Steadfast (15 page)

Obviously bored, Asa held up one hand and made the universal symbol for
blah blah blah
. “My point is that you’ve left yourself vulnerable. Left Nadia vulnerable. The only thing more compelling than love is power. Trust me: In hell you get plenty of lessons about that one. If magic is still the first thing in Nadia’s life—not you—isn’t it possible that she’ll always choose magical power in the end? Even if that means giving you up?”

“This is the part where you start twisting my mind around,” Mateo said. “I know what you’re doing.”

Asa just laughed. “Keep telling yourself that. The denial can only go on for so long, but you might as well enjoy it while it lasts.” He rose to his feet, brushing sand from his jeans. “I’ll tell you another truth, Mateo. Another hard fact for you to ignore until it’s too late. In every romance, one person loves the other more. Sometimes it’s a lot; sometimes it’s such a slight difference that nobody could ever tell—nobody, that is, except the one who’s loved a little less. He’s always aware of that patch of shadow where the sunlight doesn’t fall. That fraction between how far he’s reaching and how far away she is. The difference between loving and loving absolutely. Nobody else can even see it, but the one who does more than his share of the loving? Eventually he can’t see anything else.”

Mateo wanted to tell Asa he was wrong, but the words seemed to die in his throat. It couldn’t be true . . . could it?

“Oh, look at the time.” Asa made a great show of stretching and getting to his feet. “I should go. We’re finishing Dickens tomorrow. It’s a pleasure to have books again, you know. No libraries in hell.”

As he heard the soft crunch of Asa’s shoes against the sand, Mateo knew he should say something, anything, to let Asa know it wouldn’t be that easy to tear him apart from Nadia. By the time he turned around, though, the demon had vanished as if he’d never been there at all.

Another exciting night here at the bustling media center of Captive’s Sound,
Verlaine thought.

She sat behind the desk at the town paper, the
Guardian
, which came out only once a week and mostly just printed advertising circulars. Verlaine had an internship here, which meant less “covering news of importance to the town” and more “hanging around in case anybody drops off classified ads.” They let her write stories, even ran them on the front page, but Verlaine had yet to see any evidence that either the editors or the citizenry appreciated her hard work.

They don’t just ignore me. They ignore my writing. They ignore anything that comes anywhere near me. It’s like there’s this—chasm between me and everybody else in the world.

She took a deep breath, then another. Deliberately she wound her gray hair into a smooth bun at the back of her neck, which hopefully worked with the whole “sexy secretary” vibe she was going for with this 1960s rose-colored sheath dress. At least she was in control of her look.

But what did it matter how she looked, if nobody was ever going to look at her?

The bells on the door jingled, and she looked up—then scowled. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Would you believe a personal ad?” Asa said.

“No. Elizabeth pulled that trick last month. I wound up in the hospital for a few days as a result. Now I have a Taser and a much more selective policy about who gets to advertise in the paper.” Verlaine did not have a Taser. In fact she’d gotten no further than thinking it might be a good idea to have one around. But Asa didn’t know that.

He leaned against one of the counters and looked up at the endless musty volumes of back issues that lined the walls. “I wouldn’t have thought this place could afford to be ‘selective’ about much.”

Verlaine bit back her smile in time. “Yeah. Well. It’s not CNN. But this is Captive’s Sound.”

“This used to be a much more interesting publication.” Asa began strolling along the wall, trailing his long fingers over the ridges of the leather bindings. “Back in the day—even further back than these archives go, I’d imagine. When the printing press they worked on was one of the only ones in the New World, and more people knew the reason this paper was called the
Guardian
.”

She frowned. That wasn’t such an unusual name for a newspaper; usually it meant that the paper was a guardian of truth or liberty or something like that. What else could it mean?

And then she knew.

Slowly Verlaine said, “There’s also a reason this town is called Captive’s Sound, isn’t there?”

Asa drummed his hands against the wall in obvious excitement. “You got there much quicker than I thought you would. Nicely done!”

Once upon a time, the people here knew they were guarding something. But what’s captive in Captive’s Sound?

“So many secrets,” he said, strolling closer to her desk. His smile was brilliantly white against his tawny skin, and already she had begun to feel that strange heat. “So much waiting to be revealed. And I think you’d like to be the one who ripped the lid off.”

“Yeah, right.” Verlaine didn’t like how close he was getting, so she rolled her desk chair farther back. “Like anybody would pay attention to anything I said. Elizabeth took that away from me. Or didn’t you remember?”

It was hard to say exactly how Asa’s expression changed. His smile didn’t fade; his eyes never lost that black, mischievous fire. And yet she knew that he’d only halfway meant everything he’d said before—but what he said now was true. “I remember it well. I see it more plainly than anyone else does—even more than you, Verlaine.”

She could have slapped him. “Oh, you can see my life better than I can? You think there’s a better view than from the inside? Don’t even pretend you know what this is like.”

“Being forever alone? Forever unseen? I have no body of my own. No freedom. No chance my existence will ever change. I know what you endure far too well.”

Of course. Asa was a slave. Maybe that didn’t make him sympathetic, exactly—but it made him pitiable. Maybe he really did know what it felt like to be always on the outside looking in.

Asa’s hands were spread across the counter, and he leaned over it, just far enough for her to again feel the warmth of him glowing against her cheeks. “You’re so much stronger than anyone else knows. Nadia, Mateo—they try, don’t they? But they never understand the courage it takes for you to support and love them when they can’t love you as much in return. They never see how little the world cares for you, and how you dare to love the world back anyway. Nobody reads what you write, and yet you write. Nobody looks at you, and yet you dress yourself like a goddess every single day. Nobody wants you, and yet you keep wanting. You stay hungry. You keep your heart open. You never give up.”

She couldn’t look at him any longer. Her throat hurt, and her breaths were coming too quickly, but she’d be damned if she’d let a demon make her cry.

“Verlaine.” Asa’s voice was soft, and he was closer to her now, leaning over far enough that they could have touched. Even kissed. What would it feel like, to be kissed by him? Would it burn her to cinders? “There are stories you could tell that would force people to listen. Let me share with you this town’s real history. Let me tell you the truth about Elizabeth. Let the two of us try to find an answer together, without Nadia or Mateo or anyone else who can’t see the truth for themselves. Believe in me. Trust me.
See me
, as I see you.”

Slowly she put her hands on the folder in front of her, thick with old ad layouts and receipts. Her shaking fingers closed around the binding; it helped to have something to hang on to.

It helped even more to have something to swing.

Verlaine grabbed the folder and smashed it into Asa’s face as hard as she could. He staggered backward, all the way into the nearest wall of back volumes.

“
Trust
you,” she said as she came around the counter, still brandishing the folder in front of her like a weapon. “
Believe
in you. While you’re trying to manipulate me in the most obvious way possible. Excuse me, but no.”

“You should listen to what I’ve said.” His grin remained in place as he rubbed the side of his jaw, but when she came closer to him, he began backing away.

“I heard you out. And I didn’t hear anything worth my time.”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t affected. That’s a lie and we both know it. What you feel when you look at me—the way you parted your lips for a moment—”

“So what? You’re hot. Big deal. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re a demon.” Verlaine took another swing at him with the folder every few words, pushing him farther and farther toward the door. “A demon! And a liar, and Elizabeth’s partner in crime, and a
total asshole
.”

She shoved him out the door. The bells on the handle jingled again. And just like that, he seemed to have disappeared.

Inside she felt raw, torn apart. But Verlaine had become very good at putting her own pain aside. That was one of the few benefits of being on the outside looking in: You learned to take anything the world could throw at you.

“Well. Guess that showed him.” She smoothed the front of her sheath dress and went back to her desk to finish her homework. “Bet he’s not so smug anymore.”

If she could have seen Asa at that moment, she would have seen him laughing out loud in sheer delight.

How brilliant she was. How fierce. Asa enjoyed fighting with Verlaine more than he remembered enjoying time with anyone else.

He wanted to watch her from a distance, but he made himself pull back. If he paid any more attention to Verlaine Laughton, Asa thought he might actually become . . . fond of her. That would be disastrous. First of all, she was doomed. Bad long-term relationship prospects there.

Second, he couldn’t save her from whatever danger would come. While there was a bit of wiggle room for him to betray Elizabeth, he could never betray the One Beneath. Rescuing Verlaine from mortal danger would be utterly forbidden. If he broke that rule, he would be forced to endure the worst torments of hell for what would feel like centuries. No girl could be worth that, not even one so daring and delightful as Verlaine.

Even one that made him feel as if he would find it painful when she died.

Yet Asa lingered awhile, watching her anyway.

He was still in a good mood the next morning as he walked through the halls of Rodman High; even the sight of Elizabeth falling into step beside him couldn’t dim his smile. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “You just can’t wait to watch a documentary on Albert Einstein.”

“You know I have my reasons for coming here. How goes your task?”

“Let’s see.” Asa nodded toward the far end of the hall, where Nadia, Mateo, and Verlaine were all walking in.

They must have met up outside. Maybe they even came to school together. But even though the three of them walked side by side, even though they were smiling at one another, Asa could tell—there was a bit of a chill in the air that had nothing to do with autumn. Mateo didn’t have his arm around Nadia. Nadia couldn’t quite meet Verlaine’s eyes. And Verlaine crossed her arms and scowled at both Asa and Elizabeth as the two groups passed.

“The suspicion is still subtle,” Elizabeth said. “They doubt themselves more than one another. But I can see that the seeds have been planted. What next, beast?”

“Watch and wait.” He imagined the elm trees that grew all over town, many of them so old they had pushed up the sidewalks in front of them and broken the paving stones into half a dozen planes and angles. The smallest seed could cause incredible damage, given time and the right conditions to grow.

She asked, “What did you tell them?”

“The most dangerous thing of all. The truth.”

I laid out three possible ways to destroy you. Any one of them might work. All I have to do is hope at least one of them sees it. The faster they’re driven apart, the faster they can stop focusing on one another and go after you. Your work and your undoing, and I managed it in just one night. You’ll be sorry you called me
beast
soon enough.

Asa glanced over his shoulder at them once more. Really he should have been watching all three of them for signs of discord. Instead he only had eyes for the way Verlaine’s long, silver hair flowed down her back.

Quietly he repeated, “Everything I said was true.”

13

ON THE LIBRARY’S TV SCREEN, BLACK-AND-WHITE IMAGES
of Albert Einstein flickered. The overhead lights were out. That meant Mateo’s phone glowed too brightly—but since not even the substitute cared about what “chemistry class” was up to, that worked just fine.

“It’s Latin,” Nadia whispered as she squinted down at the picture on Mateo’s phone. “At least, I think so. I’ve never studied it.”

“Does Google Translate do Latin?” Mateo asked.

“I’ll check and see.” Nadia got to work on her own phone. “Even at full magnification, the words are kind of blurry. It would be better to see the real thing.”

“Oh, yeah, I can see it now. ‘Hi, I’m the unstable guy who brought a knife to school!’ Let’s not go there.”

She put her hand on Mateo’s arm; the pain behind that joke was all too clear. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay. You should see it. Just—after school, you know?”

Still, he looked shaken and tired. Nadia rubbed his arm more gently, leaned close enough to whisper in his ear. “Was it rough? Dealing with your grandmother? I know how hard that is for you.”

Mateo took a deep breath. “She wasn’t as bad as usual,” he said. “Which means she was awful. But maybe twenty percent less vindictive?”

“I say we call it a win.”

He grinned, then pointed at her phone screen. “We have a translation. Okay, according to the internet, this Latin script means something like ‘the road has three sections.’”

They met each other’s eyes in mutual bafflement. Nadia said, “I was expecting something more ominous.”

“It sounds more like directions from your GPS. ‘In three hundred yards, turn left at the fortress of doom.’”

She only barely managed to hold back a laugh. “Maybe the internet translation is wrong?”