Sorceress

by Claudia Gray

  Various sarcastic comments came to mind, but Asa made none of them. “I guess I do.”

  Verlaine stared.

  Asa breathed out, a sharp sigh of frustration. “No, I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to be responsible for killing you, and if I live long enough, that’s what I’ll have to do, eventually. That said, I don’t mind not dying today. Have you at least learned how to kill me yet?”

  She sat there wordless, eyes wide, for so long that he had his answer.

  “Good girl,” Asa said, grimly satisfied.

  She scowled, an expression that should not have looked as adorable as it did. “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Talking to me like—like I’m your student, or something.”

  He grinned. “Aren’t you? I’m teaching you how to deal with darker forces, with matters so far beyond your ken that you’re only beginning to understand how deep they go. You need a teacher, Verlaine. The only other one you’d find is Elizabeth, and . . . let’s say her discipline is much harsher.”

  His arms ached with the memory of pain, the long cuts Elizabeth had made in his flesh to work some of her magic. Demons were more than evil henchmen; they were a body and a soul in service, there to stand in for any spell a Sorceress might need to cast, no matter how painful.

  “That’s actually why I wanted to see you,” Verlaine said, her fingers tapping nervously on the steering wheel. “Turns out Elizabeth’s up to something that she hasn’t explained to Nadia. I wanted to see if you could tell me what’s going on.”

  How short-sighted they still were. Elizabeth was “up to” countless spells and enchantments she wouldn’t share with Nadia or even with Asa. Dark magic so consumed her life that nearly every action she took was in some way connected to her work for the One Beneath. “What worries you in particular?”

  “You know how she has Gage Calloway in her thrall?”

  Did he ever. He had a class with Gage Calloway and had had to listen to him talking about how amazing Elizabeth was—well, twice now, but that was two times too many, enough to bring Asa to the point of nausea. “If you’re asking me if I can free Gage, I can’t. That’s not the kind of magic a demon can perform.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t even thought of that. Well, damn.” Verlaine shook her head. “No, the thing is, Mateo followed Gage the other night when Gage was zoned out, or whatever you’d call it when Elizabeth’s the one in charge. Gage went to the cemetery and dug up the bones of one of Mateo’s ancestors. Which is creepy regardless, but given the whole Cabot Curse thing, has the potential to be seriously bad. What is she doing with those bones? Do you know?”

  Asa didn’t have any idea. He hadn’t even suspected Elizabeth might be attempting to manipulate that curse. “No. But I’ll try to find out. Probably that’s something I can tell you about without violating my service to the One Beneath.” Depending on what it was Elizabeth was up to—anything involving curses was as dark as dark magic got.

  Verlaine’s face lit up. “I knew you’d help.”

  “How could you have known that? I keep reminding you, Verlaine, I’m a demon.”

  Her smile never changed. “For a demon, you’re a pretty nice guy. Better than most of the real guys I’ve known, anyway. Most of the bad stuff you do, you can’t help.”

  “I can’t help,” he whispered, scooting closer to her in the car, “serving the greatest evil that has ever existed. I can’t help what I’m called upon to do, and if at any point it endangers you, I still have to carry it out, no matter how much I might . . .” Asa caught himself. “You need to be afraid of me. Very afraid.”

  They were only a few inches apart now, so close he could smell the strawberry gloss on her lips. “I am,” she whispered, but her eyes met his so easily that it couldn’t be true. At least, not in the way she should be afraid.

  No, Asa realized, the fear she felt was the same as the fear within him. The fear that you’d do anything—give up anything, go against what you knew had to be true, all for the sake of someone else—the fear that part of you belonged to another, and you’d never, ever get it back.

  You have to stop this, he told himself, even as he leaned closer to Verlaine, even as she tilted her face up to his. You have to stop—

  Asa kissed her. He’d told himself he would never kiss Verlaine again, that their one embrace in the snow had to be the only one they would ever share. Yet here he was kissing her again, then again, folding her into his arms. Verlaine made a small sound—hungry and happy both—and he was lost. They tangled in each other, kissing faster, almost frantically.

  It had always felt good to have a human body again, but this—how could he have known it could feel like this? His skin blazed with warmth every place she touched him; he could feel her body pressed against his as he leaned her back in the car. Inside it was both as though he were dizzy—completely overcome—and yet more focused than he’d ever been. Asa could take in everything about her at once, from the way her breathing quickened to the taste of her mouth opening under his, and know her completely.

  He tugged at the elastic holding her hair into a knot, and it came loose around his fingers. Verlaine’s silver hair tumbled down over his hands, framing her face. She pulled back from him slightly, just enough to whisper, “This is a really bad idea, right?”

  “Terrible. I would say disastrous.”

  “Right,” she said, and kissed him again. Asa didn’t even try to fight it.

  Serving the One Beneath wasn’t like an after-school job; Nadia didn’t have a set schedule, hours when she was supposed to show up, anything like that. When she’d tried to explain it to Mateo, she’d said, I know when Elizabeth wants me there. It’s not like she takes me over or speaks to my mind, nothing like that; I just know, and then I need to go to her as soon as I can.

  Tonight, she knew she had to go.

  Dad had cooked this evening, under their new agreement where she’d let him make dinner at least twice a week. He still wasn’t good at it, exactly, but turkey tacos were pretty hard to screw up. When he cooked, she did the dishes, which was why she was elbow-deep in suds when suddenly she understood that she’d have to go to Elizabeth’s as soon as she could.

  Nadia powered through the rest of the dishes, then walked into the living room as she dried her hands with a towel. “Dad? I was going to run over to Verlaine’s for a while. Can I borrow the car?”

  “You’re going out in this?” Dad looked up from his book; Cole, playing some game on the iPad, didn’t even glance at her. “Looks nasty out there.”

  “It’s just rain.”

  “Still, a couple of the roads on the west side of town are washed out. Couldn’t you guys talk on the phone? But kids don’t even do that anymore, do they? You can Skype or something. Or Snapchat. What is Snapchat?”

  She managed not to laugh. “Come on, Dad. Verlaine’s house is nowhere near the washed-out roads. It’s not far.” Elizabeth’s house was even closer; Nadia had walked it in better weather.

  “All right, then. But you text when you get there and when you start back home. Hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  While Nadia drove the few blocks to Elizabeth’s house, she took a good look at everything around her. Every single yard had deep puddles; all the gutters were thick with rain. How did it work, the magic they’d cast? Were clouds from all over being drawn toward Captive’s Sound? Nadia could hardly believe there was so much rain in the whole world.

  “When does the rain stop?” Nadia said as she walked into Elizabeth’s front room, instead of hello. She began to shuck her raincoat, then realized water was trickling through the decrepit building’s roof, all the way down to the ground floor. The water wasn’t puddling—mostly because the floorboards leaked as badly as the roof—but the entire place was musty and wet. The raincoat stayed on.

  Elizabeth paid no attention to the water, or to Nadia’s question. “Would you like to know how to move water?”

  “I know that spel
l, actually.”

  “Good.” She smiled up at Nadia; her tattered white dress was gray with damp, but none of it seemed to touch her. “Then I can help you make it stronger. Together we can direct the currents. We’ll even own the sea.”

  Was this about clearing the One Beneath’s pathway to their world? Nadia knew the sound itself was important, for that. Yet she sensed this was something else.

  And how was she able to sense that?

  I’m tuning in to her magic more, Nadia realized. I’m starting to understand this on a whole different level.

  Was that understanding dangerous? Or was it the only way for her to ever conquer Elizabeth? Both things might be true.

  Either way, there was nothing for Nadia to do but to sit beside Elizabeth, nod, and say, “Let’s begin.”

  5

  I’VE GOT IT BAD, VERLAINE THOUGHT. IF YOU’RE MAKING out with a guy and you actually hear music? You have to be completely, totally in . . .

  “Wait,” she gasped, pulling back from Asa. “My phone.”

  “To hell with your phone.” Asa kissed her throat, just beneath her jaw.

  “Uncle Gary. He’s only been out of the hospital—”

  “I know,” Asa groaned, but he loosened his embrace around her and even grabbed her purse, placing it in her lap.

  Verlaine scooted back into her seat—not that she’d actually left it, but there had been some sprawling—and grabbed her phone. Since this was the first-ever time she’d made out with a guy, she would have blown off any other text; however, this song was Uncle Gary’s tone, and if he was in trouble, she had to help him if she could.

  As she caught her breath, she saw the message. Are you at the Guardian?

  “I interrupted making out for a parental panic attack?” She rolled her eyes.

  Asa laughed and kissed her forehead. “Go on and tell him you’re alive. The last thing I need is to be accosted by a protective father with a shotgun.”

  Uncle Gary with a shotgun: absurd. Verlaine quickly typed back, Not there yet. Headed that way.

  “Headed to the newspaper? Already?” Asa’s fingers tangled in her hair as he pulled her close again. “Are you sure I couldn’t persuade you to stay?”

  It wasn’t like Verlaine had forgotten that hooking up with a demon was a really terrible idea. But the voice inside her head reminding her of that had gotten very, very quiet during the last half hour. She smiled up at Asa. “I meant, I’m headed there . . . eventually.”

  “Like, a couple hours from now? Or tomorrow?” His lips traced along her neck, making her shiver deliciously. “How long can I talk you into staying here with me?”

  Verlaine never found out, because her phone chimed again in her hand. Don’t go anywhere near it! Apparently the newspaper offices are flooding.

  “Oh, my God.” She scrambled back from Asa, all the adrenaline coursing through her instantly turning to panic. “The Guardian is flooding. We have to get there.”

  It took Asa a moment to catch up. He ran one hand through his rumpled hair, trying to refocus. “Verlaine, it’s dangerous. What is it you think you can do? The rain won’t stop.”

  “The archives.” She cranked the car, and the aged motor rumbled into life. The windshield wipers began slap-slapping back and forth. “Those records—I digitized some of them, but there are whole decades that are print-only. Those are the only existing copies. If they’re lost in the flood, they’re lost forever!”

  “Come the apocalypse nobody’s going to care about—”

  “Screw the apocalypse. The One Beneath is not going to win, okay? We’re going to stop Him.”

  Her words were empty and she knew it. Maybe they’d win; maybe they wouldn’t; she wasn’t going to be the deciding factor either way. But when Asa smiled at her, Verlaine felt as though what she’d said wasn’t so empty after all. “You amaze me,” he said. “Your bravery—but surely there are tests enough for your courage. Saving some moldy old newspapers isn’t worth endangering yourself.”

  Verlaine shook her head. “They’re not ‘moldy old newspapers.’ They’re records of how people lived, who they loved, and how they died. Everything that’s human and normal and right about Captive’s Sound—that’s what’s in the Guardian. That’s what we have to save. Besides, if there’s anything in Elizabeth’s history that’s going to trip her up? That’s where it’s going to be. Now, are you with me or not?”

  “I am,” Asa said.

  She put the car in drive.

  Whenever Asa found himself helping Verlaine, Nadia, or Mateo, he felt the strain of his bonds. Literally: It was as though he could sense the One Beneath’s hold on his soul like straps across his chest, biting through his skin, making it harder for him to draw breath.

  Once, when Verlaine’s life had been in danger, he had deliberately worked against the will of the One Beneath. The price had been a brief time back in the furnaces of the demonic realm, suffering torments that still gave him nightmares. Worst of all, Asa knew the day would come when he would be ordered to hurt Verlaine, and he would not have the power to defy.

  But this task, this moment: This was something he could do for her.

  They parked a couple of blocks off the town square, because the police had already sealed off one of the streets. Together Asa and Verlaine ran toward the Guardian offices, leaving umbrellas and raincoats behind; they were about to get so wet a few raindrops couldn’t make any difference. Although the puddles on either side of the streets were so wide they nearly met in the middle, the square itself didn’t seem to be flooded. Waterlogged, sure—but not flooded.

  As soon as Verlaine unlocked the front door of the Guardian, she cried out in dismay. The entire front half of the main room was about three inches deep in water that had flowed in from the street.

  “We move the archives to the higher shelves?” Asa said, getting ready to do some heavy lifting.

  Verlaine shook her head. “First we have to get everything we can out of the basement.”

  “This place has a basement?”

  “It’s little, and it’s old, and most of the records there are more recent, but if there’s this much water up here, how bad must it be down there?” She ran toward the back, her Converse sloshing through deeper water, and opened a door. “Oh, no!”

  Asa went to her, or tried to; already Verlaine’s footsteps were thumping down metal stairs. He got to the doorway to see her almost to the bottom of a spiral staircase, which led to a basement room that had to be at least a foot deep in water.

  Only one bare bulb in the stairwell burned, dimly illuminating the scene below. Verlaine sloshed down into the water, the skirt of her red-and-white dress darkening as it got splashed. Around her, various file cabinets stood, swaying slightly in the current. One of them had already tipped against the wall. What worried Asa the most was that water continued flowing into the room. The level of flooding was going to rise, and quickly.

  Verlaine remained undaunted. “Come carry some files!” she shouted up at him. “The ones in the lower drawers—it’s too late already—but we can get a lot of the rest out if we work fast.”

  Asa felt the straps holding him back again—putting his mortal life in any risk, even the slight one presented by going into the flooding basement, verged on the limits of the freedom allowed him by the One Beneath.

  But he wouldn’t abandon Verlaine even one second before he was forced to. Until then, he stayed by her side.

  “Coming!” he shouted, as he went into the water and the dark.

  “Again you’ve chosen your ingredients poorly,” Elizabeth said.

  Nadia only barely managed to conceal her frustration. “I haven’t been around as long as you.” That was putting it lightly. “I don’t have the same number of memories to choose from.”

  “You interpret events too literally, then.” Elizabeth’s smile was that of a queen on her throne—distant, unruffled, unchangeable. “We have weapons beyond experience, you know. We have nuance. Double meanings. The m
any shadows and possibilities tied up in what might have been.”

  Nadia frowned. Her mother had told her this much, of course—but she had also warned Nadia against doing this too often. “Mom said that twisting memories twists up your mind, in time. She said it makes you dishonest, and dirties your magic.”

  “We’re playing dirty,” Elizabeth said. “Haven’t you realized that yet?”

  Nadia’s cheeks flushed, and she stared down at the floor. When her mother had taught her about magic, she’d always stressed how smart Nadia was, how much she could do. Learning from Elizabeth was all about learning her limitations—and being made to feel small.

  She thinks I hardly even know what I’m doing, Nadia thought. I’ll show her.

  “Choose your memories again.” Elizabeth’s green eyes flicked up to Nadia’s, almost teasing. “Try again. See if you can sense the current this time.”

  How was she supposed to darken this spell? It was a cheerful one, hard to twist. Nadia’s eyes shut as she called the memories forth:

  The love of a child.

  A living thing rising from the earth.

  Hope through grief.

  Each one would have to be turned dark in some way—

  Cole sobbing against the door right after Mom had walked out, hitting it with his little fists, and the pure hatred Nadia had felt for her mother at that moment.

  The seaweed that had tangled around her limbs the night she dove for Goodwife Hale’s Book of Shadows, the living green stuff that had captured her and attempted to drown her.

  Hoping that her mother would be glad to see her during her last trip to Chicago, and the terrible disappointment when Mom had opened the door and felt only annoyance—when Nadia had seen that there was no love left in her at all.

  And she felt it—the current of the waters, surging through her as powerfully as her own heartbeat.

  At La Catrina, Mateo froze, knife in his hand, half-chopped tomato on the cutting board.

  What was that?

  It had felt like . . . an electric shock? No. The sensation had lasted too long for that. Whatever it was, it had coursed through his entire body, strong and insistent, just at the verge of pain.