Steadfast

During his brief time in Captive’s Sound, Asa had sized up Kendall Bender as—insubstantial. Not terribly bright, not stupid, enamored of her own judgment: an entirely ordinary human being. But grief had awakened something else in her, something entirely individual.

The girl seemed to be in a daze as she wandered through the hallway, despite all the balloons and stuffed animals decorating her locker, despite all the questions about her sister. Her sandy hair wasn’t even brushed. Probably she’d come to school straight from the hospital.

Asa stood very near the now-unused chemistry lab. (The school had closed it due to potential contamination, though nobody could say what the contamination might be. Instead the class sat in study hall and watched “science documentaries,” which were mostly designed to amuse the brain-dead.) He was close enough to feel the enormous power lurking there—the wild, dark energy not far below the surface. It reminded Asa of pain. It reminded him of home.

Yet that darkness did not reach out to him, nor would it ever. The One Beneath did not speak to mere slaves.

A dog on a leash, Verlaine had said. Maddening girl.

Let her call him what she would. After last night’s disastrous attempt on Elizabeth’s life, no doubt Verlaine, Nadia, and Mateo were licking their wounds. They were doubting themselves now. That made them vulnerable.

He’d watched long enough. Waited long enough. The time had come for Asa to begin his work.

So here we go, Mateo thought. Plan B.

The butler opened the door, and his eyes widened in surprise. Mateo usually avoided Cabot House, showing up once a year for inspection/birthday wishes/weird, creepy, passive aggression from Grandma/a savings bond, before getting out again as quickly as possible. This was his third visit in three months.

Mateo tried to keep a straight face. “We meet again.”

“Mrs. Cabot isn’t expecting you,” the butler said in his creaky voice. His weedy, white eyebrows seemed to be frozen in an expression halfway between surprise and disapproval.

“Just dropping by. Let her know I’m here, okay?”

He had to wait for her in a long room filled with ornate old furniture that hadn’t been used in a while. A fine layer of dust grayed and softened every line, as though the room had been draped in a veil. Mateo felt more like an intruder in a museum than a visiting grandson. That was pretty much par for the course.

All along the brocade wallpaper hung Cabot family portraits from decades and even centuries gone by. A few of them showed signs of damage from the fire that had damaged the upper stories of the house back when his mother was young. This frame showed some blackening; this picture was stained with soot. But the one that interested Mateo showed not the damage, but the person who had caused it.

There, in a Colonial-era portrait, stood members of Mateo’s family in knee breeches, full-length dresses, and powdered wigs—and next to them stood Elizabeth Pike.

Not Elizabeth as he knew her, of course. She’d spent most of the past four centuries aging backward from the old woman who’d made a deal with the One Beneath. Only now did she again look like a girl of seventeen. In this portrait Elizabeth still had gray hair, the more solid body of someone past middle age, but the painter must have been skilled, because the face remained unmistakably hers. Maybe it was the shape of her eyes; maybe it was the way she tilted her head just slightly.

No. What made Mateo so utterly sure this was Elizabeth was the expression the painter had captured in her eyes: contempt. Elizabeth thought everyone else in the world was beneath her, only fit to do her bidding.

“Mateo.” He turned to see Grandma standing in the door. She rarely stood any longer; it surprised him that she had the strength. Her ebony cane was clenched firmly in one frail hand. As always, she angled herself so that only one side of her face showed—the side without the horrible scars from the fire. “Your young lady appears to have heeded my warning.”

“Nadia and I are still together. Thanks for asking.” Mateo wasn’t going to waste any time trying to make this woman like him. Instead he simply stepped close and held up his phone. “Listen, I need to know if you’ve ever seen this.”

He brought up the picture Nadia had taken of a symbol drawn on yellowing old paper—a sort of wreathed circle made up of a few dozen curving lines that crisscrossed one another. At first Mateo had thought it looked vaguely Celtic, but that wasn’t quite right. Really, it was more like a drawing by this guy they’d studied in art history, M.C. Escher. Lines you thought led somewhere didn’t; angles that shouldn’t have existed did.

“That?” Apparently startled out of her usual gloom, Grandma nodded. “I’ve seen that design before.”

Usually Mateo hated that his grandmother lived in the past, that he was buried under so much horrible family history, it felt like it could crush him. But her obsession had finally paid off. “Where?”

“It’s an old knife—part of the family silver, though it resembles no serving piece I’ve ever seen. But I recall the symbol well. I thought it was some Cabot family crest, fallen out of use.”

“Any chance I could have that knife?”

Immediately she turned to frost again. “If you’re looking for items to hock, I’m sure there’s something more valuable in the house.”

“I’m not pawning anything, okay? You can have it back soon.” In theory, anyway: Nadia might have to use it for some spell that would turn it to ash or God only knew what. He’d deal with that if and when it happened. “My friends and I want to look at it. That’s all.”