Steadfast

“I don’t know what it is you think you have to say to me. What, are you going to tell me how much fun it is to work for Elizabeth? We both know that’s not true.”

“Elizabeth is cold, cruel, and merciless,” Asa said, startling her with his honesty. “Yes, she wants me to convince you to join her. To start learning from her. But Elizabeth has a weakness—arrogance. For instance, it never occurred to her that I might ask you to start studying with her for my own reasons, not hers.”

Nadia sat back on the corner of her bed. This conversation was changing directions every second. “Why would I care about your reasons?”

“Because I think they’re the same as yours.” Asa stepped away from the wall, coming a little closer to Nadia, close enough for her to again feel that strange, unearthly heat. “Believe it or not, Nadia, we both want the same thing. We want to see Elizabeth crushed, defeated, destroyed forever. I can’t do that. Maybe you can.”

“But you both serve the One Beneath.”

“Precisely. I serve Him, not her. And if you think the One Beneath doesn’t accept deceit and backstabbing among His servants, then, I have to tell you, you haven’t even started to understand Him.” Asa’s grin was fierce, almost frightening. “He loves her, you know. Insofar as the One Beneath can love anyone or anything, He loves Elizabeth. But He would glory in her devastation just as He would in anybody else’s. We’re all just kindling for His fires. There’s no one He wouldn’t burn.”

Her heart was thumping wildly inside her chest, though her fear diminished by the moment. Asa was giving her the one thing she needed most, the one thing she couldn’t get any other way: knowledge. “Okay. You want her defeated. So do I. Joining her doesn’t do that. It only helps her win.”

“Only if you play by her rules, Nadia. What if you played by mine?”

Asa leaned forward then, his hands on the bed, on either side of her. His face was very close to hers, the heat overwhelming. Nadia’s eyes met his, and a shudder went through her, one so delicious that it took her a moment to remember she should be disgusted by him.

But she wasn’t. Not even close.

Asa’s smile broadened. He looked like a panther caught midpounce. “Don’t feel guilty,” he murmured. “You can’t help yourself. Sin, temptation, craving, unmentionable desires: That’s the stuff demons are made of. How else could we be so hard to resist?”

Flushed, Nadia pushed herself farther back on the bed to put at least a few more inches between her face and Asa’s. She had to think clearly now. “Stop playing games and just tell me what you’re suggesting.”

“Join Elizabeth. Work with her. Learn from her. Learn all the magic she has to teach—and she has so much, Nadia, more than any other witch has ever possessed. Discover the countless spells a Sorceress has at her disposal. Tell her you must learn more before you swear yourself to the One Beneath; she’ll accept that. It’s how they all begin, really. You can start as only her student, no more. And you’ll learn enough to destroy her long before the One Beneath ever has a claim on your soul.”

Could that work? It sounded . . . plausible. Even coming from a demon.

Asa backed away, giving her a few moments to think. Nadia pushed her hair back from her face and stared down at her Book of Shadows. It so obviously belonged to a beginner: Crayola spells in the front, blank pages in the back. If she could learn more—become nearly as powerful as Elizabeth herself—

Demons tempted people. That was what they did. And they always tempted them down the path of evil, into the keeping of the One Beneath. So Nadia had every reason to doubt and distrust what he told her now.

Yet she also knew that the hatred in Asa’s voice when he spoke of Elizabeth was absolutely true.

“If I become powerful,” she said, “and I stop Elizabeth for good, that harms the One Beneath. You can’t work against Him. It’s impossible.”

“True enough,” Asa said. “I can’t work against Him. But I can assist in Elizabeth’s destruction, which is what I’d very much like to do. After that—yes, He’ll come after you, and I’ll help Him. But that’s going to happen no matter what, Nadia. At least my way you’d stand a chance, and we’d get to see Elizabeth go down in flames. Your way, you’re just a stick of kindling for his next blaze. Think about it.”

He clapped his hands again; sounds from the rest of the house rushed in, and Nadia let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. When she looked up from her Book of Shadows, Asa was already gone. He must have slipped out the window again, without a sound.

Asa smiled as he walked away from the Caldani home. He’d made a good beginning of it, if he said so himself. Honesty always worked better than lies.

Of course, Nadia didn’t know the other purpose behind the plan he’d suggested—pulling her away from her friends, from the people she loved. He was rather proud of having found a way to do Elizabeth’s work and his own with a single stroke.

Well—not a single stroke. He had two more people to visit tonight.

Seduction was never accomplished in a single conversation, or on a single night. It had to begin slowly. You took people so far, then no further, and waited for them to travel the rest of the way to hell on their own. They always did, in the end.

12

MATEO SAT ALONE ON THE BEACH NEAR HIS HOUSE, BACK against a large piece of driftwood in the sand, earbuds in, music going. It was a cloudy night, one where he couldn’t see the strange roiling stuff between Captive’s Sound and the stars; the only evidence of magic visible at the moment was the strange glow surrounding the lighthouse. After the whole thing with Grandma, he needed space. Needed to feel like the world hadn’t closed in around him. Right now he just needed to be alone.