Daughter of Chaos

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “Dear Satan,” Prudence told Nick. “That must have been sad for you. But on the plus side, it was very amusing for me.”

  Nick was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching as Sabrina made her hasty exit. Sabrina was cute enough, with her little skirts and her new bone-white hairdo, but Prudence didn’t understand the fixation.

  Still, Nick’s enormous crush was proving very convenient. Prudence and Nick were partners in fencing class. Prudence always chose Nick as a partner, since she wouldn’t risk her sisters going near a man with a sword. During their last class before Yule, Nick had asked for Prudence’s help. Prudence agreed to keep Nick updated on Sabrina’s doings and to talk up Nick to Sabrina. In exchange, Nick was doing all Prudence’s homework until summer. Nick believed they were friends. Prudence believed they were business partners.

  Watching Nick get rejected was a hilarious added bonus to their business arrangement. Prudence loved winning.

  “I’m doing something wrong,” Nick murmured to himself. “I need to figure out what.”

  Actually, Prudence had no idea what was going wrong. Sabrina was obviously attracted to Nick, and Nick’s seduction techniques were excellent. They’d even worked on Prudence.

  She thought the matter over. “Perhaps you’re being too subtle? Maybe she doesn’t know you’re romantically interested.”

  “That could be it,” Nick said slowly. “I did invite her to join the good time in Ambrose’s attic with us. Don’t you think that might have given her a hint?”

  “That was only polite,” Prudence argued. “And very subtle. You were still wearing your underwear.”

  Nick frowned. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “What you should do is astrally project to her bedroom tonight,” Prudence suggested. “Naked.”

  She began to stroll down the corridor. Nick walked with her. The red flames affixed to the stone walls, held aloft by withered Hands of Ingloriousness, cast brief illumination on the pin-scratch mark between his brows.

  “It’s a classic move,” he admitted. “Simple, yet elegant. I’m not sure it’s the right move in this particular case.”

  “In these uncertain times, we can’t lose sight of unholy truths. Nothing says romance like naked astral projection.”

  Prudence reflected on many memories that proved her point. Some mortal boys had tried to worship her as a goddess. Many tried to touch her and fell to their knees howling in misery when their hands passed through the vision that was her body. Naked astral projection never failed.

  Even though she’d solved his problems, Nick was still frowning.

  “Stop dragging your feet, Nick!” Prudence told him severely. “You need to come on much stronger than this. Sabrina and her mortal have been broken up for weeks. Her quaint notions about fidelity kept the other boys at bay while they were together, but as I told you earlier, the time has come to act. Now she’s fresh meat up for grabs and the sharks are circling. Plutonius Pan is making a play for your princess.” Prudence shuddered. “Try saying that three times fast, or thinking about it for more than three seconds.”

  Nick appeared on the verge of being physically ill.

  “Plutonius Pan? Sabrina would never let him touch her.”

  “Let’s not pretend Sabrina’s standards are high, shall we?” asked Prudence. “Consider the evidence. Not only a mortal, but a witch-hunter! Only maniacs are in for witch-hunters.”

  “She didn’t know he was a witch-hunter!” Nick defended Sabrina loyally. “Nobody knew.”

  Prudence shrugged. “Doesn’t change the fact any warlock would look good after years with a mortal. Even Plutonius.”

  “The mortal is an annoying idiot,” muttered Nick. “Who is ruining his life, but more importantly, my life. Plutonius Pan. The Dark Lord is testing me.”

  “Have you noticed how some people begin to look like their familiars?” Prudence asked.

  Every witch was given a familiar, a goblin to be the other half of their soul. Plutonius’s faithful goblin companion was an albino weasel. The resemblance was pronounced.

  Nick didn’t respond to this observation. Nobody had ever seen Nick’s familiar. Nick had familiar trauma he refused to discuss and was clearly brooding over this new information.

  “I won’t share Sabrina with Plutonius Pan,” Nick announced. “I don’t have an open-door policy.”

  “The witches’ bathroom wall says different, Nicholas.”

  Nick sneered. Prudence beamed saucily.

  “Not for Plutonius Pan, I don’t. I hate him. I hate everything about him. I hate his whole face. This is a disaster.”

  “Ha ha,” said Prudence.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “At your pain,” Prudence explained cheerfully.

  Nick rolled his eyes. “Aren’t you just sweet as cyanide.”

  They turned a corner and saw Sabrina approaching a bunch of Prudence’s father’s most prized warlock students. The members of the club Father Blackwood wouldn’t let girls join and Nick refused to join. Luke Chalmers was a member of this noxious brotherhood. Prudence could see his smooth blond head leaning against Ambrose Spellman’s dark one.

  “Ugh, there’s Luke,” murmured Nick.

  Prudence shook her head. “We hate Luke.”

  She and Nick exchanged a fist bump. Nothing brought witches together like mutual hatred.

  Prudence was pleased to note Luke’s face darkening when Ambrose caught sight of his cousin and immediately broke away from the Judas Society.

  The whole Academy knew Father Blackwood had given Ambrose the choice to stand with him when the ghosts came, and Ambrose declined. He chose to stand with his family instead. Father Blackwood was still enraged that Ambrose had picked a bunch of renegade Spellman women over the High Priest.

  The witches of the Academy felt differently about Ambrose’s show of loyalty. Imagine having a man who valued women above power, who believed keeping faith with women was worth punishment. Many of the witches were in the midst of a full-blown Ambrose Spellman Situation.

  Sabrina hurried toward her cousin. Ambrose’s smile welcomed her, a fire spell set to a dry torch that created a sudden blaze in the shadows. Prudence wondered sometimes what it would be like to be smiled at that way.

  The Spellmans were weirdos. Prudence had watched Hilda Spellman smooth wrinkles in Ambrose’s shirt, or fix the hairband in Sabrina’s hair, little gestures that served no real purpose except being close. Now Ambrose was allowed to spend time at the Academy, he and Sabrina were constantly doing totally puzzling things right in front of the other students. They would say “Just checking in on you” to each other and go out of their way to walk together.

  A few days ago, Prudence had seen Sabrina lying on a stone bench with her head in Ambrose’s lap. They’d been chatting idly. Occasionally Ambrose brushed Sabrina’s hair back and sang a brief line of song to her, then returned to the conversation. Prudence lingered, along with many other students, to look at them. It was like watching a strange play, a performance that made no sense but was oddly fascinating.

  The Spellmans obviously thought this kind of behavior was normal.

  Prudence had made it clear to every witch having an Ambrose Spellman Situation that if Ambrose was open to being with witches as well as warlocks, she, Prudence, was first in line.

  Ambrose studied Sabrina’s face, the arched wings of his eyebrows flying up. “Something wrong, cousin?”

  He called Sabrina “cousin” all the time. Prudence thought she understood why. It was the same way she called Dorcas and Agatha “sisters.” It was both a claim and a proclamation made. You’re mine, my very own. I’ll take care of you.

  Sabrina shook her head, bob flying about like a cloud in a too-strong wind. “No,” she said unconvincingly. “But can we talk?”

  Ambrose gave her a little kiss on the forehead. “Sure. Let’s go home.”

  As they turned and walked off, Ambrose moved away slightly, but Sabrina put her
arms around his waist and hugged him. That wasn’t an efficient way of getting where they were going, to their stupid home.

  Once Prudence had believed Nick Scratch was the best it was going to get when it came to warlocks.

  She remembered Nick’s existence and tore her eyes off the Spellmans, only to find Nick still watching them. Prudence hoped to Satan that she wasn’t half as obvious as Nick was being about his Sabrina Spellman Situation. She’d caught him watching Sabrina with a look of open longing that lasted almost three whole seconds. Pathetic.

  She poked him in the side with a wine-red fingernail. “Naked astral projection is the answer!”

  Nick’s gaze moved to her. “No. I have a different idea.” He turned and stalked off.

  “It’s your sexless funeral,” Prudence called after him.

  Prudence wouldn’t normally waste her time advising Nick. Except things were strained between her and her sisters because of the stupid mine-collapsing spell they’d done without her. Usually the Weird Sisters stuck together. They were stronger that way. They were a unit, the power of each amplifying the other, the three in one.

  But now Agatha and Dorcas were hanging back from Prudence. Maybe they hated her for finally having a father when they were still orphans. Maybe they’d decided to leave her out from now on. Prudence certainly wasn’t going to make the first move to reconcile. But sometimes she found herself wondering why she had nobody to talk to.

  “Hi, Prudence,” said Mania Brown, passing by with Elspeth and Melvin. “You look beautiful and mystical today.”

  “As I always do,” said Prudence. “No need to comment on it. How dare you speak to me.”

  Prudence swept on, hurrying. She’d stayed too long after class. Judas must be waking from his nap.

  She entered the High Priest’s private chambers to find the baby already screeching in his elaborately carved ebony crib under his inverted cross ornament. Prudence cursed, threw down her book bag, and picked him up. His small brown face was screwed up in distress, his little fists flying everywhere as if he wanted to fight.

  “Be quiet,” Prudence murmured. “I know your mother’s dead. So’s mine. You don’t catch me wailing about it, do you? There is no need to show off like this.”

  Baby Judas kept screaming despite Prudence’s words of comfort. He was constantly crying. Prudence didn’t know how to make him stop.

  He was the son of Father Blackwood—her father, she reminded herself; he wasn’t only her High Priest but really her father—and his late wife, so Baby Judas was her brother. She’d never had a brother before. She was used to sisters.

  She had a baby sister now too, but Zelda Spellman had taken her away to keep her safe. Prudence sometimes thought her baby sister wouldn’t cry at her like this.

  “Shut up,” Prudence told the baby.

  She fed him and changed him and gave him the skull of a ferret with teeth rattling inside it. Baby Judas possessed every luxury. She didn’t see what else he wanted.

  The door to Father Blackwood’s study slammed open. The baby’s crying intensified.

  “Prudence, make Judas cease that blessed racket at once!”

  Prudence glared daggers at her father. He studied her with ice-blue eyes that always found her wanting.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder,” he bit out. “Stop constantly disappointing me.”

  Prudence had believed, when Father Blackwood told her to care for the babe, that now Lady Blackwood was dead, her father wanted to claim her at last. She’d thought they would be a family. But over Yule, Father Blackwood had presented Judas to his relatives. He hadn’t presented Prudence to anyone. She was an illegitimate girl, no use to him except as a skivvy.

  Men didn’t care about daughters, unless they had wives to make them. Prudence had heard someone say once that the right woman could rule any man at home. Lady Blackwood had hated Prudence like poison, no matter what Prudence did to please her. But now Father Blackwood was in need of a new wife to preside over his infernal affairs.

  Everybody knew Father Blackwood and Zelda Spellman regularly engaged in revels of dark carnality. The orders of whips to the Academy had doubled over the last few months. The Spellmans were trouble, but they were undeniably high class. Zelda Spellman was the former High Priest’s sister, and a much-feared witch in her own right. Hilda Spellman was a joke, but nobody dared laugh at Zelda.

  When the babies were born, Prudence helped Zelda deliver them. Zelda hadn’t indulged in even a moment of sentimentality about Father Blackwood, despite their carnal acts.

  “He’s not a man who should have daughters,” she’d said crisply. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Prudence answered.

  “I will take her,” Zelda said.

  She’d rocked the little girl in her arms and told Prudence to feed Baby Judas with the milk of a Judas goat to keep him thriving. Prudence crushed down the urge to say: Take us with you.

  That would’ve been silly. Prudence wasn’t Ambrose Spellman, impulsive enough to throw away her advantages. He’d made an adorable decision, but ultimately a foolish one. She’d spent her whole life as an orphan, but now she could be the High Priest’s acknowledged child. Prudence wouldn’t lose her chance at power.

  Father Blackwood must choose another wife. Surely his choice would land on a beautiful, magical, well-connected woman of spirit. Surely his choice would be none other than Zelda Spellman.

  Sister Jackson, a woman bitter as winter apples fallen from a tree and rotting, had recently found out about Zelda and Father Blackwood’s affair and begun talking loudly about how much she pitied Zelda. “Poor woman. You know why she became a Night Mother, don’t you? Wishes she was a real mother. She lives for babies.”

  That sounded fine to Prudence. If Prudence’s mother had lived for babies, she wouldn’t have thrown herself in the river when Father Blackwood didn’t marry her. She would have lived for Prudence. They would be together now.

  If Zelda wanted children, Prudence decided, she could have the Blackwood children.

  When Sabrina got herself into trouble over her mortal boyfriend, Father Blackwood wanted to destroy her. Zelda stood in his way. Her transgression is mine, Zelda said in the choir room before the eyes of everyone. Prudence saw and understood. Zelda meant: Every part of her is mine. Sins and all, soul and all. Nobody, not even Satan, will touch her.

  Zelda fought for Sabrina fiercely as a lioness. If she liked a niece that much, surely she would like a daughter more.

  Prudence could imagine it now. The grand wedding, the beautiful infernal ceremony. Maybe the anti-pope would attend, since it was a union between two important families. Zelda, Lady Blackwood, would wear a black satin gown encrusted with bloodred rubies and crows’ feathers. Father Blackwood’s eyes would follow her with pride, delighted enough with his new bride to follow her wishes in domestic matters.

  “These are my babies, Judas and Leticia,” Zelda would say, then lay her hands upon Prudence’s shoulders. “And this is my eldest daughter, Prudence Blackwood. Allow me to present her to you, Your Unholiness. One day we will dance at her infernal bridal, but not for a century or so, I hope. The family would collapse without Prudence.”

  Prudence’s sisters would be so jealous. She’d make sure they were taken care of, though. In the end her sisters would see this was for the best.

  If Zelda absolutely insisted, even if it would be a little embarrassing, Prudence was prepared to call her “Mother.” She’d practiced saying it a few times.

  Her father would come to value her. She’d be able to talk to him about taking the Blackwood name. She wasn’t an orphan. She never had been. She walked the dark floor, rocked the crying child, and didn’t understand why nothing reassured him.

  “Will you hush, brat,” she told Baby Judas. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

  A new year was coming. All Prudence needed was a little luck.

  When the knock on the door came, Harvey thought his dad had forgotten his
keys. He bolted up from the table and flung open the door.

  Then he stared in dismay at Nick Scratch, standing on his threshold in a whirl of black night and white snow.

  “You again?” Harvey shook his head. “I can’t deal with any more witch garbage right now.”

  Harvey made to shut the door, but the other boy threw himself bodily against it. Harvey fought to get the door closed and keep his voice steady. Neither worked.

  “Seriously, I can’t do this. If you could leave, and stop reminding me of all the ways in which my life is completely screwed up, that’d be great.”

  “Wait!” said Nick Scratch. “Help me.”

  It was the last thing he’d expected Nick to say.

  Harvey stopped trying to shove the door closed. “What do you mean?”

  “I helped you on the night the ghosts came. You owe me, mortal.”

  Harvey bit his lip. “I know. But how could someone like me help someone like you? I can’t do any magic.”

  “The way you looked at me earlier, before you turned away,” Nick said. “It’s the same way Sabrina looks at me, as if she can’t believe what I just said. Witches have always liked what I had to say before now. I’m not a fool. I can tell I’m doing something wrong, but I have no idea what it is.”

  There was a silence, in which Harvey leaned against the door and weighed Nick’s words. It was a strange revelation, that Nick Scratch might be sincere.

  “So you … really don’t know what you’re saying is horrifying?”

  Nick frowned. “Why would it be horrifying?”

  “Huh,” said Harvey. “Okay.”

  Roz had explained to Harvey that misunderstanding other people’s cultures was hurtful. It was like when you stepped on somebody’s foot. You should apologize and stop doing it before you did anything else.

  Witches weren’t the same as persecuted minorities, but if Harvey was misunderstanding Nick, he felt bad.

  “I’m sorry,” said Harvey. “I think we’re having communication issues. The way you talk about Sabrina is normal for witches?”

  “I have a friend who thinks I’m not coming on strong enough,” said Nick. “Do you think that’s the problem?”