That was weird—Mateo didn’t usually think of Kendall as being that bad. Yeah, she was as dumb as a box of hair, and about equally sensitive, but it wasn’t like she went out of her way to be mean to anyone. Well, anyone except Jinnie, but those two hated each other and Jinnie
was
one of the jerks.
And Kendall was also mean to Verlaine.
Come to think of it, everybody who didn’t ignore Verlaine was mean to her, even the people who weren’t mean to anyone else. Mateo knew he’d always ignored her; Gage had, too. Why had he ignored someone who was—now that he thought about it—actually great? It didn’t make any sense.
Before he could really think about it, though, Nadia said, “The night before Halloween, huh?”
The night before disaster struck Captive’s Sound if they didn’t do something to stop it—yeah, not the ideal time for going out. “Are we, um, busy?”
But Nadia surprised him. “Who knows? If we aren’t—it might be good to take our minds off everything for a couple hours.”
He could see that. In fact, if Elizabeth was now watching Nadia so closely that she could pounce at any moment, going out might be the only way to throw her off. “So you’ll come with me?”
Nadia’s eyes met his, and he realized he’d just asked her out for the first time. It wasn’t that he hadn’t meant to ask her sometime; they’d become so close, so fast, that it was hard for him to remember that they hadn’t been out before. That he hadn’t even kissed her yet—
She hesitated. That moment in her attic, when he’d thought they might—Mateo had wondered whether she was holding back then but had decided he’d imagined it. Maybe he hadn’t.
But Nadia nodded. “Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “I’ll come.”
“In case anybody remembers I’m still here, I’ll come, too,” Verlaine said.
“Definitely. Come on along.” Gage gave them finger guns, trying to be deliberately dorky so it would be ironic but really just kind of being dorky, before strolling off to invite more people.
Verlaine took her sandwich up. “I like that guy.”
“He’s okay.” Mateo couldn’t look away from Nadia for long. “Yeah, Gage is great.”
Which he was. But Mateo wasn’t thinking about anything but the fact that Nadia had said yes.
The warmth of that moment stayed with him throughout the afternoon. Forget trying to concentrate on classes. Even the sickening haze of magic that clung to so much of Captive’s Sound didn’t have much hold on him today. He’d spent the last couple of months being either scared or furious; this was the first time he’d truly felt happy. And if he felt like that only knowing that Nadia was going to the party with him, what would it be like when they were together?
Less than a week—
Oh, crap. Chemistry lab
.
Walking by that place put the damper on his good mood. He couldn’t think of why, exactly, but lately chem lab gave him that creepy feeling like there were eyes watching him from behind, or as though he’d heard an odd sound in the house while showering alone: watchful, jittery, tense.
But it got a whole lot worse when Elizabeth walked into the hall.
She was right next to the Piranha, who didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. To her, Elizabeth probably looked the way Mateo had always thought: clean-scrubbed and natural, with fair freckled skin and chestnut curls.
Now he saw her for herself, a creature thick with something gold and febrile that rippled down her like so many snakes. The glow around her was brilliant, almost blinding, and yet there was nothing beautiful about it.
“Thanks for the extra-credit work,” Elizabeth said sweetly.
“No prob.” The Piranha grinned at her like an idiot—the same way Mateo used to grin at her himself. “I only wish I had more students as motivated as you!”
As the Piranha wandered off toward the teachers’ lounge, Elizabeth began walking toward him. “Mateo.” Her voice was so warm and sugary. Like honey. It disgusted him now. “Where have you been hiding lately?”
He’d kept himself from shrinking away, hadn’t revealed that he could see her true form. But Mateo knew he couldn’t keep up the lie one second more. After what had happened to Nadia, it was impossible to think that anything he did could put her in more danger; Nadia was already in as much danger as she could be.
And just once, he wanted Elizabeth to hear what he thought of her.
He said only, “I know what you are.”
She paused, then tilted her head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“I know what you are.”
Mateo’s hands balled into fists. He would never, ever hit a woman, but Elizabeth didn’t even count as a woman any longer. “You don’t get any more of my dreams. You don’t get to pretend we’re best friends any longer. Keep your fake memories and your fake smile to yourself from now on, okay? Don’t come near me again, or I swear to God, no matter how much magic you’ve got, I’ll find a way to hurt you. Do you understand me?”
Elizabeth didn’t protest. She didn’t ask what he was talking about. But she didn’t lash out, either. She simply stood up straight—less like the sweet girl who had played at being his friend and more like an equal. Why had he never noticed before how tall she was? She could look him squarely in the eyes. “It’s not worth making you forget,” she said. “I’m bored with it.”
Then she walked away, as smoothly and calmly as ever.
It wasn’t the epic revenge he’d dreamed of. Maybe that would have to wait for Halloween night.
But at least he never had to pretend to be Elizabeth Pike’s friend ever again.
Nadia Caldani had broken one of the First Laws. She had told a man about magic.
Elizabeth was shocked—and she had for centuries believed herself to be beyond the reach of shock any longer. Even she, who had broken so many of the First Laws, had never broken that one. And a young girl like Nadia had?
She must have recognized the curse
, Elizabeth realized as she headed home.
Which I should have anticipated she would do
.
That was no reason to assume that Nadia would then go so far as to tell a male about the Craft. No witch properly schooled would ever have made such an assumption … or done such a thing without a compelling reason. Abandoned by her mother and teacher she might have been, but Nadia would have learned this rule from the very first.
Then again—Mateo had stopped telling Elizabeth about his dreams. Nadia had taken away Elizabeth’s window into the future, which at this point was more a moral victory than a real one. But still, that could be her motivation.
Was it reason enough to tell him about the Craft? It wouldn’t be for most witches. But Nadia was apparently far more ruthless than Elizabeth had realized. Mere girl though she was, primitive though her magical skills might be … she was a fighter. A worthy opponent.
Gulping down the last of her water, Elizabeth tossed the bottle onto the floor amid the shards of broken glass. She made her way through her home to the bright light of her stove, by now the only heat in a very cold house. Neither heat nor cold mattered much to her any longer, but some spells worked better by the light of this unearthly fire.
First she went to the ancient, half-rotted chest of drawers leaning against the far wall. Slowly she pried open a small drawer she hadn’t gone into for a decade, not since Lauren Cabot had committed suicide.
There, amid the dust and stained wood, was a human finger bone, yellow with age. This she had possessed even longer than her immortality. George Cabot, the first of his family she had known, the first to serve her: This was all that remained of him. It was all she needed to keep the curse going forever.
Elizabeth’s first impulse was to crush it. Mateo Perez would never again share his dreams with her; that made the curse useless. He would only have been able to assist her for another few days at the most anyway, and had already done his last and greatest service by showing her how dangerous Nadia had the potential to be … by showing her that many of her plans, in the future, would be dedicated to Nadia’s destruction. So why not end the curse?
But no. The curse on the Cabots was part of the magic that underlay all her works; by now it was as much a part of Captive’s Sound as the beach or the sea. It would be foolish to disrupt that so profoundly, so close to her goal. No, that curse would die only with her.
You could give him a few days to live as an ordinary human
, Asa suggested.
A small gift to remember you by
.
“You think I care about mercy, beast?” Elizabeth said as she placed the bone back in its drawer.
I know you better than that
.
Ignoring the demon’s japes, Elizabeth crossed the room to where a metal hook hung on one wall. If Nadia truly represented some sort of threat, the very first thing to do was to take away Nadia’s Steadfast.
Elizabeth’s fingers closed around Verlaine’s bracelet.
Dear Mr. Laughton and Mr. McFadden,
Congratulations! You have won an all-expenses-paid cruise to beautiful Jamaica. The boat leaves on Friday, October 30—
Verlaine paused at her laptop, not sure this sounded right. Wouldn’t people call them if the cruise were leaving so soon? She couldn’t disguise her voice on the phone, though, and she didn’t think either Nadia or Mateo could really make themselves sound like adults if they made the call for her. Maybe that guy Gage, whose voice was deep—but they weren’t friends yet. He wasn’t somebody she could ask for a favor like this. Could Mateo ask him, though? Once her dads believed they’d won the cruise, the rest was easy. Her parents had taken a huge life-insurance policy when she was born, meaning that Verlaine had way more money than most people at Rodman, including the teachers. She drove the land yacht and thrifted her clothes and lived off her allowance because that money was for college—but to save her dads’ lives, she’d dip into it and buy them the nicest cruise anybody ever took.
Besides, if they didn’t manage to stop Elizabeth, chances were she wouldn’t make it to college anyway—
She nibbled again at her fingernail. Her nails were starting to look like crap. Tonight she’d paint them again—that would stop her from biting them—but then she’d have to do something else to calm her nerves.
If only she could be sure Uncle Dave and Uncle Gary would be safe on Halloween. Then the rest wouldn’t matter. She could concentrate then.
Determined, Verlaine decided to go ahead and book the cruise. Later she’d call Mateo and see what he thought about the plan to get Gage on board. She surfed over to a travel site—then froze.
The pain arced up through her, so sharp that she first thought there was a knife hidden in the keyboard, one that had snapped up to stab her. That was crazy, but that was how it felt. But a split second later, Verlaine saw the white forks of electricity lancing up from the keyboard, searing her hands so that she thought she could see bone.
All she could hear was some high-pitched, hoarse sound all around her—was that her screaming? Her body seemed to twist away from her, one direction and then the other, jerking around wildly while her mind slowed down, second by second.
I’m being electrocuted
, she thought, almost dully.
Then something flung her back from the computer, into the far wall, and she couldn’t see anymore, couldn’t even feel.
AROUND DINNERTIME, DAD ONCE AGAIN PROPOSED THAT
they visit La Catrina. “Since Mateo is no longer somebody we’re trying to avoid,” he said, giving Nadia a playful glance. It was all Nadia could do not to roll her eyes.
“It’s his night off. But yeah, we should go.” It would be less awkward to eat with her family there when her father wouldn’t be watching her with Mateo the whole time. Way less awkward.
“Want to ask that friend of yours along?” He frowned. “Was it Vera? Veronica?”
“Verlaine.” She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”
“Something always happens when we try to go to La Catrina,” Cole complained. “We never get in.”
“Don’t be silly. C’mon, guys. Nadia, honey, why don’t you tell Verla to meet us there? And invite her dads along, too. I ought to meet them sometime.”
Nadia texted:
Hey, come eat at La Catrina with us if you want. My dad says to ask your dads, so—if you don’t want to, no prob
.
So she wasn’t expecting to see Verlaine, and wasn’t surprised not to have heard from her by the time they arrived at the restaurant. But Nadia immediately overheard Verlaine’s name—from a table where Kendall was holding court among her friends.
“So, like, Verlaine was in the school library, but I think she was using the computers for something illegal, like downloading movies or something like that, and there’s this thing in the library computers that’s supposed to stop you if you do something illegal, like it gives you a shock, and that’s how they keep guys from watching porn all the time, but this time it malfunctioned and it, like, electrocuted her, and so she’s in the hospital, not this one, the good one in Wakefield, and I heard she could die.”
“Oh, my God.” Nadia looked over at her father. “Can we—”
“Let’s go,” he said, like it was the only thing to do. Dad could be great like that sometimes.
Nadia had never felt worse in her life than she did when she saw Verlaine’s dads in the waiting room at the hospital. Uncle Gary tried to be polite and informative, even though his voice kept shaking; Uncle Dave could only sit there with his head in his hands.
“A coma?” Nadia whispered. “How long does that—would she—?”
“They don’t know.” Uncle Gary kept weaving his fingers together, clasping his hands, unclasping them, like he was trying to work all his nervousness out that way. “It’s not unusual, really. I mean, we hear about comas that go on for—for months or years—”
Uncle Dave made a small sound in the back of his throat, and Cole put a tentative hand on his shoulder. That was when Nadia lost it. Her eyes began to tear up, and she had to lean against her father.
“—but that’s not what usually happens!” Uncle Gary added hastily. “Lots of people who’ve been through some severe shock go into a coma for only a few hours. Then they come to again and they’re fine. They’re just fine. All ‘coma’ means is that the person won’t wake up. That’s all they can tell us about Verlaine right now. She—she can’t wake up.”