Oh, right. That’s right. Because I always, unfailingly, screwed things up. I always knifed myself in the back. I was afraid of being happy because no one can be happy forever, and I couldn’t bear the fear of its inevitable loss.
I climbed into Incy’s frigid car in numb misery. Boz and Katy got into the backseat; doors slammed and Incy started the engine. I gazed out the window, imagining that I could see River’s face right in front of me. Her eyes with their wisdom, their love and forgiveness. Their understanding. That’s all she had ever offered me. I’d thrown it back at her—not once but twice.
And Reyn. I’d pushed him away, even as I’d hypocritically lusted after him. Despite his past, he was sincerely trying so hard to be good. And here I was with Incy, bread ’n’ butter. The thought turned my stomach, the alcohol solidifying into a knot of pain. Incy had a bad past, and clearly had zero interest in being good. How had I not known this? Maybe it had been creeping up so slowly for years that I’d been able to avoid admitting it to myself. Or maybe it had happened all at once, in the last two months. I hoped I could talk to Boz about it, the next time I was really sure that Incy couldn’t overhear us.
I leaned my head against the cold window, knowing that I had to plan a new life for myself. Which was about as bleak a thought as I could possibly have.
“Nasty!” Incy’s voice was insistent.
My head jerked upright. “What?” I glanced around, saw that we were making our way out of Winchley. Incy was staring at me, looking upset.
“I asked you why you thought Miss Edna’s was about rape. The people there are offering it. If they say yes, it’s not rape, is it?”
“It still is,” I said, wanting to go back to the hotel, get in my shower, curl up on the floor, and cry for a couple days with hot water sluicing down on me. “They don’t understand what they’re doing.”
“Some of them might not, I grant you,” said Incy, eminently reasonable. “But some of them truly do understand and want to do it anyway. It’s kind of like hypnosis. While you’re joined, you can instill a sense of peace and well-being in them. They feel high afterward.”
“It could kill them,” I said.
“It never does,” said Incy. “We’re always very careful.”
“Who taught you how to do that?” The car’s powerful heater had come on, but I was still trembling.
“Miss Edna,” said Incy, turning down another street.
“Are we headed back uptown?” Boz asked. “Where are we?”
“We’re in my car,” said Incy with exaggerated patience. “It never does kill them. It makes them feel fabulous, and they offer it up freely. How is that rape?”
I was sick of this discussion, so sick of Incy, so anxious to be out of this car and alone somewhere so I could let some of this emotion out. As of tomorrow, I was going to start completely suppressing all emotion again. There was no other way.
“It’s statutory rape,” I said stubbornly, leaning my head against the window again. “It’s just wrong.”
“Wrong!” said Incy, astonished. “Wrong for who?”
“Wrong in general,” I said, feeling sobs start to thicken in my chest, like storm clouds. “It turns out that there actually is a wrong and a right, and it makes a difference which side your decision falls on.”
Incy took his eyes off the road to stare at me in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”
“Some things are right to do; some things are wrong.” I actually had to explain this.
“Like you would know!” Incy said, unconsciously mimicking the words Dray had shouted at me. I was detecting a theme here. “You, who stole from people for decades! You, who’ve left people behind to die while you escaped! This is me you’re lecturing from your pulpit, Nas. Me. I’ve seen you do stuff that would make a cockroach give you a high five! What about that train wreck in India? How many people did you save then? Oh, wait—you were too busy picking their valuables up out of the grass, stuffing them into your pockets!”
“That was then!” I said, burning with the knowledge of how true it all was. Incy could go on for days about the many awful things I’d done. I’d never be able to remember them all, even if I tried for the rest of my life.
Incy laughed shortly, derisively.
Some scathing, defensive retorts came to my lips, but I bit them back. It was pointless to remind him of his own crimes. He was right. I was no one to judge.
“That was then,” I said again lamely. “But I know right from wrong now, and I can’t unknow it.” I could barely speak, full of revulsion for myself, my past. In desperation I closed my eyes. Immediately I saw Reyn’s face, harsh and forbidding, then intent and focused, then flushed with desire as we fused our present and our past with just a kiss.
I’d thrown him away like an old apple core.
“I don’t know about all that,” said Boz, “and this is all interminably boring. But I would definitely rather hang out at a different bar.”
“Me too,” said Katy.
“Me too.” My voice sounded as broken as I felt.
There was silence for a while, though Incy was muttering angrily under his breath. Probably cursing us out as ungrateful traitors. Inside I was writhing in pain, my thoughts ricocheting in panicked hysteria. I was lost; I was alone. I had nothing and no one to help me. Not anymore.
When Incy spoke, his voice was mild, almost disinterested.
“I’m really sorry to hear you all say that,” he said, and flicked his hand sideways, as though shaking off water.
And suddenly I was drowning in darkness.
CHAPTER 23
I couldn’t move. My hands, my feet—all of me weighed a thousand pounds. I could still feel everything, but even my utmost, straining, panicked efforts couldn’t move anything except my eyes.
The world looked like it was smeared with Vaseline. Edges were blurry and indistinct. Lights outside the car were fuzzy halos. Incy seemed to be talking to me from very far away.
I tried to scream, tried to summon an immense noise from deep in my belly, but I was aware of only a high-pitched keening sound. Again I tried to move my arms, my legs, but gravity was much too strong. And of course this reminded me of some of the worst times in my life: The night my parents died, my father’s steward hid me in a neighbor’s wagon, beneath a mound of hay. I hadn’t moved or made a sound for many long hours, out of shock, trauma, the fear of being found. Even when I breathed in warm hay dust, I fought the coughing down. I kept my eyes squeezed tightly shut, as if the world couldn’t see me if I couldn’t see it. Covered by the heavy weight of suffocating hay, I’d had hours to vividly relive the deaths of my parents, my brothers and sisters. Over and over I had seen Eydís’s head topple off her shoulders and fall to the ground.
Other times, during raids by the Butcher of Winter or other tribes, I’d hidden up in trees, down in root cellars, in the special hidey-holes I’d made sure to have until the late sixteen hundreds, when raiders weren’t part of my world anymore. For hours I’d clung to tree branches, my skirts tucked up under me, trying not to shake a single leaf, knock loose a single acorn or pinecone. I’d stayed silent and still until my muscles screamed in agony, until I was shaking with cold and my jaw ached from keeping my teeth clenched. When I’d finally been able to move, long after they’d gone, my body had been so stiff that I couldn’t climb down. I’d fallen, hitting several branches and then landing so heavily on my shoulder that my collarbone had snapped.
Later I’d found a neighbor who’d hidden in a hay rack, which had been torched with him in it. Another neighbor had hidden in a barrel that had been axed open as the raiders looked for ale. The neighbor had been axed open, too. I’d been the lucky one, for I was still alive, broken collarbone or no.
All my memories of having to be still, silent, all those memories that were associated with terror and pain and dread—they came back and whirled around me like tumbleweeds of barbed wire, like shrieking banshees, as I sat petrified and immobilized in Incy’s
car. Oh goddess, help me. Oh God oh God oh God…
Next to me, Incy laughed. He swiveled to look at Boz and Katy in the backseat.
“There! All of you are nicely cocooned, right?” He laughed again. “Even better, you’ve shut up. No more of your whining and yapping and self-righteous mewling. Fantastic!” He turned to me. “See what I can do when others give me their power? I become very, very powerful myself.”
Muffled sounds came from the backseat. Incy had obviously put some kind of binding spell on all of us. How did he know how to do that? I wondered with rising hysteria. Had the mysterious Miss Edna taught him this, too? I tried to grit my teeth, to lift one finger using all my strength, and screamed inside when nothing happened.
Incy let out a sigh. We’d left the main streets and were now on a smaller road that wasn’t lit. Holy Mother, where was he taking us? This couldn’t be happening. In all my fears of Incy I’d never imagined things coming to this, never truly believed that he would turn on me, hurt me.
I tried to say, “Incy, you love me!” but it was like being encased in firm jelly and I couldn’t get out any sound, couldn’t move my jaw.
“You know, I really tried, Nasty,” Incy said. “I really tried. This is all your fault. You brought this on yourself, and you know it. This isn’t how I wanted it. I didn’t want you dead. I wanted you by my side, bread ’n’ butter, like the old days. The two of us, ruling equally.”
My eyes widened. Ruling? Ruling what? Wait—dead? Dead?
Incy reached across and took my hand, which felt like it had been dipped in Novocain—I could sense it, but it was numb.
“I’ve tried so hard, for so long,” he said. “I did everything you wanted. I was there for you. I supported whatever you wanted to do. But it was never enough, was it? You should have been thanking me. You should have been grateful. Instead you just left, with no word. With no word!” He shouted the last part, painfully loud inside the car, and slammed his hands on the steering wheel. “You left me!” he shouted. “How dare you! How dare you! You ran away! I had to ask people! No one knew where you were! Do you know how humiliating that was? Everyone was surprised that I, your other half, didn’t know where you were!”
I had thought of him as my best friend, my other half. It had seemed like a good thing. Now I saw it as I was a building, and he was poison ivy covering the building, blocking the windows, creeping inside. Again I struggled, my arms trying to push against ropes that weren’t there. Maybe his spell had lessened, or he hadn’t done it right, or it would wear off…. No. I tried to scream and barely got a tiny unnhh sound out. I was drowning, drowning in a cocoon of dark magick.
“And you,” Incy went on, pointing his finger at me, as he had done in the hotel room. Had that been tonight? Just tonight, earlier? “You have all this lovely power. Did you offer to share it with me? No. You ran away and gave it to strangers! You threw it all at those laughable puritans! And they don’t even care about you! Not like I do!”
I discovered my eyes were still capable of tears. They had cared about me, at River’s Edge. They had. I’d given them nothing in return. Had I ever even said thank you? Once? I couldn’t remember. My eyes burned. All of Solis’s words about consequences, about cause and effect, came tumbling into my brain. This was the universe dropping an anvil on my head and shouting, “You made the wrong effing choices, you colossal idiot!” Because none of the previous hints had worked.
Incy wanted my power. He wanted more power than a regular person could give. Just like in my dreams, my visions.
Why was I—why was I wasting time wallowing in self-pity? My brain suddenly cleared, my shrieking panic temporarily held off. I would deal with the unending regret and despair later. Right now I had to save my ass, if only so I could go to River’s Edge, apologize for being me, and then hide in a cave for the rest of eternity.
I concentrated. I focused on dampening the white-knuckled terror rising in me. Think, Nastasya, think. I remembered all the boring meditation lessons foisted on me. I inhaled slowly, one, two, three, four. Those four seconds felt endless. Adrenaline lit my brain as I exhaled slowly, one, two, three, four. And again. Pull the air into your belly, Anne had said. Inhale and exhale only through your nose. Breathe in calmness, breathe out external distractions. Breathe. And again.
My jaw felt looser. “I don’t have any power,” I managed to mumble almost incoherently.
Incy laughed, throwing his head back. Then his face contorted and he swung at me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t duck. He slammed his fist into the seat right by my head, making my head bounce. “Don’t lie to me!” he screamed in my face. “You keep lying to me!” His face was ugly, splotched with red. Suddenly he leaned over and yanked on the scarf around my neck. I felt so enveloped that I was shocked when he managed to touch me. He tugged on it several times and got it off my neck. Rolling down his window, he threw it out into the night. My scarf, my protection… now I was completely bat-shit freaking.
Oh God. Breathe. Breathe. Slowly. In, two, three, four.
Incy was driving crazily, speeding down the dark road. The car kept slipping on the falling snow. If we wrecked, Boz, Katy, and I would be trapped, unable to move. If he flipped the car and the gas tank exploded, we would burn and burn, with so much pain that we would lose our minds. But not die.
Incy roughly pushed his hand beneath my collar, his fingers easily finding my scar with its raised edges. “Do you think I’m stupid?” he shouted. “I know who you are! I know what you are! Did you think I couldn’t add it all up? I’m! Not! Stupid!” He banged on the steering wheel with each word, and the car zigzagged, making my stomach roil.
He knew? About my family, my heritage? How? For how long? Had he stayed with me only to try to benefit from it? The thought was crushing, deepening my sadness and disillusionment about all that Incy and I had been to each other. So Incy knew I was the only heir to the House of Úlfur the Wolf. My power was supposedly immense and ancient. Incy was going to take it from me.
“You’re a selfish bitch!” Incy said. “But I welcomed you back with open arms. You didn’t deserve it, not after what you did. But I took you back.” He looked at me with a cold malevolence, and the car skidded again.
I’d never felt so powerless, which was ironic, since he was doing this to get my power. I had no doubt he had already mapped out how. Innocencio was going to wrest my family’s power from me, and unlike me, he had plans for it. Look at what he was able to do just by stealing power from regular people. What would he do with a power so big, so strong? I’d done nothing with it besides try to flip Nell out. I had done nothing with my legacy, my potential, my heritage. Now I was about to lose any chance to.
I had to get out of this, had to come to terms with who I was and what I could do, or I would never do anything else again. This knowledge settled on me like a shroud, and I almost wept with desperation.
Is there a manual somewhere that lists abandoned ware-houses suitable for crazed maniacs to take victims to? On TV, in movies and books, there always seems to be one handy where the axe murderer of the week can hole up and do his dastardly deeds.
Incy apparently had that manual. His was, I think, on the very outskirts of Boston, past Quincy, on a spit of industrial land that jutted out into the ocean. He pulled the Caddy onto a loading dock and got out, leaving the car’s headlights on. As soon as he left the car, I struggled again, trying to squirm, then relax, then squirm again to break free of this goddamn holding spell. I didn’t know how Boz and Katy were doing. I hadn’t heard anything from them, and I couldn’t turn to check.
I watched as Incy jumped up on a platform and pulled open a metal sliding door that led into a vast darkness. Looking excited and determined, he came back to the car and yanked open the side door.
“You first,” he said grimly. I heard rustling sounds and felt someone’s legs hit the back of my seat. It wasn’t until Incy had hauled Boz out onto the gravel and dragged him past me that I could see him. Boz’s face was white
and wet with sweat. His eyes were half closed, unfocused, his mouth hanging open slackly. Incy put his shoulder under one of Boz’s arms and walked him up the cement ramp to the open door. Boz’s feet scrabbled clumsily on the ground; an onlooker might assume he was completely wasted. Incy pulled Boz into the warehouse, right into the darkness, and my throat ached with sobs. Incy had brought us here to die. I didn’t know why he was going to include Boz and Katy in this scene—it was aimed at me. But their deaths would be on my hands as well.
My brain was locked in a dull panic. I was trying to remember any magickal thing I’d ever been taught, from how to keep flies away to how to help onions grow, hoping that something useful would hit me. My thoughts were random, disorganized, pinging slowly from one side to another like atoms in a supercooled matrix. I heard a quiet huffing sound from the backseat, as if Katy was trying to cry or was having trouble breathing.
Innocencio was gone for ages, I don’t know how long, and then he came back for Katy.
He grabbed her and pulled her out of the car, handling her more easily than Boz. She slumped like a stringless puppet over his arm, looking unconscious, bloodless. It occurred to me that Incy was probably drawing power from Boz and Katy right now. And it was hurting them. Maybe even killing them. He was using them to keep us all bound, so that he’d be able to get my much greater store of power.
Eventually he came back for me, his third hostage. I wanted to kick him, punch him, scream like a harpy, but the little I’d said before had taken herculean effort. Think, Nas. I had to harness whatever mental and magickal energy I had for the brilliant escape plan that I was sure was going to pop, fully formed, into my fogged brain at any second.
“Tsk, tsk.” Incy looked regretful as he opened my car door. I was encased in a magickal spider’s web, a deadened cocoon of numb helplessness. He unclipped my seat belt and pulled me out of the car as if I was deadweight.
“Incy,” I murmured, struggling to get my feet under me as he hauled me up the ramp.