Steadfast (25 page)

“I was
brought
to Captive’s Sound? On purpose?”

“You’ve been put in the way of temptation. I expect they’re tempting you now; that’s the only thing that would bring you here.”

“I’m not
tempted
,” Nadia insisted.

“They’ve offered you power, though, haven’t they?”

Nadia’s temper snapped. “They offered to teach me. I don’t have anyone else, not now that you abandoned our whole family. You know that. I won’t ever turn to Elizabeth—
never.
But it would be nice if I could actually learn everything I need to know about witchcraft. You walked off without thinking about that, didn’t you? Left me half-trained, forever. Do you have any idea how much that sucks? No, you don’t. Mom, do you even know that Cole has nightmares, all the time, and Dad—he doesn’t—”

“Stop this,” Mom said. “No, Nadia, I didn’t know any of that. And I don’t care.”

It felt like rage could actually make her head explode. “You
don’t care
?”

Mom held up one hand. “You can scream at me pointlessly. Or you can get the answers you came for. Which do you want?”

Nadia took a deep breath, then another, then another. “Answers.”

“I broke one of the First Laws.”

So, she could still be shocked. She’d never thought her mother would do something like that—even after leaving her family. Yes, Nadia had broken one of the First Laws herself when she told Mateo about witchcraft, but that was different; she’d
had
to tell him when he became her Steadfast. “What—why did you—”

“I didn’t know I was breaking it, you see. But it turns out there are good reasons for the law that tells us we must never bear a child to the son of another witch.”

“Wait. You mean
Dad
?”

“Normally witches know enough of each other to warn people away from relationships they shouldn’t be in. Witches learn to recognize one another; you must have picked up on that by now.” Mom sighed. “There are female relatives and coven members around to provide warnings if a mother has died, usually. But if that mother emigrated far from her native country, if she passed away long before she could find a new circle of witches, and she had only male relatives to survive her, men who could never have been told anything about the existence of witchcraft . . .”

Her father had told them the story. His mother had never really recovered after being uprooted from her native Iran. The political situation made it impossible for her to go back and visit, and both Nadia’s
pedarjoon
and Dad believed her grandmother’s sadness had robbed her of the fighting spirit she would have needed to recover from the sudden infection that had killed her.

Covens were secretive. Several existed in a major city like Chicago, but even those were wary of one another and unsure whether more lurked in the shadows. The likelihood that any American witch would have strong ties to a coven from Tehran in the 1970s—it was beyond remote. It was impossible.

“It’s so stupid,” Nadia said. She still stood in the center of her mother’s living room, like the unwelcome guest she was. “The secrecy about witchcraft. It cuts us off from knowing even the most basic things we should know about each other.”

“That secrecy has kept us alive,” Mom replied.

Nadia would have liked to argue that; at this point, secrecy was creating more problems than it solved. But she had to get her answers first. The rest could come later. “Okay, so, you broke one of the First Laws. It’s not like there are Witch Police who come and shut you down.” She paused. “Are there?”

“No. But these things carry their own penalties. Have you never asked why that would be one of the First Laws, Nadia? Why it’s forbidden for witching bloodlines to intermarry?”

“I always figured it was so we wouldn’t die out. So there would be more witches instead of fewer, like there would be if we intermarried all the time.”

“A good guess, but it comes from a modern understanding of genetics. The First Laws are far older than that.”

Something in Mom’s voice was familiar now in a way it hadn’t been before. She was in Teacher Mode, which Nadia had sometimes found frustrating, but now it encouraged her. Maybe, instead of the vacant-eyed shell who had greeted Nadia at the door, her mother would start acting like herself again. “Well, then, what?”

“A child born with the blood of two witches is—special.”

“You mean, I’m more powerful?”

Nadia’s fragile hopes faded with the shake of her mother’s head. “No. You’re immensely powerful, Nadia. You have so much potential—but my mistake makes you better suited for a specific kind of magic.”

“What is that?”

“Dark magic.” Horribly Mom smiled, as if she could say that and only think of it as a bad joke. “Witches like you are the perfect servants of the One Beneath. His evil fits into your witchcraft like—like a key in a lock. No wonder He’s using this Sorceress to tempt you, Nadia. Almost no children are born of two witching bloodlines, and they haven’t been for centuries. He’s been waiting for a servant like you for a very long time.”

She wanted to tell her mother she was wrong, and yet Nadia knew instinctively, bone-deep, that this was the truth.

Quickly she turned from her mother and walked to the lone window in this long, thin, cramped room. She blinked against the thin, watery sunshine, stifling her tears. Elizabeth’s desperate efforts to persuade her—the way Nadia’s power had developed when she moved to Captive’s Sound, where the One Beneath was at His strongest—even Asa’s smug evasions of her questions, the ones that would have led her to understand this: All of it added up.

Nadia had been made to do evil. To be evil.

Did that mean she was doomed to follow in Elizabeth’s footsteps, no matter what? No. Nadia refused to believe that her fate was already determined, out of her hands.

“Were you ever going to tell me about this?” She kept her voice from shaking somehow. “Or is that one more thing you decided I didn’t need to know?”

“I did what I had to do.”

Nadia turned to glance at her mother over her shoulder. “You had to abandon us? You had to leave Dad, never even see me and Cole again?”

“I had to keep you safe.” Mom’s expression had become—lost, somehow. Her eyes stared past Nadia, through her, trying to see something that wasn’t there any longer. “That was the most important thing to me then. I know that much.”

“. . . What do you mean?”

“The One Beneath doesn’t always give His servants a choice.”

A chill swept over Nadia as she remembered Asa. Once upon a time, he’d been human, like her; he’d been turned into a demon against his will, so that he might be the One Beneath’s slave. She’d despised him for that, knowing that little good remained in demons after their transformation . . . but that had been before she’d realized the exact same thing could happen to her.

Mom kept talking. “I knew He’d find a way to tempt you one day. But I could keep Him from controlling you. From forcing you to serve Him.”

“Mom? What did you do?”

“I cast the only spell that could protect you. A spell of sacrifice.”

Her mother had tried to protect her? The same one who had left without a backward glance? Nadia didn’t want to believe it. Believing that could even be possible—it would rip off the bandages on her wounds, leave her bleeding and in agony about Mom’s abandonment all over again. She whispered, “I don’t know that spell.”

“It’s very advanced magic. Rare. The sort of thing a witch hopes never to cast once in her lifetime. Sacrifices have their own power, and only become stronger when mixed with magic. A spell of sacrifice will protect someone from being enslaved by the One Beneath, always and forever. But in order to cast it, a witch must give up the most important thing in her life.”

Nadia whispered, “You mean . . . us?”

“I mean my love for you, for all of you. My very ability to love. That was the only sacrifice powerful enough to keep you safe. All the love I’d ever felt or could ever feel—I tore it out of my heart and laid it down.”

Memories of those last few weeks they’d lived together as a family came flooding back. Mom had stopped smiling. Stopped laughing. She’d forgotten to sing bedtime songs to Cole, to come shopping with Nadia for a prom dress, even to kiss Dad hello when he came in through the door. Nadia had always known that was the beginning of the end—the moment when Mom’s love ran out. She had never imagined that Mom had actually given that love away.

For her.

“I thought—afterward—I’d be able to go on like I had before,” Mom said, forehead furrowed in concentration. “I’d just do everything I used to do, and none of you would ever have to know that my heart wasn’t in it any longer. But you did know, all of you. You knew it right away.”

“Not
this
—”

“No, not about the spell, but you knew I didn’t love you. The way you all looked at me with those wounded eyes—I couldn’t stand it. And you have no idea how irritating it is to live with people you don’t love in the slightest. Like a college roommate, but worse.” Mom laughed at her little joke; Nadia didn’t.

Mom didn’t even seem to realize that would hurt.

“That’s why you left?” Nadia managed to say.

“More or less. I’d been emptied out. I was of no more use to you, and I thought it would at least be easier to live somewhere else.” Her mother shrugged, like it was no big deal. “I didn’t realize all the repercussions then.”

“You mean, how it would affect Cole.” Her little brother was the easiest one to talk about, the one most obviously betrayed.

Mom gave her a look, like she didn’t know what Nadia was talking about. “How it would affect me,” she said. “I don’t love anymore. Not anybody, not anything. Once, I know, I used to take pleasure in my appearance, in my home. Now I don’t even know what that would mean. And I used to have favorite foods, too. These days I only remember to eat when I get extremely hungry, and even then—what’s the point?” Mom shook her head. “Sometimes I try to recall what it was like to feel love. To have that kind of joy in other people, in food or friends, or even in just existing. But I can’t even remember it clearly. All I know is that it was the only thing that made life worth living.”

Their eyes met. Nadia knew she must look stricken; Mom only looked annoyed. She couldn’t even understand what this moment meant to her daughter. Not even that was left.

Finally her mother said, “I gave all that up forever to keep you safe, and make sure your choices were your own. So I suppose I must have loved you very much.”

Nadia nodded. By now her vision wavered with unshed tears, and Mom was just a blur, nothing more.

“I can’t help you with your Sorceress.” Mom rose from the couch, and Nadia realized that she was about to be asked to leave. “And I’ve done as much as I can do to shield you from the One Beneath. He could still trick or coerce you into serving Him; all I’ve done is keep Him from enslaving you. Now that He sees what you are, He won’t stop until you’re His.”

“There has to be something I can do,” Nadia insisted.

“If you want my advice? Don’t go back.”

“What? You mean, run away? Just leave my family?” How could she ever think Nadia would do that? Then again—Mom had left them, and she no longer even possessed the part of her soul that would have told her why that mattered.

“They’ll manage. I have to say, your father’s stronger than I thought.” Mom stepped closer, and for the first time all afternoon, Nadia felt some flicker of intensity from her. If she couldn’t feel love, she could still feel fear. “Nothing else will save you. If you return, the One Beneath will claim you. No matter how hard you fight, no matter what magic you try to perform.”

Nadia swallowed hard. “You can’t know that.”

“Believe me or don’t,” her mother said, opening the door so Nadia could leave for good. “But mark my words. It can’t end any other way.”

22

“HOLD OUT YOUR ARM,” ELIZABETH SAID.

Asa did it without hesitation. Though she could see in his eyes the foreknowledge of pain, he still obeyed instantly. That was what it meant to be the slave of the One Beneath.

The demon needed reminding of that. Besides, the next step required blood.

They stood together on the small scrap of island that surrounded the old lighthouse. Sun shone down brightly, making the day feel more like early autumn rather than November’s end. Elizabeth pushed up the sleeve of Asa’s black coat, exposing his tawny skin.

In most ways, her body had once again become like that of any other human being, but a few aspects of her ancient, once-immortal power remained. For instance, her fingernails remained far harder than they should have been, less like any aspect of the flesh and more like steel.

So Elizabeth was able to use her thumbnail to slice into Asa’s flesh.

He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as she drew her nail up the length of his inner arm, splitting his skin along the middle, just above the veins. Blood welled from the wound, dripping down either side of his arm to fall on the shell-strewn ground beneath their feet. Asa pressed his lips together and adjusted his stance; Elizabeth knew he was bracing himself for what was to come.

She dragged her nail back along the cut to deepen it, then took both hands and pulled the flesh apart. Despite the heavier bleeding, she could now make out the very structure of the arm: muscle, nerves, veins, and arteries quivering. No need to delve all the way to bone.

Only a small cry escaped Asa, and that he stifled as best he could. Elizabeth wondered whether she should punish him for it regardless.

The spell was punishment enough, she decided. Quickly she brought to mind the ingredients for the summoning:

A call to war.

A fire at night.

A cry of purest pain.

“Hold,” she murmured. Asa had begun to waver on his feet.

“Quickly,” he said, voice shaking. “I might black out.”

A rider on a horse, shouting about Fort Sumter, and stupid, ignorant boys dashing out of their houses to fight in a war that would shred their arms and legs and souls, take their lives before they really knew what living was.