“A deal with Lucifer must be entered into willingly, and yes, something as small as him writing your name for you makes it automatically void. So even though it looked real to you, it never was.”
“Oh no... Oh no...” I was starting to do something terrible.
I was starting to believe her.
“But what you did do willingly was demand he help you get into hell, and contract or no—your passage was secured. After all, the gates are only closed onthisside.” She sighed deeply. “A long game. From the beginning, he was plotting. From the start, he was scheming, and it’s only now that I see his intentions.
“This is why he forced me to be kind to it and treat the both of you the same. This is why I wasn’t allowed to get between the two of you and hurt the creature by forcing you to ignore it. It’s all because Lucifer needed to be sure that when he reclaimed the thing and brought it back where it belonged,youwould risk everything to come after it. Even if it meant chasing it to the depths of hell.”
My tears ran in earnest. Soundless, hiccupping sobs heaved my chest.Why was she saying these things? Why was she speaking about Dora this way? This can’t be my mother. This can’t be the sweet, kind woman who laughed under the covers with us as she read us bedtime stories. She can’t be!
“And as soon as you entered the academy grounds, the plan was set in motion,” she said. “You were raised free of magic, so it was down to me to complete the ritual. But because I’m a demon now, and no longer a witch, the only magic I can cast is darkmagic—and dark magic requires a price. And there is no stronger currency than—”
“Sacrifices.”
“Hatred.”
What did she just say?
“That is what those murders were meant to achieve,” she continued. “Hatred against witches. Hatred against each other. Hatred in all its vile and most violent forms. But what I never wanted is for you to become the focus of that hatred,” she said. “When I knocked you out in the library, I was going to carry you back to your bed, but then that fae boy burst in. I had no choice but to leave you, and it all went wrong.
“But, that’s all in the past now,” she went on. “You’re safe now, and I was able to channel all the hatred from that fae brat’s little witch burning into pure magic. Now we have everything we need to open a window into the past, and discover what spell the foremothers used to close the gates.”
She snapped her fingers and suddenly I was upright and spinning around. Just like that, I was faced with the scene she didn’t want me to see too soon—in case I mightoverreact.
I took a single look, and screamed.
A scream that ravaged my throat and shredded my heart, but did nothing to block out the raving lunatic that used to be my mother.
“Once the gates are open,” she said as she moved around the edge of the pentagram, placing items where she needed them, “hell will unleash on earth, and Lucifer has promised me that the first to die will be the Avos coven,” she gritted, her voice rotted with the same hatred she forced upon Abaddon.
And deep in Abaddon, we found ourselves in a large, bare, stone room. A massive black pentagram dominated the floor. At each end of the five-pointed star, there was a jar of black blood, severed wings, a desiccated heart, and a pair of golden eyes.
“My mother and the only family she ever fucking cared about will pay for killing my husband, snatching me from my daughter, and forcing me to give birth to a beast just to get away from their control.”
I don’t even think she was talking to me anymore, because I was fairly sure that last horrible comment was directed at the young woman lying still in the middle of the pentagram.
Dora.
“Dora,” I screamed uselessly. “Dora, it’s me! I’m here! Wake up! Please, wake up!”
She couldn’t hear me, of course. She probably wouldn’t have heard me even if I wasn’t spelled silent.
Dora looked exactly as she did the night she was taken. The same dress. The same hairstyle. The same butterfly shoes. The same bits of food on that dress, shoes, and on her hair from the last meal we shared together. A meal that ended up all over her when the demons took her in the dining room. It looked like she’d been immediately spelled into a coma, and left to rot for almost two months.
The two months she waited for me to come and rescue her.
“But, you don’t need to be scared,” she told me. “When hell is unleashed, we will be too. Together, we’ll leave this wretched place and be reunited with your father.” She turned a sweet smile toward the ceiling. “He’s in heaven of course, and unlike hell, heaven is not a prison. Those who ascend can always return to a mortal life—albeit through reincarnation.
“But when your father sees that we’re together and walking the earth again, I know he’ll choose to be reincarnated, and I know he’ll choose me, even though I’m a demon now. From there, it’s a simple matter to track down his new body and awaken the memories of his past life. The Avos coven created the spell for that centuries ago, and I’ll teach it to you, baby girl.” Shesmiled at me. “You’ll bring Daddy back, and just like that, we’ll be a family again.”
“Insane.” My whole body trembled. “My gods, she’s insane.”
Maybe she read my lips, because she stepped over her gruesome altar of horrors and came over to pat my cheek. “This is all a shock, I know. You came with such pure and kind intentions. You believed you were saving your sister, but now that you know the truth, you understand that between the three of us—you, me, and your father—being reunited, and the life of that creature, there is no contest. Of course I choose our family.”
“Dora is family!” I shrieked, and startled myself. “I can speak?” I said the words, and my ears heard it. “Finally, I can speak!”
Mom turned away.
