Daughter of Chaos

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “I’m glad you stopped them. Thanks,” said Harvey softly. He meant for that night, and for coming with him today: all of it. “You’re a good guy.”

  Nick’s eyes cut away. “I’m really not.”

  He was. And, maybe, they were friends.

  As they reached home, Harvey gathered courage to ask: “Have you found out anything more about the enchantment on Greendale?”

  “Mortals don’t need to know,” Nick said loftily. “Mortals need to stay home where it’s safe and hear about how the witches handled it later. I’ll check in on your awful father, restrain him if necessary, then go.”

  Maybe they weren’t friends.

  There was a silence as Harvey regarded Nick’s disdainful face, the absolute arrogance he carried himself with even when he was only leaning against a wall in Harvey’s house and fussing with a book. Possibly Nick didn’t know how bad he sounded. Possibly he didn’t care.

  “That’d be a no to everything you just said,” Harvey remarked coldly. “Hang on.”

  He left Nick flipping through his new book and went to the bathroom, where he splashed water on his face until the fact he’d been sobbing uncontrollably was less obvious.

  Then he went back out to find Nick in the kitchen, already drinking a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks for making this,” said Nick. “I require it at all times, but especially when I have a night of intensive study ahead.”

  Harvey stared. “I didn’t make it.”

  “I did,” announced Harvey’s father. He moved past Harvey and into the kitchen.

  His step was the heavy one Harvey always dreaded, the tread that meant he was angry.

  “Nick,” Harvey said urgently. “You didn’t test the coffee. Did you?”

  “Oh, unholy f—” Nick began.

  He was cut off by Harvey’s dad, taking a chisel out of his belt and slamming it into the side of Nick’s head. Nick went down hard. Harvey stared at the uplifted chisel, the dark shine of blood on metal.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Dad.”

  “He’s a witch, Harvey!” his father growled.

  There was something unfamiliar about his father, the shine of his eyes odd, the movements he was making uncoordinated in a different way than when he was drunk. It was as though he was sleepwalking.

  He sounded very awake when he told Harvey, his voice rapid and furious: “He’s a witch, like the old stories your grandpa used to tell when I was a boy. I had nightmares when I was a kid, about how the witches would come back, but today the dreams are different; they’re not like dreams at all. Today I dreamed—I dreamed of how we used to fight them. The stories were true, Harvey. The witches are real, and they’re here in our town. We never got rid of them.”

  “You never will,” Nick ground out between his teeth.

  He pulled himself up off the floor, knuckles white on the back of a kitchen chair. His face was pale and his eyes were black with murderous fury. He lifted a hand and snarled a spell.

  Nothing happened.

  Harvey’s father laughed a strange frantic laugh. “I dreamed it. The herb we used to give them so they couldn’t use the powers the devil sent them. I put it in his cup. They can wreak such evil, Harvey, but we can stop them.”

  He punched Nick in the face and then laughed again.

  “There’s nothing you can do, witch.”

  Blood was running down Nick’s cheek in a vivid crimson stream. When he snarled, red stained his teeth. “I’ll show you what I can do.”

  “Dad,” Harvey breathed. “Nick—”

  “Oh, stop standing there whining,” his father snapped. “If you’re going to be useless as usual, go to your room.”

  “Yeah, go to your room, mortal,” Nick agreed. “You don’t need to see this.”

  Nick, bleeding and enraged, very clearly intended to kill Harvey’s father with his bare hands. His father, even more clearly, intended to murder Nick for being a witch. They can wreak such evil, he’d said, and Harvey knew they could.

  He could see why a witch-hunter would go after a witch. He could see the temptation of the witches being the powerless ones, for a change. Nick was used to relying on his magic, and Harvey’s father was strong when he was angry. Harvey’s dad would win.

  “If you want to be useful for once in your life, Harvey,” said his dad, “get the gun.”

  So Harvey did.

  He went to the front door and picked up the gun, its weight familiar in his hands. His mind was cold and clear as it had been the last time he’d used it, when there was absolutely no other choice.

  Nick watched him, eyes narrowed, face guarded. His father gave Harvey a brief nod of approval. “Give it here.”

  Harvey said, “No.”

  His dad threw him an irritated glance. It was almost comical, how ordinary and dismissive he was being with Harvey when he was planning a murder. “What do you think you’re playing at? You can’t shoot a deer. Give me that gun before you hurt yourself with it.”

  Harvey aimed the shotgun.

  “I’m a very good shot,” he said. “Tommy taught me. Cup.”

  He shot. The coffee cup exploded into black liquid and shattered fragments, white as bone. Nick and his father sprang back in different directions, which was probably a good idea. It wasn’t safe to shoot in the house.

  “Hat,” said Harvey, and fired again.

  His father’s miner’s hat, hung up on its hook, spun with a bullet dead center and fell off the hook to the floor.

  “What target should I pick next, Dad?” Harvey asked. “Nick, get behind me.”

  Nick didn’t move. He was staring at Harvey with his eyes gone wide. Harvey understood this was a scary situation, but Nick wasn’t helping himself.

  “Are you with me, Nick?” Harvey asked.

  Nick murmured: “Yes.”

  Nick came prowling cautiously forward. His dad tried to follow. Harvey fired again. He jerked the gun aside a crucial fraction of an inch, but not much more. The bullet passed very close by his father before it shattered the window and let in the cold air. The bloodstained chisel fell from his father’s nerveless fingers.

  “We’re leaving,” said Harvey. “Don’t follow us.”

  Nick stopped at his side, so Harvey took a step forward, to shield him. His father was staring in baffled fury, and Harvey could see the twin desires struggling on his face. He wanted to kill Nick—and hit Harvey.

  Harvey looked down at his father and shook his head.

  They left. Harvey took the gun with him.

  “Come on,” Harvey told Nick. “You won’t be able to teleport yourself to Invisible Academy. Get in the truck. I’ll take you.”

  Nick complied. There was silence but for the purr of the engine until they came to a fork in the road and Nick said to go left. As far as Harvey was concerned, they were driving into the wild depths of the woods, but he figured Nick knew the way.

  It was a strange path, barely wide enough for the pickup truck. The moon seemed caught in a prison of thorns overhead, white rays playing in wild bright flickers as though to dazzle Harvey’s vision and stop him from seeing. Invisible Academy, indeed.

  When he stopped the truck, he looked toward Nick, who was sitting still with white moonlight in his open eyes. It was possible Nick was in shock.

  “Will you be okay from here?” Harvey asked. “You can just go inside, right, and sleep off whatever herb it was. Then you’ll have your magic back.”

  “Yeah,” said Nick. “Should be fine.”

  “Cool,” said Harvey.

  He waited for another while.

  “You should test your food and drink with those spells from now on,” Harvey said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand what could happen. How do you feel? He hit you pretty hard.”

  “I know that, mortal,” Nick drawled, the usual edge surfacing in his voice like a shark fin cutting the water. It was probably a good sign it was back. “I was there.”

  “Should I have taken you to the h
ospital?” Harvey asked. “I thought you’d want to go to the Academy.”

  “Yes,” Nick said instantly. He still didn’t get out of the truck.

  “Do you need help getting inside? How’s your vision?”

  Nick waved off the question as though it were an irritating fly. “Harry, I’ve had worse than this a thousand times. Do you intend to go back to that house?”

  Harvey laughed. He leaned forward against the steering wheel, resting his chin on his folded arms.

  “I really doubt Invisible Academy wants a mortal scholarship kid.”

  Nick thought for a moment. “Sabrina—”

  Harvey’d imagined taking refuge at Sabrina’s sometimes. Not lately.

  “No. I’m going back to my home, okay? My dad was—he was being a witch-hunter. I’m not a witch.”

  “He’s never hurt you before?”

  Harvey was silent.

  Nick bared his bloody teeth. “That’s what I thought.”

  “I’m still going back,” said Harvey. “Don’t act like people don’t get hurt in the Academy. I know they do. You’re going back to your home and I’m going back to mine. Go inside where it’s safer, at least.”

  He gestured for Nick to go. Nick opened the door of the truck at last, and then instantly turned back around.

  “When can I come back?”

  “Back?” Harvey asked. “Back to—to my house? To the murder house? Why would you want to do that?”

  Nick shrugged. “I left my book there.”

  Harvey raised his eyes to heaven. “My dad will be out with his friends tomorrow, nerd. You can get your book.”

  “All right.” Nick climbed out of the truck, leaning an arm against the roof to look inside. The mocking gleam was back in his eyes. “Hey, farm boy? Prudence says you’re out of your mind.”

  “What?” Harvey gasped. “Prudence? Force-feeds people truth potions Prudence? Death threats Prudence? She’s a psychopath. I’m totally normal.”

  Nick tapped on the roof of the truck and smiled brilliantly at him. “Crazy as heaven. She was right.”

  He was gone then, a shadow in his black clothes heading for a shadowy edifice with staring windows, a building that kept trying to slip out of Harvey’s sight and become a mausoleum farther off among the trees.

  “What a jackass that guy is,” Harvey muttered to himself, and drove home.

  He opened his front door, very cautiously. When he didn’t hear a roar of fury, he walked carefully to the kitchen, where the cold winds were blowing through the shattered window.

  His dad was sitting at the table with his head in his hands. When Harvey came toward him, he looked up.

  “Did that really happen?” he murmured, sounding half asleep. “Harv … ?”

  “I’m here,” said Harvey.

  “Your grandpa used to tell me such stories,” his dad muttered. “Greendale was a mountain once. Then the angel fell, and green grass grew over the scorched earth, but there was never a mountain again. We took the land, but we didn’t know what we were taking. The earth was still black under the grass. The witches were here, Satan-touched red in their eyes and red on their hands, and laughing. Laughing. I was a puny kid, before I got my growth. I used to have nightmares about them, the wicked witches. Toughen up, your grandpa used to say.”

  His father wrung his big hands. Black dust was ingrained in every line on his palms, from the mines. It couldn’t be washed off now.

  “If I had a few drinks, it stopped me thinking of the laughing. Your mom said we wouldn’t tell you boys those stories. Enough horrors, she said. But the black earth of this town, it got to her. She was riddled with sickness, the doctors said. It was so fast. Like evil magic. And you were always this shivering spineless kid, the worst of me, as my Tommy was the best of me. So scared of everything, and you made me think of being scared. No matter what I did, you wouldn’t toughen up. And you would look at me, the worst of me but with your mother’s eyes, reproaching me for—I don’t know. I kept drinking. But the laughter didn’t stop, in my head. It never stops.”

  Harvey knelt on the floor, amid the broken glass and the shards of porcelain. His dad was almost clawing at his own hands. He’d hurt himself. Harvey held his father’s shaking hands still, looked up into his father’s face, and saw he was terrified.

  Maybe he’d always known, deep down, that his father was scared like he was. Maybe that was why he could love his father, the way he couldn’t love his flint-eyed grandpa, no matter how much he tried.

  “You were always such a weakling,” his dad said. “I thought this town would eat you. But it ate my Tommy instead. And that thing came back, and it wasn’t my Tommy. It was the witches’ creature, in our house, and the drink didn’t help. Nothing helped. I prayed for it to go away. Someone got rid of it. Tommy didn’t do that to himself. Not with the shotgun, he couldn’t have. So who—who?”

  Harvey went cold, staring up at his father. His dad reached out his rough hand and touched Harvey’s hair.

  “There was nobody in the house but you,” he whispered. “But you couldn’t have done it. You poor pathetic wimp. My scared baby. You’d never have the guts. Would you?”

  Long ago, Harvey used to take his drawings to his dad wishing for approval, hoping his dad would praise him the way he praised Tommy.

  His father’s hand touched Harvey’s hair almost tenderly. He’d hit Harvey in the face with that hand. He’d wished him dead instead of Tommy. It didn’t matter. Harvey’d known, for years, what his father thought of him. He shook his head and thought: Don’t love me for that. For anything else, but not for that.

  “Oh God,” said his father. His shoulders seemed to collapse in on themselves as he sagged forward. “I’m so scared. I’ve always been so scared. Where is God? I wish this was a dream. It feels almost like a dream. Is it a dream, Harv? Let it be a dream.”

  Harvey caught his dad as he fell forward. It was almost like a hug, though his father didn’t hold him. His father’s hands were shaking too much for that. Harvey rested his chin against his dad’s shoulder and rubbed soothing circles onto his back until the shaking stopped.

  Some things couldn’t be forgiven, or forgotten, but you had to go on anyway. He didn’t want to live in a world without some kindness. Harvey could understand being scared.

  “Okay, Dad,” Harvey told his father gently. “It can be a dream.”

  Prudence and I had been searching through the books about princes of hell for hours. It was like clawing through a dating website, if all the boys’ interests were dismemberment and blood rain. I didn’t see how any prince of hell was more likely than another.

  But we had to find the name. There was no chance of banishing any demon without a name.

  “I don’t think it’s Caliban,” I said at last.

  “Word has it Caliban is sexy,” Prudence drawled. “But unlikely to be our prince.”

  I slammed yet another book shut. Prudence glanced up inquiringly at the sound.

  “I keep thinking about that one line in the book. On the first day of the end, the memories of their ancestors returned to the mortals,” I quoted from the passage I’d read about the massacre in Scotland. “How much time do we have? When is the first day of the end?”

  Prudence didn’t answer me. Nick Scratch did.

  He stood outlined in the doorway. There was a dark trail of blood running from his temple down to his throat. He’d always seemed untouchable, but he wasn’t. He could be hurt. I’d sent him out into a town crawling with people enchanted to be dangerous.

  I hadn’t realized, until that moment, how much I cared.

  Nick said: “The end is now.”

  Seeing Sabrina Spellman fuss over Nick Scratch was nauseating. They didn’t have time for this, but Sabrina insisted on cleaning the wounds and healing him and asking him tedious questions about how he felt and was he sure he was all right.

  Nick didn’t appear to find the questions tedious. He answered them patiently, seeming entirely char
med to find himself in this situation.

  “You should go lie down,” Sabrina urged.

  “I like it where I am.” Nick clearly wouldn’t have moved if the library was on fire.

  Sabrina made another worried sound and passed a hand over Nick’s hair, though the wound was already gone. Nick shot Prudence a swift inquiring glance, as if Prudence had any idea why Sabrina did the weird things Sabrina did.

  Then he canted his head slightly to the side, hopeful, inviting Sabrina to stroke his hair again. She did.

  “Oh, Nick,” she murmured. “I feel so terrible. I shouldn’t have asked you to do this.”

  “Don’t,” Nick murmured back, something soft and startled in his eyes, as though he was surprised to find himself capable of tenderness. “Don’t feel bad. I’ll do whatever you like.”

  Prudence wanted to bang her own head against the table, but if she sustained a wound and Sabrina tried to stroke her hair, Prudence would be forced to do murder in the library.

  “Can we please focus? A witch-hunter attacked you and robbed you of your magic! If mortals know how to do that, they’re too dangerous to live. We have to go after that guy and kill him immediately. Who was he?”

  She watched with incredulous fury as Nick turned to her and made the visible decision to lie through his teeth.

  “No idea,” he said.

  “Can you describe him?” Sabrina asked. “Not that I’m saying we should kill anyone, mind you.”

  “No,” said Nick, that liar. “I checked on your mortal. Afterward I was coming back, and I got attacked. It was dark. I couldn’t see a thing.”

  Like witches couldn’t see in the dark. Like Nick couldn’t teleport.

  Sabrina, who had been raised overly trusting, nodded to herself. “It’s a relief Harvey is all right,” she murmured.

  “Yeah,” said Nick. “He seemed good.”

  When Sabrina eventually left to get another book on the princes of hell, Prudence stabbed Nick through the hand with her pencil.

  “Harvey did this to you, didn’t he?” she hissed.

  Nick wrung his hand and glared. “No!”

  “Yes he did,” Prudence insisted. “Why else are you lying? Don’t expect me to buy that absurd story. Sabrina would be frantic if she knew, so you’re hiding what happened to protect her stupid feelings. Once a witch-hunter turns dangerous, they don’t stop. I’ll cut his throat.”