Her father sat frozen beside Nela, and suddenly she was terrified, because how could her father not be tried as accessory? He must have seen the tattoos. He’d told the Brotherhood he shared a bed with her mother. At some point he must have seen her naked.
A satisfied smile curled the lips of the prosecutor. “I think this is all the proof we need to put Mrs. Vogel to trial, your Honor.”
“I agree,” the judge said, then he turned his attention to Nela’s mother who was still bowed forward. “Mrs. Vogel, you will be put to trial. The Brotherhood will determine the date.”
She straightened. “I understand. Thank you.”
The prosecutor inclined his head before fixing a stony gaze on Nela and her father. “Mr. Vogel, would you be so kind to explain to me and the judge how you could not have known about your wife’s breach of the law? Wouldn’t a husband notice if his wife’s skin was covered in ink from head to toe?” His voice and expression were overly polite. Nela’s mother turned her head, arms clutching her cut shirt to her chest.
Her father slowly rose to his feet, his hands clasped in front of him. “I’m as shocked by this revelation as you are.” What? Nela stared at him incredulously. “I have to admit I didn’t quite say the truth during my questioning. My wife and I have been separated for a while. Our views of certain things were too different, but we decided to keep our separation a secret. We pretended to be a couple for our child’s sake.”
Nela’s blood seemed to turn to ice at his speech. He was lying, had to be. Her mother and he had been happy together. They’d never really fought like people did who separated. He was doing this to save his own hide. “Neither I, nor my daughter Nela knew of my wife’s actions.”
“You didn’t? It’s hard to believe,” the prosecutor said.
Her father nodded his head in understanding. “That’s only to be expected. But I can assure you that my daughter and I believe in the Brotherhood. We would never break the law. I’d like to bare my back as proof of the truthfulness of my words, if you’d allow me to do so.” He bent his head in a show of respect.
The judge exchanged a glance with the prosecutor, then said. “Go ahead.”
Her father removed his coat and held it out to Nela. She took it from him with a glare. He averted his eyes quickly and began unbuttoning his white shirt. He peeled it off his body and folded it before laying it on top of the coat on Nela’s lap. Nela knew how his skin would look even before she saw his back. His tattoo was as it had been when he first got it. It hadn’t spread an inch. He had never practiced magic. Nela clenched her fists beneath her father’s coat, glaring at his pale back and the unchanged tattoo.
“As you can see,” he said in a deferent tone. “My wife is the only member of our family who doesn’t abide by the Brotherhood’s laws.” Nela didn’t think she could despise anyone more than she did her father in that moment. How could he talk like that? How could he betray her mother?
The prosecutor’s eyes narrowed on her but the judge seemed satisfied with her father’s display. He inclined his head and her father put his clothes back on. Nela risked a glimpse at her mother. She didn’t look angry or shocked. If anything she looked relieved. How could she stay silent? She gave Nela a meaningful look before the guard took her arm and led her out. Nela jumped up, wanting to talk to her but her father put a hand on her shoulder. “We should head home now.”
Nela resisted the urge to scream at him. The prosecutor was still watching them like a hawk. She waited until they were outside, the tower long behind them when she whirled on him. “How could you say all those things?”
“I did what I had to do. I couldn’t let them see your back, could I?”
Nela froze. How had he found out about her meetings with Darko? “What do you mean?”
“You healed that boy, don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten. You have to be careful, Nela. They’ll be watching us.”
Chapter 20
Guilt had been Darko’s constant companion since he’d kissed Nela. Actually it had started before then. He’d been spending too much time with her. He stepped up to the shoulder-high brick wall and swung himself over it into the Melaten cemetery, landing on the soft grass on the other side. The cemetery closed at 6pm, so he rarely got the chance to enter the grounds through one of the gates. A guard patrolled the area in front of the main entrance most nights. He made his way toward his sister’s grave and knelt down in front of the gravestone, closing his eyes. For the first time he didn’t know what to tell his sister. Nela was on his mind and that was the one topic he didn’t want to think about when he was with his sister.
He sighed. He needed to stop acting like an idiot and get his emotions under control. Whatever was going on between him and Nela was doomed. Soon his Master would use her to summon the demon and then she’d be gone.
Doubt hit him. Could he let the Master kill her? She didn’t deserve to die, but it was the only way to get his sister back. He reached out and touched her cold gravestone, needing a reminder why he was doing what his Master asked of him. The candle flickered in its red glass prison, casting eerie shadows on his sister’s name. She’d died because of him, because of what he was, because he didn’t take better care of her. He couldn’t let Nela get in the way of saving his sister. He owed her.
His cellphone buzzed in his coat, breaking the silence of the cemetery. He pulled it out but he didn’t need to look at it to know who it was from. Nela was the only one who sent him messages. He clicked on the tiny envelope on the screen.
Can you come over? Had a hard day.
Their last two meetings they’d spent talking. He needed to steer their interaction back to magic classes. He glanced at his sister’s grave. Behind it dozens of candles glowed red, each representing a lost life. In the blackness of night they appeared like the menacing eyes of monsters. Darko shook his head, banishing the crazy thought, before he cast another quick glance at the phone in his hand. He’d been here for less than ten minutes when only a few weeks ago he spent almost every night at her side. His conscience told him he should stay here, but he wanted to see Nela, wanted to hear her voice, see her face. It made him feel not quite so empty inside. Sometimes being around her made him believe that he had a chance at having a normal life. A life without death and blood and hatred.
Pushing down his guilt, he stood. He’d have time to make it up to his sister for the rest of their lives once the Master had brought her back, but his time with Nela was limited. He drew the shadows to himself. They were always plenty in the cemetery as they should be in a place of sorrow. When the shadows had erased his surroundings, he reached out for Nela, for her room, and eventually he found the door she’d opened for him. It was stronger than last time. He’d given her a flask with holy water last time they’d seen each other. He was ripped away from the ground and step by step Nela’s room materialized around him.
A smile tugged at his lips when he noticed that the stuffed animals had disappeared from the board above her bed. He’d thought it was cute how she’d blushed when he’d stared at them the first time he appeared in her room. And yet at the same time, a crueler part of him had envied her, maybe even hated her a little, for having those precious parts of her childhood around her. His childhood memories were consumed by fire and hatred, and no matter how hard he tried to focus on the good, the happy, the horrors always caught up.
He hadn’t been able to take a single thing from his family home with him, not a single photo, or family heirloom. Nothing. After he’d fled from the lake with his sister, he’d found his home burnt down to the ground. There was nothing left to salvage.
His smile disappeared when he laid eyes on Nela’s pale face. He stepped out of the pentagram and she pressed herself against his chest. He should have pushed her away as he’d promised himself at his sister’s grave, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. And not because he didn’t want to hurt her, his motives were altogether selfish. It felt good to have her in his arms, to smell her vanilla shampo
o, to run his hands through her silky hair shimmering in the dim light of her bedside lamp. It reminded him that there was still good in the world. “What happened, Nela?” It was scary how easy her name rolled off his tongue. As if he’d been saying it for years.
She lifted her face and stared at him. She wasn’t crying, not even close. There was a fire in her eyes. He twirled a strand of her hair around his finger, mesmerized by the way it glowed in the light. “I was at the Witch Tower today, remember?”
He’d forgotten that she had had a visit scheduled with her mother. “It was bad?” He’d only seen the Witch Tower from outside. He knew if he ever set foot inside, he wouldn’t leave alive.
“She’s lost weight.”
“I hear they give the prisoners only clear broth and day old bread.” Nela stared at him in horror and he quickly shut his mouth. He wasn’t used to sugarcoating things. “Sorry. That wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I’d rather have you tell me the truth. It’s bad enough that my father keeps twisting the truth like a rubber band.” He raised his eyebrows. She sighed and started telling him about the hearing.
“So they’re already changing the laws.”
“Yeah, it seems so.” She pulled away and began pacing back and forth in the small space that wasn’t occupied by her desk, bed or wardrobe. “I’m so angry at my father.”
“Maybe he was just trying to protect you. They could have asked to see your back and then you would have been in trouble.”
“You don’t know him. He was probably trying to save himself.”
“Even if he tried to save himself as much as you, it makes sense. There’s no reason why you both should risk ending up in the Witch Tower as well.”
“Are you on his side or what?”
He raised his hands in an appeasing gesture. She was on edge tonight. “Hey, I’m just trying to see this from different angles. He’s still your family, isn’t he?”
“He is,” she said, slumping onto her desk chair. “It’s not that I don’t love him, but sometimes I don’t get him. How could he talk like that in front of my mother? I don’t even want to think about how that made her feel. She must think we abandoned her.”
“She doesn’t think that,” Darko said, perching on the edge of the desk. “Just imagine how much worse she would feel if you or your father would be sent to prison because of her.”
“It’s not her fault,” Nela protested.
“She practiced magic and she got caught. She’ll blame herself. Wouldn’t you?”
Nela leaned forward and rested her head on his lap. He tensed briefly, then started stroking her hair again. If the Master could see him now! “You’re right. She looked relieved after my father had showed his back to the judge and the prosecutor.” She let out a small laugh. “I knew you’d talk sense into me,” she whispered, her breath hot on his legs and incredibly distracting. He’d been with a woman before but that had been more than six months ago and had had nothing to do with feelings. Mikael had introduced him to a witch who was several years older than him and he’d found distraction in her arms on a few occasions. But this was different somehow. His body desired her as much as his mind did, and that scared him. He could control his body, and it was much easier to still a physical craving than one of the mind.
His fingers trailed down her neck, following the gentle bumps of her spine. Goose-bumps followed his touch. He watched it in fascination. Slowly she raised her head from his lap and watched him with half-closed eyes, her lips slightly parted. He captured her mouth in a kiss. His entire body felt aflame with want, but something in her eyes stopped him from taking it further. They were filled with trust. Trust in him. A wave of disgust washed over him and he quickly pulled back. Confusion clouded her expression. “What’s wrong? Did I do something wrong?” She sat up, removing her warmth from him.
He averted his eyes. “No,” he said hoarsely. “I forgot that I’m supposed to meet my Master tonight. He doesn’t like it if I’m late.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointment plain on her face. “Okay.”
He rose to his feet. “Will you be alright?”
She nodded dazedly. “Sure. It’s not like the Brotherhood will climb through my window and kidnap me.”
He attempted a smile, then bent down for a quick kiss before he stepped into the pentagram and left.
***
He waited a long time in the antechamber, staring at the door that led to his Master’s laboratory. In all the years since his sister’s death only one goal had propelled him forward: to bring her back, and he still wanted that more than anything, but since he’d met Nela he wasn’t sure if their path was the right one. Could he sacrifice Nela? She trusted him. She gave him brief moments of happiness he knew he didn’t deserve.
His gaze zoomed in on the small holes from the woodworms that littered the lab door. The same was happening to his resolve. With every second he spent with Nela, small holes and rips appeared in his determination to reach his goal no matter the cost.
The door was ripped open and his Master’s pale and wrinkled face glared at him. “What are you doing standing there like you’re lost?”
Lost. Yes, that was probably what he was, only not in the way the Master meant it.
“I came to talk to you about my sister’s resurrection and the ritual.”
“Again?” The Master said in annoyance. He shuffled into his lab, his back bent. In the last few weeks, he’d been buckling under his age more and more.
The glowing lines between the beating hearts in the jars and Master Valentine had dimmed and several hearts had crumpled into blackened heaps in their prisons. The process was speeding up. “So what exactly do you want to discuss?” Master Valentine asked, leaning against his lab table.
“I was just wondering,” Darko began. The Master made a sound of disgust, but Darko kept talking, “if there isn’t another way to increase your power than to summon a demon? What if you can’t control it? What if it kills you and then causes havoc in the city?”
The Master’s face twisted with anger. “Don’t pretend you’re worried about this city and its people. You couldn’t care less if the demon burnt it and every miserable human down. You want the girl for yourself. You don’t want to give her up. I can control that demon, but can you control your dangerous emotions for the necromancer?”
Darko didn’t try to deny that he wanted Nela in his life. But the Master got it wrong; this wasn’t just about not wanting to give her up. He didn’t want her to get hurt. That wasn’t entirely selfish. “We could use her powers in other ways if we let her live and tried to summon a demon in some other way.”
“Listen well, Darko, because I won’t repeat myself. The ritual needs a necromancer. Beyond that the girl is of no use for me. You will have to get your emotions under control if you ever want to see your sister again. I would forbid you from seeing her again until Summer Solstice if she didn’t have to enter the pentagram of her own free will. You already have her trust, so I’m confident that she’ll follow you anywhere. Just make sure to keep it that way and get rid of your own silly entanglement.”
Darko knew there was no use in trying to change his Master’s mind. He’d known from the start. If there were another way to give the Master the power he needed, then they would have done it long ago. Their only chance was Nela. For his sister’s fake, he would have to give Nela up. But not yet.
Chapter 21
Nela had been staring at the countdown on the screen for almost one hour, her arms wrapped around her legs which were pressed against her chest like a shield between herself and whatever would happen on TV. Her father wasn’t sitting on the sofa with her, instead he hovered somewhere to her left.
She tensed as the last few seconds counted down and the Chamber of the Joined Council appeared on the screen. Cushioned chairs were positioned in half circles around a podium with a speaker’s desk. The Council consisted to equal parts of members of the Broth
erhood, church representatives and politicians as representatives of the people. In the beginning after the treaty a quarter of the latter had been witches or wizards but after several reforms only four of her kind remained, which was only ten percent of the politicians.
Nela tensed as Grand Master Claudius in his long white frock walked up to the speaker’s desk and faced the Joined Council. It had been years since the Grand Master had officially addressed the council in a live broadcast. There hadn’t been any information about the nature of his talk beforehand, but Nela had a feeling it was connected to the murders of Wicca members. Of course none of the humans even knew the victims were witchcraft supporters.
Grand Master Claudius’s face morphed into an indulgent smile before he finally began his speech. It was worse than anything Nela could have suspected. He was actually trying to convince the Joined Council to abolish the treaty that had guaranteed peace between humans and her kind for over sixty years. She heard her father’s sharp intake of breath, but didn’t glance his way, too busy trying to gauge the reaction of the council members whenever the cameras zoomed in on their faces.
The forty members of the Brotherhood were nodding along with their Grand Master’s words, their faces alight with fervor and conviction. The representatives of the Catholic and the Evangelic church didn’t show their support of his demands quite as openly, but many of the Catholic priests gave the occasional nod. That was to be expected. After all, the Brotherhood had close connections to the Catholic church and even used their chapels for their own celebrations and the Markings of Nela’s kind. The twenty members of the Evangelic church even dared to whisper among themselves during the Grand Master’s speech. There weren’t Jews or Muslims on the council though they made up a small but not insignificant part of the population. Since Nela wasn’t entirely sure about their views regarding her kind – they kept their opinions to themselves as not to attract the ire of the Brotherhood – she couldn’t say if that was a disadvantage or not.