Sorceress

by Claudia Gray

  “I think so,” Nadia said, though she wasn’t entirely certain. “But Asa’s hardly our top priority. Elizabeth’s the real problem. Why are you so hot to take him down all of a sudden? Has he done something to you?”

  Verlaine took a couple of steps backward, hugging her arms around her as she leaned against the kitchen wall. “No. But—we’re kind of headed into the home stretch here, right? If I might have to do this, I need to know how.”

  There was more to this than Verlaine was saying. Always, before, she’d stuck up for Asa, defending him so fiercely that even Nadia had doubted her own contempt for him. Demons were evil, but enslaved; Asa had no choice but to do the One Beneath’s bidding. When he wasn’t trying to screw with their heads, he could be almost . . . interesting.

  Still, Verlaine was right. Soon they might all be called upon to exceed their own limits, or to act in desperation. Even to kill. Verlaine was the most powerless of them all; she lacked Nadia’s witchcraft or Mateo’s ability to glimpse the future. She deserved whatever chance Nadia could give her.

  At least this proved Verlaine wasn’t crushing on Asa. Nadia was relieved; she should have known Verlaine wouldn’t get that mixed up.

  Nadia leaned out of the kitchen and called to Cole. “Hey, buddy, Verlaine and I are going to hang out in the attic for a while. Is it okay if we play with your cars a little later?”

  “Right after Madagascar!” Cole said, his eyes never leaving the screen.

  “You bet,” she said. He probably had two or three episodes on the DVR. That would give them plenty of time to search through Goodwife Hale’s Book of Shadows.

  Goodwife Hale had been a powerful witch who’d lived around the same time Elizabeth had been young; Nadia and Mateo had rescued her centuries-old spell book from the place she’d hidden it, deep under the water of the sound. The magic it held had protected it from the damp, made it glow in ways only Mateo’s Steadfast power revealed. That was what happened with Books of Shadows that belonged to powerful witches—they gained their own magic, even something close to sentience.

  Like Elizabeth’s terrible book, which once had tried to kill Nadia . . .

  She shook off her chill as the wooden ladder to the attic rattled down. Together they climbed upward into the space Nadia had claimed as her own. The large Victorian house the Caldani family had moved into a few months ago was as rickety as it was romantic, but Nadia loved it. How else could she have ended up with such a great space for her magic? A few oversize pillows and a small jar of chocolates made the space comfortable—and hopefully made her dad think it was nothing but a place to hang out, on the few occasions when he stuck his head up here.

  He never hung around long enough to pull back the cloth draped over her jars of spellcasting materials. Never realized prisms were hung in the windows and the ceiling painted blue for a reason. Never pushed aside Nadia’s paperbacks to reveal the Books of Shadows hidden beneath.

  As Verlaine sat cross-legged next to her, Nadia took up her own Book of Shadows first and pressed her hand against the cover—her way of saying hello. It was important to acknowledge your Book of Shadows, to connect with it. Only then did she pick up Goodwife Hale’s spell book —

  “Ow!” Nadia pulled her hand back as the book tumbled onto the floor. Her fingertips stung, as though she’d been shocked. That couldn’t be right. The only electrical sockets up here were several feet away. “Is there—broken glass on the floor?” Although Nadia didn’t remember breaking anything, maybe Cole had sneaked up here.

  “No. Nothing.” Verlaine picked up the spell book and turned it over. “Did a spider bite you or something?”

  “I hope not.” With a shudder, Nadia remembered the thousands of spiders living in Elizabeth’s home. “Here, I’ll—ow!”

  The Book of Shadows shocked her again, worse this time, and Nadia jerked back. When the truth sank in, she felt it cold and heavy in her gut.

  Verlaine looked down from Nadia’s face toward the spell book, then up again. “What’s going on?”

  “The Book of Shadows has rejected me. It knows I’m working with Elizabeth.”

  “It’s a book. How can it know that? No, wait, how can it know anything?”

  “It knows,” Nadia repeated.

  The spell book knows I’m bound to evil.

  “Wow. Awkward. Whole new area of awkward.” Verlaine bit her lower lip. “Are you still going to be able to use it?”

  Nadia took a deep breath. She had to be smarter than a mere book, however supernatural it might be; she had to remember her goal, to get to a day when she could break her bonds to Elizabeth and the One Beneath, permanently. “I can still use it, but only through you.”

  “Through me?”

  Maybe Mateo could have used it, too, but Nadia still wasn’t sure what effect a male Steadfast might have. So she simply nodded. “You take it. Read your way through. You might not understand all of it, but all you have to do is look for any reference to demons.”

  Verlaine peered at the hefty, overstuffed tome in her lap. “I guess an index is too much to hope for.”

  “No index.” Nadia had already combed through the book backward and forward, taking what notes she could and learning her way around. Working with a handwritten spell book that old was like memorizing paths through a forest without using a map. “I know there’s nothing in there directly about killing demons, because I looked as soon as Asa showed up. But there are probably hints we can put together. Just write it all down, and come back to me.”

  “You mean you want me to take the Book of Shadows home?”

  “Not like I can do anything with it here. Actually, take them both.” Nadia pointed toward the other borrowed spell book she had, the one that once belonged to Faye Walsh’s mother. She hadn’t found time to explore that one yet. “I doubt either of the books wants to have much to do with me. Just be careful with them.”

  “No using the ancient, priceless spell books for coffee coasters. Check.” Verlaine grinned at her, and Nadia managed to smile back.

  But as the evening went on, and she played cars with Cole, and stir-fried veggies for dinner, Nadia could only remember the terrible sting against her hand as the book had rejected her. The physical pain had been slight, almost meaningless. What hurt worse was the knowledge of how much she was changing. Her own Book of Shadows still responded to her, because it reflected Nadia herself; as she became darker, so did her spell book. Magic had changed for her, probably forever.

  Not dark magic, though. It still loves me.

  Nadia decided not to think any further about magic, dark or otherwise, until the time came for her to obey Elizabeth’s summons later that night. Already she could feel the pull—the strange, unearthly undertow that was Elizabeth’s way of calling Nadia to her side. She would have to go soon. She texted Mateo that she couldn’t come to La Catrina—even though she desperately wanted to see him. But if she saw him, she would have to tell him what had happened, and right now she didn’t think she could stand to speak the words.

  Instead Nadia sat through a family dinner, nodding when her dad spoke and laughing at her little brother’s silly jokes, keeping everything she really felt on the inside. No matter what she heard or said, the voice in her head just kept repeating, You can never be what you were before.

  Never again.

  “Mom? Dad? I’m going out!” Asa called.

  The Prasads were not his parents. They had been the parents of a boy named Jeremy, who had been arrogant, sexist, spoiled, and cruel. Asa knew this had not given Elizabeth the right to murder him and then hand his body over for Asa’s use. But the guy had been so nasty that Asa didn’t feel too bad about it.

  He made a good Jeremy, in his opinion. Better than the original. Already Asa had pulled up Jeremy’s GPA, despite having to balance homework with his service to the One Beneath. (Teachers were unlikely to accept excuses signed by the lord of hell.) Although Jeremy’s old friends had mostly dismissed him as “no fun anymore,” virtually ever
yone else Asa interacted with seemed happily surprised by his transformation from a raging asshole to . . . well, okay, to a demon dedicated to the destruction of the world they knew, but a polite one.

  As Asa slipped into his black jacket, Mrs. Prasad appeared in the mudroom, affectionately petting his shoulder. “You’ll be in by curfew?”

  Jeremy’s curfew was absurdly late—and yet Asa had the impression it had been observed more in the breach. “Sure. Of course.”

  She beamed. “While you’re out, I might make some snickerdoodles. You used to love those when you were little!”

  Apparently Mrs. Prasad felt nothing but love for him—and it was at moments like this when the guilt threatened to creep in. Thinking of this new family and the way Mrs. Prasad adored her son reminded him of the sister he had lost so long ago that he could hardly remember her face. . . .

  “Cookies would be great,” Asa said. He forced himself to smile back. “Thanks.”

  It was a relief to finally be out on the streets, walking through Captive’s Sound. Although the trees were almost entirely bare of leaves now, their naked branches clawing at the cloudy sky, there had been no snow since Thanksgiving. Asa was one of the very few people who knew that had happened for a reason.

  Soon they would all know, he thought. Not even the most skeptical human in Captive’s Sound could fail to recognize what was about to come.

  When he reached Elizabeth’s house, she already had the spell prepared, which was just as well. Asa didn’t like seeing her kill things. Not that he liked looking at crow entrails either, but better the aftermath than the event. He only hoped she’d been quick about it. As he stepped over the bird guts on the floor, he said, “Love what you’ve done with the place.”

  Elizabeth ignored this. She was immune to humor, he thought, like virtually every other human emotion. “Nadia should be with you.”

  “Was I supposed to pick her up? Nobody told me about the car pool.”

  “The summons should be as clear to her as it is to you, but she has not answered.” Instead of being ticked off, though, Elizabeth seemed oddly . . . satisfied. Now what’s that about? Asa wondered.

  Then he heard Nadia’s footsteps outside, and she hurried into Elizabeth’s house, cheeks flushed, as though she’d run here. She lifted her chin as though in defiance, but stopped when she saw what was left of the crow.

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “You ignored my call?”

  “Of course not. I’m here,” Nadia said. “But what—what are we doing with that?”

  “Death provides the ingredients for some of the work we do. You should know that by now.” Elizabeth sat on the floor, in what seemed to be the only area free of broken glass and dust. With his boot Asa kicked away a clear spot for himself; as Nadia made her own place, Elizabeth continued, “These sorts of spells are delicate. More complicated than you might think.”

  Nadia hesitated. She was flustered, Asa noticed. For a girl her age, Nadia was uncommonly self-possessed. But there was something about her this evening—fear, loneliness, and longing, too: Demons could almost smell that kind of need.

  Which made him think of Verlaine glancing over her shoulder at him, and of the one and only time they’d kissed . . .

  His train of thought was broken as Nadia took her place in the circle. “What kinds of spells? Dark magic?”

  “No. By now you must have realized much dark magic is simple. Elegant.” Elizabeth smiled. “Spells to influence the weather are not inherently dark, and they can be far more complex.”

  “The weather? This is all about the weather?” Nadia looked as though she wanted to laugh. Had she understood the work ahead, Asa thought, she would not have been so amused.

  Serenely, Elizabeth looked up at the ceiling—exposed boards and rotting plaster, laced with countless cobwebs—and held out her hands. Asa took one of them; Nadia the other. When he and Nadia joined their fingers in turn, they exchanged a swift glance. She looked bewildered; he tried to look sympathetic.

  “We are going to command the winds,” Elizabeth whispered. “We are going to still the sea. And then, we will summon the rain.”

  3

  THE RAIN CAME DOWN, AND DOWN, AND DOWN.

  Endless sheets of it, sweeping like silvery curtains along the street. Nadia hugged herself as she stood with Asa and Elizabeth on Elizabeth’s porch, watching the gutters turn into small rivers, and the puddles in every yard welling wider.

  “You could at least have told us to bring raincoats,” Asa said.

  Nadia stifled her smile, but Elizabeth was, of course, unmoved. “If you can’t endure getting wet, the days to come are going to be beyond you.” She glanced sideways at Asa, her eyes cold and flat. “But we already knew that.”

  Asa turned away, casually, as though he hadn’t heard. But Nadia saw the tension in his shoulders, remembered how his expression had always darkened whenever they reminded him that he was “on Elizabeth’s leash.”

  I think he hates this as much as I do.

  “You can leave,” Elizabeth said to Asa, then turned away from him as though he were already gone. “Come, Nadia. You and I have more to do.”

  Nadia followed Elizabeth back inside the house, casting one glance behind her to see Asa’s reaction—but he was already gone. Probably he’d clapped his hands together and stopped time in the eerie way he had, then strolled home while dodging the raindrops hanging around him in midair.

  As they walked back into Elizabeth’s main room, Nadia said, “The days to come—what will they be like?”

  Elizabeth turned back toward her with a smile on her face that looked almost genuine. “After the One Beneath walks into this world? Glorious. The bridge between the demonic realm and the mortal realm will allow the demonic realm to triumph.”

  “Will they become the same? Like, just one place?” Nadia couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of the whole world becoming hell.

  “Not exactly. Humans will still live here. They will have the same feelings, the same wishes. But they will inhabit a transformed world. One that answers to no natural law, one where they will forever know the One Beneath in all His power and caprice. As He wills it, so shall they suffer, and from their suffering He will grow even stronger. His reign will be eternal.”

  The image in Nadia’s mind showed a world devastated and terrifying, but still itself. Like The Walking Dead except worse. As terrible as that seemed, she almost felt relieved. No matter how dangerous this world became, no matter how much pain people endured here, it had to be better than hell.

  “About time you started asking questions,” Elizabeth said. “Is there anything else you would like to learn tonight?”

  She thought of Asa, making jokes before he walked out into the rain. He looked like any other guy. Spoke like one. It was hard for her to remember that Asa was under Elizabeth’s control, that he could become a weapon at any moment. Verlaine was right. They had to protect themselves. “How do you kill a demon?”

  Elizabeth halted midstep. She turned, looking over her shoulder at Nadia; the orange glow from her stove painted the lines and shadows of her face sharply, and strangely. “Why do you need to know?”

  “I don’t.” Nadia shrugged. “I want to know.”

  “Do you hate him?” Elizabeth said, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. It was the way any other girl would say, Do you like him?

  The lie came easily: “He’s supposed to serve you, right? To serve us. Sometimes I think he forgets that. I ought to know how to deal with him if he gets . . . ahead of himself.”

  Elizabeth took her usual seat on the floor, amid all the broken glass that glittered in the dim orange light. “It involves the use of his real name, which can be powerful in certain contexts. Demons’ names are important. Also you’ll need the blood of the sea, and a dagger consecrated to white magic.” The confusion on Nadia’s face must have been obvious, because Elizabeth smiled. “So many things you have yet to learn. But you can learn the details later, when we ge
t into darker magic. We cannot worry about mere nuisances when there is serious work to be done. For now, Asa is a necessary tool.”

  She nodded, like that was okay with her. Inside, though, Nadia could only think, Darker magic? Darker than working toward the end of the world? So she made her next question direct. “What’s the next step for the One Beneath?”

  “For us as His servants, you mean.” Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed, and Nadia realized she should push no further tonight. “Next we draw Him forward. Each spell we cast toward His power will bring Him closer to the surface. Others will attempt to undo our work here tonight. We must prevent them from doing so.”

  “Undo our work? You mean, they’ll try to work against our spell? Other witches?” Weren’t all the other witches in Captive’s Sound defeated by now, or too terrified of Elizabeth to act? Nadia had always thought she had to stand against Elizabeth alone.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I mean the works of man. They can be stopped. What we have to cast is a spell for falling apart.”

  “Falling apart? I never heard of a spell like that.”

  “Of course you haven’t. The spell is of my own creation.”

  Nadia went very still. Creating your own spells was the highest form of witchcraft—something she had never attempted, something her mother had never mastered. It was a gift not one witch in a thousand could claim. Why wasn’t she surprised that Elizabeth was the one? “What does the spell do?”

  “On its own? Very little. But it enhances the magic we’ve already done. Intensifies its impact.”

  Could she stop Elizabeth from casting this spell? Not without giving herself away, Nadia figured. Anyway, this was only adding onto the spells they’d already cast, which so far only affected the weather. Besides—she couldn’t help feeling curious. What would an original spell feel like? How much power had Elizabeth unlocked?

  “Grounded by agate.” Elizabeth wore an agate ring, a milky-lilac circle around her left little finger. Nadia’s agate charm dangled from her bracelet, and she clasped it quickly as Elizabeth began to recite the ingredients: “Three things are needed. A woman weeping for something lost forever. A time when you were cruelly betrayed. And a time when you cruelly betrayed another.”