders, fingers perched on the bare skin there as if she were an instrument under his command. Tess took a breath, drew the bow, and bent to the cello.

  She’d never heard such a sound before. Her hands were moving, under her control and hers alone, but she had never played like this before. She had never dared to dream of playing like this. She was better than she’d ever been, better than Alejandra had ever been, better than any cellist she’d heard. Every note bled with perfection. Every caesura was a held breath, a precipice into freefall.

  It didn’t matter what she played—notes weren’t enough to encompass the sound that swelled from between her fingers.

  And through all of it, there was the devil. His fingers on her collarbones, his lips in her hair, his breath against her ear. The devil behind her, and the scent of blood surrounding her, and before her—oh, before her. There was an audience.

  She gazed out at them as she played. They flickered: souls of the dead, decaying bodies, the faces of everyone she’d ever known. She should’ve been afraid, but she wasn’t.

  She finished, and one final note rung out. Tess hadn’t consciously decided to end the performance. She’d just known time was coming to a close, and the devil had more to tell her. She needed to answer his call.

  The audience before her sprung into a standing ovation, louder than the ovation at her last recital, louder than the competition in Philadelphia when she’d won first place for the very first time. She rose too. Rose and bowed, clutching the black cello against her body.

  The applause went on forever. It went for no time at all. And Tess bowed again and again as the roses cascaded in: red and white and pink, pooling at her feet. Until the flames of the forest rose up once again, devouring the audience, consuming the roses, dissolving Tess’s dress of blood until she was left gasping once more in the devil’s arms.

  “What … what was that?”

  His eyes were black and full. “This is what I could do for you, if you only let me. This is what you could become. Do you understand?”

  She pressed a hand to her chest, trying to catch her breath. Her heart pounded against her hand, desperate and wanting.

  And that was the worst part of it, the wanting. She’d given so much to be here, to be a good role model for Nat, to get them through this damned year. But in the devil’s arms, she’d seen what she really wanted. The praise, the skill, the success. The black cello, melting into her body like they were one being.

  “What would you give?” he asked.

  Everything, Tess thought. Don’t ask. Anything. Anything at all.

  He reached a hand forward, tracing her lip with his thumb. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “I know what you need.”

  His other hand pressed to the small of her back, and suddenly, it wasn’t empty. Something cold and hard pressed against her skin. He brought his hand around. His palm, shielded between their bodies, opened to reveal a slender blade.

  “Do you know what you must do, Tess?”

  Her nostrils were full of the scent of blood, thick and cloying. When she closed her eyes, she saw her own body, stained with blood, ripped open at the throat and wrists. Her own body, once more wearing a gown of blood.

  She placed her hand over his, on the blade, cold metal biting into her fingers.

  “Remember,” he said, and then he was gone.

  Tess’s eyes snapped open. She surfaced from the dream like she was breaking through the surface of water, where everything was clearer, weighted. She shot up, expecting to still be clutching the black cello. But no.

  Just Tess. Empty-handed and alone as she ever had been.

  Under the couch, the devil’s blade waited.

  twenty four

  Eliot

  LUCILLE HAD AN INEXPLICABLE OBSESSION WITH FAKE greenery. It draped the edge of the breakfast bar, lined the mantle over the fireplace, and webbed the walls of the foyer. It was even here, in the bathroom, carefully wound around the metal edge of the mirror to look like it had grown there naturally, as if Eliot’s father’s tidy home in Squirrel Hill was being invaded by the world outside.

  Which was ironic, considering Lucille hated just about everything about nature.

  Eliot splashed some water on his face. He’d only arrived minutes ago and he already felt like he was suffocating. Everything his father said so far was an attack: “Eliot, why haven’t you applied to this college? Don’t think you’re smart enough? Eliot, why haven’t you published anything? If you’re studying words, you might as well at least try to get good at them. Eliot, why are you such a disappointment?”

  Well, he hadn’t said that last one, but it was clear all the same.

  “Eliot, dear, food is ready!” This was Lucille, voice saccharine and pinched.

  “I’m coming!” Eliot shouted. Now that he was in the hornet’s nest, he had to do his best to avoid getting stung.

  The house that his father and Lucille lived in was almost as nice as the country estate, but everything in the country house was passed down through the generations, and here, it was new. Eliot didn’t even want to think about how much the massive dining table cost, but was grateful for the six feet of space it put between him and his father, with Eliot in the middle of one side and Lucille and his father capping the ends.

  Lucille was on some kind of odd diet, so everything on the table was raw and unidentifiable. Eliot took little bits as the serving dishes were passed to him and pushed the piles around his plate.

  “Did you sign up for that math class I recommended you for?” his father asked, taking a bite of some sort of puree.

  Eliot kept pushing the food around. “I didn’t. Not for summer term, anyway. I’m taking a literature class and a history class this term.”

  His father snorted. “For what purpose?”

  Because I am, Eliot wanted to say. “Colleges are looking for more of an interest in the humanities,” Eliot said. “A liberal arts education. Even if I were to go into math or science.” Which he wasn’t. Not that he was bad at math or science; Eliot was good at school in general, and if he didn’t understand a concept, he just asked Henri to explain it to him.

  Another snort, but nothing more was said. While he was preoccupied with his food, Eliot risked a look over at his father. He sat straight, too straight, bowing his head slightly every time he took a bite of food.

  He was an objectively attractive man, Eliot supposed. His once-dark hair was shot through with gray, especially at the temples. He kept himself clean-shaven and fit, playing on a community men’s rugby league and going to the gym most evenings. There was a picture of his father that Eliot used to keep on his nightstand when he was away on business, back before he realized Eliot had his mother’s magic and turned against him. The picture itself was from his first publication on vectors, back when his father taught at the collegiate level. He was twenty-three in it, just a few years older than Eliot, and Eliot always thought he’d grow up to look just like him.

  He was very, very wrong. Next to his father, Eliot looked like a twig. A nerdy socially awkward twig.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked, waving a fork at Eliot’s plate.

  “I have been,” Eliot lied.

  Birch’s eyes narrowed, just a little. As usual, Eliot wondered if his father made him stick so close to him as punishment to Eliot, and not just his mother. “Lucille spent all day cooking. Be respectful.”

  He wasn’t sure how not eating was being disrespectful. Or how Lucille could’ve spent all day cooking when everything was raw.

  “He’s fine, Edward,” Lucille said.

  “He should eat. He’s going to look like that the rest of his life if he doesn’t.”

  “I look fine, Dad,” Eliot said, too quietly to b
e heard over Lucille’s, “He’s perfectly handsome.”

  His father harrumphed again, muttering something under his breath, but Eliot didn’t care that much. He wished he had Tess’s number. If anyone hated his father, it was Tess. Maybe they could commiserate.

  There were so many things left unspoken between them, things Eliot wanted to shout across the table just to see the look on his father’s face.

  But no shouting, no argument, would make him understand Eliot and Caroline’s magic. If his father had his way, Eliot would forget about it altogether. And forgetting his magic … well, to Eliot, that was almost as bad as forgetting how to read or how to walk. It was a part of him.

  “You are looking a little pale. Are you feeling okay?” Lucille’s voice was tinged with warmth, and it made Eliot’s stomach curl.

  “It’s because he never leaves that library,” his father said.

  “I’m not in the library now, am I?” Eliot snapped. His father raised an eyebrow at him. It was a challenge: You want to sass me, boy? You want to find out what happens? Softer, Eliot amended, “I do leave. I just have plenty of work to do, for my senior thesis.”

  Lucille ignored her boyfriend’s eye roll, and Eliot wondered if he really was here because she wanted to see him and not because of his father. “Have you started applying to schools? Or is it too early?”

  “It’s a little too early,” Eliot said. “August I can start, I think.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Lucille said. In another world, another lifetime, Eliot wouldn’t dislike her. After all, she was kind. She spoke softly and she always smelled of roses. But in this world, he knew what she was: a woman who was dating his father while his mother was dying halfway across the world, and because of that, he could never fully forgive her.

  “What do you do all day in that library, anyway?” his father asked.

  A million things. Read grimoires, practiced magic, drew shapes in the dust of his office, considered the curve of Tess Matheson’s cheek and how nicely it rested on her palm.