Steadfast

21

NADIA SAT ON THE 22 BUS, HEADING NORTH ALONG Clark Street, cell phone clutched in her hand. Texts from Verlaine kept scrolling along the screen, one after the other, each of them explaining what Elizabeth had stolen from her, and why. Although Verlaine’s misery was clear even through textspeak, Nadia couldn’t bring herself to feel anything—and for once, she didn’t think dark magic had anything to do with it.

She was only ten blocks from her mother’s new home. Nine blocks. Eight. A powerful numbness had settled over her, which Nadia knew was an attempt at self-preservation.

Only a few minutes remained before she faced the person who had hurt her more than any other. She couldn’t afford to have feelings right now.

When she alighted at her stop, her boots sank down into days-old snow, already gray and crusty. Nadia had missed so many things about Chicago—Ann Sather, the “L,” real pizza. But she’d forgotten about some of the sucky parts, like snow that never melted and only became grimier. Or cold that bit through your coat and your flesh to make your bones quiver. Days like today: Nadia had managed to blot those out.

It was amazing, the things you could make yourself forget.

She double-checked the address as she walked along the street. Stupid, she told herself. It wasn’t like she hadn’t memorized this from the moment she’d first seen it. But her hands had started trembling, and despite the cold, sweat made her skin sticky beneath her thick coat and socks.

What else can Mom do to you? Nadia told herself savagely. How could this get any worse than it already is?

The apartment building was a nice one, but there was no doorman, and Nadia was able to slip in as someone else was walking out. As the aged elevator shuddered its way upstairs, Nadia clenched her fists, spread her fingers, clenched them again. She was ready for this. She had to be.

Finally she stood at her mother’s door. Only then did it occur to Nadia that Mom might not even be home; despite the ample settlement Dad had paid out in the divorce, she might have taken a job. Or just gone out, to shop or visit the Art Institute, something like that. Her mother had a life now, a life that didn’t include her at all. Nadia hadn’t thought of it because she couldn’t imagine it. Their lives still had that jagged hole torn in the center, the place where she had been. Maybe Mom had moved on.

But she still knocked on the door.

Mom answered it.

They stood staring at each other for a long moment. Nadia didn’t feel as though she could speak. All she could think was that Mom looked awful—even haggard. Her soft brown hair, which she used to always wear braided back in complicated, impractical, romantic styles, now hung lank around her face. She’d lost weight, though she’d been thin to start with. Instead of one of her rich cowl-neck sweaters in plum or rust or gold, she wore a plain T-shirt that didn’t look very clean. Even though this was the first time she’d seen her daughter in more than half a year, her mother’s face showed no reaction save a great tiredness.

Finally Mom said, “You shouldn’t have this address.”

“Don’t blame Dad. I snooped through his things.”

That should have earned her a scolding at minimum, but Mom merely shrugged. “I suppose it was inevitable. What do you want?”

What do I want? What do I want? For you to explain yourself, you worthless, miserable, hateful—

Somehow Nadia held back the angry words. “I want to know why a Sorceress says you traded me away.”

“Dammit.” Mom ran one hand through her hair. “A Sorceress?”

“Her name’s Elizabeth Pike. She happens to be in the same town we moved to—in Rhode Island—” Did Mom even know that much, or care?

“Happens to be? There’s no ‘happens to be’ about it.” Her mother sighed and stepped into her apartment. “You might as well come in. I’m only going to explain this once, and it’s going to take awhile.”

The apartment was nothing like Nadia would have expected. Mom loved color and texture, making things beautiful; she always spent enough on decorating and redecorating their condo that Dad sometimes got annoyed. But this space was bare and joyless. The furniture seemed to have been purchased from secondhand shops almost at random, because nothing matched, and while everything was in good condition, none of it seemed pretty or even cozy. Her walls were bare, the floor uncarpeted. Her witchcraft materials lay out in the open; apparently her mom didn’t expect anyone to come in, ever.

It was strange not even to feel comfortable taking a seat. Nadia had been more at ease in a doctor’s office.

For her part, Mom didn’t seem to care whether Nadia sat or stood. She made herself comfortable on the sofa, hardly even glancing at her daughter. “It’s no coincidence that you’ve been confronted with a Sorceress. The One Beneath has more influence in the mortal world than we’d like to think. Probably He . . . aligned the forces. Smoothed the way. Made it more likely your father would wind up there, dragging you along.”

“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.”