Storm: a Salt novel (Entangled Teen)

by Danielle Ellison

  Vassago raises an eyebrow. “How about a match, Mr. Prescott?”

  I look past Vassago toward a little table set up with Scrabble. “Are you serious?”

  “I anticipated your arrival. Come.” He turns away without me and walks toward the table. This is ridiculous.

  I cross my arms. “I don’t really feel like playing Scrabble.”

  “What do you seek then?”

  “Answers.”

  Vassago gives me a nod. He moves to sit at the table in the middle of an empty parking space, waiting for me. I stand there for long, silent seconds. I don’t want to play Scrabble.

  “A quick one,” Vassago says, “since you are already here and it is set up.”

  I am here, and obviously Vassago went through some trouble to make that happen. Why would he do that? Has he been keeping tabs on me? I sit next to him on the opposite side of the table and glance at the board. It’s surprisingly pristine for a demon that burrows through the trash and keeps a collection of crumbs in his beard.

  The whole thing reminds me of being a kid. Dad and I used to played chess. The first time I sat down to play with my dad, I was six. He is always white because he likes to make the first move. Back then, his approval was the only thing I longed for. It was before I knew better. That first day when he explained the rules of chess me, he said the most important thing to know about chess—and every other game—is to have a strategy.

  Every move has a counter move if you are able to see it.

  “Choose wisely,” Vassago says, passing me a sack of letters. I get an ‘M’ and he gets a ‘J,’ so Vassago goes first. Almost immediately he puts down CENT. It’s only six points.

  “Really?” I ask. “Six points?”

  “It’s what I have,” he says. “Do not underestimate. The end result can be stronger with a slow start.”

  I reach in for my letters.

  L C Y X G A E

  I stare at the pieces, and then see the word LEGACY and put it on the board. Sixteen points, since Y is a double letter score. I don’t have a strategy in Scrabble aside from winning.

  Vassago makes a noise at my move. “Interesting choice.”

  “All I do is draw the letters from the bag,” I say.

  “Or are meant to draw these particular ones?” Vassago asks. “It is your job to make the words, after all. Perhaps destiny is at play as well.”

  I have no clue what that means. I watch him while he puts his own tiles on the board. What have I gotten myself into? Is he going to make everything have a higher meaning? The letters I draw from this bag are just letters. That’s all.

  “I don’t really accept that crap,” I say. Destiny, fate, all of it is an excuse.

  Vassago spells out CHECK and then I add MATE and it makes him laugh. He plays REMAIN and I play MANY. He must find the whole thing amusing because he’s laughing and muttering and smiling.

  “I also enjoy chess,” Vassago says randomly.

  I was thinking about that a second ago. I raise an eyebrow. “My dad taught me, but it’s been awhile since we played.” Years, really. I can’t even remember the last time I could be in his presence without hating him. Which meant avoiding him at all costs.

  Vassago nods, putting down a ‘G’ onto the board. If anyone had told me I’d be playing Scrabble with a demon in the middle of the night in a parking garage, I would have never believed them. Vassago’s hand flits over the board, freezes, and then he looks at me. “Do you remember the incident with the red balloon?”

  Red balloon? For a second I don’t, then he touches my leg with his foot, and it all comes rushing back toward me.

  I was three or four and Dad and I were in the park. There was a festival with balloons—mine was red—I wanted blue. I wasn’t aware I had the void, but the magic changed it to blue. My dad was so angry with me that he popped it. I cried and he told me to stop crying. “This is not how Prescott men act,” he’d said.

  “Your move,” Vassago says. I look at the board. DAGGER.

  I stare at him. What the hell just happened? “I’d forgotten that moment.”

  “Your move,” Vassago repeats. I shake my head and look at my letters. I really only have one option, so I play KING.

  “Ah yes, the King’s safety is crucial,” Vassago says randomly, looking at the board. I look back up at Vassago’s goons, standing frozen, and then meet his gaze. “Your father is also aware of that rule.”

  “Why are you bringing him up again?” I watch him, waiting for Vassago to pick the rest of his letters.

  “He is the reason you are out killing innocents, is he not?”

  I scoff. “Demons aren’t innocent.”

  Vassago draws another letter. “Some are. You are. Penelope is.”

  My jaw tenses. “We’re not the same as them.” He can’t even try to compare us.

  With a curt nod, Vassago leans over the board. “Perhaps not yourself, but she is the same. Her magic comes from us now.”

  I lean closer toward the table, mimicking Vassago. “How do you know about all that? What am I doing here?”

  Vassago licks his finger and then holds it in the air, muttering words I can’t make out. “A storm is coming. And a cold front, I expect.”

  “Cold? It’s August.”

  Then he looks at the board and lays down the rest of his pieces. I stare at the board. His new word says

  MAUVE

  Chapter Eleven

  Penelope

  “Took you long enough,” Lia says. We’re standing in the middle of an empty park at two in the morning, and she’s complaining as if my tardiness is the most inconvenient part of this.

  “Yeah, well, human.”

  Lia hmms, eyes on me, and I notice for the first time that her eyes are blue. Very blue. I’ve never seen a demon with blue eyes, only green, and it makes Lia seem almost human.

  “Why are we here?”

  “I have information for you, and I think you’ll be even more inclined to think about it considering your current predicament.” The demon’s lips snarl.

  I cross my arms. This demon is tuning into the wrong news channel. “I don’t have a predicament.”

  “You do,” Lia says, looking me over. “It hasn’t occurred yet—not beyond the whole ‘giving all the Statics magic’ thing.”

  “Right. You think I did that.”

  “I know you did,” she says. She doesn’t look back at me, but I see her chest move as she sighs. A demon with an attitude. Great. “Magic is a balance, and any tipping of the scale can destroy it all.”

  That quote again. It’s becoming one of those earworm songs that I hate, but gets stuck in my head all the time. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a fact,” Lia snaps, jumping off the railing and moving toward me. I try not to gag as the sulfur smell fills my immediate breathing space. “You need me, and I need you. You are the tipping point on the scale. You changed things when you made the demons disappear, because you used both sides at once. The void and the essence.”

  “Is this a re-run? You told me that part, thanks.”

  She’s close enough now that I can see the dark black skin under her scales. “Magic isn’t supposed to be wielded that way. It’s one or the other. Someone who can access both sides? Dangerous. For both sides.”

  “I don’t have the essence,” I say. Kriegen made that perfectly clear to me before. I only have a little jolt of my family’s magic, not enough to power up on my own. They filled up the rest of the essence to let me have power. Like a supercharged battery.

  “Yet, before you met your halfling, you used it.”

  “Only with someone in my family.”

  Lia shrugs. Demons. They’re always so cocky.

  “You’re pretty annoying. You demons only like to say half of whatever you’re trying to say. Humans like sentences.”

  Lia’s standing next to me now, and I move to the side, not because I’m scared, but because I don’t like what she’s saying. It can’t get any better
from here. Not with that blue steel look of determination on her face “Sentences, right.” She pauses. “I’ve learned your story, Penelope Grey, and all about the demon who took your essence—you survived, because he didn’t take it all.” She moves around me toward the other side of the park, and despite my better judgment, I follow.

  Lia stops at a streetlamp and peels off a sticker, then she says, “It’s like that. A sticker that’s been on a surface for a few years. When you take it off, the outline still remains. It becomes part of what was.”

  “Did you plant that there for this demonstration?” I ask.

  “Your essence is still part of you, Penelope, even if there’s not enough for it work on its own. You’ve been using the void since you met your halfling loverboy, and after that encounter last week, there’s no question that it liked what it saw, and I’m assuming that it’s staying.”

  I scrunch up my nose. Magic is a balance, and before I used the overflow of the void that Carter had and didn’t use. And now the void likes me? Destiny sure likes making crap confusing.

  “You’re dangerous when you use the void, especially with the halfling,” she says.

  I scoff. “He does have a name.”

  She doesn’t pay attention to that. “Even as you tinker with it now, you’re opening the crack, and it will only be a matter of time before you can access the void regularly. Until it moves from liking you to becoming part of you. The void isn’t the same as the essence—it’s more alive. It’s more innate.”

  I raise an eyebrow. I do like the void. It’s easy and natural, like it’s always supposed to have been part of me.

  “I have power with Carter,” I say.

  She snorts. I think. It’s hard to tell what the sound is actually supposed to be. “You have a glimpse with him. The magic you’ve used already is only a sliver of the potential. The void will do what it desires with you, and you need to be ready.”

  If what Lia is saying is true, then the dam was sealed and now that it’s been cracked, I can take whatever I need to from it. Will it really try to overpower me? And what does that have to do with the Statics?

  “You said you would give me information about the Statics. This isn’t information.”

  “I am helping you, you daft girl,” Lia crosses her arms. “When demons take a witch’s essence, it’s absorbed. It becomes part of a demon, but it changes the magic that already exists inside a demon and becomes tainted. All those demons in De’Intero you killed? You also pushed out their magic. Released it. The magic couldn’t return to the source it came from because it was tainted.”

  The magic couldn’t go home. “So, where did it go?”

  “All magic needs a host.”

  The gleam in her eye

  Suddenly, it all makes sense. “The Static witches.”

  She nods. “Those with ability but not with power. At least not until now.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You have a responsibility to magic now. You alone. The fact that you can access it makes you a target. Don’t you feel it calling to you?”

  I don’t answer that, even though I always feel it. It’s always trying to come out, ready to be used.

  “You can trust me,” she says.

  “I doubt that,” I say. Trusting her is the opposite of everything I’ve been taught. Everything I’ve learned. “You should go.”

  Lia nods. “I’ll leave, but this isn’t over. You need me.”

  She flickers out and leaves me standing alone on the sidewalk of the park.

  Chapter Twelve

  Carter

  I stare over all the words on the board. These don’t feel random. I reach for the bag, Vassago grabs my elbow.

  “The questions that are coming, I have already answered for you.” He says. His eyes take on a light white color for a second, the same look they’ve had before when he was delivering a prophecy.

  “I don’t have any questions,” besides what he’s talking about.

  Vassago drops my arm and taps the table. “I said the ones that are coming. The ones the change will bring. She will be marked, and the time will be upon us.”

  Whoa.“She? Who is she?” I look at the word MAUVE.

  He doesn’t look away from me. “Remember the balloon.”

  “The red balloon?” What the hell is happening right now?

  He grows quiet and after some awkward silence, I look back at the board, unsure of what move to make. It’s my turn, right? I’ve lost track now.

  “You need another letter,” he says calmly.

  I take another from the bag and stare at everything in front of me. Letters that don’t fit on the board yet. Clues that I don’t understand. Answers to questions I haven’t asked.

  “It’s unnatural for things to become what they were not intended to be,” Vassago says in the silence. I look at him again. “Other times what they are intended is not what they must become. Keep in mind the words I told you before.” He motions toward the board. “Your move still.”

  What he told me. The only other time we talked was…“In the bar?” I ask. He gave us the prophecy or vision or whatever name it has. There is one who seeks the same as you and one who hides the truth from you. Only when the two meet shall the lost be found. I make my move because he taps the board. “I thought we dealt with that. It was about my mom, and Pen’s family secret. Is there more?”

  Vassago grins. “There is always more, Mr. Prescott.”

  I cross my arms as he studies the board. “You’re really unhelpful.”

  A hand flutters to his heart. “I service to the lost, and you are lost, but she is more lost than you. I found you because I find the lost. This is my duty. Your duty is to protect your partner at any cost.” His eyes narrow in on me. “Especially when your partner is also the girl you love.”

  I groan. “Stop talking in riddles. I don’t understand what you’re saying to me.”

  Vassago doesn’t even blink. “Serve, assist, and guide. This is our purpose.” Then, in a quick movement, he points to the board. “Your turn still.”

  I throw the letters I have on the board and spell DEMON. Vassago rubs his hands together. “A good chess strategy suggests that when you develop your pieces, you make moves that threaten. Moves that can come as unexpected.”

  “We’re not playing chess,” I say.

  “Aren’t we?” he responds.

  Quickly, he places down his tiles. The word “cent” has been changed. Now it says

  OBSERVANCE

  I point to the Scrabble board. “What is all this, Vassago?”

  “Have you noticed how Scrabble is like chess? It’s strategic, and much like life in that you must think two moves ahead of your opponent. I like a good challenge, and you do as well, or you wouldn’t be out here in the middle of the night.”

  Middle of the night, right. Today has sucked. I came out to escape it all. I look at the board at all the words and then back at Vassago. “How did you have this whole set-up ready and waiting for me, Vassago?”

  He sits up in the seat. “I knew you would come.”

  “How?”

  “The change is upon us, and it was your destiny—and mine—to be here.”

  “Destiny, huh?” I look at the board and a few letters. “What if I had said I didn’t want to play?”

  Vassago smiles. “You are a Prescott. You were taught never to back down from a challenge. That is part of your path. Some destinies are chosen for us. Others we choose. Others are left up to us to determine.”

  I put my last tiles on the board and write PEACE. “Which one is yours?”

  Vassago looks at the board, and then at me. “That’s still to be decided.”

  I glance at my phone. Three a.m. “I should probably get home.”

  He nods his head thoughtfully, eyes on the board. I stand up from the table, feeling more unsettled than I did before I left home. Vassago studies the board and then he smiles. He picks up a final few letters and places the
m down. He spells out QUEEN.

  “I think I win with that,” he says.

  “Thanks for playing,” I say, extending my hand.

  Vassago looks at it for a moment before taking it. “A change is coming, Mr. Prescott. A storm is forming that will soon arrive. Every side will be playing soon, so prepare your moves.”

  I glance back at the board. OBSERVANCE is where my eyes go first, and then across the rest of the board. This game with Vassago and the conversation with Poncho from earlier must connect. Poncho mentioned a destiny, and Vassago has, too. Maybe destiny centers around the Observance?

  He drops my hand. “Be sure you don’t bring your Queen out too early. The King may be the goal, but the Queen is the most powerful.”

  …

  It’s nearly morning when I get home. Uncertainty has settled in my chest that I can’t ignore. I grab a piece of paper and start writing down the words on the Scrabble board, before I forget. If the conversations and the words on the Scrabble board are one piece, then I should figure what he was trying to say.

  CHECK. REMAIN. DAGGER. MAUVE. OBSERVANCE. QUEEN.

  I only have guesses here. ‘Queen’ could be Penelope, but why? Queen of what? Mauve is that demon. It’s conveniently around lately and I can’t ignore that. ‘Observance’ is obviously the party. ‘Dagger’—is that the black one? It could be any dagger, I guess. I don’t know what ‘remain’ is, or ‘check.’

  Vassago talked about chess a lot. In chess, check is when the other player’s king is in danger. The threat must be stopped or the king needs to move. If the king can’t be moved then it’s a checkmate and that player loses. Vassago laughed when I changed check into checkmate.

  If Pen’s the queen then then who’s the king? Or is Pen the king? She could be the king.

  I’m too tired for this.

  I leave the paper on my desk and head to bed. As soon as I’m there, the WNN dings. I have thirty-six missed notifications, all attacks on demons and Statics. But it’s a message that makes me freeze. A message from the Council to Pen and me. We have a meeting with them after Maple’s funeral.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Penelope