The Devil Makes Three

by Tori Bovalino

  Demons. Dark magic. The devil. These were the things he searched, muttering under his breath and dead to the world around him as dawn broke; as something grappled at the door of his office and found itself forbidden.

  thirty eight

  Tess

  TESS FINISHED HER SUNDAY SHIFT AT EMILIANO‘S BY ROLLing silverware until her fingers were aching. By the time she grabbed her bag and said her goodbyes to her coworkers, the sun dipped low over the horizon.

  She walked out the back, relishing the sultry summer air as it rushed around her. Emiliano’s was always either too hot or too cold, never just right, and today was one of those days when she felt like she was wasting more energy shivering than actually doing her job.

  Tess had barely gone a block when she saw her.

  Regina stood across the street. She was unable to cross, with four lanes of one-way traffic separating her from Tess, but it was enough to be jarring. Tess hesitated for a moment, watching her. She couldn’t even be entirely sure Regina’s eyes were on her. She stood against the wall of the Subway, face slack, staring off into the distance. There was no smile on her face; there was no expression at all.

  Something was not right. A sense of urgency prickled in Tess’s skin. She needed to get home to safety, and fast.

  Tess turned around and started for home. In the summertime, South Oakland was deserted. Tess found herself walking faster than usual, eager to put distance between her and Regina. It was nearly a twenty-minute walk to her dorm, fifteen if she was really booking it.

  And Tess was booking it.

  She remembered what Eliot said about calling him, but this wasn’t an emergency. Regina was just … there. It wasn’t like she was doing anything malicious.

  Unless …

  Tess looked over her shoulder.

  Far back, far enough that she would’ve had to run to catch up, Regina was following her.

  Tess ran.

  It wasn’t like she was unaccustomed to running, but she was unaccustomed to this blood-pumping, terrified sort of running. She was gasping for breath and aching before she even reached the end of the block, but there was no way in hell she was stopping.

  Tess slowed, risking a look over her shoulder. Regina was still the exact same distance away—which didn’t make sense, since Regina wasn’t running. In fact, Tess couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t look like she was moving her legs at all.

  When Tess saw Regina at work the morning she went missing, she’d been wearing jeans, rolled at her ankles, and a pair of sandals. Now, Tess saw the flesh of her ankles and feet, bloated and discolored, straining against the crisscrossed braided leather of her shoes. Some of the puffy skin was cut and cracked, and days-old lines of dried blood clotted over the straps.

  No, her feet were not moving. The only parts of Regina that were moving were her smile, slowly growing wider, and her eyes, blinking at intermittent intervals, more to dispel the flies that gathered around her head in a halo than to fulfill any biological need.

  She’s floating. Shit shit shit, she’s literally floating.

  She refused to dwell on this. She could not slow down. She could not stop. She could not break.

  Just a few blocks more. Every time she turned, Regina was there—maybe getting closer. Maybe. Gaining ground on Tess little by little, inch by inch.

  Tess hit her dorm and nearly slammed into the door. The cold metal of her key ring slipped through her fingers and clattered onto the concrete steps. She swore under her breath. Regina had rounded the corner of her street and was coming closer, closer, closer.

  Tess ducked down and scraped her keys up. The short, gold one. She fumbled for it and somehow managed to turn it and wrench the door open. It locked automatically behind her, but she wasn’t going to press her luck. Tess darted up the stairs to her dorm. One more lock, one more key.

  Two floors below, the main door of the apartment opened. Regina floated on the other side.

  “No no no fuck no,” Tess gasped, twisting the key in the lock. She slammed the door behind her and hit the deadbolt home, then locked the doorknob.

  But how had Regina gotten past the first door?

  At the worst possible moment, her heart was flooded with memories and grief. Clearly, this thing inside of Regina was not Regina. Though they weren’t friends, not really, Tess couldn’t just … She thought of Regina training her, of her laughing in the stacks. Of her smile when she’d write test answers under the hem of her skirt, so she could flip it up to check her responses. Of the annoying way she popped her gum. The things that made Regina a teenager, a girl, a human.

  And what was she now? A body? A devil?

  Tess sat down against the door and dropped her head to her hands. She had to think, and quickly.

  On the other side of the door, the scratching started.

  “Tess.” The voice was half whisper, half hiss.

  Tess didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her blood was frozen.

  And still, the whispering on the other side of the door, now turning into a whimper. “Tess, please let me in? I’m so scared. I need to talk to you. Tess.”

  She pressed her hands against her ears, trying to block out the sound of Regina’s voice. There had to be something she could do. When she’d banished the devil the first time, what had she done? Ordered him out. But that had done nothing to stop Regina from getting into the building, and she didn’t want to test if the protection only extended into the apartment—no, she could not just open the door and find out.

  On the other side of the door, the whispering became more urgent. Tess couldn’t listen to it. It sounded too much like Regina for her to tune it out completely. To listen was to be convinced. To be convinced was to be killed.

  Think think think.

  She got up and peered through the peephole. There, on the other side, was the horror of it: Milky, deflated eyes, still colored with those shimmering black irises; green-tinged skin; cracked lips, ripped at the edges. She was coming apart at the seams, the edges of a gash opening back again on her throat, black blood leaking over her collarbones. Tess could smell her through the door, rotten meat and decay.

  “I can save you,” not-Regina crooned from the other side of the door. “I can change everything.”

  Tess squeezed her eyes shut, backing away from the door. She had to do something. If she did not deal with Regina, someone else would have to, and she wouldn’t risk endangering anyone else. Fear, thick and dark and heavy, threatened to choke her.

  “Go away, Regina,” Tess tried.

  “I won’t hurt you,” the body on the other side of the door promised. “I can’t leave you. Let me in, Tess. Please, let me in.”

  She took a deep breath. Tried to calm herself. That surety, the same that arose whenever she played the cello, rooted itself against her breastbone. Tess reached for it, let the calm spread from her heart, through her veins, to her brain, to the tips of her fingers.

  She thought back to mythology, to the devil, to vampires, to all the horrible and false things she could think of, all come true and out to get her. Tess considered what she was capable of. No longer trembling, she made up her mind.

  “I can give you what you want. I can change your story,” Regina said, her voice melting into the devil’s and back again.

  “I know,” Tess said. Carefully, knowing how the old building creaked, she took a step back towards the kitchen. “I know.”

  thirty nine

  Eliot

  ELIOT SAT IN FRONT OF HIS FATHER‘S HOUSE FOR A SOLID five minutes, debating if it was worth it for him to just run. Except, if he kept showing up to his father’s house like a good boy, maybe he could take the weeks between the end of his summer classes and the beginning of the school year and go back to England.

  Finally, he got out of his car and went up the path. Lucille was there at the door, waiting for him, and he wondered if she’d been there the whole time he was sitting.

  “You look like you haven’t slept, darling,” Lucill
e said, reaching to touch the bags under his eyes. Eliot moved away.

  “I’ve had a strange week,” Eliot said.

  Lucille pressed her lips together, but she didn’t ask further. “Well, dinner is about ready,” she said. “Have a seat in the dining room, why don’t you?”

  Lucille disappeared into the house, calling for his father. Eliot went to the dining room, set once again for their not-so-cozy party of three. He sat on the side and waited.

  All things considered, he didn’t dislike Lucille. Even though his father himself was a rubbish bin of a human being, the women who were attracted to him were lovely.

  Lucille cared about Eliot, which was something he couldn’t hate her for. It was awkward, of course, especially the first few times, when she’d tried to get too close too quickly. But she realized, somewhere along the line, that Eliot was happiest when treated like a museum: visited occasionally, remarked over, but easily forgotten and left at the end of the day. He preferred to be regarded from a distance.

  And there was another thing he respected about her: she never tried to replace his mother. Even though his father had tried to force her into the position of Eliot’s mother, even though it disappointed him when Lucille didn’t melt into that role.

  Everything would’ve been fine, Eliot thought many times, if it hadn’t come down to timing. If his father had just waited until his wife was out of the picture. After all, Eliot thought bitterly, it wouldn’t be long.

  But his father had never been very good at waiting.

  Lucille came back in, carrying a steaming bowl of pasta. His father followed behind her, drink in hand, cheeks ruddy. He had an envelope in his hand, marked as airmail.

  “Something came for you,” he grunted, tossing the envelope onto Eliot’s plate. The return address was to their home in Hertfordshire, and for a brief moment, Eliot’s heart leapt. Had his mother written him something? But, then, why would she send it to his father? Why wouldn’t she call?

  “Someone sent it to the house,” his father said, adding ice to his drink from the side bar. “That satanic nurse of your mother’s sent it here.”

  Eliot kept his features carefully composed. He liked Josie—even though she was not magic in the slightest—and she took good care of his mother. Perhaps that was what his father faulted.

  While he was occupied with his drink and Lucille went back for the bread basket, Eliot opened the envelope. It encased another one, this addressed to him. He recognized it from Annika, one of his mum’s uni friends—one of his mum’s more talented uni friends. Eliot had taken a few lessons with Annika in her Oxford garden. She provided his mother with most of her more difficult to find or dangerous herbs.

  As he broke the seal of the envelope, it expanded. Eliot recognized the trick, used to mask illicit items to get through the postal service without getting stopped in customs or costing more in postage.

  There was a note inside. Eliot glanced up, noted that Lucille was now quietly telling his father why he shouldn’t pour more whiskey into his glass, and went back to the letter.

  It was only a few lines long. More would possibly appear when he was alone.

  This is your mum’s regular order for the summer harvest. Please write if you need anything more specific.

  Eliot frowned down at the note. He had the abrupt and awful feeling of something ending, something he couldn’t stop. Annika had addressed this to him. She knew his mother would not be needing these things anymore. Perhaps she’d never practice magic again.

  “Well?” Birch asked, settling in. Eliot accepted the serving dish from Lucille, pushing the envelope into his pocket with his other hand. It shrank back down to a manageable size. “What is it?”

  Eliot cleared his throat, stalling. Annika went to Oxford with both his parents—meaning his father knew vaguely what something from her would contain.

  “Just a letter,” Eliot said, pushing pasta onto his plate. “From one of mum’s old friends.”

  There was too much of a pause. Eliot glanced up from his food. His father’s mouth was set into a thin, hard line. “Not one of her … degenerate friends, I hope.”

  Eliot clenched his jaw. If Eliot’s suspicions were correct, the “degenerates” Birch spoke of were other witches, which certainly meant his father was drunk and volatile. That was the only time he would speak of anything related to magic or his mother. At the other end of the table, Lucille was intently focused on her napkin.

  Don’t make it worse, he reminded himself. Don’t antagonize him.

  But Eliot was so tired. “I quite like Mum’s uni friends, actually.” It wasn’t much, but it was enough, and Eliot knew it the second the words left his lips.

  His father’s eyes flared. “Before I met her, she was running around with any satanist she set her eyes on. Why, if you knew her in her Oxford days, you wouldn’t idolize her the way you do. Believing in this and that. Teaming up with a coven, worshipping the devil.”

  Eliot set his fork down. “I would appreciate if you didn’t talk about her that way. Considering she raised me.”

  His father laughed, low and condescending. Of course, Eliot saw now, he wanted to pick a fight. This wasn’t his first drink of the night, and he was primed for battle. “One day you’ll realize that I’m not the villain in this story.”

  But he was.

  He’d become the villain when he had an affair—or many, though Eliot only knew of the one; when he outlawed magic in the house; when he shattered Caroline’s vials and burned her books and held her bleeding wrists above her head as she begged him to stop, as Eliot could only watch from the corner and scrub out the chalk markings on the floor and watch her lie about what they’d been doing. He’d become the villain when he’d seen her magic and tried to take it away.

  “Edward,” Lucille said, very quietly. “This isn’t the best conversation for dinner.”

  “No. This is my son, and I’ll speak to him as I choose.” His father’s cold, dark eyes turned back to Eliot. “I know how you see me. I’m the evil one who drove you away from your mother, who brought you here, who’s ruined your life. But you’re wrong. I’ve given you everything you’ve ever wanted. I’ve given you security and education and money, without asking questions, without asking for anything. And what do I get in return?”

  Eliot’s nails dug into his palms. He tried to feel for his magic, to pull it close around him, but any power he had had retreated to somewhere deep inside of him.

  “I get a son who hates the sight of me. A son who tried to curse me.”

  Lucille looked between them. Eliot refused to meet her eyes. His father sneered and took a sip of his drink, gearing for another round.

  “I want to go back to the UK,” Eliot said. He wasn’t sure how the words had escaped him, if he’d even said them at all.

  His father laughed, short and harsh. “You’re not going back. You think I’m going to let Caroline take anything else from me? You think I’m going to let her ruin you more? She’s already turned you against me. Filled your head with fanciful bullshit. Told you you were magic. It’s time to grow up, Eliot. Be a man. You can’t follow your mother around forever.”

  Eliot wanted to be anywhere else. At the head of the table, Lucille was hiding her face. Eliot stood up from the table. “If you want me to stay, you’ll stop talking to me like that.”

  His father rose too, taller than Eliot, broader than Eliot. “I will speak to you however I want.”

  It was as if Eliot was drowning. He could see his father, but he couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t get out of there. It would always be like this. His father held all the cards, always. It didn’t matter how much Eliot tried to grow up, tried to grow away.

  It’s not you it’s not you it’s not you, he tried to repeat, over and over again in his mind. It was a mantra from his younger days, back when he was a child, back when he idolized his father and everything began to change. It’s your magic he hates. It’s not you.

  But Eliot was too old
for that. He and his magic were one and the same. By hating his magic, his father hated him.

  “You’re just like her,” his father sneered. “That bitch. You do what you need to get what you want. Even now, look at you, trying to manipulate me, to get your way. That’s always been you. Selfish, never realizing what a life I’ve provided for you.”

  Someday, he’d be past all of this. He’d be out of this dining room, out of this house, out of this city.

  “Edward, please—”

  “You have no reason to hate her,” Eliot snapped.

  “She taught you to hate me,” he said, turning a look of utter disgust on Eliot.

  His father wasn’t finished. “I lost my position because of you. The respect of the community. I know that’s what you did, you son of a bitch.” He slammed his glass down. Amber liquid splashed over the table. Lucille flinched again. “You tried to fucking curse me. She put you up to it, didn’t she?”

  Eliot could taste the words on his mouth, corrupted infatuation charms he’d tried years ago and never worked. Maybe it was about conviction after all. Maybe he was right, and Eliot had ruined everything himself.

  Lucille stood, moved closer to Eliot. As if he was a child in need of protection. He shot her a look to stay put. He wished he could say something, anything, to make it stop. But he’d learned the best thing was to stay quiet and wait for it to be over.

  “You think you’re special,” his father continued. He stalked around the table, glass in hand, getting in Eliot’s face. “You think because you’re like your mother, you’re better than everyone else.” Eliot paled, risking a glance at Lucille. He didn’t know if she had any idea of what he could do—and how she’d react if she did know.”You’re an abomination. A freak.” He waved at Eliot, drunk and angry. “And your mother is just the devil’s bitch.”