Path of Night

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  For Beth, my friend from work, with many thanks for inviting me into the witch’s house

  What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

  —Dostoevsky

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Greendale

  Hell

  Greendale

  Hell

  Greendale

  On the Road

  Hell

  Greendale

  Hell

  Greendale

  On the Road

  Greendale

  Greendale

  Hell

  Greendale

  Hell

  Greendale

  On the Road

  Hell

  Greendale

  About the Author

  Copyright

  I woke with daylight transformed to golden prisms through the diamond panes of my windows. I rolled over toward the velvety-black curled-up shape of my sleeping familiar, tucking a smile against my pillow. Through the tangle of dreams warm as bedsheets, a single cold thought intruded.

  Something terrible has happened to your boyfriend.

  My eyes slammed open. I sat up, spine broomstick-straight, hands closing into fists around my fat, ruffled pillow.

  I was safe and warm in my bed this morning because of Nick. Lounging around drowsing felt like a betrayal of him.

  I stared around at my wrought-iron headboard, my mirror with roses in the frame, the bedroom I’d had my whole life. Every inch of my room was familiar, but every detail felt alien because there was no chance of Nick teleporting into any of the sunlit-gold corners, dark and handsome and shocking. I’d scolded Nick for doing that a hundred times. Now I’d give anything for him to appear again.

  Salem yawned and stretched, kneading the star-patterned comforter with his claws.

  “It’s too early for intense angst, Sabrina.”

  He leaped off the bed and trotted away, nosing the bedroom door open and heading in search of food. The savory scent of Aunt Hilda’s cooking filtered up the stairs and through the open door. With my luck, Aunt Hilda was making something featuring eyeballs.

  I sighed, climbing out of bed. I knew I wasn’t getting back to sleep. I pointed to myself and was instantly clad in a light sweater and short skirt, but I didn’t twirl in front of the mirror the way I used to. I was only getting dressed because we always had company these days.

  “My love, you’re up early.” Aunt Hilda glowed as I walked into the kitchen.

  Her hair was a golden cloud from bending over her steaming pots, and she wore an apron bearing the legend SEXY WITCH. Her boyfriend, Dr. Cerberus, had given it to her. Her smile dimmed slightly when she saw my face.

  Aunt Hilda liked having guests, since it meant more people to appreciate her cooking. And Aunt Hilda was the only Spellman whose love life was currently thriving. My cousin Ambrose’s boyfriend had been killed by witch-hunters. Aunt Zelda’s husband, Father Blackwood, had fled the country after attempting to assassinate our entire coven. My boyfriend was trapped in hell.

  No matter how screwed up my life was, I wanted Aunt Hilda to stay happy.

  With an effort, I smiled back. “Morning.”

  She enfolded me in a hug. Aunt Hilda smelled like rosemary and mugwort, witch’s herbs and childhood love. She stroked my hair. “Sit down and I’ll whip you up some waffles in a jiffy.”

  I sat at the kitchen table, feeling soothed despite myself. It was nice to have time alone with my aunt.

  Even as I had that thought, the kitchen door slid open. I sighed, then brightened.

  In this house brimful of witches, there was a mortal.

  Harvey, one of my three best friends in the whole world, walked into my kitchen carrying a teenage witch in his arms. Elspeth was wrapped in a blanket and had her hands clasped around his neck.

  He smiled when he saw me. “Hey, ’Brina.”

  Only when I told myself sternly to force another smile did I realize I was already smiling at the sight of him. His green flannel shirt and brown hair were sleep-rumpled, and his always small, always sweet smile was drowsy.

  “Hey. Didn’t know you were here.”

  Harvey settled Elspeth into the rocking chair, tucking the blanket around her. “Elspeth didn’t want to be alone, so I slept over. Miz Spellman said I could,” he added, too embarrassed not to call her Miss Spellman even though Aunt Hilda had been insisting on Hilda for ten years. “Hope that’s okay.”

  “Always,” Aunt Hilda and I chimed, as one.

  We grinned at each other and him, three points of light each catching brightness through reflection.

  Harvey knelt by Elspeth’s rocking chair. “I’ll get you your pillow to lean back on, okay?”

  “Very well, beautiful mortal,” said Elspeth happily.

  “That’s a weird thing to call me.” Harvey patted her hand and left the room on his pillow quest.

  When Father Blackwood tried to murder our coven, his daughter Prudence saved all the witches she could. Those who lived were the few remaining students of the Academy of Unseen Arts, my witch classmates. They were living in my house now, sleeping on floors and recuperating from Father Blackwood’s poisoning attempt. My mortal friends had raced to help me out. Harvey especially was stricken by the sight of suffering, and swooped in to bring meals and medicine to the witches and, if requested, carry the invalids anywhere they wished to go.

  Most of the witches were fully recovered. I suspected Elspeth was too, but she was milking the situation for all it was worth.

  When the door shut behind Harvey, Elspeth rocked her chair vigorously.

  “You wouldn’t believe the freaky things I did with that mortal last night!”

  Aunt Hilda dropped her wooden spoon on the floor.

  “Oh, yes?” I asked.

  Elspeth fixed me with a wide-eyed stare. “I asked him to spend the night with me.”

  “Oh, yes?” I repeated, hearing the edge in my voice.

  “He said okay. So I thought, ‘Finally!’ I was about to take off my dress when he said, ‘You don’t have to be alone if you’re scared’ and he fetched me blankets and hot chocolate!” Elspeth’s voice was outraged.

  I hid my smile with the back of my hand.

  “He put marshmallows in the hot chocolate.” Elspeth brooded over her wrongs. “Never in my life have I been treated like this by a man. Even the way he talks would shock my mother to her very core. Who knows what other strange deeds he wants to do in the dark of night?”

  Harvey, coming back in with the pillow, caught the end of this and made a scandalized face. “Whoever that is, he sounds horrible.”

  Elspeth collapsed back against the pillow with a dramatic sigh, as though too weak even to keep her eyes open.

  Aunt Hilda clicked her fingers so her spoon flew up into her hand, and busied herself at the stove. Harvey gravitated toward her.

  “Something smells great.”

  I twisted around in my chair and made frantic silent gestures to warn Harvey, but he was already peering beneath the pot lids. I watched as the inevitable unfolded.

  “I’m making enough satanic shepherd’s pie for everybody. Try some of this, sweet Harvey.”

  “Happy to.” Harvey accepted a small bowl with alacrity. He wasn’t as starving-intent as the Academy students, but he was a teenage boy, and he had to do all the cooking at his place.

  “I wanted to make the kids a special treat,” Aunt Hilda confided, while Harvey nodded and dived in. “So I didn’t use grass snake intestines for the mince, or anything inferior like that. Only ball python. Nothing but the best!”

  Harvey’s face froze around the spoon.

  Aunt Hilda beamed. “Is it good?”

/>   “Delicious,” Harvey answered in a small, horrified voice.

  “Oh, wow.” Elspeth’s eyes snapped open. “Snake intestines, for real?”

  Harvey moved with the speed of, ironically, a snake. He scooped Elspeth from her rocking chair, deposited her at the table, then placed his bowl before her and his spoon firmly in her hand. “You have it.”

  Elspeth hesitated. “Do you mean you want to share?”

  “No! You should keep up your strength,” Harvey urged. “I want you to have the whole thing.”

  “Truly?” asked Elspeth.

  Harvey nodded with conviction.

  Elspeth clutched the bowl and whispered: “Is this what love feels like?”

  Harvey patted her on the back. “Nope. That’s the snake intestines talking.”

  He went to make coffee. Elspeth began to eat, kicking her feet happily under her blanket. Better her than me, I thought, though since my dark baptism I was more able to swallow witch’s cooking. Not that I got much of a chance these days. The Academy of Unseen Arts students ate like a pack of starving hyenas. It made me hate Father Blackwood even more, to think he hadn’t been feeding them properly. Nick had lived at the Academy. I should have invited him for dinner every day.

  “Here you go, ’Brina.” Harvey set coffee down by my elbow.

  I leaned against his shoulder, then he drew away and sat in the chair beside mine. He unslung the gun he often carried these days from his shoulder and propped it between us. I took a deep draft of coffee.

  Salem, the goblin cat who’d got the cream but demanded more cream, came up onto the table and was disappointed to see I was drinking my coffee black as the path of night. Harvey petted him. “Hey, kitty cat.”

  “Fool mortal,” said Salem. “Ingrate. You should have shared the snake intestines with me. More ear skritches, I say, more.”

  Harvey didn’t understand Salem. Sometimes I felt that was best. He smiled as Salem tipped his head imperiously into Harvey’s hand and gave Salem more ear skritches. “Who’s a sweet kitty?”

  “Not Salem.” I grinned, then yawned against the rim of my cup.

  “Must get lashardia,” murmured Aunt Hilda. “I’ll make you some soothing tea for tonight, Sabrina.”

  “Lashardia?” Harvey asked.

  “Corpse plant,” Aunt Hilda told him in her sunny way. “Feasts on flesh and blood. I grow it on graves. Once Sabrina drinks lashardia tea, she’ll rest in peace all night. Mind yourself around lashardia fruit, though, Harvey love. The seeds are deadly poison!”

  “Oh,” Harvey said quietly, as Aunt Hilda whisked out. “Is she gone?”

  When I nodded, Harvey scrambled up and drank water right from the tap. Then he ducked his head underneath, emerging with drops sparkling like rain in his untidy hair.

  “Snake intestines, wow. Uh, could I have some cereal? Just to get the taste … out of my mouth.”

  “Do you not like snake intestines?” Elspeth sounded amazed.

  Harvey acquired cereal. The Academy students were suspicious of mortal food that came in packets. Nobody else was eating Ambrose’s cereal, and my cousin wasn’t here to eat it. He’d gone with Prudence to track down Father Blackwood and make the former head of our coven pay for his crimes.

  Ambrose had been magically confined to our house for years. I was used to seeing my cousin every day, whenever I wanted. I missed him a lot.

  He wasn’t the only one I missed. At least I knew Ambrose was out in the world somewhere. Not suffering in hell, in who knew what terrible ways.

  I reached for my coffee cup with trembling hands, and missed. Harvey put down his spoon and reached for me, linking our fingers together. I let myself cling.

  “Oh no, Sabrina,” remarked Elspeth. “Are you being sad because Nick is in hell?”

  The Academy students didn’t know exactly why Nick was in hell, but they’d absorbed that he was. Most of them were tactfully not mentioning the issue, but Elspeth wasn’t a tactful person.

  “You’re not helping, Elspeth,” Harvey warned.

  “Nothing will help, will it?” Elspeth asked. “Nick’s gone! Poor Sabrina. Here you are with only one boyfriend left. And he’s mortal, so—no offense, mortal, I’m sure you’re doing your best—but you must miss the warlock sex. Nick Scratch was balefire in bed.”

  Harvey and I dropped each other’s hands with extreme swiftness.

  “Good for him,” Harvey said distantly.

  I took a fortifying sip of coffee. I’d gone to mortal school, which meant mortal peers and mortal sex ed until I was sixteen, and I was still growing accustomed to the ways of witches.

  I didn’t miss the warlock sex because I’d never had it, or any other kind of sex. Nick always made it clear going further was my choice, because he was the best. We hadn’t been dating that long and he was very experienced, which was intimidating. And we kept getting interrupted by murder trials and werewolves.

  I’d believed we would have more time.

  With determination, I ignored this and addressed the other issue Elspeth had raised.

  “I only have one boyfriend.”

  Elspeth nodded. “Right, because you lost the other one to hell.”

  “I only have one boyfriend, Nick Scratch, who is currently in hell,” I clarified.

  Elspeth frowned. “What do you mean, currently? Nobody comes back from hell.”

  I exchanged a glance with Harvey, then trained my gaze on my coffee cup.

  “Sabrina and I aren’t dating,” Harvey put in hurriedly. “We’re just friends.”

  Without looking up, I nodded. I heard Elspeth push her empty bowl away.

  “Weren’t you in love with this mortal, Sabrina? Everybody was talking about it. Have I got it wrong? Were you in love with the other mortal, um, Theo?”

  She sounded genuinely puzzled. Now I had to contemplate a universe in which I’d dated another of my best friends.

  “Er, no. I wasn’t dating Theo. I was … I was dating Harvey. But not anymore.”

  I had been in love with Harvey. But not anymore.

  “We broke up,” said Harvey. “Amicably.”

  Sure. If you wanted to describe me raising his brother from the dead, resulting in Harvey finding out about the world of magic and laying his brother to rest, then dumping me, as “amicable.”

  “But why?” I started to daydream about transforming Elspeth’s head into a turnip. “Didn’t Nick suggest you could have two boyfriends, Sabrina? I heard from the Weird Sisters he was planning on it.”

  “He most certainly was not,” snapped Harvey. He gave Elspeth a disappointed look and took a huge, horrified bite of cereal.

  “He may have suggested something like that,” I admitted. Harvey choked on his cereal and began to cough violently. “But I said—” Well, I hadn’t said no, because I was so stunned. “But that’s not the way it worked out!”

  Elspeth regarded me with sympathy. “Bad luck, Sabrina.”

  I drained my coffee and glared at the bottom of the cup. Harvey had abandoned his cereal and was running his hands through his hair.

  “Thanks, Nick,” Harvey muttered to the floor. “Thanks for making everything super awkward, from hell. However witches and sometimes people in the big city do things, and whatever freaky jokes Nick may have made before we met—because that dude hates me—I hope you understand the situation, Elspeth. Sabrina and I are good friends! Everything is very simple! There’s no need to make things weird. I hear Sabrina’s aunt Hilda coming back, so we need to shut up about embarrassing stuff.”

  I too could hear Aunt Hilda singing softly. She entered the kitchen, her arms filled with fruit and blossoms that were either bloodred or lavender with dark hearts.

  “Are mortals embarrassed by discussing sex in front of authority figures?” Elspeth asked.

  “Oh my God,” exclaimed Harvey.

  Elspeth regarded him with dismay. “Don’t call upon the false god in front of ladies!”

  “Sorry,” Harvey mumbled.

/>   We collapsed into silence. In the quiet, I heard the front door swing open. Everybody tensed. We’d laid many protection spells upon our threshold since vulnerable invalid witches lived here. We’d learned caution after attacks by witch-hunters, countless demons, and Satan himself. There were only so many people who should be able to enter.

  The fruit and flowers of the corpse plant tumbled from Aunt Hilda’s arms onto the table like blood rain. Salem’s shadow loomed against the salt and pepper shakers. Aunt Hilda turned toward the door, a vision of golden rage in a Sexy Witch apron.

  “Salus!” she murmured.

  Elspeth rose, blanket falling from her nightgown-clad figure. “Salvus.”

  We were three. Though I couldn’t say I felt any particular mystical connection to Elspeth.

  “Ardens,” I whispered.

  Tiny lines of blue lightning wrapped around the silver rings on my fingers. Hellfire came to me so easily.

  “Dracarys,” murmured Harvey, and shot me a smile. “That’s from a TV show. Just trying to be supportive.”

  Despite the smile, I saw he’d reached for the gun propped beside his chair. I laid a hand on his shoulder and aimed my other hand at the door. The faint glow radiating from my palm moved as the door swung open, falling like a spotlight on Roz’s startled face. Theo was right behind her.

  “Oh. Sorry, guys.”

  Roz and Theo were two of the very few people I trusted unconditionally. My protection wards would always let them pass.

  The scrape of Harvey’s chair made me glance toward him. My hand fell away from his shoulder as he rose, face alight with quiet joy.

  “Hey, it’s my man.” He fist-bumped Theo. Then he cupped Roz’s face in his hands. “Hey,” he said, soft. “It’s my girl.”

  Harvey kissed my best friend on the mouth. He lingered over the kiss, staying close to Roz’s smile as though he liked to be there. When they strolled over to the table, Harvey’s arm was around his girlfriend’s shoulders. He picked up one of the lavender blossoms from the table and drew the petals down Roz’s glowing brown cheek. He kissed the flower and then folded Roz’s fingers over the stem. Harvey was always offering tokens and gestures, small tender proofs that love never left his mind. I remembered.