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.”
Nadia hugged her father tightly around the waist while she struggled against entirely breaking down. “How did it—” She had to gulp in breaths that threatened to turn into sobs. “What happened?”
Uncle Gary shrugged. “They said her laptop electrocuted her, but a laptop shouldn’t even have enough voltage to do that—and the computer was acting fine when the medics got there. I mean, we’ve shut it down, and Dell is going to be hearing from our lawyers, believe you me, but how could that happen in the first place?”
It hadn’t been the computer, or electrocution. It had been magic. Elizabeth.
Why? Why go after Verlaine, and why now? None of this made any sense.
“Can I see her?” she whispered.
Uncle Dave nodded silently.
“Are we going, too?” Cole asked.
Her father said, “Nope. We’re going to get Verlaine’s dads something to eat.”
Nadia went on tiptoe to kiss her father on the cheek—something she hadn’t done in what felt like a long time—before she made her way down the hospital corridors. They were all incredibly wide, so stretchers could get through; it made Nadia feel even smaller and more powerless than before.
Then she stepped into Verlaine’s room, and that was definitely the worst.
Verlaine was so pale, so still; as she lay there she looked more dead than alive. Machines were hooked up to her hand and her heart even though the little green and blue lines of data they sent up to the screens around her told the doctors nothing. A plastic mask covered Verlaine’s nose and mouth, giving her oxygen, making sure she would keep breathing. Otherwise, at any moment, she might stop.
Nadia gripped the metal rail alongside Verlaine’s bed. “Hey,” she said, but the word hardly even came out. And it was pointless. Obviously Verlaine couldn’t hear.
The door opened, and Nadia looked around for a nurse or doctor—but instead, it was Mateo.
It was like she didn’t even move, didn’t even think. One moment she realized he was there; the next she was in his arms, hugging him as tightly as she could, stifling her tears against the reassuring warmth of his chest. Mateo stroked her hair, whispered wordless sounds of comfort into her ear, and just held her.
When she could speak again, she said, “How did you find out?”
“Kendall Bender was talking at the restaurant, one of the waitresses told my dad, my dad phoned me. I rode my bike out here.”
No wonder Mateo looked drawn; a ride that far on his motorcycle in this kind of cold would have to have been exhausting. But of course, he was almost as worried for Verlaine as she was. Nadia could tell that from the way he looked at her in her hospital bed.
He said, “It’s like—it’s like I didn’t realize she was my friend until now.”
“I know what you mean.” Maybe it was because they’d been so suspicious of each other at first, or because the stuff they’d been dealing with was so intense—but Nadia had never before thought about how funny Verlaine was, or how good some of her ideas had been. How she was one of the only people who had the sense to recognize magic when she saw it and not let anyone talk her into believing it was just a trick of the light.
To have loved and lost. That was what Elizabeth had said, reminding her of the pain of Mom’s abandonment. Had Nadia unconsciously used that to keep herself apart not only from Mateo but also from Verlaine? If so, she’d been a fool; Nadia could see that now. You had to love people while you could, because you never knew how long you had.
Mateo tenderly brushed Nadia’s hair back from her face—his fingertips seemed to paint lines of warmth along her cheek and temple—but his gaze remained focused on Verlaine. “I was wondering about this the other day. Wondering why I don’t think about Verlaine when she’s not there.”
That was a harsh way of putting it, but Nadia knew what he meant. Then the realization dawned on her, and her eyes widened. “You mean—the magic you saw, the old magic that was done to her—you think it has something to do with the way we feel about Verlaine?”
“Or the way we don’t feel about her. The way people are vicious to her when they aren’t to anyone else.”
“If that was magic—then—that would explain why it’s not working now, keeping us apart from her. Because she’s in the hold of an even stronger magic.” Nadia’s mind started putting the clues together. She hadn’t cared for Verlaine, either, when she met her. But then she’d levitated Verlaine’s car and encountered her again—magic masking magic long enough to get her to be okay with Verlaine, if not to care about her as she should. As for Mateo, he’d spoken to Verlaine exactly when the Steadfast spell was taking effect … that, too, had provided enough of a crack in the wall around Verlaine for him to like her. Everyone else either tormented Verlaine, the way Kendall did, or kept forgetting about her, like Dad or Gage. Only now, in the grip of a spell so powerful that it threatened to end her life, could Verlaine be seen for who she was.
“Why would Elizabeth do that?” Mateo said. “Cast a spell that made people just—not care about Verlaine?”
Nadia shook her head. “It can’t be as simple as that. Maybe she’s masked in some way? Hidden?”
“From who? And why?”
“Only Elizabeth could tell us.”
“When we take Elizabeth down, will it break the spell on Verlaine, too?”
“Maybe. I hope so.” That was one more thing to fight for. Nadia took a deep breath, then another, steadying herself.
But then Mateo said, “This is my fault.”
“What? No. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
“Don’t blame yourself. Please—don’t.” Mateo’s dark eyes sought hers. “You beat yourself up too much already. And this is something I did. Nadia—I confronted Elizabeth. She knows I know, which means she has to know you told me. I said she wasn’t learning anything from my visions ever again, that I didn’t care how much magic she had, and this … what she’s done to Verlaine … that must be her revenge.”
“You told her,” Nadia repeated dully. Revenge—would Elizabeth do something as extreme as this only for revenge? That seemed wrong to her somehow, but she couldn’t analyze it; she could hardly even think about anything other than the fact that Elizabeth had finally done what Nadia had most dreaded from the beginning: She’d hurt someone, badly, because Nadia dared in some small way to defy her.
Who might have been next? Her father? Cole?
Mateo’s face was so pale that for a second Nadia thought he might get sick. “I did this.”
She tried to fight back the anger welling inside, knowing Mateo wasn’t the true target—only the most convenient one. “No. Elizabeth did this.”
“I definitely didn’t help,” Mateo said. Apparently he wasn’t willing to cut himself any more slack than that. He was looking only at Verlaine now, and it was to her he spoke next: “I’m sorry.”
Nadia could only grip the side of Verlaine’s bed and struggle not to cry.
How could she have gotten everything wrong?
“I’m sorry, too,” Nadia whispered. But Verlaine couldn’t answer.
Elizabeth had worn her chains so long that she’d forgotten how heavy they were. As she stood here in the light of her stove, naked and waiting, she knew she would miss the weight.
But not for long, Asa whispered inside her skull. Not for long.
The entire house quaked as the spell began. This was the dismantling of her deepest magic—but she was at last ready to let it go.
She would be released from the keeping of the One Beneath.
“You have given me everything,” she whispered. He would hear; He always did. “Every success, every glory. My mistakes were mine alone. My power was only yours.”
Heat flooded through her, whipped around her, as tangible and beckoning as a lover’s embrace. Her curls tumbled around her face while broken glass began to circle in the whirlwind that surrounded her. It glinted in the stove’s orange light.
To think she had only come to the One Beneath out of fear and necessity. She had gone to Him on her knees to plead for the life of her husband—a man she neither loved nor liked, but one whose farmstead had been her lone source of food and shelter. Too many had known of her practice in the Craft, back in those days when secrets were more poorly kept; as a widow, she would quickly have been shunned and left to starve.
But the One Beneath had seen the true potential within. He had raised Elizabeth up, given her the ability to reach beyond any mortal law.
The immortality spell had been the greatest act of love she had ever attempted. Had it succeeded entirely, Elizabeth could have continued in His service for all the ages of man, growing ever stronger, working His will, until the Day of Judgment—when she would stand with Him and find only joy in the hell made for her.
But the spell had behaved in a way she had not predicted.
Instead of ensuring that she would live forever as a witch in full possession of her talents—as the Sorceress the One Beneath needed her to be—the spell had made her slowly, so slowly, turn younger. At first this had satisfied her vanity, but it had not taken Elizabeth long to see where that path would lead.
It led … here. To her own adolescence. To the point where, when she became any younger, her abilities would no longer be manifest. She would possess some little magic, but she would be a Sorceress no more.
What lay beyond that was horrible to contemplate. How pitiful to be a child, bereft of the magic that would allow her to manipulate others into allowing her solitude and giving her what she needed to survive. To spend endless decades being patronized, put in homes, questioned and studied, eternally frustrated by the memory of what she had been and never would be again. Ultimately it would end with her as an infant, forever a curiosity to those around her, and her incapable of standing, eating, or saying a single word.
No. That she could not endure.
So long ago Elizabeth had made this pact with the One Beneath. When the dreams of the Cabots ceased to show Elizabeth in their future, it meant that the death of her magic was but a year or two away. Mateo no longer saw her in his dreams. What that meant for the One Beneath—well, that would only be revealed in time. It was not Elizabeth’s to know. If she could weaken or injure Nadia before Halloween night, or better yet ensure her death in the coming conflagration, she would; He was owed no less. She could be certain that in the end He would deal with Nadia accordingly.
All that remained for her to do was to free herself from the One Beneath’s service, so that she could again die—and, in her death, do Him the greatest service in all the history of time.
The immortality spell would end—only slightly diminished, because the original magic was so strong that it wanted to endure through all eternity. But that tiny fraction of vulnerability would be enough for her to die, if she met a cataclysm great enough. Or caused one.
Together they would destroy the lines that separated her world from His. Her death would be His freedom.
“Shatter me,” she whispered. “Hallow me.”
The broken glass spun closer and closer. She bit her lip against the first slash—her skin tearing open, blood beading upon her hip—but then the cuts came faster and faster, and the pain was too overwhelming and too glorious to resist. Elizabeth screamed, as long and loud as she could, and it was the most joyful sound she would ever make.
Time blurred. The world went away. She shivered and shuddered—then gasped as the chains fell away.
Elizabeth was free. The One Beneath had released her. Once again she could die.
Tears sprang to her eyes as she knelt upon the floor, put her forehead down in the puddles of her own blood that congealed there. All but the last few cuts had healed, because of her body’s lingering regenerative power; she wept only for the loss. “My only liege,” she whispered.
He cries for missing you, too, said Asa, in a tone of voice that suggested he would rather not have told her. Demons often resisted their servitude. It did not signify.
Slowly Elizabeth rose to her feet again. She took up one of her bottles of water—but the thirst had diminished. Strange, not to have it there: She almost missed the craving. After a couple of swallows, she used the rest to rinse blood from her skin. Only a couple of scratches needed bandaging. As it had been centuries since she needed anything like that, Elizabeth wound up ripping some old cloths to tie around the cuts. Probably they were not clean—there was something about cleanliness and infection she dimly recalled from the past couple of centuries—but it hardly mattered. Her other magics remained in place, for now.
“Only one errand left,” she said to the demon chained within her mind. “Finding you a place.”
Eager though I am to depart your company, I feel the need to point out—you haven’t exactly done much to stop Nadia Caldani.
Elizabeth shrugged. “She has been taken care of. The boiling will have frightened her, and now she is without her Steadfast.”
She is not. Her Steadfast remains by her side.
“That’s impossible.” Verlaine Laughton had survived Elizabeth’s attack through some fluke of modern medical practice, but she had been comatose for the week since and would remain so until the time came to begin breaking the seal of the captive’s Chamber. In such a state, Verlaine should have provided little power to Nadia—and none when Nadia left the hospital in Wakefield.
I can tell you only what I know. Nadia still has her Steadfast.
Then it could not have been Verlaine. But who?
A thought came to her and was as quickly rejected. It was ridiculous. Absurd.
And yet, if there was no other possibility—
Elizabeth’s eyes widened as she took in the unbelievable truth.
Mateo paused in front of the door. “You’re completely sure there’s no other leads we can follow.”
“Unfortunately, none come to mind.” Nadia squared her shoulders, obviously trying to make herself feel strong. The autumn wind caught her dark hair, a strand of it curling along her cheek.
Did she know how vulnerable she looked in moments like this? Mateo could sense in her the fear that drove her onward—for Verlaine, for him, for her family, but never for herself. Yet Nadia had already taught him that vulnerability wasn’t the same thing as fragility. As deeply as she had been hurt—could yet be hurt—nothing had broken her.
Besides, you had to respect anyone who was willing to confront Grandma.
When the butler opened the door to the great house on the Hill, Mateo put on his best smile. “Yeah. I’ve shown up three times in one year. Crazy, huh? It’s like I’m ready to move in or something.”
“ … Mrs. Cabot has retired.”
It took Mateo a moment to realize that he didn’t mean Grandma had quit her job; so far as he knew, she’d never had one. She was just in bed. “Well, we need to see her. It’s important.” Then he paused, remembering the ghastly scars on his grandmother’s face and how badly they must have hurt. More quietly, he added, “Tell her I’m—reasonable. It’s okay. My friend just has some questions about our family history that only Grandma can answer.”
The butler didn’t seem to think much of this, but he showed them into a side parlor and went upstairs. “He has to wake up Grandma,” Mateo explained as he took a seat on the long antique sofa, with its wooden frame and gold silk cushions. “That guy should get combat pay.”
Nadia didn’t sit by his side; instead she paced the length of the parlor, a long, thin room with ornate green-and-white wallpaper and endless overstuffed, heavily carved furniture, all slightly hazy with a layer of dust. At first Mateo thought she felt awkward—and no wonder—but then he realized she was staring at one of the oil paintings on the wall. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Have you never seen this?”
“Seen what?” Usually he got in and out of Grandma’s house as fast as possible, so he hadn’t spent much time studying the wall décor. But as Mateo went to her side, he realized she was pointing at an old family portrait … really old, from the looks of it. The faces were flat, the sense of proportion skewed: It reminded him of paintings of George Washington or Benjamin Franklin he’d seen in history textbooks.
“Mateo, look,” Nadia insisted. “Really look.”
It was almost as if he had to force himself to do it. Why? But slowly the realization crept in as he focused on one figure in the back of the family group, standing slightly to the side—an older woman whose long, curly hair was half-chestnut, half-gray, and there was something about the eyes—
He whispered, “Elizabeth.”
Even this far back, she’d always been there, like a leech or a remora on the side of his family, sucking them dry.
“You’re important to her.” Nadia never took her eyes from the portrait. “All of you. Her magic may be linked to your family in some profound way we haven’t yet guessed. The visions—as horrible as they are, as devastating as they can be—that’s not all she’s done to the Cabots. Not all she’s done to you. We’ve only just started to figure her out.”
Mateo’s mouth felt dry. The rage spiked within him again, white-hot and blinding, but he refused to give in to it. Going crazy over this, no matter how understandable it might be—that was just what Elizabeth wanted.
The parlor door opened, and the butler said, “Follow me.”
He led them back into the music room, where Grandma always saw him when he came. Never once had she invited her grandchild to so much as come upstairs. Despite the fairly early evening hour, she was already in a nightgown, around which she’d bundled a heavy quilted robe. Though her hair was mussed, she remained as haughty as ever. Of course she was angled so that the scarred side of her face was in shadow.
“The butler told me you did not seem crazed,” Grandma said, instead of hello. “But I should warn you that he is armed.”
“Great to see you, too.” Mateo gestured toward Nadia. “This is Nadia Caldani, my—friend.” He didn’t yet have the right to call her more than that. “Nadia, this is my grandmother. Grandma, Nadia has some questions only you can answer.”
“If you are here to ask if it’s safe to become romantically involved with a Cabot,” Grandma said to Nadia, “the answer is no.”
Nadia stepped closer. “What do you know about Elizabeth Pike?”
The question obviously caught Grandma off guard. “ … Elizabeth Pike? Good Lord. What do you need to know about her?”
“Everything you can remember,” Nadia insisted. She was the first person Mateo had ever seen who wasn’t intimidated by Grandma at all.
If Grandma hadn’t been so completely bewildered by the question, Mateo thought, she would have thrown them both out. Instead she sat there searching for what to say. “She was—fast, we used to say. The kind of young girl who went around throwing herself at men, including my husband. Not that there was anything improper between them. He told me that and … I still believe him, despite everything else. But the way she hung around him! It was shameless. And he was weak in the way most men are weak. A pretty young girl paying him attention—well. He never strayed, but he confided in her. Told her of his dreams, his thoughts, that sort of thing. No doubt it propped up his ego. Whatever can that matter now?”
“You’d be surprised,” Mateo said. His thoughts tangled together and buzzed in his head like a swarming hive. Elizabeth had used his grandfather the same way she’d used him.
Nadia nodded. “And how did Elizabeth know your daughter? Mateo’s mom?”
“Lauren took that girl on as if she were a little sister, or perhaps even a daughter.” Grandma said it automatically, without any curiosity about how someone she remembered as a teenager with Grandpa might still be a teenager years after his death. She doesn’t let us remember, Mateo thought with a chill. Elizabeth doesn’t let us recognize the evidence in front of our own eyes. “And Miss Pike was a bad influence. I’m convinced to this day that she was the one who told Lauren it wasn’t too late to have a child. Talked her into trying for a test-tube baby.”
Mateo could have reeled. It wasn’t that Grandma regretted his ever having been born; she’d already made that clear plenty of times. What killed him was that Elizabeth was the reason he’d been born. He was her … invention. Her possession, in more ways than he could ever have guessed.
“Test-tube baby,” Nadia whispered. “That’s what they used to call IVF, right? In vitro fertilization?”
“I have no idea what the technology is called.” Grandma sniffed. “All I know is, it made possible what should have remained impossible. It allowed a woman past childbearing years to give birth to a son who will carry on the curse of the Cabots.”
Nadia turned to Mateo, almost wild with excitement. “Mateo, don’t you see? This is why you’re my Steadfast! No man conceived of woman!”
Mateo’s eyes widened as he realized what she meant. Technically, his cells first started dividing in a petri dish somewhere. Did that mean he wasn’t “conceived of woman,” for the purposes of whatever old curse or spell kept men from holding magic? That had to be it.
“What are you blabbing on about?” Grandma said, her good eye narrowed.
Clearly excited by the revelation, Nadia said, “You’ve actually given us a lot to consider. But there’s just one more thing I need to know—did your husband or your daughter ever mention any—weak spots or vulnerabilities Elizabeth Pike might have? Places she absolutely had to go, possessions that were overly important to her?”
“Not that I can recall. Wait. There was one thing—Lauren was forever meeting with her at the school. Elizabeth Pike seemed to positively be attracted to it. At the time I thought it meant she was only a good student. But no teenager enjoys school that much.”
This was the first sensible, helpful thing Mateo had ever heard his grandmother say. Too bad it didn’t get them very far: They already knew Elizabeth’s plans weren’t centered on the school, so nothing at Rodman High could have anything to do with it.
Disappointed, Nadia nodded. “Okay. That’s all we needed to know. Thank you for talking with us, and sorry we woke you up.”
Before they could go, however, Grandma said, “You’re a very polite young lady, Miss Caldani. You seem a sensible girl. And yet the connection between you and my grandson is all too clear.”
Was it that obvious to everyone? Were they sending off sparks? When Mateo’s eyes met Nadia’s, and he felt that moment of raw electricity between them, he could believe it.
Grandma continued, “For your own sake, Miss Caldani—stay far away. I paid the price for loving a Cabot man. Trust me, it’s not one you want to pay.”
“You can’t tell me who to love,” Nadia said, so steady and sure it took Mateo’s breath away. “I can’t even make that choice myself. Sometimes, love chooses us.”
“Nadia,” he said. His voice broke on her name.
Nadia plowed on. “Mrs. Cabot, it’s horrible, what happened to you. And believe me, I know the curse is real. But I can fight back in ways you never could. I can give Mateo a chance nobody else can. And I’m not abandoning him, no matter what.”
Her hand closed around his, and they walked out together.
His grandmother must have been too astonished to say another word.
The whole way home, as Mateo’s motorcycle zoomed along the winding roads of Captive’s Sound, Nadia’s mind whirled with what she had just learned. As important as the information about Elizabeth was, she kept going back to the revelation about IVF.
Apparently male infants conceived that way were exempt from whatever powers had once bound them from holding magic. That explained why Mateo was now her Steadfast; although Nadia had long since accepted this, she was glad to finally have a reason.
However—thousands and thousands of baby boys had been conceived that way. IVF began back in the 1970s, hadn’t it? That meant there were grown men out there capable of holding magic. Were they also capable of performing it? For the first time in all human history, could there be men who were also witches?
Possibly she and Mateo were the first to discover this. No other witch would ever even think to investigate something every magical principle and even the First Laws took for granted.
But if they didn’t know this—what else might be out there, waiting to be discovered?
The motorcycle came to a stop half a block away from her home. Nadia felt relieved; she didn’t want Dad walking out to say hi. Not now. Not after what she’d said at Mrs. Cabot’s house on the Hill.
She took off the helmet, slid off the bike. Mateo slung his leg over so that he stood in front of her. When Nadia handed him the helmet, his fingers closed over hers, and they just stood there, holding it, like they still needed an excuse to touch.
“What do we do now?” Mateo said.
“We prepare to go against Elizabeth.” Nadia felt the weight of responsibility heavy on her again, crushing down. “She’s going to attack the town’s magic. So we should cover it, each of us. With what I can reveal with my own spells, and what you can see, we ought to be able to determine a lot of the more powerful forces Elizabeth has at work.”
“Like whatever she did to Verlaine,” Mateo said.
Involuntarily Nadia shuddered. “Once we know more about her spells, we’ll know what she’s trying to attack. Then maybe I can figure out how to fight her and keep those spells in place.”
His dark eyes betrayed his disbelief. “You’re going to fight to protect her magic?”
“It’s part of this town now, for better or for worse.” She caught herself. “Okay, mostly for worse. But Elizabeth is woven into the fabric of Captive’s Sound. That means she can rip the place apart. If keeping her magic in place is the only way to stop her, then that’s what we do.”
“So we’ll be fighting for my curse?” Mateo said. But as horrible as that had to sound to him, he only smiled ruefully. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Mateo—”
“It’s all right.” The moonlight caught the warmth in his deep brown hair, painted the lines of his cheekbones and jaw. “If that’s what we have to do, then we’ll do it. You’re the one who told me I was strong enough to bear the curse. Who made me believe it.”
The responsibility pushed her down even harder, but Nadia struggled against it. She snatched the helmet from him, hung it on the bike, and grabbed his hands. No more excuses. No more waiting. “Don’t do this only because of me.”
“I’m not. But I would.”
Mateo’s fingers wound around hers, so soft and so slow that her skin tingled. At first she wanted to look away, suddenly shy, but when their eyes met, she couldn’t imagine turning from him.
His voice was low. “What you said back there—”
“I meant it. I won’t abandon you.”
“That’s not what I was talking about.”
They’d never kissed. This was the first time they’d touched like this. Had she rushed it? “Maybe—maybe you feel like it’s too soon—”
“I love you, too.” Mateo shook his head, as disbelieving as he’d been when he swore to fight to protect his own curse. “I knew from the visions that I would—when I saw you in danger, it didn’t just scare me. It ripped my heart out. So I fought how I felt about you. I didn’t want the visions to be true, not any part of them, not even the part that told me I’d love anyone as incredible as you. But no matter how hard I pushed you away, you just kept coming. You’re relentless, you know that? You wanted to understand me. You wanted to know me. You wanted to save me, and I think you’re the only one who can.”
And yet every time she’d wanted to give up, Mateo was the one who had given her the courage to go on. He was the one who saved her, not the other way around. Nadia began to tell him so, but even as she looked up at him, he leaned closer, and their lips met.
The night was no longer cold. The wind no longer tore at her hair, shivered across her skin. Nadia only felt Mateo’s mouth on hers, his arms pulling her close, and a deep, delicious warmth that seemed to glow inside her.
When they broke the kiss, Nadia had to catch her breath. He whispered, “So. Not too soon.”
She smiled at him—but the sadness in his eyes caught her. “What’s wrong?”
“Besides the witch who’s cursed me and come after you and already suspects we know too much about the upcoming devastation she plans to let loose on the whole town?”
“Okay, yeah, that’s enough,” she admitted. “But we’re together in this, in everything.” Elizabeth can’t take that away, Nadia nearly said, but stopped herself. Elizabeth could take it away … and had threatened to do exactly that.
By now Elizabeth had to realize that they were close. The only reason she hadn’t destroyed Nadia long ago was because Elizabeth didn’t acknowledge her as a real threat. But it wouldn’t be beyond Elizabeth to take Mateo away out of pure cruelty. To use his pain against Nadia, or to twist the curse into some new, unimaginable horror.
From his expression, she could tell he was thinking the exact same thing. “We have to be careful,” Mateo said. “I already tipped her off, but … we can keep from making my mistake any worse. Work separately and not together, so we give her less time to figure out what’s going on.”
“Right. We should.” And yet the thought of parting from him, even for the brief time remaining before Halloween, shook Nadia deeply. They could call; they could text. But still—“I don’t want to let her take you away from me.”
“Gage’s party. We’ll see each other then. Go over more of what we’ve learned,” Mateo promised. “And—be together. You and me.”
“You and me.”
Nadia was reading Mateo’s latest text message (Don’t know what’s glowing dark red around the city library, but it’s nasty—like barbed wire made of flame) when she heard Dad.
“Okay, we’re loading up the car.” Her father set Cole’s Buzz Lightyear backpack next to the door. “You’re sure you’re set.”
“Positive.” Nadia tried her best to smile naturally. “Groceries in the pantry, phone numbers for the neighbors, and all your info in the Big Apple.”
Dad put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re sure you won’t come with us, honey? It’s sweet of you to want to finish the group project so Verlaine gets full credit, but you know she wouldn’t mind if you took a couple days away with us.”
“I know. I just—I’ll feel better if I get it done.”
Was this the last time she’d ever see her dad? Her little brother? For the first time, Nadia asked herself how they’d feel if something happened to her—if they lost her as well as Mom—but no. She couldn’t even think about that.
Cole came downstairs with his jacket only half on his body. “Dad and I are going to do boy stuff,” he announced proudly. “We’re going to a Knicks game.”
“If I can get tickets,” Dad interjected. He smiled at Nadia. “No parties in the house while I’m gone, okay?”
She should have told him he was being ridiculous, or promised to be good and smiled as they went out the door. Instead Nadia wrapped her arms around her father and held him tight. Although he seemed startled, he returned the hug. When she thought she could talk without crying, she said, “I’ll miss you.”
“Honey, are you sure you’re all right here?”
“Just—being on my own. It’s weird. You know.”
“Yeah. I do.” And he would, wouldn’t he? “We can still stay.”
“No, we can’t!” Cole’s voice was almost a shout—and thank goodness, because it made her smile.
“Really, I’m good,” Nadia said. “Call me when you get there, okay?”
“You got it.”
And with that, Dad and Cole were out the door. Nadia stood at the window watching the car drive off until the taillights had vanished into the dusk.
“All right!” Gage held up both hands above his head; Mateo slapped them as he came in, pretending a cheer he didn’t feel. “Now we can get started.”
“Looks like the party’s started already,” Mateo said. There were a couple dozen people there, laughing and talking—including a couple of the Jerk Squad, even Jeremy Prasad, but maybe the fact that they were here early meant they’d clear out early, too.
“Only now gettin’ good,” Gage promised. “Now, we have certain beverages of the controlled variety. These are available to those who aren’t driving or trying to fry their brains into oblivion, mostly because I am sincerely hoping not to have to clean up any puke later on. Do these categories apply to you?”
“Yeah. I walked over.” And Mateo didn’t feel the need for oblivion any longer. As crappy as he felt about Verlaine—which was about as bad as it got—he wasn’t running from his problems any longer. He was going to face them.
And tonight, maybe he could do better than that. Because tonight, he and Nadia—
—what, exactly? He wasn’t sure. But if they were facing the ultimate danger tomorrow, that meant Mateo wanted to spend his last night as close to Nadia as he could possibly be.
Can in hand, Mateo wandered onto the porch that faced the sea. A few people were roughhousing down on the sand, but here he was more or less alone. Wind chimes made of blue-green glass sang softly in the breeze.
Somehow this seemed familiar—but he couldn’t quite place the memory. Surely he hadn’t been to Gage’s aunt’s house before; he would have remembered that. But whenever he had visited this place, or another house that reminded him of this, he’d had a good time. Mateo felt warm and relaxed for the first time in way too long.
Even as he settled back into the cushions of the swing, though, he heard a soft voice: “Mateo.”
Nadia looked so beautiful. She wore a soft white dress that outlined every inch of her, and her black hair gleamed in the moonlight. But nothing was as incredible as her eyes as she drank him in. Mateo felt like he could hardly speak. Yet he managed to whisper, “Nadia.”
“Were you waiting for me?”
More than he’d even known. “Yeah. I was.”
Mateo held out one hand, and she took it. As Nadia settled into the swing beside him—her thigh against his, her face so close—he swallowed hard.
Tonight, he thought as she cuddled closer to him. At least we have tonight.
Behind her mask—the illusion of Nadia only Mateo would see, the one that would make him weak—Elizabeth relaxed into his embrace, and she smiled.