Roz was always losing things. My scatterbrain, her dad would call her, willfully ignoring the fact it was harder for her to keep track of what she couldn’t see. She lost that bracelet often, but she’d always been able to find it again, as though it was returning to her hand.
Now, she reflected, the bracelet had obviously been magic.
It was the only witchcraft Sabrina had used near Roz their whole lives. And it was done to bind them together.
Roz couldn’t see much, but she could see, very clearly, her own small brown child’s hand wearing that bracelet, and Sabrina’s hand reaching out to clasp hers.
When she thought about the witches, she wanted them stopped.
When she thought about Sabrina, or Sabrina’s family, or the witch boy at the movies who’d been kind for no reason at all, it was different.
Not everything was darkness. Past strange dreams, past fear and jealousy and all the wounded longings of growing up, she loved her friend.
She knew only part, but she knew the one thing she couldn’t lose.
Roz scrabbled on the floor for her phone. She searched until she found it and called for help.
“Harvey,” she sobbed as soon as he picked up. “Harvey, please help her.”
“Roz?” Harvey’s familiar, dear voice was grounding. “Hey, what can I do? What are you saying?”
“Sabrina,” said Roz. “I saw her in a dream. There was fire by the water, and a prince laughing as he turned to wind. Sabrina was there, and a girl with bleached hair, and a boy with dark hair. I could see them, more clearly than I can see anything now. I saw them by the light of burning torches. They’re so tired. I can’t explain how I know, but I do. Get your truck and go to them.”
Harvey’s voice was strange. It was his, but it didn’t sound like his, and it took Roz an instant to recognize why. Then she realized that she’d never heard his voice without a drop of kindness in it before.
“Roz,” he said. “Why should I? They’re a bunch of witches. They don’t need me.”
“It’s Sabrina,” Roz said fiercely. “If you don’t go to her, Harvey, I will.”
An incredulous laugh burst from his throat. “You can’t drive, Roz. And it’s dark outside.”
“So help her for me,” Roz said. “I know you! Something’s messing with our minds, but there are some things that don’t change. You’d do anything for any one of us. Help her for her. Help her for me. I don’t care why you do it, but help her.”
Harvey hung up. Roz held the phone between her hands, held her hands pressed to her lips, and prayed.
Nobody was ringing in the new year tonight. The night stretched black and cold around us. Except for the light on the water.
It wasn’t moonlight shining on the stream. Instead, it was a dull red glow. At first the glow was only a thin scarlet line against the dark surface, as though the river had been cut and was bleeding. Then the line grew wider, and wider still.
There was a door of hellfire opening in the river. Steam rose with a sibilant hissing sound to the stars. Somehow I knew that not all the waters in all the oceans of the world could put this fire out.
The prince of hell was coming.
“What’s the plan?” Nick asked.
I glanced at him. Nick seemed the most affected by the spell of discord. He was wild-eyed, every nerve obviously thrumming with tension, but he managed to give me a nod and a tense version of his usual slow, charming smile. I almost loved him for that.
“I have his name,” I said. “I’m going to recite the banishing spell.”
“A terrible, suicidal plan,” muttered Prudence behind us. “I don’t know what else I expected. Has it occurred to you that you cannot invoke Satan to banish one of Satan’s princes?”
“I can do whatever I want,” I announced, and tried to believe it.
The whole river was horribly bright by now, as though lava were running from an invisible volcano. Another flame was rising from the river—a bonfire the size of a mountain.
“Well,” Nick told Prudence. “Every text bears revision.”
When I glanced at Nick, I saw his face bathed in orange light. His cool façade was slipping, but he was still trying to maintain that small smile, for me. Usually I thought his smile looked a bit smug, but in the blaze of hellfire that seemed brave. His thoughts followed the same path as my own: a witch’s way, but not the way all the witches thought. We could go down a different dark path together.
No more hesitation. I’d promised myself that.
I gave Nick a grateful smile back and stepped forward. The towering bonfire was taking shape, a flame with the head of a vast hawk, open beak scything at the stars. The air was full of whispers, the woods rustling with the promise of discord.
“Pruflas, Prince of Hell,” I shouted, and the crimson hawk’s head in the sky turned to me.
Fire fell from the sky like rain. We ran, but I made sure to run forward. I stood at the river’s edge and screamed defiance. No more fear of the power I wielded. For the first time since the night of the Greendale Thirteen, I embraced my magic. I spoke in a voice to command sky and water.
“Dragon be my guide and hellfire my light. I have the power to banish this spirit. Nicholas shield me in my fight, Prudence lend me glory. Demon, begone!”
I heard Prudence’s whisper on the wind, sounding very far away. “Leave me out of this.”
I could see the discord Pruflas spread, written on the sky. Whispers flew bright as burning leaves on the wind.
—they’re not your friends, the mortals aren’t your friends, your family aren’t your family, you are something infinitely below them all—
The fire and the whispers stung. Cold night air and doubt ripped through me. For a moment I thought I stood alone.
Then someone stepped up and caught my hand fast in his.
“Deliver me into delicious temptation,” murmured Nick. “Evil be thou my good, might my right, and my voice heard in hell. Demon, begone!”
I exchanged a glance with Nick, the flames reflected in his eyes and the wicked smile, the sight of him sparking joy somewhere deep in my chest. I linked our fingers tightly together.
—I am not your enemy, daughter of chaos, I come for the mortals, they will always hate you—
“Unleash my wrath upon my enemy,” I yelled. “Turn away the ill luck and the evil eye from this place. Demon, begone.”
There was a sigh behind me that sounded like “Satan in a sundress.” Then someone seized my free hand.
“ I have the strength to banish this misbegotten imp,” snapped Prudence. “Demon, begone.”
From the burning hawk’s head came a roar like a great cat. Nick and Prudence shied away, shielding their eyes with their free hands. I found myself laughing. I could see through the hellfire, clear as day, and my friends were with me, not letting go of my hands. Prudence lowered her hand to throw me a dirty look, and I almost loved her for that.
“Demon, begone!”
“Demon, begone!”
“Demon, begone!”
Every witch knows the power of being three in one.
Clouds parted over Greendale. Snow fell from a clear black sky, radiant and astonishing, crystals that caught starlight, diamonds that quenched fire.
I laughed and shouted: “By my will I cast you out! By the power of every rebellious spirit I love, my town is washed clean! Demon, begone!”
The flames were thrashing in the riverbed, the hawk’s head wailing. The whispers were only noise now. Noise that no ear, witch or mortal, could make sense of.
Snow was putting out the fires burning on the ground, but flames were still falling among the snowflakes. I felt fire rake a scorching path down my right arm and heard Prudence make a sound through her teeth, too proud to scream. One last discordant note rang defiance to heaven.
The demon’s crimson became silver and shadow, the door from hell changing back to a steel bridge over a black river. Pruflas Prince of Hell was banished.
But t
here was still flame, not falling or rising, but glowing on the horizon.
The spell was laid on the people of Greendale until daybreak. The spell throwing them back to a state of primitive fear, when hags came to them in dreams and witches were made for burning. There was a mob coming, with flaming torches.
“So,” said Nick. “Have you heard the one about the mortals who were enchanted to hate magic and saw a magical light show in the sky? It is killer.”
I wrenched my eyes off the line of fire on the horizon and gazed in dismay at my companions. Prudence was hunched over, an arm around her middle.
“Are you hurt?”
Prudence gave me an annoyed look. “We’re about to be killed! When does the enchantment lift from the mortals?”
“When dawn remakes the day,” I answered dully.
I could hear the cries of the townspeople coming closer, smell the smoke from their torches. Prudence was hurt, whatever she was saying. I was cradling my arm to my chest. I didn’t think any of us had much magic left.
“Plenty of time for them to massacre us, then,” Prudence said. “So help me Satan, I will murder some of them before they kill me.”
“They’re under an enchantment, Prudence; it’s not their fault.”
“I don’t care, Sabrina!” Prudence said. “I’m going to rip out someone’s throat with my teeth!”
“Good plan,” murmured Nick, then caught my eye. “Oh, I mean … give them a warning before you rip their throats out.”
“No!” I exclaimed.
“No?” said Nick. “Well, all right.”
“We have to go,” I told them.
Hiding in the woods was our only hope. If we managed to conceal ourselves, the mob might not find us. Then by daybreak, it would be a dream, and we would be safe.
That was when I heard the scream behind me.
He drove the pickup truck pell-mell down the path among the trees, taking corners too fast, until he saw the river.
The sky was alive, but not with fireworks. There was a creature, some rough beast sketched from flame, its blazing outline blotting out the stars.
Sabrina was standing before it, dwarfed by its looming awful presence. She didn’t falter and she didn’t retreat. She shouted a spell. Harvey felt the air shimmer around him and contract in his lungs. He knew this was the magic of his nightmares.
Her hair was the white of lightning on snow, and so was her shadow. Darkness itself turned to brilliance, because it was her.
He watched Sabrina turn, her fresh-fallen-snow hair a brilliant halo around her head. Nick stepped up to her side, black hair wild in the wind like a crown of shadows, and when Nick took her hand, Harvey saw the way she smiled.
His magic girl.
And she had a magic boy now.
Sometimes misery made it hard to breathe.
The horrible demon thing was shrieking, and Prudence was there too, her ebony-painted lips curling back from her teeth as she shouted magic into the roaring flame. Nick was using his free hand to sketch little shapes in the air, banishing sparks as though he was catching fireflies, but a jet of flame got past his guard. Harvey leaned forward, but he couldn’t see who it hit.
The demon creature in the sky was so horrible he could barely focus on it, his mind trying to hide like a child running scared in the mines. The witches were a fragile line of defense, but they were magic too. They were more horrible than the demon because they seemed almost human, and he hated magic and he loved Sabrina. Darkness boiled in his heart, magic dazzled his eyes, and he wanted to kill the witches and he wanted to draw them, to make art out of hopeless beauty.
Then the demon dwindled away, but it wasn’t over. Harvey saw the mob coming. He was suddenly sure his grandfather was leading this crowd, a real witch-hunter, a tough man doing what he was born to do.
He stopped the truck with a scream of brakes, as close to the river as he could get, and leaped out with a gun in his hand.
She didn’t look down at her side. She’d muttered a few healing spells, and she didn’t want to see how little they had worked. They had no magic left, and less time.
Even less time than she’d imagined, Prudence realized when she heard a mortal vehicle come to a stop behind them. They were surrounded. She might as well have let herself be torn apart by her coven, since mortals were going to tear her apart anyway. Either way, it would be for nothing.
Prudence closed her eyes against the pain and told herself: Dorcas. Agatha. Sisters, because she wanted them to be the last thing she thought. Then she opened her eyes.
It was the witch-hunter, with a gun in his hand.
Sabrina showed her first hesitation of the night, wavering by the riverside like a candle flame in a sudden wind. “Is that … ?” she said, very faint. “Is it … ?”
“Rescue,” said Nick Scratch, officially a maniac, and pulled Sabrina toward the truck. Prudence fought to free herself from Sabrina’s grasp, and then staggered when she succeeded.
The witch-hunter came faster than any of them, crossing to the riverbank in three strides. He shouldered his gun and went straight to Sabrina, capturing her face in his hands.
“Sabrina, are you all right?”
She gazed up at him, her eyes stars. “Harvey,” she whispered. “You came. How did you find me?”
He bowed down from his absurd height to her absurd lack of same, kissing her palm when she laid a hand against his cheek, leaning his forehead against hers. “Roz told me where to go.”
“Roz sent you to help me?” Sabrina glowed.
“Of course,” murmured the witch-hunter. “She loves you.”
The pair of them seemed unaware there was anyone else in the world. Unholy god, the witch-hunter was going to cover Sabrina’s face with kisses right in front of Nick.
Eager light had died a sudden death in Nick’s eyes.
Goodbye to that weird bromance, Prudence thought with distant amusement. Nick’s going to rip the mortal’s head clean off.
Then the mortal unwittingly saved his own stupid life by taking a deep breath and a step back from Sabrina. His hands fell away from framing her face.
“Nick? You all right?”
Nick cast his gaze swiftly to the ground to hide his murder eyes. “I’m all right,” he answered, sounding both sullen and pleased to be asked.
The witch-hunter left Sabrina’s side.
“Prudence, are you all right?” he asked, coming at her. “I don’t think you are.”
She was too stunned with horror to do anything as the atrocity happened, and she was swept up in the witch-hunter’s arms.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” said Prudence, staring around wildly. “Oh, Satan, Medusa, and Beelzebub. Call back the prince of hell. I want to be torn apart by imps. I’m looking forward to being burned on a pyre by the howling mob. Unhand me. Do you realize everywhere you are touching will have to be washed one thousand times with unholy water?”
Nick was smirking openly. “Ah, the move.”
She was glad Nick was enjoying himself. No, she wasn’t; she hoped the mob drowned him.
The witch-hunter glared. “It’s not a move.”
“Looks like a move,” Nick muttered.
The witch-hunter carried Prudence to his awful mortal vehicle and placed her in the bed of the truck. He put the gun down so he could shrug out of his coat and settle it over her.
“This smells like mortal,” Prudence complained.
She could tell that the spell was affecting him too. His mouth was tight and sterner than usual, and his eyes were dark and blank, but when he smoothed the coat over her, he did so gently.
There was no working that one out. Prudence turned her face away.
The mortal helped Sabrina into the front of the truck, careful of her wounded arm, then grabbed the back of Nick’s jacket and shoved him in as well. Once he had every witch aboard, he climbed in behind the wheel, and they drove through the woods.
“Should we go to a hospital?” the witch-hunter asked S
abrina. “You and Prudence are both hurt.”
Sabrina shook her head. “Witches don’t go to the hospital. Could you—wait and drive us around until dawn, and then bring us to my aunts?” She twisted around in her seat. “Will you be all right, Prudence?”
“No,” said Prudence. “Never again. That witch-hunter manhandled me and I cannot bear the indignity, but of course I’m not weak enough to be fazed by a tiny burn. You can be a whiner if you like, Sabrina.”
This whole time, the only person who’d seemed entirely unaffected by enchantment was Sabrina. That girl thought she was unconquerable.
Prudence was starting to believe it might be true.
They drove through one of the many winding paths in the woods, in looping circles. The sky was like ink diluted by water, shading from black to a gray in which the stars were lost.
“Harvey,” Sabrina said in a small voice. “I banished a prince of hell.”
The witch-hunter glanced over at her, and then gave her a sidelong crooked grin. “Yeah? Well done, ’Brina.”
Sabrina smiled. “Thanks.”
“It was a team effort,” contributed Nick.
Sabrina redirected her smile to him. “Yes, it was.”
“Oh, right,” said the witch-hunter. “Well done, Prudence.”
Nick made a face at him over Sabrina’s head.
“You’re not permitted to speak to me,” said Prudence, and closed her eyes.
By the time she opened them, the witch-hunter had parked by the edge of the trees overlooking the town. All seemed quiet in Greendale, and there were no more whispers in the wind. The horizon was no longer painted with crimson fire but touched with the first tentative brushstroke of gold.
Dawn was remaking the day.
Sabrina’s head was on the witch-hunter’s shoulder, Nick’s arm on the back of the seat behind her. As Prudence watched, Nick poked the witch-hunter in the shoulder.
“How’s the enchantment level, Harry?”
“Nick,” Sabrina scolded. “It’s Harvey.”
The witch-hunter rubbed his face with a tired sigh. “I think it’s getting better.”
Daughter of Chaos Page 25