Steadfast

Nadia turned toward him; he was standing too close for comfort, so close he was only inches away. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing, more like. Let me guess. You meant to kindly inform Jeremy’s mother that her son was, perhaps, no longer with the living. Why you thought she’d enjoy that knowledge is beyond me, but it’s the only sensible possibility.” Asa raised an eyebrow as he glanced at Faye Walsh next to them, paused in place as she attempted to crouch and take cover behind her seat. “If ‘sensible’ comes into this. Which I doubt.”

She wasn’t taking lectures from a demon. “You don’t think it’s sick, walking around in his skin, not letting her know her own child is dead?”

“What I think is irrelevant. I didn’t ask for a role in Elizabeth’s little dramatic production, but I play it as best I can. Let the Prasads live without grief while they can. I promise you, it can’t be for long.” His expression had been unreadable for a moment there—almost angry—but a mocking smile spread over his face. “I bet you’re weaving more memories of Mateo in with your spell ingredients. Aren’t you? Love is powerful, Nadia. Maybe more powerful than you realize. Certainly more than you can control.”

This chaos—this was because she loved Mateo so much? Nadia felt a sick sort of shiver inside. “Why are you talking to me now?”

“So angry. So rude. And here I am, helping you out.”

“Helping?”

Asa held out his hands, gesturing at the entire frozen-in-place scene around them. “Giving you a moment to get your bearings, to think how you might undo the worst of what you’ve done? Very useful, if you’ll take advantage of it. But I’d hurry up, if I were you. My existence is eternal, but my patience isn’t.”

Nadia knew better than to trust a demon’s word. “Why would you help me?”

“You know, just because Elizabeth brought me here doesn’t make me her servant,” he said, very quietly. He stepped even closer, tilted his head, as if studying her expression; she could feel the heat radiating from his body, even through her clothes. “I serve the One Beneath, not her. Yes, if she commands me to do something that helps them both, I have to do it. But that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of acting on my own. Serving my own purposes. Even working against her, if it doesn’t betray my unholy lord and master. You think I’m your enemy, but there are ways I could be a very powerful ally, Nadia.”

For a moment she paused. Could Asa be telling some sliver of the truth?

But she said only, “You need Mrs. Prasad to believe in you again, or else you’ll have blown your cover. You’ll be punished.”

He smiled mirthlessly. His black eyes seemed to look through her—as though he knew what she looked like without her clothes. “You say it so easily. What do you think the punishments of hell are like? Have you ever considered that?”

Her heart thumped wildly in her chest. “It doesn’t matter. I have to make Mrs. Prasad forget it for her own sake. So I guess it’s your lucky day.”

“Only if you think fast.” Asa held up his hands, obviously about to allow time to resume.

Nadia went for her bracelet again, this time reaching for the aquamarine charm. A spell of forgetting was simple, really. Basic. And one of the first lessons she’d learned, one she ought to have remembered before now, was that the simplest way out was almost always the best.

Snap! People were screaming again, and she heard the chunk of the ax against wooden seats, but Nadia kept concentrating on the spell.

Letting go of what was once irreplaceable.

Smiling through pain.

Making right a wrong.

“Are you seeing this?” Verlaine yelled, backing away from the fast-approaching Mrs. Prasad. She was still filming. “Nadia, move!”

Packing a box for Goodwill full of Mom’s stuff, and dropping in the heart-shaped locket she’d given Nadia on her thirteenth birthday, the one Nadia had thought was so beautiful that she’d wear it forever.

Joking about her broken arm after coming home from the hospital, and letting Cole be the first to sign her cast, in green crayon.

Coming to see Verlaine in the hospital, finally acting like the friends they would’ve been all along but for the dark magic, and seeing Verlaine’s face light up.

Mrs. Prasad stopped. Slowly she lowered the ax. Nobody moved, or spoke, or even seemed to breathe. Then Mrs. Prasad said, “Where am I?”

“You’re okay, Mom.” Asa went to her immediately, putting one arm around her shoulders while with the other he took the ax. People sighed in relief as he handed it to someone nearby. “It’s okay. I think those new meds of yours aren’t good. You just need to lie down.”

A wave of voices rose—people either expressing sympathy or anger or bewilderment. Really, though, Nadia could tell most people were just relieved it was over. Nobody seemed to be asking any more questions about the Halloween carnival. Asa shepherded Mrs. Prasad toward the door, Mr. Prasad falling into step alongside them.

Nadia looked down at the aquamarine charm, still held between two of her fingers. She didn’t think Mrs. Prasad had full amnesia, though she’d have to check later. Her spells had been so powerful before—

—could Asa be right? Could her love for Mateo be throwing her off balance?

“Nadia?” Ms. Walsh stepped closer. “What are you doing?”

She was staring down at the bracelet, the one with all the charms Nadia required to practice witchcraft.