Path of Night

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “Guys!” exclaimed Theo. “This is a fun philosophical conversation we’re having among piles of demon corpses, but what do you say we find Sabrina and Roz, then get the hell out of hell?”

  The mortal’s attention shifted entirely to Theo as they resumed negotiating the maze. If beloved Theo didn’t want to be around demon corpses, the mortal would make it so.

  “Whose bad idea was it to split up in the first place?” Nick fell into step with Theo and jerked his head in the mortal’s direction. “His?”

  Theo cleared his throat. “Maybe you could ease up on Harv a bit.”

  There was a pause.

  “You keep calling him that,” said Nick. “Is it short for something?”

  Up ahead, the mortal kicked a rock into a wall.

  “I get that you two are bestest friends,” Nick continued scornfully, “but reconsider going along with his terrible plans. Also reconsider the friendship. Given his attachment issues, once Roz runs for the hills, you’re up next to date him.”

  Theo looked dismayed.

  “When that happens, get ready for his weird fetish.”

  The mortal wheeled around, voice cracking. “My what?”

  “You know,” said Nick. “Where you want people to tell you the truth all the time.”

  “Honesty is not a fetish.”

  “You demand it in a romantic partner!”

  Outrage and embarrassment struggled for supremacy on the mortal’s face. “That’s totally normal.”

  “Everybody thinks that about their fetish,” said Nick triumphantly.

  The mortal rolled his eyes and resumed walking. He did that with people he didn’t like, became increasingly silent, hunching his shoulders and praying for the offensive presence to depart so he could be alone with his precious friends.

  “You mortals are lucky I’m here,” Nick announced. “As a warlock, I’m more intelligent and experienced, so I’ll be leading this misguided group.”

  The mortal stopped dead. “Wanna be the leader, Theo?”

  “I want no part of this,” Theo murmured.

  “You can’t be the leader,” the mortal informed Nick. “We’re rescuing you, and you can’t lead your own rescue mission.”

  Nick raised an eyebrow. “That’s narrow-minded.”

  For a moment, Nick wondered if he was going to get punched.

  “I try to be patient,” the mortal bit out. “But I’ve had enough. It doesn’t matter how awful you pretend to be. You’re getting rescued and delivered to Sabrina. Shut your annoying mouth. Do as you’re told.”

  Nick blinked. “All right. There’s no need to get nasty.”

  The mortal raised his eyes, peering above the sparks, trying to find heaven. Then he gestured at them to follow and went on. He wasn’t walking as far ahead of them as before. After a while, they drew level.

  “Congrats on making Harv lose his temper,” Theo muttered.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you want to get witch-hunted?” asked Theo. “Don’t you think you have enough problems?”

  Nick genuinely hated being ignored. Possibly it brought out the worst in him.

  That was why Nick disliked illusion spells, which made you feel nothing was real. And more recently memory charms, which made people look indifferently through you, as though you weren’t there.

  “That was cool, with the sword-fighting,” added Theo.

  Even when it was Father Blackwood, a man Nick actively despised, he hadn’t been able to stop the instinctive grin at being praised.

  “Thanks, tiny mortal.”

  “Have you been doing much slaying of the vicious and remorseless hordes of hell?” Theo continued.

  The mortal was tilting his head toward them, as though possibly he also found sword-fighting cool.

  “I used to partner with Prudence in fencing class,” said Nick. “Talk about vicious and remorseless.”

  He caught the mortal smiling, head ducked to hide it. That was another senseless thing the mortal did. There was no point smiling just for yourself. Smiles were useful. You could charm people into giving you things.

  “Could I learn how to sword-fight?” asked Theo.

  “Sure. I’ll teach you. There are interesting books about the history of magical swordsmanship you should read. The best is Dueling with Excalibur. Let me quickly sum up an incident from the fourteenth century.”

  Neither mortal tried to stop him, though the Weird Sisters knew to stop Nick before he said, “Let me sum up.”

  “Hey, nerd,” said the mortal at last, and Nick went still. “This bit of the maze is a dead end. Let’s rest here. We’ve got a ways to go, and you look tired.”

  The mortal insisted he’d take first watch. He removed his jacket and folded it so Theo could use it as a pillow.

  In dreams, Satan was so close. Satan was Nick, or perhaps there was no Nick anymore. Nick was being blotted out. Lucifer was all that remained. Nick woke shuddering to find the mortal studying him with concern.

  “Get back.” Nick recoiled. “I’m not safe.”

  The mortal came closer. Nick didn’t know what he’d expected. He let his head drop, too exhausted to lift it.

  “Why did you come here, farm boy?” Nick asked, so weary his voice was a whisper. “I—I wanted to be the hero. We can’t both be the hero.”

  “She’s the hero, Nick,” the mortal murmured, patient after all, and laid a hand on Nick’s back. “We’ll get you to her. Sleep.”

  There were gray stone walls all around and restless red sparks overhead, but the mortal was standing guard. When Theo murmured in his sleep, the mortal patted Theo’s shoulder and sang as he did when he thought nobody could hear. A lullaby for fools, promising a kinder world. Nick rested his head in his arms and pretended it was meant for him, too.

  * * *

  Nick woke with a start, realizing there was an emergency. The mortal was giving Theo romantic advice.

  “Don’t listen to a word!”

  Theo looked up at Nick with obvious relief. The mortal began to complain.

  “Hush, little mortal.” Nick patted his head. “Stop misleading poor Theo.”

  “Get off me,” the mortal muttered. “I’m supporting—”

  “You are like a tiny stupid baby.” Nick turned to Theo. “Who do you think has more expertise?”

  “Well, you,” admitted Theo.

  “Pick out someone good. Be useful!” said Nick. “Do what they want. Be sexy. You’ll do fine.”

  Theo grinned. Nick felt Theo would soon understand that Nick was a much better friend to have than the mortal.

  “Dude, you’re not helping,” the mortal scolded. “It’s not about being useful!”

  “You think that because you’re useless.”

  They started to march again. The mortal offered Nick gross mortal bars in packets to eat, and Nick waved them away.

  “You’re probably a hallucination sent to trick me into eating things in hell. Which I’ve been trying not to do, unless Lilith made me.”

  The mortal got upset. “I won’t make you do anything! Because of boundaries.”

  “Oh,” said Nick. “Do I get boundaries?”

  Theo was nodding, so this wasn’t the mortal being wrong as usual. Nick considered boundaries he wished for.

  “Why must you be unnecessarily tall, Harry?”

  “I can’t help that.”

  “I don’t blame you—”

  “Big of you,” said the mortal, not without irony.

  “—but there’s a spell,” Nick continued.

  “No!”

  “This is why I don’t like you,” said Nick. “Or why I wouldn’t like you, if I ever gave you any thought, which I never do. You are so stubborn, even when totally reasonable suggestions are made to you.”

  “I don’t think I am stubborn,” said the idiot, stubbornly. “But nobody ever makes reasonable suggestions to me. Your boundaries should be about you.”

  Nick had feared this was the case. He did
n’t think the mortal understood it was difficult to admit you felt bad about what you couldn’t stop.

  “I could have boundaries. Anytime I wanted.”

  “Okay,” said the mortal. “When you work them out, tell me what they are.”

  “See, guys, that was really good,” Theo said encouragingly.

  Maybe, Nick thought with tentative hope, the mortal could be made less unintelligent? Maybe if he was given a reading list.

  There were no reading lists possible in hell, which was one of the many things Nick disliked about hell. There were mists in hell, fits of darkness that rose and curled around you. Gloom came over the walls now, mist slinking around their ankles like gray cats, and Nick tensed. But no horrors followed. Not yet.

  The mortal was hanging behind Theo and Nick. When Nick glanced over his shoulder, the mortal seemed pleased by the mist. Of course. People couldn’t look at him in the mist. Nick understood shyness was one of the many mortal emotions. Sabrina didn’t suffer from this one, so Nick didn’t need to put up with it.

  The mortal began to sing a song to himself.

  “It’s funny how many mortal songs are about love,” Nick remarked.

  The mortal went reproachfully silent about Nick ruining the illusion nobody could hear.

  “What are witch songs about?” asked Theo.

  Nick shrugged. “In choir we sing about damnation, lust, and entrails.”

  Through the mist, Nick saw Theo go green. Maybe Theo didn’t enjoy entrails. Mortals ate strangely, though Nick liked what he’d tried of mortal food. He liked mortal songs too. Nick didn’t mind that the songs were about love. It was new to him; that was all.

  “In choir?” asked the mortal, sounding surprised.

  The mortal seemed to believe witches exclusively did wicked things that upset him. Nick nodded.

  The mortal drew nearer. “So—you sing?”

  Nick said: “Not alone.”

  There was a pause.

  “That’s not how choirs work?” Nick pointed out. “You’re tragically dim-witted.”

  The mortal’s irritated silence was deafening.

  “I know …” Nick offered, “a few mortal songs.”

  He tried singing a line, and waited.

  The mortal cleared his throat, as if he really might join in, but only silence followed. When Nick glanced back, all he saw was mist.

  “Mortal?”

  In the dark there came a shriek of rising wind, and worse. Like the sound of a coming storm, the worst storm Nick knew. The thunder of swift paws on snow. Not the wolves, Nick thought. Not with the mortals here.

  These mortals would try to fight. They’d die so quickly.

  “Mortal!” Nick shouted.

  Nick grabbed Theo’s collar and shoved Theo behind him. Everything was howling darkness, wind cold as snow, falling leaves, and the coming of the wolves.

  “Nick?” the mortal called through the dark. “Nick! Where are you?”

  Nick went quiet. The sound of the mortal’s call was strange. It was Nick’s name, but it didn’t seem like that voice could be for him.

  Then the mortal blundered out of the mist.

  Nick blinked. “You sounded farther away.”

  “What?” asked the mortal. “Hell plays tricks on you.”

  “Oh,” said Nick, “it does.”

  The mortal took hold of Theo’s shirt, not grabbing. It was strange, how easy gentleness came to him. The mortal pulled Theo in. “You all right?”

  Theo hugged him back. “Yeah.”

  Nick leaned against the stone wall, cold as a wall of ice. The mortal turned to him.

  “Nick, you all right?”

  “Obviously,” snapped Nick. “We have to get out of here. The wolves … I know mortals don’t matter. But—”

  “Why do mortals not matter?” the mortal demanded.

  “If mortals matter,” Nick said, low, “it will be awful when you die.”

  “It should be awful when people die.”

  Maybe it was easy for mortals to accept death. They had no other choice, but Nick did. Life was awful enough.

  When Sabrina talked about becoming mortal, Nick was terrified. He’d decided long ago that would be the ultimate horror. What, get some sweet, softhearted mortal to love you and make you a home and make you happy, then home dies?

  No, thank you. Nick had home die on him once already.

  It was the test the mortal failed, not being able to accept Sabrina’s magic. Nick would fail if he couldn’t accept Sabrina’s mortal side. He was still terrified. He didn’t want anything to hurt her.

  So he’d done what he’d done. Now Sabrina and the mortals had thrown themselves into danger again. Terror was exhausting. Nick wanted it to stop.

  “If we get over this wall,” the mortal said, “the wolves can’t follow. Let’s get Theo over first.”

  Theo, by far the smallest and lightest, was the only one they could get over. Before the mortal would let Theo go, he insisted on embracing him again.

  “I love you,” he said into Theo’s shoulder.

  “Is now the time?” Nick demanded.

  He helped the mortal boost Theo over the wall and watched Theo scramble to make it.

  The mortal urged: “Let’s find a door. Sabrina’s really close. Here, help me.”

  Nick reached out, in the dark and mist, and his fingers curled around the bars of a door.

  “Come on,” said the mortal. “I know the right thing to do.”

  Nick took a step back. “How nice for you.”

  “You can’t let Sabrina down again.”

  The mortal’s eyes narrowed, judging Nick. He didn’t understand anything.

  “You let her down first!” Nick shouted. “You were supposed to love Sabrina and you dumped her for no reason. She cried, and now I’m supposed to be the one who loves her, and I’m trying but I betrayed her. I don’t know how to love anybody. Where was I supposed to learn? From the witches? From the wolves?”

  “The wolves?”

  Nick shook his head, speechless with misery.

  “Nick,” the mortal said softly. “Are you crying?”

  “I don’t do that!”

  “Do you”—the mortal hesitated—“want a hug?”

  “How dare you?” Nick snarled.

  The mortal, the worst fool to be found in any possible world, moved forward.

  “I get you’re mad at me,” he murmured. “But you know, I did you a favor. Sabrina wouldn’t be with you if I hadn’t left her. You wanted to be with her, right?”

  “I did,” said Nick. “But I didn’t understand what to do. I tried to please my parents and Amalia and the whole Academy and the Dark Lord and Sabrina. How was I supposed to do any of that by telling the truth?”

  The mortal’s face crumpled. “You know I wouldn’t lie, right?”

  “I’m not you,” snapped Nick.

  “You don’t have to be. Listen. Sabrina loves you now. We all came for you. I wanted to. What you did was really brave, and we couldn’t let you stay down here. Trust me.”

  “I can’t,” Nick said savagely. “I’m almost sure you’re not real.”

  The mortal gathered Nick carefully in toward him, the way he did with Theo and Sabrina, to keep them safe.

  “Hey,” said the mortal, in the tender way that would get him eviscerated at the Academy. “Nick. You had a really hard time, didn’t you? But it’s okay now. I’m sorry for everything. You can come in out of the cold. All you have to do is open the door.”

  “Oh no,” Nick whispered.

  Nick put his head down on the mortal’s shoulder for a minute. Just a minute. He couldn’t let himself cry.

  Then Nick lifted his head.

  “This isn’t real,” he said. “That wasn’t for me.”

  The mist and the mortal faded away. Nick was back on the mountain. The snow was falling, and the cold went deeper than his bones.

  The warmth seemed to drain out of my kitchen as I looked into Harvey’s
furious face. There was light in him I’d always loved, but now the light was cold. “It doesn’t matter if Nick approached me on Satan’s orders.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” Harvey demanded. “I get you’ve lost your mind over this guy, but ’Brina, this is horrible. If everything was a lie from the start, how could you ever trust him?”

  “Wow,” murmured Theo. “This is so bad. Gotta go.”

  Harvey grabbed for Theo, but Theo evaded him.

  “Where are you going?” I asked desperately. We could explain to Harvey together.

  “I’m gonna see my other friends!” claimed Theo.

  “What other friends?” Harvey demanded.

  “I won’t let you meet them, because you guys embarrass me,” said Theo. “Work this out! Leaving now.”

  Theo darted off, Elspeth following. Even the ghost child vanished.

  Harvey and I stood alone together. His face was cold as the sculpture of an angel. Like the witch-hunters in the church, come to pass judgment on my kind.

  “Nick was so good to me, in so many ways—”

  “Because he felt guilty for being a sleaze, like a guy cheating on his wife and bringing her flowers?”

  “It wasn’t like that!”

  Harvey didn’t understand witches. My aunts and my cousin had performed their own dark devotions. When you walked the Path of Night, darkness entered your heart. Someone with no darkness in his heart couldn’t imagine that, and perhaps could never forgive it.

  “He’d do anything for me.”

  “Except tell the truth?”

  Harvey was shaking his head, refusal in every line of his body. If he thought Nick was so horrible for lying, maybe he hadn’t really forgiven me for lying about what I was. Maybe he secretly thought I was horrible too.

  I burst out: “You can’t understand.”

  “Because I’m just a mortal?”

  Harvey turned away. I caught up with him in the hall and grasped his sleeve. “Harvey, please. You can’t go.”

  “Why not? Only you’re allowed to leave. Is that it, Sabrina?”

  “What? No,” I faltered. “But you promised to help me.”

  “Right,” Harvey sighed. “All you care about is Nick. How can you be this sure of him?”

  “She wasn’t. She asked Nick not to talk to us,” Agatha’s voice rang accusingly from the stairs. “And he obeyed.”