THE CROW SWOOPED OVER CAPTIVE’S SOUND, WINGS outspread. His cobweb eyes saw nothing and everything.
They saw two girls walking together along the street, one’s hair black and one’s nearly white, one short and one tall, yet not opposites. Not apart as they should be.
They saw the girls go toward a large house the color of the sky at dawn in early spring. The house glowed from within with a force that flickered like candlelight but had the potential to become a flame.
Beyond anything else they saw the dark ripples through the earth, tracing rings beneath every street, every house, every human being in Captive’s Sound. The energy leaped and sparked as it found the deep lines of power that underlay this town, but those lines couldn’t stop the web from being spun. They only made it stronger.
Something else looked through the crow’s stolen eyes and recorded it all. The crow flew on, unknowing, enslaved, and blind.
“Can I go now?” Mateo asked as he loaded the final pitchers into the dishwasher.
“You haven’t touched the Bissell, and I don’t see any chopped peppers in this fridge.” Dad crossed his arms. “What’s up with you? You’ve been trying to escape for twenty minutes, and you know your shift isn’t up for another fifteen. Not like you to ditch the job.”
That was the problem with having your father for a boss; not only was he judging you as harshly as any other boss would, but he also wanted to psychoanalyze you in the bargain.
And Dad was the absolute last person he could talk to about any of this stuff.
At least he had a reason for wanting out that his father would understand. “One of the customers left her cell phone here. A girl I know from school. I wanted to run it by her house.”
“Ahhh. There’s a lady in the case. Might have known.”
“Dad. She really left her phone. See?” Mateo held it up as evidence.
“That’s why we have a lost-and-found box.” But his father seemed more amused than anything else. “About time a girl got your special attention.”
Mateo went for the knife and the peppers. The quicker he finished up his side work, the quicker he could escape both work and the interrogation.
“Here I thought you were going to play the field forever,” Dad said as he continued stirring the sopa Azteca. “Not that a handsome young fellow like you shouldn’t play, hmm? But there’s more to life than that.”
Girls would “play,” sure. Mateo had learned that early. They were attracted to him, flirted with him. At a party, sometimes they would hook up with him, making out just long enough for Mateo to start to hope things were finally changing. But that was it. Girls in Captive’s Sound thought he was dangerous; kissing him, letting him touch them, was something they did only for a thrill. Nobody was foolhardy enough to stay with him—to let herself care. After a beach bonfire early in the summer, when he’d realized this one girl had gotten with him only because her friends dared her to, Mateo hadn’t bothered trying again.
“I spent my time as a bachelor,” Dad said.
Oh, great. Mateo hoped he wouldn’t vomit on the peppers.
But Dad wasn’t going to launch into stories about his swinging single days; it was worse than that. “From the week I moved to Captive’s Sound—the day I met your mother—it all changed. So beautiful. So lonely. Nobody in this damned town ever gave her a chance.” Bitterness had crept into his father’s voice; it usually did, when they talked about Mom. “Crazy, they called her. They drove her crazy with their stupid stories about a curse. That’s what did her in, Mateo. As far as I’m concerned, every gossip in this town has her blood on their hands.”
This was the point in the speech where Mateo usually mouthed the final words along with Dad’s voice: blood on their hands.
Today, though—with his own knowledge of the dreams Mom had seen, too, with his grandmother’s scarred face still fresh in his memory—that blood seemed way too real.
Nadia had hoped she and Verlaine could slip up to the attic without being noticed, but there was a downside to having her father working from home.
“Well, who have we here?” He smiled as he rose from his desk; already stacks of papers were spread around him like he was building a nest. Within a week, the chaos would be total.
“Verlaine Laughton,” Verlaine said. She didn’t seem to mind meeting Nadia’s father; the weird defensive edge she had most of the time had vanished. “Nadia and I go to school together. Thanks for having me over. This house is amazing. Is it, like, a hundred years old?”
“A hundred and fifteen, according to the realtor. Did you say your name was—”
“Verlaine.” Obviously she was used to repeating it. “One of my grandmothers was named Vera, the other one was named Elaine, so my parents put them together.” Her cheery expression clouded. “I like to think they’d have chosen something else if they’d known Verlaine was also a famous poet who died of syphilis back in the day. At least, I hope they would’ve.”
“At least it’s original.” Dad laughed, though he was clearly distracted; Nadia could tell she’d have to remind him of Verlaine’s name again.
“We’ll be upstairs, okay, Dad?” Nadia hurried Verlaine out as smoothly as she could. For his part, Dad settled back into work; when he got his head into legal questions, he usually didn’t resurface for hours. Cole, meanwhile, had only looked away from the Disney Channel long enough to wave.
Verlaine followed her up to the attic, obviously wary, but when she got there, her reaction was almost deflated. “I thought this would be all, you know, spooky and mysterious.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” Nadia stowed her school stuff in a corner. Already she’d set up a couple of card tables; someday soon, around the end of the month, she’d go Dumpster diving and see if she couldn’t find something sturdier to replace them with. Her various ingredients were stored in test tubes and flasks she’d ordered from medical-supply catalogs, along with a few apothecary jars that had been in her family for a long time, left behind by Mom when she went, probably by accident. Her Book of Shadows might get to look mystical in time—as they gained power, apparently, they could change appearance and practically take on lives of their own—but right now it looked like an ordinary leather-bound journal propped on a windowsill.
But it wasn’t all science. She had some oversize pillows to sit on, the protective blue ceiling like a cloudless sky overhead, and a secret stash of chocolate. Some materials and ingredients had the power to conduct and focus magic, and weirdly, wonderfully, chocolate was one of the best.
As she tossed Verlaine one of the mini candy bars, Nadia said, “So, you need to really listen to this, okay? Think long and hard before you say you want to stay. It’s serious.”
“What’s serious?” Verlaine said around a mouthful of chocolate.
“If you’re here when I cast a prophetic spell—which I’m going to admit right now I’ve never done before—there’s a chance you’ll do more than watch me. There’s a chance the magic will … change you. Change us. It could make you my Steadfast.”
Verlaine scooted closer. “What’s a Steadfast? It sounds important.”
“It is.” Nadia had to go through it all, so there would at least be some chance Verlaine knew what she was getting into. “A Steadfast is a woman who isn’t a witch herself, but who has the ability to enhance a witch’s powers through her presence. A Steadfast doesn’t have magic of her own, but she amplifies everyone else’s magic. By that, I really mean everyone—any witch who’s near the Steadfast, whether they know about her or not—but the effect is infinitely more powerful for the witch she’s bound to.”
“Whoa.” Verlaine’s face lit up, which told Nadia she wasn’t explaining this well enough. “That’s fantastic. Beyond fantastic. Do you have, like, dozens of Steadfasts?”
“What? No. Never. You can only have one, and it’s a serious thing. A sacred thing. A witch and a Steadfast are truly bound together in the most profound way. Lots of times, it’s a witch’s sister who doesn’t have the gift, or a daughter. Someone who’s always going to be there, no matter what.”
This was crazy, taking a chance like this with someone she’d known only a couple of days. Of course, it wasn’t much of a chance. Some witches cast prophetic spells dozens of times with their closest friends, hoping to be bound as Steadfasts, without it ever occurring.
But Mom had always said, You never know. When you open yourself to prophetic magic, you open yourself to the primal forces of the universe. It’s unpredictable, and it’s dangerous, and your soul reaches out, like casting anchor in a stormy harbor—
Nadia didn’t need an anchor, though. She didn’t need Verlaine, didn’t need anyone. Well, Dad and Cole—but really that was more like they needed her.
“What does that mean, enhance your powers?” Verlaine grabbed another couple of chocolate bars.
“It means if I cast a spell when my Steadfast is nearby, that spell will be stronger. More effective. It will last longer. That person’s presence might make it possible for me to cast spells that might otherwise be beyond me at this point. I’d probably advance faster, too, if we spent enough time together.” Nadia took a deep breath. “So for me, it’s all positive. For the Steadfast, it’s not. Steadfasts can see magic in ways I can’t—in ways no one else can. Apparently that can be, well, disturbing.” Nadia sighed. “It’s probably not going to happen with you. Seriously. We just met.”
“You never know. I have really crappy luck, so if this is actually dangerous and bad, I bet I get it on the first try.” Although Verlaine had been joking, Nadia could see her expression shift as she considered the possibilities more seriously. “How long does it last? Being a Steadfast.”
“Until the witch and her Steadfast end it, or die. So hopefully a really long time. And the bond’s strongest when it’s newest; it would be really hard to break in less than a couple of years.” It might be hard even after ten. Or more. This was one of those things Mom hadn’t reviewed in full.
The one part about a Steadfast that Mom had stressed most was that person should matter to you. Deeply. The power a Steadfast gave to a witch was in direct proportion to the capacity for love and loyalty between them. It was a bond more profound than any other, as enduring as that between parents and children—
—so, maybe not that profound, then.
“It’s not going to happen for us,” Nadia said, trying to push aside the swell of anger within her. “So forget it. Never mind. Don’t be freaked.”
Verlaine had evidently gone from being excited at the possibility to relieved that it was unlikely. “Okay, I get it, you were just—giving me the ‘in case of emergency’ speech. Like on a plane. They always tell you where the life jackets are, and show you how to calmly put on the oxygen masks—like if those masks fell out of the plane ceiling you wouldn’t all be screaming bloody murder.”
Nadia had to laugh. “Yeah, pretty much.” She pointed with her whole hand, flat like a blade, the way stewardesses did. “That way is the emergency exit.”
“Got it. Okay, so—show me what you’ve got.”
Nothing for it now but to start the spell.
She took down her Book of Shadows, because she still needed the instructions for a prophetic spell. It probably looked pretty impressive as she scattered a circle of whitish-gray powder on the floor. Even better would be the cleansing flame, which was violet and hovered slightly above the powder, glowing brilliantly.
“What is that?” Verlaine whispered.
“A cleansing flame.”
“What’s it cleansing?”
“The air. Also the bone.”
“Bone?”
Nadia pointed at the powder on the floor. “You can buy it in some fertilizer stores.”
“Ew. Um, no offense.”
“None taken. There’s a lot of grossness in witchcraft.”
The cleansing flame began to do its work; the bone powder looked precisely the same, but the light in the room seemed to disappear. Really, it was all being drawn into the one violet flame, which grew larger, brighter, tongued with more forks of fire. It was a blaze now, illuminating them both. Nadia took her seat on the floor across from Verlaine, who obviously realized the moment was near.
“We’re about ready,” she said. “Spellcasting is silent, usually. You can speak spells aloud if you really need to keep yourself together, but mostly it works better when the focus turns inward. So I’m going to go through it without speaking. Okay?”
“Okay.” Verlaine hesitated. “If I do turn into your Steadfast, how will I know?”
“You won’t be my Steadfast. I’m, like, ninety-nine percent positive.”
“Yeah, but just in case of a water landing, tell me where to find my life jacket.”
Nadia grinned despite herself. “There would be a—flare. A surge in the flame. And you’d start to feel it not long afterward.”
“Got it.” Verlaine straightened herself, clearly ready. Nadia hoped she was, too.
Looking straight into Verlaine’s hazel eyes, her fingers closing around the pure silver dangle on her bracelet, Nadia began to go through the ingredients of the fortune-telling spell:
The sight of something wondrous, never before seen.
The breaking of a bond that should never have been broken.
Cold beyond desolation.
Loyalty beyond life.
These were mostly very powerful ingredients; only at this point in her life, she realized, would she have had any chance of casting this. Nadia pulled the memories together and thought them, felt them, as deeply as she possibly could:
The first time she’d seen Cole—when he was still in Mom’s belly, the one time her parents let her come to the sonogram, and suddenly all the boring talk about this baby brother she didn’t really want turned into something real, someone real, her actual true brother practically waving to her before he was even born.
Mom standing at the door, a suitcase next to her, saying, “It’s better this way,” and the horrible sight of her father unable to speak for his tears.
Chicago that year they’d had the “thundersnow,” when the winds had been hurricane-strength and two feet of snow had fallen amid bolts of lightning, and she’d opened the door to the balcony just to feel the storm’s fury, and the wind had nearly torn her away—
Dad on the night of the wreck, crawling through twisted metal and broken glass to grab Cole, never hesitating even though his own ribs were cracked and he had to be in incredible pain—
The magic turned over inside her. Rippled around her. Nadia drew a line in the remaining bone dust and envisioned Captive’s Sound—every street she’d seen, every moment she’d spent here—recreating the place as best she could within her mind and demanding that fate show her what was in store.
Her eyes widened as the bone dust blackened, began to radiate an unearthly heat that seared her outstretched hand—
The attic door opened. “Nadia?”
Startled, Nadia turned to see Mateo poking his head up into her attic.
The violet flame flared—and vanished. Instantly the room’s light looked normal; the magic she’d felt had gone … someplace. The bone dust was just so much black gunk on the ground. Verlaine jerked back, clearly not sure what to do.
Mateo frowned. “Whoa. What was that?”
“What was what?” Nadia answered, too quickly. She tucked her hair behind one ear, glanced back at the pile of bone dust on the floor, and adjusted herself so maybe he wouldn’t see it. Did it look like she was acting weird? Probably.
“Sorry to barge in; your dad said it was okay.” But Mateo’s attention remained on what he’d seen. “I meant, what was that—purple light, and all the sparks?”
Verlaine was doing a much better job of acting natural. “What purple light?”
He paused, then shrugged. “Guess it was something about—you know, it’s dark in the hallway and then you come up here—”
“Like how you see red after a camera flash,” Nadia agreed. “Definitely. Happens to me all the time. By the way—what are you doing here?”
Did that sound unfriendly? She hoped not. But it was a pretty good question.
“Does this look familiar?” Mateo held up a cell phone identical to hers—wait.
“I never took it out of my backpack!” Nadia protested, going to pick up her pack to prove her point. That was when she discovered a brand-new hole in the side pocket. “Oh, great. Wow. I’m glad it fell out at La Catrina instead of on the side of the road or something.” Blushing—in embarrassment, in the shock of near-discovery, because Mateo was near, for a dozen reasons—Nadia gave him a sidelong glance. “Thanks.”
He smiled, but awkwardly. “So. I should get going. It’s late. I told my dad I’d be back to help close up. But we should, um, talk sometime. Yeah. Right?” Mateo sounded so awkward, and yet nothing like the guys at school who had no idea how to ask a girl out. There was something else behind his hesitation, something heavier. Nadia could sense the barriers he put between himself and the world, and how hard it was for him to reach past them. And there was something about his eyes—something lost, something hunted.
Something she wouldn’t understand tonight. So maybe she should stop staring at the guy.
“Definitely. We’ll talk. See you around,” Nadia said.
And then Mateo was gone, back down the attic ladder, the door shutting atop him.
Verlaine said, “Do the two of you usually affect each other like that?”
“Like what?”
“You know—big Bambi eyes, all bashful, kind of gooey—”
“I wasn’t gooey,” Nadia protested as she took her seat next to Verlaine again. “Wait. Did you think Mateo was, um, gooey?”
“We’ll figure it out later,” Verlaine said impatiently. “The flame definitely flared. Completely. You saw it, right? Am I your Steadfast now?”
“I—don’t know. I doubt it.” But Verlaine was right; Nadia had seen the flare for herself.
“Wouldn’t I feel it? I don’t feel any different.”
Nadia shrugged. “We’ll have to check to make sure.”
Something quick and simple would be best: Reigniting the cleansing flame, maybe? Nadia pinched a bit of the bone dust between her fingers; it was still warm. Bone had a slight oiliness to it that set it apart from sand or ash, a reminder that it had once been alive.
If Verlaine were her Steadfast, even brand-new, then the flame would flare up instantly, and brighter than ever before. Nadia snapped her fingers, feeling the bone crumble and spark between them—
—but a spark was all she got.
“It didn’t take,” Nadia said. “We’ll have to try again.”
Verlaine shook her head, suddenly panicked. “What if it took, but it’s Mateo Perez instead?”
“Impossible.”
“What are you talking about? He came in just when the flame went foomp and flared up. He could be your Steadfast now!”
Nadia shook her head. “Couldn’t happen. No man can ever be a Steadfast, no more than a man can be a witch. They’re magic-blind, all of them.”
“All of them?” Verlaine didn’t look convinced. “You can’t be sure.”
“I can be absolutely sure, and so can you. It’s one of the absolute truths of witchcraft. It’s been true as long as there have been witches, so about as long as there’s been human history. No men. Not one. Not ever. Some people say it’s because a witch went evil and cursed them all way back at the start of civilization, but that would have been one badass curse. There’s all kinds of theories. But the old books all say ‘no man conceived of woman’ can ever know or use magic. And it’s true.”
Verlaine frowned. “Isn’t that sexist? You know, reverse sexism?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. We have bigger problems, okay?” Nadia kept staring down at the black, oily smears on her fingertips. “The spell.”
“Oh, right. Yeah! You told the fortune of Captive’s Sound, and … that is not a good expression on your face.”
Slowly Nadia shook her head.
“I would call that a bad expression. Very bad.” Verlaine began twisting the ends of her long, silvery hair between her fingers, her nails tugging at a small tangle there. “But—you didn’t see much. You couldn’t. It just turned black, that’s all.”
“It turned black,” Nadia said. “Nothing more. That means there’s only one thing waiting in this town’s future.”
Verlaine’s eyes were wide. “Which is not good.”
“Which is destruction. Complete and total.” Nadia stared down at the black oily soot on her hand, which was about as much as would be left of Captive’s Sound in the end. “I don’t know when it’s coming. And I don’t know why. But it’s coming.”
Anxious to be done with his work for the night, Mateo tied off a bag of garbage in the back room at La Catrina and stepped out into the alley.
His eyes widened, and the garbage bag slipped from his fingers, landing on the pavement with a wet crunch.
Mateo couldn’t pay any attention to that, or to anything else besides the fact that the world had apparently gone mad.