The Devil Makes Three Page 20

  “I hate you,” Eliot said. It was a surprise. He’d never said it before, not out loud, not like this. And the response was immediate.

  The back of his father’s hand cracked against his cheek, whipping Eliot’s head to one side. He staggered back, falling into the china cabinet. At the end of the table, Lucille gasped his father’s name.

  He felt dizzy and strangely ashamed, like he’d been caught in a private act. Eliot raised his hand to his cheek and felt moisture there. Blood, where his father’s ring had broken his skin.

  “I think,” Eliot said, trying to maintain his calm, trying to keep his head, trying not to cry, “that that’s my cue to leave. Thank you both for this evening.”

  He turned and left, feeling numb all the way down the walk to his car. His head was buzzing and his cheek stung and in the house, he heard the beginning of an argument between Lucille and his father.

  When he got into the car, he rested his head on the steering wheel. How had it escalated so suddenly, out of nowhere? What had Eliot done to incite his father’s wrath? And what was he going to do now?

  He was no one without his magic. He could not give it up. Not for anyone.

  And then, his phone was ringing.

  He whipped it out of his pocket, cursing under his breath, committed to not answering, even if it was his mother. But it wasn’t his mother. It was Tess.

  forty

  Tess

  ONE STEP, CREAKLESS AND SILENT. TESS HELD HER BREATH and waited. She wasn’t sure if Regina would think she was escaping and come flying into the room, using whatever strange trickery she had to get through the locked front door. If that happened, she would be out of luck and probably dead.

  Another step.

  “Tess,” Regina pleaded. “I can tell you everything. I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  Tess took a deep breath. “I’m sure you can.” Her voice came out as barely a whisper.

  The door rattled. “Why are you moving away? Where are you going? Why won’t you let me in?”

  Shit. Tess froze halfway across the living room. The doorknob rattled again. The scratching resumed. But Regina did not even try to break down the door, even after she’d proven so easily downstairs that locks meant nothing.

  Maybe the apartment was safe. But she could not hide in here forever.

  Almost without thinking about it, she started to hum. It was a simple thing: just her lines from the piece she’d been working on, Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” She closed her eyes and focused, just as she did every time she picked up her cello. Tess blocked out Regina’s voice and the awful scratching. Every one of her steps was timed to a beat until her heart was no longer racing. Until she was flooded with calm. She kept on humming, eyes closed, until she bumped into the far wall. She knew this apartment, every corner of it, and her hand found the knob of the drawer where they kept the knives.

  Tess selected three. The sharpest ones. Two, she slipped into her belt. One, she gripped tightly in her hand.

  She squared her shoulders and hummed louder. Anna was visiting her parents until Monday. It was just her, alone in the apartment as darkness fell. Her and Regina. Her and the devil.

  She took a step. Adjusted her grip. Regina called her name, growing more desperate. Tess hummed louder.

  There are many different kinds of fear. The kind that prickles your stomach, like standing on the edge of a cliff looking down, considering the possibilities. There’s the kind that makes you freeze, like getting a text from a parent to call them immediately or watching the car in front of you stop suddenly without knowing if you have time to brake without smashing into them. There’s the tickly, fun kind of fear too, the kind that comes from ghost stories and scary movies and campfires.

  And then there’s the kind of blunt-edged, dulled fear that slows everything down, grinds everything to a musty halt in the middle of a haze of panic. It’s a fear so deep that no other thoughts, no other emotions can exist alongside it. It’s a numbing fear.

  This was the kind of fear Tess felt.

  If the thing was still living, Tess thought, trying to be logical, she would have to kill it. Some part of her registered her odd detachment and wondered if she was going into shock. But shock would not keep her alive. Logic might.

  Step by step, she made her way to the door. Blood loss did not kill the thing that now inhabited Regina, judging by the amount of blood in the library when Eliot had discovered her body. So she should not attempt to slit its throat. But there was the brain, maybe—going for an eye and stabbing through, or something of that sort. Fragmentary images of it all swirled in Tess’s mind, and she had to take a moment to let the nausea pass after imagining popping one of those milky eyeballs like she’d seen once in a movie.

  Keep humming, she thought. Keep humming and keep moving. Another step forward. On the other side, Regina’s voice had grown hoarse. The scratching was also dulled, sounding like it was skin against the wood and not her nails. Tess shuddered, imagining bloody, broken tips on the end of Regina’s fingers.

  So not the eyes, then. The thought of stabbing her in the eye was too much for Tess, and might not even work. The heart, Tess decided. If she could stop the heart, maybe she could stop the thing that was not Regina anymore. And for good measure, just like she had with the devil himself, she would tell Regina that she was not welcome.

  She was right back in front of the door. Tess allowed herself ten seconds. To prepare herself, to check her grip, to make sure when the door swung open, she was ready.

  Ten. A deep inhale. A prolonged note.

  Nine. Switching the knife to her other hand to wipe the sweat on her palms against her jeans.

  Eight. Time to lean forward, to check that Regina was right outside the door.

  Seven. Seeing that swirling, blood-vesseled eye staring through the hole back at her. A sharp gasp, but reassurance. She was close enough.

  Six. Transferring the knife back to her right hand, grip tight. Her fingers felt less shaky when wrapped around the matte black handle.

  Five. This is for Nat. If you don’t get rid of her and she kills you, all of this will be for nothing.

  Four. This is not going to be what kills you. Maybe this was bravery, after all. Just fear layered on top of fear until the only option left was action.

  Three. A deep breath. Maybe the last one ever.

  Two. A hand on the doorknob. Sliding the deadbolt with her other hand. The climax of the piece. The best part.

  One. My name is Tess Matheson. I am stronger than the devil. And I am not going to die today.

  Tess threw the door open. It crashed against the wall. The ruin that used to be Regina was there in front of her, stinking and terrible. Before it could move, before it could react, Tess raised the knife over her head and was plunging it down, down, down.

  The knife went in just over Regina’s breast and scraped between two ribs—grated to a stop. She couldn’t push it in any further.

  Her hands were covered with the blood that sluiced from Regina’s body. Cold and thick, like she’d been dead for hours. Days.

  Regina gasped and a lone trickle of blood ran down the corner of her mouth. “Why?” she asked.

  Tess was hyperventilating too much to answer. All she could think was I just stabbed someone. I just stabbed someone. I just stabbed someone.

  She pulled herself together, choking on bile. “I forbid you,” Tess managed. Regina’s expression faltered. Tess wondered if there was any part of her left inside of this body, or if she was entirely the devil’s now. “I forbid you from this home. From Nat’s. From my family. I forbid you and I renounce you.”

  Regina blinked those horrible eyes and turned, knife still in her chest, and walked away down the hall. She didn’t look like she was in pain or anything; she just turned and left. Tess was too stunned to call after her.

  She did not dissolve into a deluge of gore, as Tess had expected, or fall at her feet. She just … went.

  Tess s
lumped against the wall as it all caught up to her. Her hands were awful, smelling of rot and coated in blood. Something was trailing down her face, and she couldn’t be sure if it was blood or tears.

  But she’d survived. She choked on a sob, on a breath, on a broken-off bit of humming. And she remembered the one person she hadn’t remembered to protect. The one person who the devil knew about. The one person the devil knew he could use against her—because of course, this whole time, he already had. Tess’s heart caught in her throat, beating too fast.

  Eliot.

  forty one

  Eliot

  “WHAT IS IT?” ELIOT ASKED, BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE wouldn’t just be calling him for no reason.

  “Eliot.” There was a long pause, and he wasn’t sure how to read it, but something in her voice had his foot on the brake. He frowned into the gathering darkness.

  “Tess, what’s going on?”

  “Where are you right now?” Flatness. That was what it was. Her voice lacked any intonation at all, as if she just had to get the words out to keep herself from screaming.

  “Driving home from my father’s. What is it?”

  Another pause. “Regina’s body … attacked me. Or … followed me home. She is dead and decaying, and she came to my apartment, and I stabbed her in the heart, and I thought she’d come after you next.”

  A prickle of fear slipped over Eliot’s skin. He shot a cursory glance into the mirror, as if Regina’s body would be grinning at him from the backseat. “What are you saying?”

  There was a clatter, either of Tess dropping the phone or throwing it, and then a long string of curse words half-muffled by something. Maybe the sound of vomiting followed, but Eliot couldn’t be sure.

  “Regina’s body,” Tess said, back again. “Decaying. Disgusting. But something is inside of her, Eliot. Something is possessing her. And I don’t think I killed it. Not completely.”

  Eliot’s mouth was dry. He checked the rearview again, the hair on his neck standing on end. “What do we do?”

  “Come here,” Tess said wearily. “I just … We have to figure out what happens next, and I know my dorm is safe. I need to clean this up before someone notices.”

  “Okay,” Eliot said. He wasn’t sure if he was terrified or confused or if he even believed her in the first place. “But let’s run through this one more time. Tell me everything that happened.”

  The description took the entire drive. Tess broke off at points into deep silences, broken only by Eliot saying her name. With every word and every description, he grew more and more certain the apprehension growing in his stomach was, in fact, terror.

  Eliot careened into a space in front of Tess’s building and threw the car into park. She wasn’t speaking now, and all he could hear was her quiet, uneven breathing. He thought she’d been crying, but he couldn’t align an image of her with tears in her eyes with the fierce edginess that usually lived there.

  Which was why it was all the more startling when he really did see her.

  The lock on the front door was broken—probably the work of the devil, but Eliot didn’t want to think too much on that, because to do so would be to realize the danger of the situation. A trail of blood led to the back dorm on the third floor. The door to her flat was a ruin of blood and wood splinters and tiny bits of flesh clinging to the scratched away paint. A small pool of blood stained the carpet.

  Eliot knocked softly. “It’s me,” he said.

  The girl that opened the door barely resembled Tess. Dark circles stained the space under her eyes. Her nose was red and puffy, and her eyes were watery. Before, he’d always thought she was slender, but now she just looked gaunt. Blood speckled her shirt and stained her hands.

  Without even thinking, he reached for her.

  “Wait,” Tess said, grabbing his upper arms. She stared intently into his eyes, searching.

  “What is it?”

  “I …” She trailed off, looking away. “Tell me one book I originally took you into the cage for.”

  Eliot searched his brain. “Uh. The Book of Shadows?”

  Tess exhaled, and the relief was clear in the way she folded into him, allowing him to tuck her head underneath his chin and envelop her completely, like he was hiding her.

  “It’s you,” she said. “It’s actually you.”

  “Of course it’s me,” Eliot said, stroking her hair. “Who else would it be?”

  Tess didn’t answer.

  She was shaking so hard. He felt her heart thundering in her chest. She clutched him so, so tightly, and it was all he could do to tighten his own grip, to surround her, until he was certain that the only thing she could sense around her was him.

  “Did she hurt you?”

  Tess paused, and Eliot’s heart thundered. If the devil hurt her … he would find a way to kill it himself. It would not escape Eliot. He’d use every bit of magic he could find.

  “No,” Tess said. “No. I’m fine.”

  They stood there for a long time, long enough that Eliot’s arms hurt from holding her so tight. Tess pulled away, dry-eyed, looking resolved. “I need to shower. And then we’ll figure this out.”

  He nodded. Her words broke the spell between them. Tess stepped away, and Eliot went to look at the ruin of the door.

  “Yeah, that’s going to be an issue for the damage deposit,” Tess said ruefully, coming out of her bedroom with a towel slung over one arm. “I have no idea how to explain it to Anna.”

  “I’ll fix it,” Eliot said. Tess frowned at him, but just ducked into the bathroom.

  forty two

  TESS STARED AT HER REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR. SHE WAS streaked with blood and gore, covered with the stuff up to her wrist on her stabbing hand. Her fingers were sore from holding the knife. She had a flicker of a memory; a reflection from before, one she’d dismissed as an illusion. Now, looking at the splatter of blood across her face, she wondered if it was a warning.

  Carefully, she removed the other two knives from her belt and set them on the porcelain sink. She turned on the shower, and then the sink while she waited for it to warm. Steam clouded her reflection as she carefully washed her hands once, twice, a third time. Scraping under the nails. Lady Macbeth, hands gloved in blood that would not wash away. She didn’t realize she was sobbing until she could no longer breathe.

  Tess pulled off her clothes and got into the shower, curling into a ball on the floor, letting the water fall. In the steam and the hiss and the pounding of the water, she let herself cry. She ached past her muscles, down to her bones, either from adrenaline or fear or exhaustion.

  Worst of all, every time she saw Eliot hanging around Jessop or annoying her elsewhere, she felt the tug of Truth. Even though she knew they were not the same, even though she could tell them apart—mostly—she felt the pull of the devil when she saw Eliot’s face.

  Perhaps that was what the devil wanted. Perhaps he’d put on Eliot’s body because he knew what Tess wanted, even before she’d known herself. Even before she’d considered him as anything more than a nuisance.

  No. He was still … still … She didn’t know. He was still an unknown, still a variable she couldn’t account for. Still a line of accidentals she fumbled over every time.

  Eliot could not see her like this. He could not see any trace of this when she got out of the shower and went back out. If he saw this, he would know the truth of how much Regina had scared her, and she could not let that happen.

  And worse. She could not let him see how afraid she was when she realized Eliot was unprotected, when she thought there was the chance Regina could come after him too. She pressed her hands to her eyes, trying to suppress the remaining panic. Any of it, all of it. Because, for the first awful time, Tess realized it meant something to her for Eliot to be safe.

  She brought her fist to her mouth and bit down hard. She couldn’t be like this, sobbing in the shower. She couldn’t be weak. And Eliot could never know of any of this.

  Mechanically, she s
tood. I won’t let it hurt him, Tess thought. I won’t let it hurt anyone. If someone is going down, it will be me.

  forty three

  Eliot

  ELIOT DIDN‘T HAVE HIS RUE OR THISTLE OR HIS FAVORITE herbs, but he checked the kitchen for anything he could use. He set it all up: chalk runes for tidying and freshness and cleanliness; lemon peel for purifying; spearmint, for cleansing and renewal; a drop of his blood. Under his breath, the spells for a clean house and a fresh slate.

  “Eliot.” He looked up. Tess was done, a sure sign he’d lost track of time yet again. She was wearing her glasses, and her hair was down and dripping over her shoulders. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I …”

  But it was too late. The root of his spell had already been laid. The wood of the door groaned, blood flying away in huge drops and dissolving into dust, settling in motes that glimmered in the hallway lights. The wood splintered and doubled, regrowing into a smooth, white surface. Everything smelled clean and light, like happiness or the soil after rain or the fog he missed more than anything. Like magic. A faint shimmer hung in the air, over Eliot’s body, over the door. His palms tingled with magic, skin already healed.

  Maybe he’d wanted to be caught. After all, how did he expect to explain his ability to set her dorm to rights in the space of a single shower? The truth was, he hadn’t been thinking. He’d only wanted to make things right. Perhaps, after all of this fuss, he just wanted her to know the truth.

  He sat back on his heels. Watched Tess’s face. She swallowed hard, one eyebrow raised, and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I suppose I have to tell you something,” he said carefully. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t see the hatred growing in her eyes, like it had with his father, when he knew the truth. “I … I have magic. Am magic. I’m a witch.” He snapped his fingers, one of his only tricks, and a spark flew from his fingertips.

  Tess laughed, and the sound was a bit too hysterical for his liking. She clapped a hand to her mouth. Finally, she said, “I hate to say it, but … that’s the least surprising thing that’s happened.”