Path of Night Read online

  All that was mortal would soon be lost.

  If the mortal died, Sabrina would miss him.

  “If you command it, I’ll kill him,” Nick told Satan carelessly. “I’m arrogant enough to believe that’s not necessary.”

  The Dark Lord laughed. He admired pride.

  When Agatha and Dorcas collapsed a mine on the mortals, Sabrina’s little mortal love would have died with the rest if Sabrina hadn’t laid a protection charm upon him. Nick wondered if the Dark Lord had visited Agatha in her dreams when Nick resisted.

  Sabrina decided to resurrect the mortal’s brother, because she would do anything for those she loved.

  Nick asked: “Can I watch?”

  The Dark Lord wanted Nick to help Sabrina. Nick wanted to help her too. Everybody was getting what they wanted. There was no harm in it.

  After the dark ritual was complete, Nick found out where the mortal lived. He went to the little green-painted farmhouse and heard the faltering voice of the mortal as he led his brother out onto the porch.

  It was immediately obvious Sabrina’s romantic gesture hadn’t worked out as they’d hoped.

  The mortal’s brother was clearly still dead. The mortal’s soft attempt at a childhood song broke apart in his throat as he stared at the revenant’s empty eyes.

  Nick murmured under his breath: “Back away slowly.”

  Instead, the mortal sat the ravenous undead in a chair and covered it with a blanket. The undead didn’t need blankets!

  “Gotta go to school. Wait for me here, okay?”

  The mortal knelt down by the rocking chair so he could look tenderly up at the dead thing. Nick supposed the mortal was pretending to himself the creature could understand.

  “I love you,” the mortal told that vacant face. “So—so much. Tommy? I won’t let you down. We’ll get through this.”

  He drew the dead thing’s head onto his shoulder. Nick saw the creature scent the mortal’s skin with what would be hunger. Very soon.

  The mortal had no idea.

  I remember, Nick thought. You want them not to be dead so badly, you can’t see that they are. But they are.

  He was sympathetic at the time. This was before Nick got to know the mortal properly and realized the mortal had exclusively awful ideas. Embracing the undead was just the tip of the suicidal-notions iceberg.

  The door of the mortal’s house banged open so hard Nick thought the frosted glass might break. An older mortal stormed onto the porch.

  “Stop your pathetic bleating now!”

  Witch-hunter, Nick thought coldly. Worse.

  He saw the man move in a tight circle around Sabrina’s mortal. The mortal flinched, then tried to range himself protectively in front of the zombie. This father was the kind of man who caged.

  Best to murder everyone on that porch and get Sabrina’s mortal away. Nick started forward, but the mortal said he was walking Sabrina to school.

  “Hope the zombie eats you,” Nick told the witch-hunter father, and followed.

  Once the mortal was out of sight, he sat huddled among the leaves, apparently having trouble breathing.

  Shhh, little mortal. It will be all right, Nick thought. You’re not alone like I was. She loves you. Get up. It’s no good if you don’t get up.

  The mortal did, after a while.

  Nick teleported ahead to Sabrina’s house. Sabrina was standing on her own porch, with her aunt Hilda calling her “my love.” Sabrina’s face was worried as it often was, because living among frail mortals was stressful. Usually Nick wanted to cheer up Sabrina when she looked like that, but the zombie situation had him concerned too.

  When Sabrina saw the mortal make his way up the winding path to her house, she threw herself down the porch steps in his direction. The mortal caught her in his arms and spun her. Sabrina was beaming, her hand tracing the lapel of the mortal’s dumb jacket.

  “You’re all right?” she asked him.

  “Now I’m with you, I am.”

  Sabrina leaned her bright head down to his. “Same.”

  It gave Nick a strange feeling to see Sabrina and the mortal making each other happy even when they were miserable.

  “I’d give all the witch orgies in the world,” Nick told Sabrina later, “to have what you and the mortal have.”

  He meant it. But Sabrina wouldn’t tell him what he had to do to deserve being with her.

  The sorry business ended with the mortal putting his brother in the ground and Sabrina crying. Whenever Sabrina cried, Nick wanted to cry too.

  Sabrina had indulged the mortal too much. He thought he could do any fool thing he wanted. The mortal stayed mad about the necromancy. Nick told him to forgive Sabrina, and hoped the mortal would see reason. The mortal never did. It was nothing but fuss, fuss, fuss. I love crying and upsetting everybody, I love hurting Sabrina, I hate being protected, I hate magic, I hate you!

  The mortal was stupid. Nick was done trying. Satan could kill him, for all Nick cared.

  Then the mortal made his stupidest decision yet. Nick persuaded Sabrina to come for coffee, and they saw the mortal with Sabrina’s friend Roz. Sabrina called the mortal her ex-boyfriend.

  If the mortal chose to fling love away, that was fantastic news for Nick. Sabrina said Nick might be her someone special. She took Nick to an adorable dance at her mortal school where they had funny paper decorations and no entrails hanging up anywhere. The mortal had lost his chance. Nick was the one who got to be with Sabrina.

  Nick’s only remaining problems were Satan and Sabrina’s aunt Hilda.

  Sabrina wished to follow many mortal customs. It was sweet. Nick liked dates. On their best date, Nick found many interesting books, and Sabrina said cute things like: “The store’s closing! Do you want to get locked in overnight?”

  “Wow,” said Nick. “Yes, please.”

  Sabrina seemed worried. Maybe she thought he was asking her to sleep with him. Nick would be delighted, but he remembered the mortal rules about consent, boundaries, and people waiting until they were in love. Nick could wait.

  Nick wanted Sabrina to feel safe with him. Even though she shouldn’t.

  “We can just sleep?” he offered. “Or stay up reading all night!”

  Sabrina’s mouth quirked. “And cuddle?”

  Nick stared at Sabrina’s beautiful hair in alarm. “We can go.”

  Sabrina helped Nick carry his many purchases, so he could still walk her home.

  “I’d better not introduce you to the internet,” she said as they went, laughing.

  The internet sounded like a long, strange book. Apparently there were always new things to read on it.

  “I want to have an internet one day,” said Nick. “I will read the whole thing.”

  Sabrina took his hand. Nick wondered what he’d said to please her and how he could do it again.

  On another day when he teleported into the Spellman house to pick Sabrina up for another date, Nick hoped they were going to the bookstore again. He remembered to teleport to the hall, since Sabrina got funny about him teleporting to her bedroom. He heard Hilda singing and followed the sound to their kitchen.

  Nick stood listening and closed his eyes. It was nice in Sabrina’s house.

  When he opened his eyes, Hilda was staring daggers at him. Nick didn’t step back. He offered Hilda an ingratiating smile.

  “You again,” Hilda muttered.

  “Admit it,” Nick wheedled. “You’re getting to like me.”

  “You’re the fling guy, not the forever guy. Fine. I can accept that.” Hilda shook a spatula in Nick’s direction. “Don’t hurt my girl.”

  “No.” Nick kept his smile in place. “I won’t.”

  “I don’t trust you. Look me in the face and tell me I should.”

  Nick’s gaze dropped.

  They were witches, made for sorcery, not honesty. What kind of witch was Hilda Spellman anyway?

  What happened when the fling guy didn’t want to be flung away?

&
nbsp; He would prove himself. She’d love him. When she found out about Satan, by then she’d see it was for the best. Nick tried to do everything for Sabrina, without question.

  Twice, he failed.

  First Sabrina asked him to avoid the Weird Sisters.

  “Don’t you trust me?” Nick asked, wounded, then remembered with a guilty shock Sabrina was right not to trust him.

  Nick stopped talking to the Weird Sisters.

  He was always trying to make it up to her, and she didn’t even know what he’d done. But Sabrina laughed more now that she was with him, as he’d hoped she would. Nick didn’t know why Sabrina and the mortal had to take everything so seriously. You might as well have fun, even in a terrible world.

  It was worth the constant worry if Sabrina was growing to love him. He’d told her he loved her. He thought she’d say it back, someday soon.

  The second time he failed her, Nick and Sabrina had both been expelled for causing mischief. Nick forgot he owed Sabrina. Without the Academy, he didn’t have a home. He had nowhere to go.

  Sabrina did.

  “Right back to your mortal school,” Nick spat, when she found him in Dorian Gray’s bar. “And your mortal boyfriend.”

  Being cruel was the only way Nick knew how to be unhappy. He snarled at Sabrina about being half mortal and saw her face turn white. She left. Nick knew where she was going.

  He didn’t blame Sabrina. If he’d had somewhere warm and bright, a place where someone might be kind to him, he would have gone.

  But he didn’t.

  Nick stared into his glass, and then drained it. What he had was this.

  When witch-hunters attacked, Nick realized he still had something to lose. He ran to Sabrina.

  Someone else did too. Nick was forced to witness the mortal embrace Sabrina with tender concern.

  Witch-hunters trapped their people in a reconsecrated church, and only Sabrina could go in to save them. And the mortal—what kind of witch-hunter was he!—said he wanted to help.

  Sabrina said, very rightly, that the mortal couldn’t go.

  “You can’t let her go alone,” the mortal snapped at Nick.

  “I don’t let her do anything,” Nick said.

  Sabrina ran off by herself to fight the witch-hunters.

  “If she’s not back in five minutes,” the mortal announced, “I’m going after her.”

  Nick delivered a lecture to the mortal, explaining in detail all the stupid things the mortal did and why he must stop doing them. The mortal stood quietly, finally paying attention.

  As soon as Nick turned his back, the mortal vanished.

  Nick understood too late that when the mortal said You can’t let her go alone, the important word was alone.

  The whole time Nick was talking, that fool wasn’t even listening. He was counting. When the time was up, he went to Sabrina.

  She wouldn’t retreat from a fight. That mortal wouldn’t leave the church without Sabrina. They would both die behind church doors Nick couldn’t open.

  Sabrina saved everyone, almost dying and displaying satanic power to do it. The mortal returned at the head of the rescued witches, Sabrina cradled in his arms.

  At least the mortal looked as desperately worried for Sabrina as Nick felt. It was a small comfort, not to be alone in that feeling.

  When she woke, Sabrina told the mortal, “You’re always there to catch me.”

  Sabrina wanted only one love. The true love. Nick didn’t understand why. It wasn’t like Sabrina only loved one of her aunts, but he understood this: If Sabrina wanted the mortal, Nick was out in the cold.

  “The mortal said you were like Dark Phoenix tonight,” Nick said to Sabrina later. “I don’t know her.”

  Sabrina, drying her hair, answered: “She’s from a comic book.”

  “What is a comic book?”

  “It’s a book where the story is mostly told through pictures.”

  This was so much worse than Nick had believed. “Can he not read?”

  Sabrina claimed the mortal could, but Nick had his suspicions. This was the man Sabrina believed would always catch her? He’d told Sabrina he wanted to be the one to catch her, and she kissed Nick, but she didn’t tell him she loved him.

  Sabrina said always to the mortal. She said I love you to the mortal. She never said anything like that to Nick.

  The next day, everybody in school was talking about the stupid mortal helping to free them.

  “When Sabrina dropped like a stone, I believed it was our end,” Mania said at the next table. “But that witch-hunter untied me from the stake. He carried Sabrina like she was his infernal princess.”

  Elspeth nodded. “I now understand why Sabrina committed all that necromancy.”

  “Tall as a forbidden tree,” sighed Mania. “Makes you want to go climbing.”

  Nick shoved his lunch tray violently away.

  “I looked up at that witch-hunter and thought, who knows, maybe I want to do the will of heaven.”

  Mania and Elspeth giggled naughtily.

  “Ladies, please!” said Nick. “There are ghost children present.”

  His voice made Sabrina look up from her book by Edward Spellman about the profound beauty of mortals. “What’s that, guys?”

  “Nothing, Sabrina!”

  Nick eyed the book with hate. As Sabrina turned her water-creased page, Nick saw the words Mortals have so much to teach us.

  Like what, how to be an idiot?

  “I’m a supportive warlock boyfriend,” announced Nick. “But I can’t help feeling that this isn’t your father’s best work.”

  Sabrina gave him a red-lipped smile. “Complain on Amazon like mortals do.”

  “Teleport to the Amazon River and yell about bad books?” Nick frowned. “So crocodiles know not to read them?”

  Sabrina laughed and kissed him. She had an adorable trick of touching his face and looking at him before they kissed. He’d been with many people and known that as far as they were concerned, Nick could be anyone. It mattered that he was hot or powerful. It didn’t matter that he was Nick.

  Imagine having it matter so much, that it was him, and it was her.

  Sabrina might forgive him for lying, if she loved him. But if she didn’t love him … If she loved someone else …

  Between Satan and the mortal, Nick was having a hard time.

  Sabrina could love people. If she didn’t love Nick, it was because there was something wrong with him.

  It emerged that Sabrina was Satan’s daughter. Satan loved her about as much as Nick’s parents had loved him, which was not at all. And Sabrina still didn’t know what Nick had done.

  Nick teleported to her bedroom one night and found Sabrina with her back to him, studying a drawing of the mortal’s. He put his arm around her, teleporting them to her porch.

  Sabrina turned, hands in fists, then relaxed and leaned against him. In the shadow of her porch, Nick saw the scarlet curve of her smile. She wore red lipstick more often these days. Nick let himself believe the lipstick was for him.

  “I was passing on my wild way through the woods …” Nick began, then confessed: “I wanted to see you.”

  Sabrina made a purring contented sound, like her familiar. “And you wanted to teleport me to such exciting places as my front porch.”

  Nick dropped his face into the curve of her neck. He was tired, trying not to sleep. In his dreams, the Dark Lord would find him.

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “This is all I want. Sorry if I scared you.”

  “You didn’t scare me,” said his fearless girl. “I thought I’d have to fight. But I know you’re on my side.”

  Nick nodded, grateful she couldn’t see his face. He thought this was the worst he would ever feel. He went to hell to wipe away the guilt. To prove to her he was the true love.

  Father Blackwood had forbidden them to read mortal books.

  “Intellectual curiosity is a fine thing,” he told Nick, “but there are limits.”

>   To your intellect? Clearly, Nick thought.

  He’d burned Nick’s Shakespeare, but other mortals had helpfully written books called Crime and Punishment and The Demons. Nick passed off those books as witch tomes.

  There was a quote from a mortal book Nick repeated to himself when they tortured him. Even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists.

  If Sabrina was safe, loving him, Nick could endure hell.

  Now he was fighting through a pit of demons to get to her. She was in hell. How had she—? Why would she—?

  Nick slew demon after demon. He wiped their dark blood from his eyes, and saw Sabrina killing and laughing on high.

  It made Nick smile. He could never love a girl without a little she-wolf in her.

  Too many demons came at them. Nick opened his mouth to warn Sabrina that she must escape.

  Instead, she launched herself off the ledge and levitated over the pit. Wherever her burning gaze rested, there was fire. Demons writhed and exploded into ash.

  Ever since the mortal described this, Nick had wanted to see it for himself. Now she was before him, robed in scarlet and shining.

  Nick was, at last, the one to catch her. She tumbled through the air into his arms, then exclaimed: “Nick?”

  Nick looked down into Sabrina’s brilliant iridescent eyes, the color of dying stars. “Hey, gorgeous.”

  One of the remaining demons lunged toward her with a snarl. Nick turned, shielding her with his body, and knew nothing else.

  * * *

  He woke in a quiet chamber, emerald lights playing across his face. The air felt different, but not different enough to be another dimension. The smell of sulfur was faint, as though hell’s fires still burned, but at a safer distance.

  Nick lay in a soft bed wearing clean clothes. Green light was filtering through a vast mullioned window. Through the filmy curtains surrounding the bed, he saw Sabrina standing at the window, wearing a silver gown. Beyond the glass was an emerald city, towers shimmering with jade light against a strange sky. Smoky grass-green radiance caught in the snow-white curls of Sabrina’s hair, lingering over the curve of her ruby-red lips. Her expression was faraway.