The Devil Makes Three

by Tori Bovalino

  Protect Tess, he thought; what a foolish, terrible thing, to think he could protect anyone from this.

  Another break came, and he quickly swiped the darkness away from his eyes. Ink coated the lights, making them glow even dimmer, but he could see that they were both up in murk to their waists—and more importantly, there was no sign of another wave coming.

  “Now, Tess,” he said into her ear, because the devil’s laugh was deafening in the room full of horror.

  She turned in the cage he made with his arms and chest, going back to the lock. He still felt the knife, desperately gripped in his left hand, the same hand that had held hers on the way down. It was slick with ink, clutched against the bar, but he could not drop it. The knife was their only protection.

  A small click sounded, quiet enough he shouldn’t have heard it. “Okay,” she said. “We’re in.”

  She swung the gate open, and they waded into the cage. Eliot mourned all these precious books lost, now soaked in the devil’s ink. Who knew how much knowledge was leached from these pages?

  “Where was the latch to open the shelves?” Tess asked.

  Eliot fumbled along until he found it. With a low, moaning noise, the grate began to open. Already, he could feel the ink in his veins, seeping in, taking hold.

  “Tess,” he said. He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, and maybe it was better that way. He pressed the knife into her hand, felt the slick heat of ink against her palm, and then her fingers closed securely around the handle. He pressed his mouth to her ear so only she could hear him. “You have to be the one to read it. If anything happens to me, you have to … You know what you have to do.”

  She pulled back, and he wondered what she was looking for on his face—and even worse, what she would find there.

  He picked up her left hand, the hand that held the knife, and guided the blade. Gently, he pressed the knife to his throat, just enough to pierce the skin below his Adam’s apple, drawing a drop of blood. His heart stuttered.

  Was he here, looking at his own death?

  “If something happens, you have to,” he said.

  “Eliot—” she started.

  He shook his head. “You know what will happen if he takes me. You know that I won’t … I won’t be able to fight it.” Eliot leaned down, close enough to make out the different colors in her eyes, even with the dim lighting. “You have to survive this, Tess. With or without me.”

  Another hesitation, but she was less certain this time. Her forehead bumped into his when she nodded.

  “Good.”

  As soon as his hand released hers, the knife fell away from his throat. The door was fully down now, and the level of ink decreased as it rushed down the stairs to fill the tunnel. They had no flashlight. They’d have to find their way in the dark.

  He was about to reach for her hand when she grabbed him by the chin with a force that surprised him. He was scared for a split second that they were wrong, that the devil had gotten into her anyway, but then she jerked his head down to hers.

  When she kissed him, it was full of sweat and fear and beauty.

  Her nails dug into his chin, but then he wrapped his arms around her and she released him only to wrap her arms around his neck.

  Eliot gasped a little when she pulled away. He felt unsteady, and it had nothing to do with the blistering that was rapidly traveling from his ink-burned hand to his shoulder.

  “If I don’t kill you tonight,” Tess said fiercely, lips inches away from his, “I’m doing that again.”

  fifty four

  YOU WERE ALREADY INSIDE HIS VEINS WHEN SHE KISSED THE boy. She was sweet, human and pure, like honeysuckle on your tongue.

  fifty five

  Tess

  TESS AND ELIOT WALKED SHOULDER TO SHOULDER DOWN the final set of stairs into the darkness. She kept a firm grip on the knife in her hand. The sound of the sepulcher was in her head, but this time, it didn’t sound like a buzzing at all. It almost sounded like music.

  Eliot was right. She needed to get the devil back, to protect Nat, even if that meant …

  But how could she bear hurting him?

  “I’ll keep a hand against the wall,” Eliot said, but his plan faltered as they reached the bottom.

  The sconces along the wall were lit. Not with fire, but with a dark, bluish light, like souls were guiding their way to the room at the end of the tunnel.

  Tess looked at Eliot. They hadn’t seen the glow from the cage. In this light, both of them looked ghoulish and uncertain. Tess saw the ink streaked all over Eliot’s skin and swiped at it with her sleeve, exposing some of the pale skin of his throat.

  “I will be very grateful for a shower,” he said. She would’ve smiled if his voice hadn’t been so shaky.

  In the back of her head, the devil whispered, “Come to me, my love.”

  Tess squeezed her eyes shut. No, she thought, I am not yours. I will never be yours.

  At the end of the tunnel, the devil laughed.

  Next to her, Eliot yelped. His hand slipped out of hers. When she looked over at him, he was scratching frantically at his left bicep.

  “What is it?” Tess asked.

  “It’s— Bloody hell.” Unable to reach the skin under his shirt, he pulled it off as if it was on fire.

  Tess choked on a breath. It was his tattoo. The ink was spreading through his veins, slowly migrating from his upper arm, up his shoulder, heading towards his throat, with another line snaking towards his heart. Eliot scratched at the tattoo, leaving lines of blood where his fingernails broke the skin. Ink dripped from it and the migration of the ink slowed for a moment as dark streaks of it mingled with his blood.

  When he met her eyes, the fear there was unmistakable.

  “I don’t want him to have me,” Eliot said, and his voice was barely a whisper above the rushing ink. A little stronger, he said, “You can’t let him have me.” A muscle ticked in his jaw, and she could barely hear him when he said, “I can’t feel my magic.” He sounded like he was already dead.

  Eliot’s eyes darted to the knife, then back to her face.

  “No,” Tess said. She couldn’t do it. She did not come all this way to cut off Eliot Birch’s head, to feel the spurt of blood soaking her if he was still Eliot, or to watch him erupt into darkness if he belonged to devil.

  His hand closed around hers. He drew her hand and the knife up to his neck, and she thought she could hear his heart thudding between them. He rested the tip of the knife against his throat, where there was a red nick on his skin from where the blade had been only minutes before.

  “Do it, Tess,” he said through clenched teeth.

  In the space between one breath and another, she tried to imagine leaving this tunnel alone, without Eliot. Leaving him here in pieces. She could see it, horrible and real: walking into Jessop on any given day without him there to smirk at or say something so blindingly ludicrous that she wanted to throttle him. Going through her days without him insisting on feeding her or requesting books she didn’t want to find or offering small, inexplicable kindnesses. Going through her days without him.

  This was the awful truth. Eliot Birch was the most stubborn, insufferable, privileged boy she had ever met, but he was also the only person she wanted to see most days. The only person who made her forget her anxieties, her terror, all the shit she’d dragged herself through to take care of Nat.

  And now, here in this sepulcher, she was going to kill him.

  No. She closed her eyes. There had to be another way. If she could free him from the ink, buy them a few minutes …

  Maybe she could get the ink out of his body. It was a terrible thought, a foolish thought, but it was the only one she had. She thought of how the ink stopped when he broke his own skin scratching, as if it could be drawn out of his skin or cut away.

  “How much do you like your tattoo?” she asked.

  Eliot blinked. “Pardon?”

  “I’m going to cut your tattoo off.” She was not goin
g to make it to the other end of the tunnel without him. It wasn’t a matter of whether or not she technically could—Tess knew she was strong enough to get there, read the book, and defeat the devil—but she was not going to leave Eliot behind.

  Eliot looked at her, stunned. But then he took his hand off hers, off the knife. He tore the ink-soaked bottom off of his shirt so only the dry part remained. He balled it up and stuck it in his mouth, between his teeth.

  Only then did he turn to the side, facing the wall, offering his mangled tattoo for her to mangle further.

  Tess took a deep breath, but it wasn’t like her hands were going to get any steadier than they were right now.

  She put the knife to Eliot’s arm and began to cut.

  fifty six

  Eliot

  IN HIS MEMORY, HE SAT IN THE CHAIR. THE TATTOOIST, AN Essex geezer with an accent thick enough to threaten years of Eliot’s education, prepared the gun. Across the room, Josie watched over the pages of a magazine. She didn’t approve of the adventure, but she couldn’t stop it.

  His mother held his hand. She was in her wheelchair with a blanket across her lap. Bandages covered her arm, where her tattoo had been finished minutes before.

  She rubbed a balm into Eliot’s palm out of sight. One for numbness and courage. Eliot smirked. “You don’t think I have the pain tolerance for this?” he asked.

  “I know you don’t,” his mother said. She kissed his temple.

  His tattoo hadn’t hurt. Her magic guaranteed that.

  This time, the pain was inescapable. This time, the pain was everything, blotting out every fear or memory he’d ever had. This time, his mother was not coming. This time, his screams were absorbed by the fabric of his T-shirt. This time, the only one who heard him was the demon, and he only laughed.

  fifty seven

  Tess

  TESS SCRAPED AND SCRAPED UNTIL ELIOT‘S ARM WAS A MESS of blood without a trace of ink. As if pulled away by the skin, the angry tributaries subsided as well.

  I’m not going to let him have you, Tess thought. I’m not going to let him have you. I’m not going to let him have you.

  He didn’t relax when she’d finished. When she looked up, she realized he was still looking away from her, eyes squeezed shut. She tucked the knife back into her belt and tugged for the material in his mouth.

  “Eliot,” Tess said. Her voice echoed in the stones of the tunnel. He unclenched his jaw, releasing the shirt. Tess took it and tied it around his arm to staunch the bleeding. Nothing more could be done until they were safe, back above ground.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to kill you.”

  “Bloody hell,” Eliot said, eyes still shut.

  She wanted to give him time to recover, to breathe, but now, they had work to do. She switched sides so she was closer to the arm that wasn’t injured and seized his hand again.

  “We have to keep going,” she said. He didn’t answer, but his jaw set a little tighter. “Can you do magic? To heal yourself?”

  He shook his head, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “No. Not without … I need things for it. I can’t just do it.”

  They made their way to the room at the end of the tunnel. Tess expected to find the devil in there, waiting for them. Instead, there was only the book, there in the alcove in the wall.

  As soon as Tess laid her hands on the book, Eliot moved beside her. “Is this what you want?” he asked in a voice that was not his own.

  This was not Eliot. He did not bear the wound she had just given him, was not smeared with blood. She looked in his eyes to verify what she already knew. The devil stood beside her.

  She turned to tell Eliot, but … but … No. Tess turned around and around in a circle, but Eliot was gone. She couldn’t find him. She was in the room, and the devil was beside her, but everything else was blank. This was a dream, a blank space of fog and confusion.

  The studio.

  No, not the studio.

  Tess turned again. She was alone in the room—but no, she wasn’t, because there was the devil, standing against the wall, like he’d been waiting there all along. And for all she knew, maybe he had.

  The sepulcher. The end of it all. The center and end of everything.

  “Where is Eliot?” she asked. She clutched the book against her chest. It was too precious, too necessary, to let out of her sight.

  “Eliot is dead,” Truth said. When she looked up at him, it was as if he flickered, like one second he was there, and the next second it was Eliot, with his mouth twisted into a scream. She could tell the difference between them now, better than she ever could before. Where Eliot’s eyes were warm and brown, Truth’s were black, terrible, dotted with stars. His skin was too pale; his bones were too lean. He was both dead and alive, clinging to the edge of something vital that Tess’s mortality could not understand.

  “No, he isn’t,” Tess said. She was certain he wasn’t. Because she’d saved him, hadn’t she? Everything from the last few hours was very fuzzy and getting dimmer by the second. She longed desperately to go to sleep, but the floor was covered in something dark and slick.

  Eliot is dead.

  But no, he wasn’t, Tess thought, and panic bubbled within her. None of this mattered if Eliot was dead. None of it made sense if Eliot was dead.

  The devil held out a knife.

  She almost took the knife, but along the long, flat blade, she saw an image, as if it was a screen. She saw Eliot, reaching for her, and her own hands, plunging a knife into his heart. Pulling it out. Stabbing him again and again as blood gushed around her, as it stained her skin and she could taste it, hot and coppery and—

  “He gave himself up,” the devil said. “You killed him. He sacrificed himself for you.”

  No. If Eliot was dead …

  Everything flickered again, too quickly, and she almost thought she heard her name.

  Tess’s brain was foggy. She was supposed to do something now, she knew—but what? It was like the dreams all over again. She shifted the book to one hand and rubbed her forehead with the other. It was wet with blood. She had no idea if it was hers or not.

  Was there a book in her hands?

  Or was there a knife?

  Was Eliot dead or alive? Who was Eliot, and who was Truth?

  The devil leaned close, so close she could smell the dust on his breath, the time on him. “Do you remember what I can give you?” His hand, his knife hand, traced the blade over her lips, and she tasted blood. Down the sensitive skin of her neck went the blade, grazing but not cutting, down her chest, to her stomach, then diagonally to her heart.

  Tess reached for the knife where the devil held it, poised against her breast.

  A shimmer in the image. Eliot’s voice. “The book, Tess! Read it!”

  Eliot. She wanted Eliot.

  But the devil could give her everything. It came in flickers: the studio, the black cello, the audience. What did she want? Eliot. She wanted freedom. She wanted.

  She wanted to be free of this book and its devil.

  The book. She looked down. The book was in one hand, the knife in the other. “I’m sorry,” she said to the devil, and his smile faltered—but was it a smile or a grimace? “I think I must …”

  “No,” the devil said, leaning close to her ear. His tongue flicked out and caressed her earlobe, sending a shiver down her spine. “The knife, Tess.”

  “The book, Tess, the fucking book!”

  Eliot. But Eliot was dead, wasn’t he?

  The book was Eliot, and Eliot was the book, and the devil was Eliot too. Devil or demon or specter or monster, haunt or magic or horror or Eliot himself.

  The devil reached forward and took the book from Tess’s hands. “You know why it had to be you, Tess. Don’t you?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He reached forward, tracing the curve of her cheek. His fingers were burning hot against her skin. She wanted to lean into him; she wa
nted to pull away. Tess did not move.

  There was only this. Only the devil, only time, only death. Eliot Birch was dead, and the entire world was burning.

  He opened his book with one hand to show her the insides. There were those lines of gold, glowing in the bluish darkness of the tomb. “I knew as soon as you touched the cover. I knew what you wanted, what you would do. Tess, I’ve been waiting for you since the beginning of time.”

  Tess was shaking her head. She tried to back away but the devil caught her, keeping her close. “I’m not evil,” she insisted.

  The devil’s lips curled into a smile; it wasn’t Eliot’s knowing smirk, but something darker, something that sent a shiver running down Tess’s spine. Even though his skin was hot as an open flame, she was so, so cold.

  “I’m not evil either,” he said. One hand locked around her wrist, holding her knife-hand steady. “I’m only the truth, after all. I’m the motivation behind everything you do. I’m the deepest part of you. I am yours and you are mine.”

  She wanted to deny it. Wanted to flee, to leave Eliot and the devil and Jessop behind—but. The truth echoed through her, as if this was the very first time anyone had truly known her.

  The devil stepped closer. All pretenses faded. His face was open, honest. “I’m the only one who understands you. I know what you want, more than anything. What you need. I could make you greater than you could ever be on your own.”

  She heard the sweet tune of a cello in the back of her mind. Tess didn’t doubt him. He could give her everything. All she ever wanted, all she’d worked for.

  “Make it so,” the devil said. “Stay mine, forever.” He pulled Tess’s hand up, and light glinted off the knife. “Stay with me.”

  She sensed something stirring, something awful and unnamed, as she looked at the devil. There, in his eyes, Tess saw herself. Her own human inadequacy; the realization she would never be enough to matter, never be good enough.

  Tess hesitated, looking at his face. She saw grief and longing and something else she didn’t expect to find, not so raw and open, not in the devil’s face.