Eat Your Heart Out (Descendants) (2 page)

CHAPTER 3

Turned earth and rain. Rachel breathed deeply, eyes shut and a smile on her face as the familiar smells of the greenhouse swirled around her. Daphne Chase’s greenhouse at the back of their property was one of Rachel’s favorite places in the world.

Rachel twisted her brown hair—it was badly in need of a trim—off her neck into a high bun. The humidity was slick against her arms and made her thin tee cling to her back. Daphne wandered from the work shed at the very back of the greenhouse, her fingers trailing in the neat rows of herbs. That shed was once off-limits to a younger Rachel, and now she knew why. It was where her mom hid her secret demon hunter identity before Rachel Inherited. She also knew what she’d find in there: rows of sharp knives, drawers full of sharpened stakes, drying herbs and flowers that would become protective charms.

“How are you feeling, honey?”

Rachel dragged her eyes from the scarred wood door of the work shed. She stretched side to side and pressed exploratory fingers against her right shoulder.

“Better, actually. It’s kind of crazy how much better.” Rachel peered at her mom. Her brown bob was shot with more gray than she remembered, and the woman’s already petite frame looked in need of a burger or ten. Rachel cocked her head to the side. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know.”

Rachel waited.

Daphne’s shoulders collapsed and she drew Rachel into a ferocious hug. “I’ve been worried about you. You’ve seemed … not yourself the last few months. And now with some crazy demon I’ve never heard of on the loose, it’s just …” She pulled back and cupped the side of Rachel’s face. This close, Rachel noticed fine lines feathering out from the corners of her eyes. Daphne smiled and dropped her hand. “At least Sid finished it with that Beth Ann girl. Are you happy about that?”

Rachel made an exasperated huff and climbed atop a stool to buy herself time. “Mom. We’ve talked about this, like, four thousand times. Sid and I are just friends.” She squirmed. If they were just friends, then what had it meant that night when Sid had leaned his forehead against hers, told her she was amazing. Rachel had panicked and pulled away, promised they’d talk about it in the morning, whatever “it” was.  She hadn’t brought it up again, but neither had he, so …

Daphne’s eyes were sharp. It made Rachel squirm again. “Seriously, Mom.”

“Okay,” Daphne said. She totally didn’t believe Rachel; it was painfully obvious. “And your classes? How’d the history final go?”

Rachel slumped. “It went, um.” She twisted her lips in a weak smile. “I’m just not sure—”

“Hey!”

Rachel wrenched her head around at the sound of Kendra’s voice. Her stomach fluttered in something like relief. Telling her mom she was barely keeping a 3.5 GPA was
not
high on her list of fun topics. Neither was discussing Sidney Martin. And neither was Abbadon. Rachel bit at the inside of her cheek. What she wanted was a day at the beach and a magazine with more photos than words.

Instead, she twisted on the stool to face Kendra and hitched a smile onto her face. “You didn’t have to come! Your mom probably wants to see you.”

Kendra crossed the space between them in a few big strides. She put both hands on Rachel’s shoulders and affected a sugary Southern Belle accent. It sounded alarmingly like Beth Ann Page. “Rachel, my dear birthday girl. Your crazy ass demon is
my
crazy ass demon.”

Rachel giggled and rolled her eyes. No one quite knew how to turn her mood around like Kendra.

“Someone’s happy,” Sid said, pushing aside the heavy plastic slats over the door and joining them in the greenhouse. Bruno stumped in close behind, and Rachel groaned to see a bulging folder tight under one arm and his best friend, Urn, under the other.

“Spoiler alert,” Sid said, throwing a glance behind him. “It’s not Monsieur Guillory.”

“Pardon,” the hulking man said. “Were you saying something about me, Sidney?”

Sid narrowed his eyes and stalked to another stool near Rachel. He collapsed onto it and hooked his heels over a rung, jiggling one leg. He scrubbed one hand through his dark blond hair and nudged Rachel. “You look better.”

Rachel flexed her shoulder. “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

“Right,” Sid said, one eyebrow quirked and confusion in his voice. He cracked his knuckles, and Rachel noticed the
cuts that has cross-hatched his hands had faded to pink. The bruising, too, had mellowed to a watery yellow, and his eyes behind their horn-rimmed glasses were brighter, more awake.

“You look better too,” she said. “Less like death.”

“Thanks?”

Bruno took up position at a cleared space atop one of the greenhouse’s battered worktables, setting the folder and the urn down among the stacked terra cotta pots and jumble of spades and trowels. The light was diffuse in the greenhouse, yet the indecipherable language scrawled across the urn still glowed. It gave Rachel a headache just to look at it.

“Now, can we finally talk about this demon?” Bruno planted his large hands on the table at either side of his treasures. Everything about the older Descendant was large, from his broad shoulders to his square jaw. Rachel was pretty sure the bit of demon he’d got was troll. “Everyone is rested, has their coffee, has used the restroom?”

Rachel’s eyebrows shot up. A joke? The man’s face stayed completely still, his brown eyes flat. Right.
Maybe not. Rachel cleared her throat and folded her hands in her lap.

“The most important thing you need to know,” Bruno started. “Is that
Abbadon is a full demon.”

Kendra frowned. “You mean like my dad, Kai? We’ve, uh, all met full demons.”

A muscle jumped in Bruno’s jaw. “I understand you’re friends with Rachel, but can someone explain why a half-demon needs to be here for this?” Kendra spluttered, but Bruno ignored her and craned his neck to look at Daphne.

It was Sid who spoke up. “Kendra’s been vital on more than one occasion, Bruno. And she’s awesome at research.”

Rachel whipped her head toward Sid. She’d never heard him defend Kendra like that. It made her heart flip over.

Kendra beamed. “And I can tell you that the Corpus makes no mention of
Abbadon. I can’t find him in any of the demon lexicons.”

Bruno sighed like a very patient man. It made Rachel bristle. “Now,” she said, voice clipped. “What do you mean by a full demon? Kendra was absolutely right. We’ve dealt with that a lot, you know.”

“Not this, you haven’t,” Bruno growled.

“Excuse me?” Rachel balled her fingers into a fist. She hadn’t spent the last year protecting humans and citizen demons for nothing. Her lip curled in Bruno’s direction.

“No,” Sid broke in. “He’s right. If Abbadon really is a greater demon, he’s different.”

“More than different. Beyond anything you can imagine.” Bruno once again looked to Daphne. “Have you not taught her any of this?”

Daphne kept her attention on a hanging tomato plant. “She only came into her inheritance a year ago, Monsieur Guillory. I haven’t taught her Descendant history.”

Bruno shook his head then focused on Rachel—who set her jaw and gave him a good glare—and started lecturing. “All of the demons you’ve encountered are hybrids, of a sort. Each has human blood in them, even if just a drop. All the demons in the world today—or, perhaps I should say
nearly
all of the demons—have a human ancestor. But Abbadon, he is pure. That means he cannot be killed, only contained.”

The words hit Rachel straight in the gut.
Couldn’t be killed.
As in, immortal? A shiver rolled down her spine.

At his worktable-cum-lectern, Bruno nodded. “Yes, you understand now. I found
Abbadon’s broken vessel in the ruins of the church and have been watching the signs. I saw the patterns here in Georgia and traveled to find Mademoiselle Chasseur immediately,” Bruno said, using their original French surname. He pushed against his hands against the table, tightened his forearms. As he did, muscles rippled and jumped just under his scarred skin. “Unfortunately, not all on the Descendants Council believe me.”

Bruno’s eyes slid for a moment to Sid, and Rachel frowned as the boy next to her tightened. His neck stiffened, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. His leg started jiggling faster on the stool. “Great,” he muttered.

Rachel tried to catch Sid’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at her. “Right,” she said, her eyes back on Bruno. “So what do we do now? How to we, uh,
contain
Abbadon?”

Bruno shifted on his feet. “Well, that’s where it gets”—he waved a hand through the air and looked to Sid—“foggy?” Sid nodded, and Bruno continued. “That story I told you last night is just that. No one knows how much is truth. The villagers, they couldn’t read or write at that time, and the town
maire
had already fallen victim to the beast. We don’t even know what it looks like or how it behaves. All of the information I’ve found,” Bruno picked up the folder and ruffled the edges of papers stuffed inside. “Some is consistent, but much isn’t.”

“So you’re saying we’ve got an immortal,
unkillable beast chilling out in Georgia, and we don’t know how to stop it?” Kendra laughed harshly. “That’s just lovely.”

Bruno’s jaw muscle jumped again. “I’m saying we have a lot of work ahead of us. If the first Descendants could defeat the beast, we can too.”

Bruno wanted to get right to work, but Daphne stopped him.

“My daughter turned nineteen today. We’re going to celebrate,” Daphne said.

Rachel sat up tall at that. “No, Mom,” she said, waving a hand through the air. “It’s not a big deal. Bruno’s right, we have a lot to do.” But she hoped more than anything that her mom would disagree. Even if Abbadon was prowling right outside the door, Rachel wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with it yet, not so soon after Willem.

“And we’ll do it. After cake.”

Rachel couldn’t help but smile at that.

Kendra jumped off her stool and grabbed Rachel’s good arm. “C’mon,
Rach. I made you something good.” The girl grinned, her blue eyes lighting up.

Sid grabbed her other arm and started dragging her toward the greenhouse door. “And I knit you a blanket.”

Rachel snorted. “I’d love to see you knit, Sid.”

“Then come
on
,” Kendra said.

They dragged Rachel all the way to the greenhouse door and out into the cooling night. The magnolia trees were thick at her back, obscuring the dirt path that led behind a couple massive houses and over the dunes to the coast. A salt breeze off the ocean played through the waxy green leaves and curled around Rachel’s nose.
Abbadon slithered through her mind for a moment, but the twilight was still and silent. She shook Abbadon away and let herself be pulled across the yard and into her house.

The kitchen was hung with streamers, and a bouquet of greenhouse flowers made the air sweet.

“Sid helped me hang the streamers,” Kendra said with a grin over to the boy. Sid shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “And your mom made you carrot cake.” Kendra dug through her massive tote bag; colored pencils, three tubes of lipstick, and a novel about mermaids fell out before she pulled out a wrapped gift. “And I made you this!”

Daphne and Bruno joined them, Daphne with a potted plant sporting a gigantic ribbon hugged in her arms. She deposited the plant on the kitchen table next to Kendra’s gift and a third one Rachel hadn’t noticed before. Bruno didn’t join them at the table, though he did cut himself a generous slice of cake and hover nearby.

Rachel perched on a seat and pulled the potted plant closer. Her mom pointed out each of the plants: fluffy yellow ferula stalks standing tall in the middle surrounded by a bed of weedy burdock and a ring of delicate, black-petaled hellebore. She’d cultivated the rare plants in her greenhouse especially for the occasion. Rachel put her nose to the display and coughed.

“That smells …” Like garlic and ragweed had a pungent swamp baby.

Daphne laughed. “It’s not the most enticing combination of smells, but these three together will help keep your entire room protected.”

Next Rachel opened Kendra’s gift, a homemade bracelet woven of braided blue and gray thread with a tiny gold charm hanging from the clasp—a dagger. Rachel held the charm up to the light and poked at it with the tip of her finger. It swung back and forth and caught the light. “This is amazing, Kendra!”

“I totally thought I’d ruined the surprise. You caught me working on it this morning,” Kendra said. She grabbed Rachel’s hand and wound the length of the bracelet several times around her wrist. The gold dagger whispered against the base of Rachel’s palm and settled there.

Finally, Rachel picked up the last gift—from Sid. It was wrapped in simple brown paper and felt like a book. Rachel
frowned, she hadn’t pegged Sid for the book-gifting sort. It could hardly be used to stab something. Rachel pulled the paper apart to reveal a gorgeous leather volume, the blue cover faded with age and the warm smell of old paper tickling her nose. Rachel was careful as she opened the front page and read the title: “Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande.”