“I’m not seeing a mistake,” Nessa said.
“The mistake was not covering our tracks well enough.”
Hedy folded her arms across her stomach. She stared at the glasses. One shivered, letting out a tiny chime that rang through the cavern.
“They want their candle back,” Marie guessed.
“A month ago, we were twenty-seven in number.” Hedy’s face was carved from stone as she watched the candle flame dance. “Now there are only sixteen of us left. We didn’t cover our tracks, and we underestimated their strength.”
“Accidents happen,” Nessa said. “We make mistakes—”
“On my watch,” Hedy replied. “By my command. And eleven of my people, my students, are dead. We tried sending a messenger, offering to return the candle in exchange for a truce. They returned the messenger. They’d flayed him alive, and his stomach was swollen with bits of his own cooked flesh. The Sisterhood is waging a war of extermination. And they’re going to win.”
She turned, facing Nessa and Marie. She held out her open hands.
“Tell me you brought a little hope with you. Tell me you found Wisdom’s Grave. Tell me you have a coven of your own and numbers to add to mine. Give me…something.”
Their faces, their silence answered her question. Hedy’s shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry,” Nessa said. “We aren’t any closer to finding it. And it appears that finding it wouldn’t save us from this cycle of death and rebirth. It isn’t a cycle; it’s woven into the fabric of what we are.”
“You don’t know that. Not until we find it. Generations of this coven have joined the hunt for Wisdom’s Grave. Not for nothing. I don’t believe it was for nothing. I won’t believe that.”
“And I don’t have a coven,” Nessa said. “On my world…I’m just a schoolteacher, nothing more.”
“I won’t believe that either,” Hedy said. “You are the Owl.”
“Yes. But I’m still learning what that means.”
Voices echoed up the winding tunnel, loud and raucous, followed by the sound of a copper bell ringing out. Hedy pushed herself away from the worktable and clapped her hands.
“You were both brought here for a reason,” Hedy said. “I’m not giving up hope.”
The strength of her voice didn’t match the resolve of her words. Her gaze went distant. She took a deep breath and pushed her shoulders back.
“Right. Dinner. Masks on, ladies.”
Her mouse mask still dangled from her belt, untouched. She just lifted her chin high, turned her eyes to cold steel, and led the way out.
Forty
The surviving members of Hedy’s coven lined the grand table as the feast was laid out. Roasted venison, carrots and greens, sliced cranberries marinating in a blood-red glaze. Wicker-wrapped bottles of wine were marched out, their wax seals cracked and corks pulled, burgundy liquid splashing into mismatched goblets at every place setting. They dined upon dishes of lacquered wood and glazed glass like paupers at an attic-sale banquet. The utensils were crude but the meat was rich, spiced with a flavor like hot curry, and the vegetables were fresh and crisp.
Fresher than the supermarket, Marie thought, realizing they must have been scavenged from local farms. She sat at the end of the table, near the cistern waterfall, and a cool mist caressed her face as she lifted her battered goblet of red wine.
The witches doffed their masks, and aliases turned to names as the conversation flowed along the table’s length. Boar became Sebastiana, Mole became Lamberto; Gazelle, for her part, was still Gazelle. She’d abandoned her birth name or simply didn’t care to use it. She sat close to Marie, still rarely engaging her in conversation but never far with her sidelong glances.
Hedy’s shattered resolve had been whisked away with a broom and dustpan, replaced by an air of bravado. She regaled her followers with encouragement, with praise, singling out each and every one of them when the moment was right for the spotlight to move along the table.
“Dire Mother,” said Violetta, a butterfly mask dangling from the belt of her moth-eaten robes, “now that the Owl has returned to us…have you asked her the question? May we hear her reply?”
“Question?” Nessa asked.
“An important tradition,” Hedy told her. She looked across the table to Violetta and lifted her goblet. “One of our most important traditions. But no, not yet. There’s a bit of a treat in store first. Two gifts, one for the Owl, one for her faithful knight, and both are long overdue. Celso, fetch the box.”
A broad-shouldered man with scraggly black hair, one eye concealed under a brown leather patch, approached with a box. Teak, with delicate bronze hinges and a twist clasp in front. Hedy took it from him, nodded her thanks, and turned the box toward Nessa.
“I’ve held on to this for a very long time. Though I must apologize for the poorness of the gift. It’s not so much a present as it is…well, let’s call it the rightful return of your stolen property.”
She turned the clasp and raised the lid. Inside, upon a bed of crushed black velvet, a mask of white bone glistened in the flickering candlelight. It had a savage beak and eyes that could swallow the world, surrounded by layers of intricately carved feathers. The face of a horned owl.
Nessa’s lips parted. She reached for it, slowly, her fingers dangling half an inch above the bone as if dancing on a layer of static electricity.
“I feel…” she murmured.
“Yourself,” Hedy replied. “This was your most prized possession. Some of your old power, your old life, still clings to the mask. May it feed and strengthen you in this one.”
“Let us see,” called out Violetta. She lifted her glass high and nudged the woman beside her with her elbow. “Let us all see! Put it on!”
The rest of the coven took up the call, toasting, glasses clinking along the table as every eager eye turned Nessa’s way. Nessa flashed a rare grin and pressed her fingertips to the sides of the mask.
Then her eyes rolled back, her breath gusted from her lungs, and she collapsed onto the table. Her goblet tipped and spilled, a river of red winding along the gnarled wood, staining her fallen hair.
* * *
“You said she’s been sick for a while?”
Nessa lay in Hedy’s bed, tucked into the furs, bundled up to her chin as she slept. Marie’s short-chopped fingernails dug into her palms as she watched the covers slowly rise and fall with her lover’s breath. Hedy stood beside her.
“Since the zoo,” Marie said. “I mean—it’s a long story. Nessa’s husband died, and his friends blamed us for it. We had to fight our way out. Ever since, every single time she uses magic, she’s been having these…episodes. Nausea, dizziness. But she told me it was nothing.”
Hedy studied the sleeping woman like a doctor making a prognosis.
“This book, the one she learned her craft from. Show it to me.”
Marie produced it from the mirror bag. Hedy leafed through the pages. Her fingers trailed along spidery lines of text, tracing diagrams and sigils, faster by the moment. She finally looked back to Marie as she slammed the cover shut, her knuckles trembling and white. Her voice quaked with barely restrained fury.
“Who. Wrote. This.”
“I don’t know. Like I told you, Nessa found it in a used bookstore. But it was meant for her to find. I mean, there’s a message that addresses her by name.”
“Clearly.” Hedy spat the word and turned to stare at Nessa.
“Why? What’s wrong with the book? We wouldn’t have survived half this long if it wasn’t for the spells it taught her.”
“The problem isn’t what it taught her,” Hedy replied. “The problem is what it didn’t teach her.”
After that, she refused to speak another word until Nessa woke.
She stirred, groaning, and Hedy was at her side like a shot. She cradled Nessa’s head, lifting it gently so she could slip a second pillow underneath, and held a wooden cup to her lips.
“Water,” Hedy said. “
Drink up, you’ll feel better.”
On her other side, Marie clasped Nessa’s hand—weak, clammy, beaded with sweat—in both of hers. Nessa drank the entire cup and then nodded, wincing as she shifted on the pillows.
“I’m all right,” Nessa said. “I just…had an episode.”
Hedy turned away. Ostensibly to put the cup down on her bedside table, but Marie saw her wiping at her eyes with the side of her hand. It glistened, wet, when she turned back again, hiding her anguish behind a wall of anger.
“It’s not an episode,” Hedy said. “You’re sick. And I know exactly what’s wrong with you.”
“You have my undivided attention,” Nessa said.
“Like I told you, we draw our magic from the Shadow In-Between. Fundamental cosmic energy, the power of potential, the primal essences of creation and destruction.”
“With you so far,” Nessa murmured.
“It is not safe. It is the farthest thing from safe imaginable. Accidentally allowing raw Shadow into your body—even a tiny bit, no bigger than a grain of rice—is a death sentence. When I teach a fledgling, the first year of lessons is nothing but warding rituals, charms against the Shadow, methods of protecting herself from its influence. It’s the foundation of every single spell we cast, an essential first step.”
Nessa’s brow furrowed. “I don’t remember anything like that from my book.”
“No. You don’t. Because it isn’t in there.”
Hedy rapped her knuckles against the cover of the book.
“This isn’t a grimoire,” Hedy said. “It’s a murder weapon. And you were the target.”
The furs rustled as Nessa sat bolt upright. Her eyes opened wide. Her hand clutched Marie’s in a death grip.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re infected.” Hedy tossed the book onto the side table. It landed with a thump beside Nessa’s glasses. “And there is no cure. There are ways to slow down the progress of the affliction, tonics, potions, but nothing that can stop it.”
Hedy’s words choked off. Her lips moved, but nothing else came out. She had to turn her back on them, staring at the rough stone wall, before she could speak again.
“You’re going to die.”
“But…that’s…” Nessa shook her head, like she couldn’t understand or she was fighting with all her might not to. “How? Could it have been a mistake?”
“No,” Hedy said, her back still turned. “The spells in that book are written at a mistress’s level. No one without decades of experience or staggering raw potential could even understand them, let alone hope to weave them. It’s impossible that anyone could grasp that level of witchcraft and not know about the most basic warding charms. Whoever wrote that book intended for you to fail. They poisoned you, stabbed you in the heart with a venomed dagger, and every single spell you’ve cast has driven that blade deeper.”
“Poison,” Nessa echoed.
She slumped back on the bed. She stared up at the water-stained canopy. Her hand, in Marie’s, went slack.
“How long do I have?”
“Impossible to say,” Hedy told her. “Untreated, if we hadn’t figured it out, you would have been dead in a month or less. I know a recipe for a tonic that will slow the disease’s progress. You created it, ironically enough.”
“But there’s no cure.”
“No,” Hedy said.
She walked away. Up the tunnel, head bowed in broken silence, leaving Marie and Nessa alone together. Neither spoke, not for a long while. They just listened to the slow, steady drip of water off the stalactite, pattering down on the bed’s silken canopy.
“Faust was wrong,” Nessa said at long last.
“How do you mean?”
“This idea that we’re by-products of the first story ever told. That we have no tormentor to wage war against.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Clearly we do. You know, it’s funny. I always looked askance on the traditional notion of hell. Burning forever in a lake of flame. Do you know why?”
“Tell me,” Marie said.
“Because humans can become accustomed to anything. Anything. Yes, it would be unspeakable agony at first, but how would the lake of fire feel in a hundred years? Five hundred, a thousand? Eventually it would be your new normal. An annoyance, like a fly buzzing too close to your face. You’d forget what not burning even felt like. And so, I always thought a true hell would need a creative torturer at the helm. Someone who could mix things up, so the prisoners could never reach that point of cold comfort. Finding new and more clever ways to punish them for their sins.”
Nessa’s head turned on the pillow. She met Marie’s gaze.
“And that’s what happened. We must have been getting too comfortable with the same old routine, so somebody mixed it up for us. They sent me a book that offered all the power I craved, all the secrets I hungered to understand, all the tools we needed to carve a way out of this eternal nightmare. And they gave it to me with a ticking time bomb attached. The very act of reaching for something better, the sin of hope, is what killed me this time around.”
“You aren’t dead yet,” Marie said.
“You heard her. There’s no cure. And the only thing I’m good at, the only skill that makes me useful, will kill me that much faster.”
“That is not the only thing you’re good at. And just because she thinks there isn’t a cure doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look for one.”
“With what? We have no way back to our own world, Hedy’s coven is half-dead and won’t last another month by the sound of it, and Wisdom’s Grave is just as far away as it was when we drove away from Manhattan.”
Her hand patted Marie’s. Then she slid it under the furs and turned her face to the water-stained canopy.
“I need some privacy. Please.”
“Nessa, I’m not leaving you—”
“Please.” Nessa squeezed her eyes shut. “Marie, I…I love you, you know this, and I want to spend as much time as I have left at your side. But right now…right now, I just found out I’m going to die. I’m going to be dead soon, and everything we hoped for, everything we dreamed of, was nothing but a sick joke. I need to cry for a while, and I don’t want anyone watching me, because my pride is the only thing I have left. Please don’t take it from me.”
Marie rubbed Nessa’s arm through the furs. Then she rose, turned her back, and left her there.
Out in the covenstead cavern, Hedy sat upon an outcropping of damp stone beside the cistern waterfall. She’d put her mouse mask on, head bowed, bone flecked with cold mist. One of her students tried to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She slapped it and waved him away. No one spoke.
Marie settled onto a bench, halfway along the communal table. It was still scattered with smeared plates and empty, toppled bottles of wine from the feast. She sat amid the litter, propped one elbow on the table, and rested her heavy head against her fist.
When they first arrived, when she realized where she was, she thought they were setting out on a storybook adventure. Now the adventure was over. She felt like Robinson Crusoe, and the only two women on the island capable of building a raft were too broken to take one more step. Hedy’s hopes had been shattered. Nessa’s stolen from her by the cruelest trick Marie could imagine.
And here she was. Useless to either of them, out of ideas, out of options.
I’ll stay at her side until the time comes, she thought. She couldn’t use the word die, not yet, not even in her own mind. And then…and then she’d find a way to see herself out. These “Sisters of the Noose” hounding the coven sounded like worthy opponents. After all, the Witch and her Knight always died close together. That’s what the story decreed, and that’s what the universe would demand. The only choice Marie had left was who she’d go down fighting against.
Gazelle sat down beside her.
“Can we talk?” she asked. “Openly. One knight to another.”
“You’ll have to go find a real knight, then,” Marie said. �
�I’m a pretty lousy excuse for one. I had one job. Keep Nessa safe. And she was getting poisoned all this time, right under my nose.”
“I know.” Gazelle waved a hand. “We all live in a cave together. Word travels fast.”
“After Hedy spent all those years hyping us up, I assume you’re pretty disappointed.”
“Some of the others are, true,” Gazelle said. “But I’m not. I’ve been waiting a long time to see you again, Marie. I owe you a debt. Will you let me repay it?”
Forty-One
Gazelle scrounged up a half-empty bottle of wine and a pair of rough wooden cups. She poured for both of them.
“Many years ago—too many, when I look in the mirror—I was an apprentice who made a very foolish mistake. Our coven split in a violent schism. And I, of little faith and too much fear, chose the wrong side.”
“What happened?” Marie asked.
“Well, my faction largely ended up splattered across a chunk of arctic tundra. I ran. That’s what I’m good at. And I ran right into the arms of the opposing team. They were going to kill me on the spot. And not kindly. The prospect of blooding one of their youngest, by ordering her to slice my face off while I was still alive and screaming, was touted as a possibility.”
“Jesus,” Marie breathed. “How’d you get out of it?”
“I didn’t, not on my own. One of their number spoke up in my defense. At great risk to herself, no less—but she saw something she considered unjust and she wouldn’t be silenced. The others came around to her point of view, and I was given a rare second chance.”
Gazelle clinked her cup against Marie’s.
“You were the woman in question, by the way. You saved my life.” She raised her cup. “Cheers.”
Marie sipped her wine. It was more bitter than sweet, going down in a wash of black pepper and almonds.
“Your liege still scares the hell out of me, just for the record,” Gazelle added. “Anyway. I missed your big exit. Nessa sent me on a year’s wander, to find myself, and you were gone by the time I returned. I wanted to do…something in your honor, so I asked Hedy if I could become her knight.”
Detonation Boulevard (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 2) Page 28