by Scott Tracey
Illana dropped me off back at Charlie’s where I’d left my car. Adele was on the front porch, a pair of knitting needles in either hand though it didn’t appear she was actually knitting anything. She smiled and waved one of them in the air. Illana didn’t stay, pulling out of the driveway almost before I had fully exited the vehicle.
At home that night, everyone wanted to talk about Justin. How he was doing, when he was coming home. There were subtle comments about how lonely he’d been all afternoon, and how they’d tried calling to see where I was, but I never picked up.
Jenna raised her eyebrow in a question at one point, and I shook my head. Now wasn’t the time to talk about it anyway.
Despite the way the week opened with excitement, the rest of it was a disappointment. There were no new leads on the dead Abyssal, no sightings of the current Prince, and no changes in the status of anything between. The school was running into a shortage of detention slips, though, as public displays of “inappropriateness” skyrocketed. There were at least half a dozen fights in the morning before school and at least one or two after.
Those among us with magic had taken to keeping to our own groups. Normally, Maddy had a group of girls around her, but with the violence in the halls, the witches had banded together. I used the opportunity to rope Kevin into helping me start the basics of set construction, although that was mostly me trying to keep him from severing a limb or stapling his foot to the floor. Set design was easy, the construction part was moderately difficult. The fact that my assistant could throw a perfect spiral pass on the field yet couldn’t connect a hammer to nail without a body part in the way was disturbing.
But the worst part of all was that there was no sign of the Prince. I knew he had to be planning something, but had no idea what. The longer that his reappearance took, the more my nerves strained.
When I pulled back up to the school that evening, cutting around the back lane past the football field, which would put me right near the auditorium entrance, I didn’t notice the flashing lights at first. But as I walked towards the door I couldn’t help but notice the reflection of red and blue lights against the houses across the street from the school. Instead of heading inside, I walked around to the front of the building, past all the side entrances that were no doubt locked up by now.
There were three different police cars and an ambulance parked in front of the school, headlights blazing right at the front entrance. In addition, there were half a dozen bodies standing off to one side: teachers in their off time, administrators in yoga pants and ratty shirts. Only one or two students, really. A sobbing girl who couldn’t seem to catch a breath for all of her shaking and gasping. And another girl, calm and big-eyed behind a pair of glasses, watching everything go down with perfect calm.
“What happened?” I asked. The eyeglasses girl looked at me and blinked several times. If possible, the crying girl started gasping even louder between sobs.
“He broke into the office, trying to change her grades.” She nodded first towards one of the police cars, where a silhouette sat glumly in the backseat, slumped over and still. The second nod was for the crying girl, and I guess it made a little more sense now. Her Romeo had gotten busted trying to do her a solid. What could she do but weep?
“And the ambulance?”
“He couldn’t figure out the password, so he put his hand through the monitor. They say he’s lucky he didn’t electrocute himself. I guess that’s happened before.”
“He-he-he.” Each hysterical exhale was punctuated by a wheezing sound, and it took many of them strung together before I realized the crier was trying to say something, but she couldn’t manage anything more than the first word.
He was doing it for me. He did it for love. He’s my knight in shining handcuffs. It didn’t really matter what she was going for, I knew where it ended.
“You should get her out of here. Unless the police are planning to interrogate her.” Standing around while her boyfriend sat in the back of a cop car wasn’t going to do anyone any good. Especially not with the current brand of crazy going around. She might decide that a jailbreak was the only acceptable alternative.
“I don’t even know her,” the girl said distastefully. “I just came over to see what all the crazy was about.”
“Seriously?” I stared at the girl until she started to squirm, looking quickly towards me and then away. Then back again, to make sure I was still watching her. Finally she groaned, threw her hands out and grabbed the other girl by the arm and dragged her away.
People were really losing it. Or maybe that’s how people actually were: come to watch the train wreck, but God forbid anyone ask you to grab some bandages for the wounded.
The auditorium was almost empty when I finally made my way back to the rear of the school and entered the building. Brice had it arranged with the janitorial staff that the auditorium doors would stay unlocked until eight or nine; after that, we could leave whenever we wanted, but we couldn’t get back inside unless someone else was already there.
Almost empty. The Prince lounged on the edge of the stage, silver hair now streaked with black, like the photo negative of someone going gray. Golden skin was looking a little sallow, pink in some places, less human. And more makeup.
There were no crazy backdrops. No castles or asylums or creepy surroundings. Just him and me. His hands were braced on either side of him, ready to push off the stage at a moment’s notice. He watched me warily as I approached, and even more carefully once I stopped. The Prince was the enemy. I couldn’t forget that.
“I am very cross with you,” he said clearly.
The lights in the building went out, and darkness consumed me.
The lights came back on in a one-two clang. Not lights. Spotlights. One was trained on me, and I looked up into the stands to see who was manning the equipment, but it was too hard to see. The other, as I turned to look, was focused on the Prince, who now lounged in a hideously ornate throne, equal parts gold and human bones. Whoever designed the throne had a sense of humor: the legs were made from femurs, long and ashen, while the arms were made from tibias and fibulas and phalanges at the tips. And reigning above his head, a baker’s dozen of human skulls, each far smaller than I would have expected.
Until I realized they were the skulls of children.
“Just for once can’t you cut the theatrics?”
Puzzlement ran across the Prince’s face unchecked. “But we are in a theater.” To him, it made the most perfect kind of sense. That was what one did in a theater.
“This is an auditorium. A place where you go so people can hear you.”
He appeared to think that over for a few seconds before tucking the whole conversation away. “Then hear me: I’m very cross with you, my champion,” he said, retreating to a stern face that seemed hard to hold onto. The Prince was used to smiling, laughing. Levity. He could do anger and rage as well, but the emotions never sat so easily on his face. Then again, as he planned to slaughter three dozen Witchers, he was laughing and having a grand time.
“I’m doing what you told me to do. Trying to find out what happened. It takes time.”
The Prince smiled slowly, but it wasn’t the usual smile of joy that I saw. Now that smile carried thoughtfulness, seething frustration, and calculation. “I thought you might say that.” He snapped his fingers, the sound almost immediately drowned out by a third clang of metal as yet another spotlight lit up.
I spun around, searching for it only to realize that it had come on just behind me and to the left. The far side of the auditorium: the only other entrance. Someone walked in slowly, barefoot and in thick black frames I’d never seen before. Brice, blue-eyed and sleep-rumpled.
He could have been a model, especially now, black hair sweeping into his eyes, his cheeks still stained red from where they’d pressed against a pillow.
“What’s your name, pet?”
The Prince was all smiles, welcoming like a sunny day.
“Brice,” he said, and his voice was deep and gravely. The casual confidence I’d seen in him before was still there, but it was a skipping record: every so often, there was a jarring moment where his eyes unfocused and his eyes grew wide and worried.
“Hello, Brice,” the Prince said formally. He extended a hand towards me. “Do you know Malcolm?”
“I know him,” the other boy nodded. “He’s new.”
“He’s seen you too,” the Prince confided.
“Really?” The news made Brice happy, an easy smile ran across his face.
“What are you doing?” I could feel it like the heat of the spotlights against my face. “Stop it.”
“But we haven’t even gotten started.” The Prince waved his hands with a flourish, then took a small bow. “The pleasure is all mine, Brice.”
Brice smiled, the confidence now fully stripped from him, his aura of calm washed away. More than once he reached up to scratch his face, a nervous habit that I could now see for what it was.
“Do you love him?” The Prince continued. Dogged intent and a lilting curiosity framed the question, a thing that was both innocent and judgment at the same time.
“Who? Malcolm?” Brice scoffed. “I don’t know him.”
“Do you love him?” The Prince repeated. This time, there was more force to his words, a tangled cadence of words and thoughts and emotions and intent.
The quizzical look on Brice’s face grew stronger.
“Do you love him?”
“Stop this!” I demanded.
“No,” Brice said, but there was less resistance this time. “No, I … I mean, I don’t think … ”
“Think about it.” The Prince focused his entire awareness around a boy who wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight. A boy who was innocent of whatever dark designs the Prince had in mind.
Designs that were slow to take root, but quickly spread once they did. “I mean, I think I could … ” Brice kept trailing off, listening to something that was both above and below the audible words being spoken. Messages to the subconscious, placating the ego and the superego. Faintly, I could hear a trace of music in the air, notes I couldn’t quite pick out.
“I … I think I do.” The slack confusion began to fade, and the confidence returned. Brice smiled, all teeth and brilliant. “I do love him.” My heart dropped into my stomach, because this wasn’t a confession I wanted. Not like this. Not ever like this.
The Prince’s lip twitched upward at the side, the most hideous attempt at a smile I’d ever seen.
“Stop it.” I walked out of my spotlight, or at least I tried. It followed me as I ran and merged when I caught up with the Prince. Our lights together were twice as bright, but I turned my back to it. Facing him. “You don’t have to do this.”
“You think you can just send me away?” The Prince turned to face me, and the spotlights caught his irises, making them flare into brilliant yellow suns. His were the eyes of an animal, not the eyes of a human being. He carried a predator’s feral rage and it smothered me. “You think you can just call on your Moonset magics and banish me like I am some sort of bother!” His voice rose to a shriek, and it battered my eardrums louder than any concert.
Around us the walls splintered, started to crack. A snowfall of plaster seeped from the ceiling. He would bring the whole room down around us. “I am of the blood of the old Aos Si, the Court of Kingmakers. I am a Prince of the Abyss and the scourge of Hamelin. My songs make devils weep and quelled the rage of the Undying. You do not dismiss me! I will not be so humiliated!”
His words were a thousand lashes of fire against my back, flagellation for every sin I’d ever committed against his name. Agony awoke inside of me, and I fought for the breath to scream.
I took a step back, nearly stumbling to the ground. I managed to land on my knees, to press my hands against the floor and kept myself upright. Somewhat. Sounds ratcheted through my head, clawing apart my eardrums. His fury hollowed me out on the inside, and I almost wept in the face of it. Every muscle, every tendon in my body quelled under the fire of the Prince’s wrath.
And then it was over. Above me, I could hear the Prince’s breathing grow faster as he struggled to push down his feelings.
“Yes,” he said, “that was quite unbecoming.” The Prince reached down, grabbed my arm, and hauled me back up to my feet. Only he pulled too far, and my feet dangled inches above the ground. “Oh,” he said, as if realizing for the first time that he was taller than I. “Bother.” And then he dropped me back to my feet.
This time I remained standing.
“Brice, my darling,” the Prince said, taking care to smooth out any wrinkles to his shirt that the tantrum might have caused.
“Yes, my Prince?”
The Prince looked slyly at me and then that hideous smile returned, slow at the corners like it could somehow trick me into ignoring it. “Malcolm loves you too.”
Brice’s entire face brightened, the rush of joy filling him so full he could barely stand still and contain it. He moved tiny little movements, jerks of hands and feet and shifting weight back and forth between legs. He looked about a second away from fist pumping the sky in triumph.
“But … ” and here the Prince let his word hang in the air, thick like the noose I knew it to be.
“But?” Brice was guileless, unaware of where things were heading.
“Please,” I whispered, because that was all that was left of me. “Don’t.”
“Did you bring the knife like I asked?”
Shaky hands pulled the knife out of a back pocket. It was a big knife, something straight out of a restaurant kitchen. In the light trained upon him, it glowed like a forest fire.
“Malcolm would like it so much if you were to bleed for him.”
“No he wouldn’t,” I shouted immediately, but all protests died once the Prince clasped his hand around my shoulder. At the simplest touch, every muscle in my body contracted, flexed and tensed and surged to impulses that didn’t come from me. I tried to move my mouth, my hands, my anything, but they were under the Prince’s control. I was his puppet.
Brice looked down at the knife, and then back up at the Prince. He nodded slowly. “You’re sure?”
The Prince’s smile was warm and his words carried contented and proud across the room. The feelings swept over Brice and his smile became less strained. More easy. “Wherever you think is best,” the Prince added. “Though Malcolm loves danger. He enjoys a threat. So be sure to give him a show.”
No, I wanted to scream. Don’t do this. But Brice stripped off his pajama pants and his tee shirt, leaving him clad in only a pair of black and blue designer briefs.
I could feel the Prince’s avid interest as his breath swept past my ear. Brice studied his body, piece by piece, looking for the best place to start. Eventually, his arm dropped down at his side, and he nodded to the Prince.
“Malcolm is scared for you,” the Prince murmured.
“Don’t worry.” Brice gave me a small, trusting smile. The kind of smile I might have wanted once, but I’d never earned it. I wanted to earn it. “I bust the curve in AP Anatomy.” For a moment, I was a fool, convinced everything was going to be okay. That Brice could defy the Prince in the same way I’d managed. That he was too smart, too studious, to be in danger. Because he might have to cut himself, but he knew the anatomy. He knew where to cut, and where to avoid, in order to not bleed out in seconds.
For a moment, my heart was so full of hope and relief that I strained to bursting. If even one person could resist the Prince’s song, then it wasn’t all for nothing. We could fight him together.
Brice didn’t flinch as the knife sliced across his skin. There was nothing but a pleasant gasp as the femoral artery released a spray of blood that carried all the way to the tips o
f my shoes, staining them crimson.
I’d never worked up the courage to get to know Brice outside of the play. And now I never would. He dropped to the floor. The smile didn’t fade from his face even though the light from his eyes did.
“Draw the curtain on the second act,” the Prince said coldly, snapping his fingers.
The throne vanished. The lights returned. The Prince was gone.
The body was not.
twenty-six
Sensitive witches can read things in the Coven bond and know when trouble is happening. But seeing the future before it happens is dangerous, rare, and deadly. Almost always there is a dark origin to that power, a pact made and bound
in the bloodlines. It never ends well.
From a lecture series on
rare gifts among witches
Quinn beat the cops to the scene, despite the fact that the police station was only a few blocks away. “The Prince?” he asked quietly, even though it wasn’t a question.
“The Prince,” I agreed.
There was drama once the officers arrived. A boy dead and bled out before they’d arrived, me with the blood-soaked skin and clothes. Quinn, who was obviously not a student, yet hanging around like he had every right to be there. But it was drama that the Witchers made disappear, with a few pointed looks and a lot of magic.
It wasn’t the first time they’d interfered in a police investigation. It wasn’t even the first time they’d interfered in a homicide investigation. There was the trail of bodies back in Kentucky, and several since we’d come to New York.
“If you’ve got any more tricks up your sleeve,” Quinn said quietly while his eyes focused on the investigation around us, “now would be the time to pull them out.”
“If it was that easy, don’t you think I would have?”
I knew Illana would tell Quinn everything that I’d confided in her. More than anyone, he was the one she trusted. They weren’t even technically related—he was Robert Cooper’s grandson, and she was Robert’s second wife. At best, she was his step-grandmother. But it didn’t seem like either one of them acknowledged the difference.
