Steadfast

Nadia said, “Elizabeth did it. We know that much. I have no idea what kind of spell that was—or what the burning was about—but I doubt she did it alone.”

Verlaine gave in and stared at Not-Jeremy, too. He sighed, for a moment so put upon and annoyed that he seemed like his old self again. “You know, I should probably make you guys guess a while longer, but what the hell.”

With a grin, he brought his hands together, as if to clap—

—but the moment Verlaine heard the sound, all the other noise around her stopped.

So did all the movement. Everybody around her froze in place, midstep, midword. One girl’s blond ponytail levitated in air, midbounce. Ms. Walsh held the silver duct tape slightly above her head, like she was studying it in the light. Verlaine kept turning from one direction to another, trying to make herself believe what she was seeing. Nadia and Mateo were doing the same.

And the guy who was now definitely, positively not Jeremy leaned against the wall and folded his arms against his chest.

“There’s not that much I can do on my own,” he said. “But I can do this. Nice trick, hmm? You’d be surprised how often it comes in handy.”

“Who are you?” Verlaine demanded. “No. What are you?”

“You may call me—” His voice choked off for a moment, but then he smiled, casual again. “Asa.”

Nadia jerked backward, out of Mateo’s embrace, so far that she knocked into a frozen-in-place cheerleader. Her pom-pom rustled, but otherwise the cheerleader remained still. “You can’t say your true name.”

“Asa” sighed. “Elizabeth thought your training might not have gotten far enough for you to recognize my nature. I’ll enjoy telling her she’s mistaken.”

“What does that mean?” Verlaine demanded, looking from Nadia to Asa to Mateo to the weird stopped-time scene around them. Not even the hands of the wall clock were moving. “Why can’t he say his name?”

“Because he’s a demon,” Nadia whispered.

For a few moments, nobody spoke. Asa just shrugged, like, Yeah, you got me. Then Mateo said, “Since when did demons come into this? There are demons?”

“A demon demon?” Verlaine couldn’t stop staring at him. “From hell?”

“We call it hell sometimes,” Asa said. “Just a figure of speech, though I promise you, it’s appropriate. Where I’m from isn’t a collection of evil dead people, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve been down there for centuries—haven’t run into Hitler once.”

“Demons come from the realm of the One Beneath.” Nadia’s eyes were narrowed now, like she was mad as hell but still hadn’t decided what to do about it. “They’re souls bound to serve Him.”

Oh, okay. This was starting to make a little bit of sense. “You mean, he’s like Elizabeth,” Verlaine said, relieved to have put some of this together.

But Nadia shook her head, never taking her gaze from Asa. “No. Elizabeth chose her path; no one controls her but the One Beneath himself. A demon was either captured by the One Beneath or one of His servants, or brought into being by one of their spells. They don’t have a lot of power on their own, but once they’re summoned into service, they can perform levels of dark magic no human being ever could.”

“Like a Steadfast for a Sorceress?” Mateo said.

“Not exactly.” Nadia gave Asa a thin, mirthless smile. “More like a Sorceress’s slave.”

As weird, screwed-up, and freakish as this whole scene was, Verlaine couldn’t help thinking Nadia had skated over a pretty critical point. “But—if they got captured—if they didn’t choose to be bad—then they’re the victims of the One Beneath. Slaves, you said. That’s wrong, isn’t it?”

Asa turned his head toward her as though he’d never seen her before. And then, in his dark eyes, she glimpsed something that had never been there when this was Jeremy Prasad.

No. Something that had never been there when anyone looked at her, ever. It was as though—as though he could see her, but he didn’t mind what he saw—

“Don’t waste your pity,” Nadia said. “Asa can only be here because Elizabeth brought him to do her bidding. I never thought they could walk in our world like this, but apparently there’s some kind of spell to put a demon inside a dead body.”

“A spell that involves digging out the eyes.” Mateo’s face was ashen, and Verlaine remembered the horrifying story he’d told them about having to stand there motionless, bound by Elizabeth’s magic, watching her slice into Jeremy with the serrated edge of a seashell. “The big question is why you’re telling us all this.”

Verlaine half raised her hand. “Actually, I think the big question is how he stopped time. And also why.”

Asa stepped closer to them, and Verlaine imagined that she could feel a kind of heat radiating from him . . . but it wasn’t her imagination. It was as though he were running a fever, one so high no human could ever have survived it. “I stopped time and told you who and what I am because I thought it would be much less annoying than listening to you whispering and guessing and carrying on. I only get so long here on Earth. I intend to enjoy it.”

That wasn’t all. It couldn’t be all. Verlaine sensed that much.

Apparently there was also something about saying his real name, whatever it was. He found it difficult.