Nadia bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. “I can try.”
“Then okay. Because that memory is one I could live without.”
They didn’t get a chance to try it until after school. For safety’s sake, Mateo didn’t join them; Verlaine had sensibly drawn the line at maybe forgetting how to breathe. They walked toward Swindoll Park, which was more or less back to normal now that the charred remains of the haunted house had been demolished. Verlaine hugged her 1950s satin bomber jacket more tightly around her as she sat on the steps of the bandstand. Nadia stood about a dozen feet away.
“Come on,” Verlaine called. “Let’s get this show on the road. It’s cold out here.”
“I’m so taking you to Chicago some January so you can see what real cold is,” Nadia called back. In truth, she was hesitating—unsure at the last moment.
The key to focusing a spell is choosing the most specific ingredients, while devoting your mind to precisely what you want erased, Nadia reminded herself. So. Hand on garnet charm, ingredients summoned:
Evidence of absence.
Proof of love’s existence.
Proof of love’s death.
She had to go for simple, precise examples of each one. Brief moments that had pricked her like a knife’s point—
Half of her parents’ closet, empty now that her mother’s stuff was gone.
The time she’d played hide-and-seek with three-year-old Cole and simply didn’t bother seeking him, because she was so desperate for some time alone. And then feeling so bad she’d tricked him—only for him to hug her as tight as ever before they went to bed.
Reading that email from her mother’s lawyer, the one where she’d learned Dad actually begged Mom to see their kids, and Mom ignored him—
The flash was subtle, the sort of thing that could seem like a trick of the autumn sunlight. After a moment, Verlaine blinked. “Did you do something?”
“I think so?” Nadia said. “Do you remember your third-grade piano recital?”
Verlaine frowned. “. . . I guess I must have had one.”“You don’t remember?” When Verlaine shook her head no, Nadia clapped her hands together. “Yes. Yes! We did it! Oh, wait.” She froze. “Do you remember how to play the piano at all?”
“Nope.”
Oh, no. She’d gone too far, taken too much. Deflated, Nadia slumped against the nearest tree. “Verlaine—I’m sorry.”
“What are you talking about? I only took piano for two years. I forgot years ago how to do anything besides find middle C. After third grade I never wanted to take lessons anymore.” Verlaine shrugged. “I don’t know why. Hey, were you going to make me forget something?”
“We’re good,” Nadia said with a grin.
In Verlaine’s opinion, the Wikipedia entry on demons needed some serious editing.
It included every single mythology and folklore about demons, whether they were ancient Hebrew “hairy beings,” Greek divine spirits, pre-Islamic lesser gods, or one of those creepy things that climbed inside little kids and made their parents call an exorcist. See also: devil, fiend, ghoul.
She sighed. It wasn’t as though she expected a tab titled Real Demons, which she could click down to for the straight story, but still—there was so little information, and so much of it contradicted itself.
Of course she had checked sources beyond Wikipedia. However, it turned out that searching the internet for “real demons” was basically a shortcut to all the crazy of the world, right there on your computer screen. Verlaine now knew more than she’d ever wanted to know about various death-metal bands, wannabe Satanists, actual Satanists (who sounded much nicer than the wannabes), a fashion label, and several extremely delusional individuals. But she was no closer to knowing any more about the truth of what Asa was, or what he might be capable of.
The only authoritative sources Verlaine had on the supernatural were Nadia, whose word she trusted, and Elizabeth, whose word she didn’t trust at all but whose actions spoke for themselves. Elizabeth had summoned a demon to help her do evil; Nadia said demons were the servants of the One Beneath.
But still, if they didn’t ask to be His servants—if it was something they were created for, or got trapped into—
—if Asa was as much a victim of Elizabeth’s black magic as Verlaine was herself—
She pushed her laptop away, disgruntling her cat, Smuckers, who had been napping on the bed beside her. “Sorry, buddy.”
Why was it so hard to believe that somebody could be destined for evil? Jeremy Prasad had gotten most of the way there on his own, no possession required.
Yet it haunted her. Verlaine couldn’t shake the idea of being forced to serve something so hideous, so hateful that it would burn and crush and kill. Maybe Asa didn’t mind; maybe he enjoyed it. That might be how demons were, at least once they got . . . demonized.
As she sat cross-legged on her quilt, staring down at her glowing laptop screen, Verlaine wondered why this got to her so badly. There was no question that Asa was working for Elizabeth, even that he seemed to enjoy taunting them about it. Why should she care? Her old crush on Jeremy Prasad wasn’t that strong; she’d really only ever liked his body. Guiltily she realized she hadn’t even mourned his death. Well, he wouldn’t have mourned hers.
“Like the word enslaved on its own shouldn’t be enough,” she muttered. Slavery was evil, no matter who was in the shackles.