Path of Night

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “Thanks,” Roz murmured, rewarding him with another smile.

  “Don’t touch the fruit,” Harvey cautioned. “They’re poisonous.”

  Roz edged toward the table so she could lay the flower discreetly down. She waggled her fingers at me in greeting.

  I waved. “Wasn’t expecting you guys until later.”

  “I woke early,” Roz said. “And Theo always rises at some awful hour with the chickens, so I swung by to get him on the way.”

  “Two words for you, witches,” said Theo. “Farming hours.”

  He rubbed a hand over his buzz cut and wandered over to the table, where he gave Elspeth an uncertain nod. Even sitting down, Elspeth was taller than Theo. Most people were taller than me and Theo, but I liked to think we made our presence felt.

  I gave Theo a fist-bump as Harvey had, the light twined around my fingers giving a final glimmer before going out. “We run a funeral home, so we’re in the clear.”

  A joke occurred to me about corpses rising late, but Harvey wouldn’t enjoy necromancy humor. Even now, we heard the patter of tiny incorporeal feet on the stairs and I saw Harvey flinch.

  “Don’t worry, Harvey,” said Aunt Hilda. “It’s only the ghost children.”

  The restless shades of children who’d died at the Academy lingered on in their halls. It turned out the living students who attended the Academy counted as the spirit of our school, because even the ghosts had relocated to our home. As if we didn’t have enough house guests.

  “The ghost children haunt me,” Harvey muttered, then blinked in a worried fashion. “Uh, not literally. I just think about them a lot. But I’m not scared of them!”

  Aunt Hilda tucked a comforting hand into the crook of his elbow. Harvey looked at the top of her head with pleased surprise. He always seemed startled that she liked him. This was absurd, since Aunt Hilda made it clear Harvey was her favorite.

  “I thought we could get a head start on our Fright Club meeting,” Roz said, leaning against my chair.

  I smiled at her gratefully. “Good idea.”

  Theo was eyeing Aunt Hilda’s cooking with interest, but Harvey drew him protectively away. He mouthed snakes and Theo stared in confusion.

  “Why did you kids change your club name from, what was it, WICCA?” Aunt Hilda wanted to know.

  “WICCA was a school organization,” Roz explained. “Dedicated to supporting women and fighting systemic injustice. Our Fright Club is more a personal quest.”

  Aunt Hilda offered Theo a spoonful of mince, but Theo glanced at Harvey and wisely shook his head.

  “How do you mean, a quest?”

  Aunt Hilda liked to take an interest in my mortal friends. Partly because my aunt Zelda made it clear she wished I didn’t have mortal friends. I didn’t think she was suspicious.

  “Well …” said Roz. “The Fright Club is just the four of us, researching evil and trying to do good.”

  None of my mortal friends were great liars.

  I gave Aunt Hilda a mischievous grin. “Maybe someday we’ll have a bake sale. Let’s go to our club room!”

  “You don’t want waffles?” Aunt Hilda inquired.

  Harvey and Theo looked conflicted. Roz valiantly resisted the waffles temptation.

  “I want waffles,” said Elspeth. “And I want the heaven-sent one to carry me back to my fainting couch, where I will eat waffles.”

  “What do we call me?” Harvey asked.

  “Witch-hunter,” said Elspeth, grinning. “Mortal.”

  Harvey shook his head.

  “Harvey,” Elspeth obliged.

  “See, it’s not hard.” Harvey scooped up Elspeth and carried her toward the door.

  Roz seemed unmoved by the sight of her boyfriend princess-carrying another girl around. I guessed she knew she had nothing to worry about. Harvey so transparently adored Roz.

  Theo and Roz made for the door. Before I could follow, Aunt Hilda caught my hand.

  “Sabrina, can I have a word?”

  My heart thumped hard, a telltale sign of guilt. “Sure.”

  When I dared look at my aunt, she was gazing at me benevolently, with no sign of accusation.

  “I’m so glad you’re spending time with your mortal friends,” Aunt Hilda whispered. “I know they’ll take your mind off … that awful business with poor Nick. You’re doing the right thing, my brave girl.”

  “I hope so.” I averted my eyes. My aunts had no idea what my friends and I were really up to.

  I gave Aunt Hilda a quick hug and fled, out the door and up the stairs after the others. We made our way to the attic that was my cousin Ambrose’s bedroom. Even though he’d been gone for weeks and we were badly off for space, we tried to keep the room set apart and ready for Ambrose to return to. But I knew my cousin would want me to use the space, if I needed it.

  And I did.

  Harvey was the last inside. He closed the door carefully, then turned the lock. I stood in front of the Fright Club. My best friends, ever since we were little.

  Now they were my team, assembled on the cushions we’d piled up on the floor. Roz, her legs tucked under her and her corduroy skirt smoothed under her nervously moving hands. Theo, arms looped around his legs, his face bright with determination. And Harvey, gun laid down by his side, hunching forward with his elbows on the worn knees of his jeans and dark eyes steady on mine. Every one of them was inexpressibly dear to me. Every one of them was intent on our secret mission. I’d asked them to help me, and they’d sworn they would.

  “All right, Fright Club,” I said. “Let’s review.”

  I lifted a hand and the whiteboard sheet Roz used for projects slid down over Ambrose’s British flag. The sheet was covered with writing, Roz’s neat print, Theo’s slapdash scribble, and my script, flowing and dramatic because Aunt Zelda had taught me calligraphy when I was five. Harvey had drawn the pictures.

  Each scribble and drawing were connected by a web of lines drawn in marker. Every black line across the whiteboard looked, in my eyes, like a road to hell.

  Aunt Hilda wanted me to forget what had happened. I couldn’t.

  It didn’t matter that I was Lucifer’s daughter, not Edward Spellman’s as I’d always believed. Not a Spellman at all. Who cared? I’d decided I would be a Spellman. I would be a witch, and I would live half in the mortal world and half in the witch world with my chosen friends and chosen family, and I would never use my strange powers ever again. I’d be happy.

  But before I could be happy, I needed one more thing.

  I needed Nick.

  Nothing mattered, except finding a way into hell. I had to devote myself entirely to Nick. That was what he’d done for me.

  I smiled at the drawing of Nick, gorgeous and grinning in a tuxedo as though nothing bad could ever happen to him. His picture was placed in the center of our winding paths.

  Nick had used his own body as an enchanted cage to imprison Satan, foiling Lucifer’s plans for the world and his daughter. Nick cast the spell for me because he loved me. Lilith, the Mother of Demons and the new Queen of Hell, carried Nick away into the depths of her kingdom so Satan could never escape and take back the throne.

  That was why Nick was trapped in hell. That was why I would risk anything to free him.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of what might be happening to him down there.

  Lilith, Queen of Hell, was aware of the importance of appearances. The world impressed on women early that their surfaces meant more than whatever seethed beneath.

  Now that she was a public figure, with the eyes of hell upon her, presenting a darkly serene image to her subjects was vital. Lilith spent a great deal of time each morning carefully putting on her face.

  There were many faces to choose from.

  Lilith spun in the cavern that served as her walk-in closet. More than a hundred wounds had been slashed into the stone walls. In the roughly hewn recesses were golden plinths. On each plinth rested a face torn from one of the lost souls of hell. The f
aces awaited Lilith’s pleasure, tucked away in the dark until their turn might come to suit Lilith’s fancy. She could wear faces men had killed for, faces that launched a thousand ships and burned towers. This power was hers now.

  As Lilith surveyed her kingdom of beauty, she paused, arrested by the sight of one face. Placed down low, it shone in the shadows like a pearl.

  A cloud of dark hair, cheekbones for days, and a mouth that was slack now, but Lilith knew how it curved. The eyes tilted, catlike, so people saw them as green. Lilith remembered they were truly blue. A face she’d put aside after her descent to rule in hell but had kept for sentimental reasons. Mary Wardwell’s face.

  Adam loved that face. Not her first Adam, but her last. Mary Wardwell’s Adam, who came to his fiancée’s cottage with gifts. Adam, whose love was kind. The taste of kindness was so strange, Lilith almost found it sweet. But Lucifer had killed Adam and left a different taste in her mouth.

  It didn’t matter. What was that mortal Adam’s love worth? He’d never even realized the woman he’d returned to was not the woman he’d left behind, but a murderously evil demon who’d stolen Mary Wardwell’s life. Like every man, Adam saw only the face.

  So much for love.

  The Queen of Hell turned away from Mary Wardwell’s face and selected another. This one was smooth as ice, the hair pale gold. A snow queen’s face, cold as winter, feeling nothing. It was exactly the face she wanted in case a lord of hell visited the palace. Lord Beelzebub in particular was judgmental of his new queen, and Beelzebub’s heir, Prince Caliban, had the distinction of being the most annoying soul in hell.

  Lilith left the cavern of faces. She dropped by her office on the way to her throne room.

  Pretending to be Mary Wardwell in Greendale, she’d been promoted from teacher to principal, and discovered her new high position meant far more administrative work.

  Oddly, this was also the case in hell. When Lilith had spent centuries dreaming of ultimate power, she hadn’t imagined documents from infernal officials. Lord Beelzebub wrote endless insulting missives about war in the borough he ruled, and about the impossibility of quelling unrest with Lilith upon the throne. Beelzebub had a definite idea of how power should look. He thought it should look male.

  Prince Caliban wrote Lilith exquisitely polite letters. Somehow, that was even more vexing.

  Dealing with the lords of hell was almost enough to make Lilith miss the days when her worst problem was attempting to corrupt Sabrina’s annoying soul. Little Miss Snow-White Hair was irritating beyond belief, but there was only one of her, and she wasn’t a man.

  Lilith must be careful if she wanted to keep the power she’d won.

  Men might look down on an ambitious woman, but they felt comfortably secure assuming she’d never reach her goal. They hated a woman who’d achieved her ambition. Not only was she in their way, she taught other women it could be done.

  The dark lords of hell were in eternal opposition, but now they’d united. She was sure they were plotting to crush her.

  Lilith had faced worse. She’d spent centuries with their master’s boot on her neck. There was not a soul in hell Lilith feared, save one.

  And Lucifer, Prince of Lies, was tormenting someone else now.

  Lilith departed, tossing Lord Beelzebub’s latest letter high above her head. Pages fluttered to her bone chandelier. The papers caught fire, curling like black roses in midair, then falling to dust at Lilith’s feet. As all empires would, in time.

  That was the paperwork sorted.

  Lilith flung open the golden double doors. Here was her throne room, the seat of her power. Here the Infernal Pedestal, there the tasteful satyr statues crushing humans under hooves. She’d schemed to achieve this through all the long, weary days of her life.

  A demonic minion hurried to her, uttering an oily whisper: “Can I serve you in any way, my queen?”

  “Bring me Lord Beelzebub’s head on a platter, and Prince Caliban’s tongue in a salad,” drawled Lilith. “Can you do that?”

  “Defeating their infernal armies could be tricky,” mumbled the minion. “I’m only a minor imp … I meant, can I bring you a refreshing beverage or a fresh soul to torment. Can I serve you in any petty way, my queen, that sort of thing …”

  Lilith had lost her patience in the fourteenth century and never bothered to find it. Today she was in an even more restless mood than usual. Lilith felt her unfamiliar mouth twitch into a smirk as she thought: No rest for the wicked, and who was ever more wicked than I?

  Lilith came to a decision. She turned her back on the Infernal Pedestal and snapped her fingers at her minion, gesturing to an elaborate fan, wrought gold and festooned with the feathers of peacocks and ravens. “You may escort me. Fan the sparks of hell to light my passage. I go to visit our guest.”

  She had to monitor the situation. Lucifer was bound to break the boy shortly. Action must be taken when he did.

  Nobody knew her lord’s wrath better than Lilith. The arrogance that could not endure serving in heaven, the pride that had created hell, must be outraged at being tricked and jailed. He must be seething at the betrayal by his own daughter. Her god was the most vengeful god. Lucifer was exercising his worst wiles and all the dark fury at his command to rip apart the prison that held him. The boy’s soul would soon shatter into a thousand pieces.

  Lilith was surprised Nicholas Scratch had lasted this long.

  At the top of our plan to free Nick from hell I’d written, in capital letters, the words OPERATION EURYDICE.

  I felt the name was fitting. My Nick, who was passionate about books, would like that it was taken from a story. If he didn’t know the legend, when we reclaimed Nick I could tell him: how Orpheus the musician went into the underworld to rescue his love, Eurydice. He charmed the lost souls and won her passage out with the beauty of his song. I believed Nick would approve of gender-bending the classics.

  “One thing we’re trying is unlocking the configurations that bind the gates of hell.” I pointed to Harvey’s sketch, gates hanging ominously open in the corner of our whiteboard. “If we work out the right combination, the gates should open. Roz is keeping track of the different combinations I try and calculating which might have the best chance.”

  “Harv and I can’t help with that,” contributed Theo. “Because math.”

  Theo and Harvey nodded, bros united against math. Roz and I gave them a reproachful look for being math delinquents.

  “Next up!” I pointed to a drawing of an angel blowing a trumpet. “The horn of the Archangel Gabriel will make the gates of hell open. We should acquire it. Harvey and I were discussing this last night.”

  Harvey leaned forward eagerly.

  “You know how some of the witches call me heaven-sent and it’s very weird? I think it’s their less offensive way of saying witch-hunter. When a bunch of witch-hunters came and tried to murder the witches that one time, Sabrina said they were … basically angels. There might be a connection to heaven I could use to summon the Archangel Gabriel.”

  Harvey came from a long line of witch-hunters. Many witches were suspicious of him for that reason. They didn’t know him as I did. I was certain there had never been a witch-hunter like Harvey before.

  Theo didn’t sound as impressed as I’d hoped.

  “Harv, what’s the next step? After you … summon the Archangel Gabriel.”

  “Ask him to let us borrow his horn.”

  “Have you guys considered that the archangel might not want to loan you his, like, sacred horn?”

  “’Course,” Harvey answered, clearly relieved that was the objection. “Sabrina’s researching ways she could use her power to threaten the Archangel Gabriel after I summon him, so he’ll give up his trumpet.”

  I nodded confirmation.

  “Failing a spell,” Harvey added thoughtfully, “I guess I have my gun.”

  Theo’s and Roz’s stares suggested they weren’t completely on board.

  “Whoa,” said Theo
eventually. “That’s a banger of a plan.”

  “Harvey,” said Roz in a high voice. “I implore you not to mug an angel!”

  Harvey reached for her hand. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “I don’t want you to!” Roz exclaimed. “I’m literally the daughter of a preacher man, and I’m not comfortable with this idea.”

  I’d gone to sleep last night reading up on ways to menace the heavenly host and trying to recall what I’d done to the witch-hunters we’d encountered once. It was a blur, but I remembered shouting that I was the Dark Lord’s sword and reducing the angelic witch-hunters to ash. I’d thought I could refine the process, but obviously we didn’t want to make Roz uncomfortable.

  She was the reverend’s daughter. I was the spawn of Satan. Roz was already putting up with a lot.

  I nodded. “We’ll put down shooting archangels as a last resort.”

  Shooting archangels probably wouldn’t work. My plan to menace the archangel was an intricate infernal ritual, but there were other things I could try first.

  “Cool,” said Theo. “I support you guys mugging angels if it comes down to it.”

  Harvey gave Theo a grateful grin. I gestured toward the far side of the whiteboard, where Harvey had drawn a large blue lake. “Which brings us to our next idea.”

  I clapped, and the whiteboard whisked itself out of sight. Harvey unlocked the door. A red-gold head appeared, adorned with a piece of black spiderweb lace and a disdainful expression.

  “Please welcome to the Fright Club our first guest speaker, my aunt and the new High Priestess of the Church of Night, Zelda Spellman.”

  Zelda, Lady Blackwood, the Academy students called her. But there were those who called me Sabrina Morningstar. Father Blackwood wasn’t worthy to touch her, any more than Lucifer was worthy to touch me. We were Spellmans.

  The tight corners of Aunt Zelda’s mouth relaxed infinitesimally when she looked at me. Her mouth set again when she surveyed my friends.

  “I’m far too busy to waste my time in this manner, but Hilda feels it’s important you engage in bondage with the mortals.”

  A pause followed this announcement.