The Devil Makes Three

by Tori Bovalino

  This was it. This was the summer.

  Eliot dug his bloody fingers into the earth, calling forth all of the magic he could muster. It filled him like spilled gold in his blood. This was power like he’d never had before, power like he’d never imagined. His skin shone with the force of the magic he gathered.

  Eliot let the failure slip away, the anxiety, the terribleness of it all. He was not a failure. He was Eliot Birch, and he was going to do something impossible.

  He pressed his hands to Nat’s chest, pushing into her sternum. Her eyes flew open as Eliot pressed the magic into her, as he coaxed her back from whatever fiery place the devil had taken her to. Nat gagged on the last of the ink that surged from her mouth.

  She choked and sputtered, but Eliot did not stop. He pressed the magic deeper, forcing it into every vein and capillary. Her back arched against him, body seizing. But there, at the edge of everything, he felt the tug of her soul.

  It was hard to explain. He felt as if he’d found a loose thread in a sweater. Eliot reached in and pulled. It was as she had been, unchanged, untainted. There would be no improvements in this Nat, no healing, nothing left behind in hell, but she would be whole again.

  “Eliot!” someone shouted, Tess or Anna. He couldn’t feel himself; he had no body at all. He was only magic, roots and earth and the fabric of the universe.

  Someone was shaking him. He’d let go of Nat and fallen on his side, breathing hard. He opened his eyes to find curious, fearful eyes peering down at him from a face that was familiar and not familiar at the same time.

  Eliot could barely catch his breath. “Natalie, is it?”

  Nat blinked down at him. Full and alive, she looked eerily like Tess. “You’re bleeding,” she said.

  “You’re alive,” Eliot answered. He sensed the magic leaving, swirling away, shaking the very foundations of the ground beneath him. He closed his eyes and faded with it.

  sixty two

  Tess

  NAT.

  Tess stared at her, alive, kneeling over Eliot.

  Nat.

  Vibrant, heart beating, Eliot’s blood smeared across her cheeks and collarbones. The sobs choked her, now from relief rather than horror.

  “She was dead,” Anna said. “I swear it.”

  “I know,” Tess said. There were no words, no feelings to encompass her relief and terror and the mix of all of it. She stumbled up from her knees, closing the last few feet between them, and threw herself at Nat.

  “You’re impossible,” Tess said into her hair. “I love you so much.”

  “We need to get him inside,” Nat said, pushing away and picking up Eliot’s arm.

  He was not hurt, just sleeping. He breathed deeply and evenly, a small smile on his face. Tess was full of too many emotions, too many things.

  She could not process any of it.

  The three of them carried him upstairs, into the dorm. Anna picked the lock of one of their old roommate’s rooms and dragged the stripped mattress into the living room. They laid Eliot on it, arms extended. Tess wrapped bandages around his cut palms and skinned shoulder while Nat showered in the bathroom.

  Tess made her leave the door cracked open. She couldn’t stand to have Nat out of earshot.

  “Will you finally tell me what’s going on?” Anna asked. She’d rinsed most of the ink from her body, but specks of it still splattered her clothes. Tess shuddered.

  “How much do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  Tess considered this. There was too much, all from the beginning, and no guarantee that Anna would believe her. But she’d seen the ink, the horror of it. She’d watched Nat die and later return. She’d witnessed Eliot’s magic.

  So Tess told her. She told her everything.

  As dawn light broke gray and misty outside the windows, Tess was by Eliot’s makeshift bed, waiting for anything to happen. Waiting to stop feeling so empty.

  Regina was dead. Mathilde was dead. Nat had died; that had been the worst of it, even for the brief minutes she had to endure it.

  She did not know how to come to terms with the fact Nat had been gone, or understand how Eliot had brought her back. After Nat went to sleep, Tess settled next to him, holding vigil, waiting for him to wake.

  Finally, Eliot’s eyes opened, slowly and painfully.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.” He took in the room, the twinkle lights Tess and Anna had hung a few weeks back and the discarded towels Nat had left hanging on a chair. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Tess answered. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ll survive.” He grimaced when he moved to take her hand. “And how’s Nat?”

  “She’s fine. Asleep, with Anna,” Tess said. “Um, I told Anna. About all of it. She called in an anonymous tip for the police to investigate Jessop.”

  And maybe things were better that way. Because the fear of some false, mysterious serial killer that explained both of the deaths was better than the truth getting out, better than speaking of the devil.

  “Interesting,” Eliot said.

  Tess felt strangely shy in front of him, now that things were back almost to normal and everyone was safe. She didn’t know how to thank him for saving Nat. She didn’t know if she could ever thank him enough for it. She wanted to duck her head into his shoulder and hide.

  Eliot cleared his throat and examined the gauze on his hands. “I wanted to say thank you. You didn’t have to save me, you know.”

  “I know,” Tess said. “I’m sorry about your tattoo.”

  Eliot sighed. “It was nice, wasn’t it?”

  She didn’t need to look at him to know he was joking, but she did anyway. After everything they had endured, every emotion she’d tried to ignore, looking at him now without hiding was a privilege. There was something soft in his face, maybe because of the exhaustion, or maybe not. Maybe it was something else, something that made her cheeks burn red.

  Eliot sat up and studied the wrapping around his shoulder.

  “Did you request all of those grimoires to practice necromancy?” she blurted, because she knew what was coming, and she wasn’t ready.

  Eliot sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and winced at the pain.

  “Do you want the worst answer, or a pleasant one?”

  Tess shot him a glare. “I kissed the devil to save your life, Eliot.”

  He frowned up at her. “You kissed him?” Tess pretended to poke him in the ribs and he hurriedly said, “Kidding, kidding.” He snatched her hand and wrapped it in both of his. “The truth. I was looking for a way to help or heal my mother. Don’t look at me like that; it’s not possible. But it’s the only thing I had left.”

  “Could you?” Here it was, the truth she was afraid to confront. She didn’t know how to understand the ramifications of it. “You … you saved Nat. You brought her back. I think you know how much that means, how much I can’t thank you enough for it.”

  “I know.”

  “And could you save your mother like that?”

  He drew her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss against the side of it. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Tess bit her lip, fighting an inexplicable sense of guilt. “Why not? You said you wanted to heal her, to raise the dead. That’s exactly what you did to Nat.”

  Eliot shook his head. “I felt it when I brought Nat back. I wasn’t changing anything or altering her at all. If I brought my mother back, I’d bring her back as she was. Sick. She’s gone, Tess. Even if I tried to keep her here, she would not be herself. There is no magic to restore what she’s already lost. Nothing is going to save her. The only change now will be that she’ll have her peace.”

  There was nothing she could say to make it any better. She didn’t know how to deal with it, or how to align this wet-eyed Eliot who wouldn’t look at her with the one she’d faced hell with only hours before.

  He needed softness. She did not know how to be soft. She did not how to offer comfort
at all. But for him, she’d try.

  She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I hope she finds peace,” she said. It wasn’t enough, but it was all she had.

  “Tess,” he said, and her name didn’t sound like the other times he’d said it. It was a declaration, a caress, a truth. He cleared his throat again. “I know that eventually I’m going back to England and you’re going to be a famous musician and my father is terrible and everything is a mess and you think I’m a douchecanoe”—he couldn’t not smile when he said it, and that smile made her smile, damn him—“but I don’t think I’m going to find another human being like you in this entire godforsaken universe, and I don’t think I ever want to.”

  That last part, that ‘ever want to,’ burrowed somewhere deep within her, and she had to look away so he didn’t see the pinpricks of tears that suddenly burned in her eyes. “What are you saying?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to say I’m in love with you, and I’m doing a terrible job of it.”

  Her eyes snapped back to his. “You are doing a terrible job of it,” she said, but her voice was as watery as her eyes, and when she saw him smiling—damn him and his smile—she knew, again, that she was smiling back.

  “I hate you,” she said around the lump in her throat, because she wasn’t going to cry in front of him, not now when they were both alive. He let her know that he understood by reaching out with his good arm and tugging her towards him over the center console, knotting his fingers into her hair as she clutched his shoulder and held him tight, because his mother was dying and her family was on the edge of poverty and three people had died because of them and he’d brought one back and she’d probably never be able to afford conservatory and he couldn’t go back to England, but right then, right there, it didn’t matter.

  They were free.

  sixty three

  Eliot

  THE COFFEE SHOP IN SQUIRREL HILL WAS NEARLY DESERTED when Eliot arrived, expecting to see his father. Instead, Lucille was there, in the back corner, nursing a black coffee.

  “Hello,” Eliot said, barely able to hide his surprise. He slid into the seat across from her.

  “Hello,” Lucille said. She wasn’t wearing her usual makeup, and her eyes were softer than usual, bluer. She pushed a cup towards him. “I got you English Breakfast.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” He took a sip and found it too hot, so he sat the cup between his hands. He had no idea what to say.

  When his father called him the night before, asking about the police’s inquiry into Jessop, Eliot had told him he didn’t know anything. And then, when he told him to meet him at the coffee shop this afternoon or else, there was nothing else Eliot could’ve said.

  He’d wondered if it was so his father could interrogate him. But if Lucille was here alone, probably not.

  Lucille’s eyes now traced over the scab on his cheek, down to his shoulder, where the gauze from his bandaged arm peeked out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt. He should’ve healed it before, but he was still too exhausted from saving Nat.

  “When are you done with classes?” Lucille asked.

  Eliot frowned. He wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “Two weeks. Why?”

  Her expression cleared a little, as if she’d made a guess and been correct. She pulled something out of her purse and slid it across the table. When Eliot opened the folder, he saw flight confirmations. Round trip to London. Departing in two and a half weeks, returning the day before school began.

  “How did you …” Eliot couldn’t finish the question.

  Lucille spoke quickly, as if making a confession and wanting to get it over with. “I don’t want to replace your mother. Ever. But I don’t think it’s fair, the way this is going, the way you’re sandwiched between them, and I hope you don’t only see me as the other woman.”

  Eliot stared at her, shell-shocked, uncertain what to say.

  “I hate seeing you hurting, Eliot,” Lucille said. “And this situation is shit. I’m sorry I fell in love with your father when I did, and I don’t want to ruin your life. So here. Go be with your mom. Because you deserve to spend as much time with her as you can.”

  Eliot couldn’t speak. There was a lump in his throat, choking him, and if he kept looking at the flight confirmation, he was going to cry. “How did you do it?” Eliot asked.

  Lucille smiled, just a little. “I gave him an ultimatum,” she said softly.

  An ultimatum. Just like his father had given Eliot. Eliot could imagine it now: Lucille, a force to be reckoned with, throwing china and laying down the terms. Either Eliot could go to England or she would leave. A risky bet, but one that had paid off.

  He was out of his chair in half a second, throwing his arms around her, and she was laughing into his hair. “Thank you,” he repeated over and over again.

  “It’s going to be okay, Eliot,” Lucille said. She pulled away, and he could see that she was crying too. “But don’t tell him I told you it was my idea.”

  Maybe, just maybe, he could make it through this.

  “I won’t,” Eliot said.

  sixty four

  Tess

  GETTING A MOVING VAN TO MATHILDE‘S HOUSE WAS PROVing to be a giant pain in the ass. Nestled on the line between North Oakland and Shadyside, it was surrounded by narrow one-way roads that her mom kept missing. Tess, Anna, and Nat sat on the porch, waiting with frosty glasses of tea.

  This was an odd day, one Tess had been waiting for with trepidation since Mathilde’s will had been read. She left the house and all of her possessions to Tess’s father, her only remaining family. The money she’d saved over the years and inherited from her husband Harry was split between Tess, Nat, and her parents, with trusts set up to put the girls through college. In the city, it would be easier for her mom to find a job, and her father could continue the pen company from home.

  And now, the day came for Tess’s parents to join her and Nat in the city. They’d sold their house and the stationery store. It was time for a new start.

  There were more conversations to be had, discussions between Tess and her parents. Maybe they weren’t at war anymore, but she didn’t know how to trust them. Living together once again would be a constant negotiation.

  “Do you think you’ll make it to the vigil?” Anna asked.

  “I’m not sure. What time is it supposed to start?”

  “Um, 8:00, I think.”

  Tess nodded, not looking at Nat or Anna. “I’ll be there.” The vigil in honor of Regina had been set up by the school in a rare moment of compassion. There would be therapists, too, for anyone who wanted to talk—and police officers, for anyone who had leads.

  Tess rubbed her eyes. It was hard not to be exhausted after two weeks of interrogations, investigations, and uncomfortable discussions. Luckily, Eliot’s sweep of the stacks was thorough enough that neither of them had been named as suspects after the bones were discovered. In fact, the official opinion was that Tess was meant to be a victim of whoever murdered Mathilde Matheson and Regina Heigemeir.

  Of course, they knew better.

  “Oh!” Nat yelled, jumping up. “There they are!” She dashed into the yard to intercept their mom and the moving van. Her father pulled in afterwards, driving the family car.

  Anna’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Hey. Are you okay?”

  Tess bit her lip. She hadn’t seen her parents in months. Besides discussing Mathilde’s death and assuring her parents she was safe, they hadn’t spoken much.

  “I have to be, don’t I?”

  Nat launched herself at their parents the moment they were out of their vehicles. Tess watched as they hugged her, squeezing her tight, kissing her hair.

  Anna nudged her arm. “You can do it.”

  Tess sighed, but Anna was right. Nat and their mom went to the back of the van to start unloading. Her mom looked up, straight at Tess.

  She got up and forced herself down the stairs. “I’m so sorry,” her father said when she stopped just in
front of him. “I’m sorry that you had to go through this without us.” She respected that he didn’t pull her straight in for a hug, that he gave her space. He smelled like metal and ink—but not the dusty kind that had clotted in her dreams. He smelled new and clean, like home.

  Tess examined his face. “How could you have helped? You ruined everything.” His face fell. She sensed they were all quiet, her mom and Nat and Anna, listening to her. But it didn’t matter. This was something she had to face. “I didn’t tell you and I couldn’t tell you, but you ruined all of it. And I need you to know that.”

  He nodded. His jaw twitched, something he did when he was disappointed. “I know,” he said. “I know, and I’ll never make it up to you, and I’m sorry, and I know.”

  “I don’t forgive you,” Tess said, rigid. “I can’t forgive you. Not right now.”

  Her dad took this in and nodded. “You don’t have to. What do you need from me?”

  She hadn’t expected—hadn’t known— She was ready for a blowout, a clash, the fight that they’d never had at home. She wasn’t prepared for this immediate peace.

  Tess was exhausted. She was tired of holding it together and pretending and being angry. When she looked at her dad, she no longer saw failure. She saw his humanity. The mistakes that made him real.

  She would write her story her own way, without the devil.

  She threw herself into his arms and of course he caught her. She couldn’t be mad anymore, not now, because it was okay and her parents were here; because she’d never given Mathilde the chance to get closer to her, and she’d regret it forever. She would not make the same mistake again.

  “Stay,” she begged. “Stay, and don’t hurt me again.”

  “Okay,” Dad said. And then Mom was bringing Nat in and Anna joined from the porch, even though she hadn’t been formally introduced, but it didn’t matter. They were alive and Tess and Nat were safe. She allowed herself to be comforted.

  Just as she did dozens of times a day, Tess closed her eyes and thought their names. Mathilde. Regina. Harry. And then, even though it was too late, even though there was nothing else to do, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I will not forget.