Nick blinked several times in rapid succession. “Why? For spells?”
“No. Mortals put flowers in containers called vases and watch the flowers slowly die in their homes.”
“Whoa,” said Nick. “Morbid. Are you sure?”
“I swear by Satan’s hoofprint in a burning field. After the flowers, mortals give you compliments. They say, ‘You’re pure evil.’ When you reply, ‘Thanks!’ they get angry. This is funny if it’s a normal mortal, but dangerous if it’s a witch-hunter. Because witch-hunters kill us.”
“They can try,” Nick scoffed.
Prudence explained, slowly and carefully: “Witch-hunters were born to hurt us.”
From the adjoining room in Father Blackwood’s suite came the boom of Satanic chanting, and the shrill cackling of several witches at once. Prudence rocked the baby’s cradle.
“Please.” Nick sneered. “I realize being a witch-hunter isn’t ideal, but this one likes to draw little pictures and sing little songs. Oh no, soon I shall be slain.”
“Here’s another fun fact about mortal boys,” said Prudence. “Whenever you think, ‘Oh, this one’s different …’ This one’s not different. Witch-hunters are all the same. They aren’t safe.”
Nick smiled because he didn’t understand. “Nor am I.”
Talking about witch-hunters made Prudence’s flesh creep. Even an orphan knew the stories. Children murmured tales of horror under the covers in the Academy. You lived your life sheltered in the shadow of the Dark Lord, then one day you were blinded by terrible lights. Witch-hunters, with their blazing torches. If you were lucky, someone might scream a warning. She and her sisters had run witch-hunter drills a hundred times, planning to combine their power to bring the witch-hunters down.
Prudence understood it was difficult to imagine Harvey organizing a mass slaughter, since Harvey couldn’t organize a haircut. She tried a different approach.
“What happens at the end of your master plan? Let’s say this works out. You and Sabrina get married. What if she wishes to move the mortal in with you? You can’t keep one of those in the house! They age and crumble apart all over the place. It’s unsanitary.”
Nick frowned. “About when do they die?”
“When they’re seventy or eighty.”
Nick recoiled. “That can’t be right.”
“Pathetic, isn’t it? They’re basically people-shaped goldfish.”
He seemed to be mulling this over. “I read if you build a foundation of trust and affection, the ravages of time won’t matter.”
“That’s drivel,” Prudence told him.
“Quite right, Prudence,” said Father Blackwood. “Stop reading trashy books, Nick.”
Her father stood framed in the doorway between their rooms. His robes were slightly askew. Over his shoulder, Prudence saw several witches dancing around naked but for black feather boas and entrails. It was a pretty standard Wednesday night.
“So sorry to interrupt the seduction in progress,” Father Blackwood added. “I only wanted to look in on my darling child.”
He walked past Prudence as though she wasn’t there, robes swishing, and ran the sharp points of his nails along the carvings of Judas’s cradle. Judas opened his eyes and began to scream at the top of his lungs.
“I hear you, Judas,” Nick murmured. He raised his voice. “I was only talking to Prudence. I wasn’t planning seduction.”
“Then why bother talking to her?” Father Blackwood winked. “Oh, Nicholas. You can’t fool me. We’re crows of a feather, my boy. Will you come to the next meeting of my little society, on the mortal New Year’s Eve?”
Nick wandered over to the settee where Prudence slept, then lay down with his face on the pillow. In muffled tones, he said: “Can’t. Busy. A woman to woo, a mortal to annoy, a to-be-read pile I have to keep in the bell tower. You know how it is.”
Father Blackwood frowned, chucked the screaming Judas under the chin, and as he departed flung over his shoulder: “Silence the child, Prudence!”
She could silence his precious son and heir by putting a pillow over the baby’s face. Better yet, she could silence her father by knifing him repeatedly.
When she pulled her gaze away from his closed door, she saw Nick watching her.
“You sure you want him for a father?” Nick drawled.
“Who else do I have?” Prudence snapped. “Like you’re any better. You’re chasing after a dead man. You read everything Edward Spellman ever wrote. You never stop boring me and my sisters with tedious facts from his books. Now you’re obsessed with his daughter. You think corpses and books will teach you how to be a man?”
“What else do I have?” Nick asked, copying Prudence’s snapped question with a mocking lilt to his voice. “But I’m not only interested in Sabrina because of Edward Spellman.”
“What’s this fascination with Sabrina about, then?”
“Satan ordered me to seduce her,” Nick said flippantly.
Prudence rolled her eyes at the sarcasm.
“It doesn’t matter how it started,” said Nick. “You and I witnessed everything Sabrina did for the mortal. She performed a forbidden ritual. She picked up a knife and cut a throat. She walked into the land of the dead. What did you think when you saw her do it?”
Prudence grimaced. “I thought, She’s a madwoman who has gone too far! ”
Nick’s voice was very soft. “I thought, I want someone who will go that far for me.”
“So … she’s a witch who won’t devote her heart to the Dark Lord. She’s a witch who loves people,” said Prudence slowly. “And … you want her … to love you?”
There was a long silence as she waited for him to deny this horrible accusation.
Then Nick gave a very tiny nod. Prudence saw lights go on and off behind her eyes.
So he’d had a traumatic childhood. Who hadn’t? That was no excuse.
“You want her to love you?” Prudence repeated. “Nick, you kinky freak. Settle for whips and devil worship like everybody else. If you want her love so badly, shouldn’t you make sure she and the witch-hunter don’t get back together?”
Nick frowned. “Why? I told him to forgive her.”
“You did what?”
“I want Sabrina to be happy,” Nick said simply.
Witches sharing partners was nothing new. She was prepared to share Ambrose with Luke Chalmers, Satan help her, but the ways of most mortals were different.
Nick was romanticizing the idea of mortal love, but Prudence knew better. Desire was crueler with mortals than it was with witches. She’d seen how ugly mortal boys could be when they were jealous. True love was for fools. The only thing you could trust was family.
“Won’t the mortal get jealous?”
“Up to him,” said Nick.
“Aren’t you jealous?”
There was a sudden flicker of darkness in the room, as if Prudence had blinked. But she hadn’t blinked.
When she could see again, Nick’s eyes were hollows in his face, pits with horror hidden in their depths. “Jealousy is a wolf that eats happiness. I’ll never be jealous of anybody.” He shrugged off the seriousness and threw a wicked, sparkling glance her way. “Honestly, Prudence. Me, jealous of him? It could never happen. He’s only mortal.”
Nick might think he was ready for love, but he didn’t look it when he laughed with his head thrown back, proud as the angel who fell to rule hell, a witch’s child every inch of him.
Prudence was abruptly exhausted. “Remember I warned you, Nick Scratch. Now leave.”
Nick could slight Father Blackwood and get away with it. He could presume he was welcome wherever he went, including a girl’s heart. He’d suffered plenty, but he’d always been a man, so he assumed things would go his way in the end.
If Nick was Father Blackwood’s son, Father Blackwood would’ve claimed him, and proclaimed him to heaven and hell.
Prudence had to make her own way, and her own luck. She certainly couldn’t trust Ni
ck to watch the baby as she did so. Judas’s howling hurt her head, but she picked him up and carried him to the dormitory where she used to sleep with her sisters. The baby’s wail chased her down the corridor.
“Be quiet or I’ll give you back to the witch-hunter,” Prudence whispered. “Do you want that? Ugh, maybe you do. Satan in a sun hat. Listen to your big sister, Judas. Masochism is a fine thing, but it can be taken too far.”
Dorcas and Agatha were sitting on a narrow white bed together, Dorcas painting Agatha’s toenails black. When she saw Prudence, Agatha jumped up.
“Prudence. You’re here!”
Did they not want her to be?
When they were small, Prudence worried about them constantly. Agatha, who became overly enthused and ran headlong into trouble. Dorcas, who got her tongue tangled in front of strangers. She’d drilled the lessons of witchcraft into them. They were orphans. Nobody was looking out for them. They had to be the wickedest witches to be found in all four corners of the world.
Was it Prudence’s fault her sisters had cast the spell to collapse that mine, killing those mortals—the witch-hunter’s brother—as thoughtlessly as if they were playing a game of cat’s cradle? Was it her fault they’d decided to leave her out, because they didn’t need her any longer?
The Dark Lord had taken their souls, but she had taught them to be heartless.
Prudence didn’t tell her sisters: I miss you. She wasn’t Nick Scratch. She knew longing to be wanted got you torn to shreds.
“Don’t fret,” she told Agatha. “You two keep on whispering secrets without me. I’m not interested. I have places to be and horror to unleash. Watch this baby for me, or else.”
She turned away from her sisters and her little brother. She went into town to help Sabrina Spellman banish a luck demon.
It hadn’t snowed last night, but it had rained. Some of the old ice and snow had washed away. The world beneath was showing through, slimy dark stone appearing in patches where the snow had grown thin and gray as an old man’s hair.
Maybe I was viewing the world through jaundiced eyes because I was looking at it from behind a trash can.
“Let me make myself perfectly clear,” said Prudence from behind the trash can next to mine. “I’m here to banish a minor bad-luck spirit. If this turns into anything more difficult or dangerous, you’re on your own.”
I nodded absently, trying to keep a lookout.
The shop was shut up, with no sign of the owner. So we were lurking behind the café, hoping for a chance to jump a demon in an alley.
“I got it.”
“I mean it, Sabrina,” said Prudence. “You don’t so much flirt with Death as slip your number in Death’s back pocket, cop a feel, and whisper, ‘Call me, lover.’ If you do anything stupid or reckless, I’m out.”
“I understand,” I whispered. “Shut up!”
Prudence fixed me with an outraged glare. I gestured to the back door of the tea shop, sliding open in the alleyway as Mrs. Ferch-Geg carried out the trash.
She was wearing a floral dressing gown, her blond hair done up in a rainbow array of old-fashioned curlers. She was carrying a basket of sad-looking éclairs and squashed cream cakes. She looked so normal that I thought for a moment we’d gotten everything wrong.
The Welsh woman walked over to the trash cans, her worn house slippers sliding in the melting snow. I braced for her to discover us. When she pulled the lid off a different trash can, I gave a small sigh of relief.
Then the breath froze, like an ice cube of horror lodged in my throat.
In the trash can were the wet, rotting remnants of a dozen tea parties. The smell of old, stewed tea bags and sour cream drifted toward us, and Mrs. Ferch-Geg turned around to face the brick wall and let her hair down.
Curlers tumbled onto the snow, lying in the ice like a dozen snakes. Through the sparse golden strands at the back of the pleasant widow’s head was a second mouth, lips twisted and withered. The maw yawned wide, seeking and hungry as a baby bird’s beak lifted for its mother’s worm.
She waits until food is rotten to consume it with her second mouth, Nick said in my memory. I clung to the remembered sound of his voice, calm and amused, as though nothing was a big deal.
Mrs. Ferch-Geg fumbled, clumsy with her hands behind her back. She snatched up handfuls of reeking garbage and stuffed them into that gaping mouth. The mouth chewed noisily, toothlessly, giving a guttural moaning sound of mingled satiation and demand. Crumbs spewed from its slack lips, smeared with cream turned clotted and black. I had the sense that no matter how she fed that ravenous mouth, it would never be satisfied.
Prudence was making a face of extreme distaste. I stuck my tongue out and gagged in grossed-out solidarity, then pointed to Mrs. Ferch-Geg, held up three fingers, and folded them down one by one. Prudence nodded and we sprang, sending the trash cans clattering and rolling to the mouth of the alley.
“Dwy Ferch Geg!” My voice rang out confidently. “Dragon be my guide and hellfire my light. Satan give me the power to banish this spirit. Lucifer shield me in my fight, Beelzebub lend me glory. Spirit, begone!”
The Dwy Ferch Geg shrank before my upraised hands, staggering back, but Prudence slipped between her and escape.
“Deliver me into delicious temptation,” purred Prudence. “Evil be thou my good, might my right, and my voice heard in hell. Spirit, begone!”
The spirit spun in a circle. I glimpsed the pleasantly smiling face of the tea shop lady, the golden-haired bishop’s daughter who had lived hundreds of years ago. Every feature was still as a mask, her blue eyes glazed as a doll’s. When she spoke, it was the mouth at the back of her head that moved, as if this was the mouth that was truly hers. Rotted food slid from her lips with every word.
“Gossip stains worse than the soot from hellfire. Do you think you can cleanse this place by banishing me?”
“Ms. Wardwell told me that we mustn’t listen to her, no matter what she says,” I told Prudence. “We must complete the ritual.”
Prudence rolled her eyes. “This is hardly Baby Prudence’s first demon summoning. Unlike you, I don’t need advice from some random outcast witch.”
I let the insult to Ms. Wardwell slide, since Prudence was helping me out.
“Unleash the snakes upon my enemy,” I yelled. “Turn away the ill luck and the evil eye from this place. Spirit, begone.”
“Satan give me the strength to banish this misbegotten imp,” said Prudence. “Spirit, begone.”
There seemed to be a tiny localized storm in the alleyway. I felt a gust of wind stir my white hair as the air turned electric. The figure before me, in her floral wrap, seemed to blur. For an instant I saw a smaller woman, ashen and ghastly, her body emaciated and her hands held out in appeal.
“Live by the words, die by the words. What’s a spell but a string of words,” murmured the demon. “A whip of words, to lash a demon. A rope of words, to hang a witch. You won’t be able to utter spells when they have you by the neck. The ill luck is already here. The witch-hunters will rise. The prince will come. Like every spirit in the Pit, I heard the bells ring through hell the day you came into this world. It was evil fortune that you were ever born, Sabrina Spellman.”
I wanted to ask what she meant by that, but I remembered Ms. Wardwell’s warning. Demons lied. I didn’t want to make any more mistakes. I couldn’t let myself weaken or get distracted.
Prudence was looking at me through shrewd narrowed eyes beneath her sweep of violet eye shadow and wing of eyeliner. She wore the colors of a tropical night bird, even in a mundane alley on a gray winter’s morning.
“Prudence Night!” called out the spirit, her voice shrill. “Do you think you can afford to be rash when you have so much at risk? I was the child of a man of the church too. Look what happened to me. All the voices of the congregation told me I was doing my duty when I named the women to be drowned and hanged and burned. They said I would receive my reward. Then I died and woke to torment in hell.”<
br />
“Sounds to me like you received the reward you deserved,” I spat.
Prudence wheeled on me. “Satan in a miniskirt, Sabrina, you just told me to ignore her!”
I blinked. “Oh. Sorry. Spirit, begone! ”
“Overcome by the compulsion to be righteous?” Prudence sighed. “I never feel that urge myself. Spirit, begone!”
On the rising wind, I heard shrieks and whispers right on the cusp of hearing. Some of them sounded like people I loved calling out to me. I was certain down to the marrow of my bones that if I could make out what they were saying, it would be important.
“So many voices,” sighed the Dwy Ferch Geg. “So many voices in our heads, ringing like the bells of the church by my father’s house and the bells that herald the prince’s coming. I could scarcely hear the voice in my head, telling me what I did was wrong. How can you be sure, little lost daughter, that you are listening to the right voice?”
I didn’t even know which of us she was talking to. I wanted to stop, to ask her, but I knew I couldn’t. Instead I lifted my hands above my head and saw faint phosphorescence outline my fingers, the color of dawn light touching frost.
“By the power of Satan and his rebellious angels, I cast you out,” I said. “Spirit, begone!”
Prudence nodded, taking a deep breath. “By the will of Satan, this place is washed clean. Spirit, begone!”
The Dwy Ferch Geg turned in a full circle, so I saw both her mouth and her mask. She dwindled away into a shrunken pallid ghost, every feature lost save the gaping darkness of her mouth.
Her starving lips moved once more. She said: “You can’t kill a whisper.”
Then she was gone. Prudence and I stood staring at each other amid the demon’s discarded clothes and the old pastries.
“Huh,” said Prudence. “Well, start the day with a bang or a banishment, I always say. You’ll sing my praises to your aunt Zelda?”
“Already did,” I said cheerfully. “She said she’s planning on giving you a solo. Said you were capable on many levels. I think you impressed her, the night—well, the night Judas was born.”
Prudence’s smile was swift and unguarded with joy. I guessed she really wanted a solo.
Daughter of Chaos Page 12