Spellcaster by Claudia Gray
Besides—how could Elizabeth underestimate her? With so few skills, so little knowledge, no mother, no teacher, Nadia couldn’t be any real challenge to Elizabeth, and they both knew it.
Then she heard a high, wavering cry from her little brother’s bedroom.
Cole’s awake, she typed quickly. Gotta go. Then she dropped her phone and hurried to Cole before he could wake her father. Her bare feet padded against the old wooden floors, the one loose board squeaking underneath as she reached her brother’s door. “Hey, buddy. You all right?”
He lay in bed, clutching his covers up to his chin, which was always a sign of bad dreams or at least potential monsters in the closet. “No,” he snuffled.
“It’s okay. I promise.” Nadia came to sit on the side of his bed and ruffled his hair with her fingers. “Was it seeing the ambulance tonight? Nobody got hurt, not really, but I guess that was pretty scary anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Cole said. He looked so small, lying there. These days, when he ran around like crazy and could eat almost half a pizza by himself, Nadia sometimes forgot how little he still was. “But I woke up and I wanted Mommy.”
Then he started to cry again—almost like he was ashamed. A little boy in first grade shouldn’t have been ashamed of still wanting his mom. And Mom should have been here for him.
Nadia’s throat tightened, but she didn’t let herself lose it, too. Instead she whispered, “Scoot over, huh?” When he did, she lay down beside him, atop the covers, but still able to hug him tight.
Cole cuddled next to her, even as he said, “I thought I was too big now.”
She’d told him that during the summer, mostly to try to get him used to sleeping on his own again; Dad had said they had to help Cole start acting like everything was back to normal. He did now, mostly. So she could make an exception. “Not if you have a bad dream. Nobody’s so big that they don’t want a hug after they have a bad dream.”
“Okay.” Cole closed his eyes almost right away; he’d always been quick to soothe, but Nadia knew she’d need to stay until he was fast asleep.
Going after Elizabeth meant risking more than her own safety. More than Verlaine’s, more than Mateo’s. It meant risking Dad, and Cole.
She looked over at him, with his chubby cheeks and fat little hands; lined up along the wall were his favorite toys, the race cars and the LEGOs and the sock monkey. Despite Mom’s abandonment, despite the move and everything they’d been through, his world was still so innocent.
Nadia took a deep breath and tried not to think about Elizabeth, or curses, or the monsters in the closet.
The next day, Mateo impatiently went through the various tests the doctors wanted to run. He had to pretend to be concerned, but since last night was definitely not a “seizure,” it was all a huge waste of time.
What he wanted to do was to find out what the hell actually had happened to him—what Ginger had done. Nadia would know. But using cell phones near the hospital machines was forbidden, and since she’d be in school until three p.m., he was stuck for the time being. Hours of bad food, useless tests, and the smell of Lysol awaited.
That, and his dad freaking out nonstop. “You’re not using steroids, are you?” he said as he paced the floor. “If you are, you know you can tell me. We’ll deal with it together.”
Mateo somehow managed not to roll his eyes. “Dad. I’m not using steroids.”
“You’re going out for baseball again this spring, right? I know that’s a lot of pressure.”
“Seriously, do you remember where we live? This is Captive’s Sound. If you try out, you’re on the team. They made a couple people try out last year who didn’t want to.”
His father didn’t seem to hear any of this. “You promise me? Because if something’s making you sick, we need to know.”
Mateo nearly snapped at him, but he realized how tired Dad looked; probably he hadn’t slept. Thinking about how badly Dad had been scared made Mateo feel like crap. “I absolutely promise.”
After school was out, Nadia and Verlaine came by—but they got there about five minutes after Gage, who had brought him a flash drive with some TV shows on it and one of those oversize chocolate bars, which at any other time would have been awesome. But as it was, talking about what had really happened was pretty much impossible, and Dad returned long before Gage left. That didn’t give Nadia any chance to explain.
He wanted more than an explanation, though. Mateo wanted her near—close to him, beside him—
The dreams, he reminded himself. And hadn’t there been one last night? The drugs had dimmed it; Mateo knew he’d had some kind of vision of her again but couldn’t recall the details.
And—he realized—he wanted to.
The visions—the ones that had cursed his family for centuries, the same ones that were beginning to ravage his own mind—Mateo wanted them. He needed them. Because they told him when Nadia was in danger, and gave him a chance to keep her safe. He’d said that before, but he’d never felt it as strongly as he did right now. Before he’d been willing to accept the visions of the future; now he wanted them.
Nothing was worth more than Nadia’s safety. If he had to suffer for it—go crazy for it, be like his mother and grandfather before him—then that was just how it was.
“Hey, are you okay?” Gage looked worried. “You kinda went away for a second there.”
Verlaine nodded. “Your eyes did this kind of misty thing.” She shot Nadia a look like, Is that magic?
Nadia didn’t see it; she was looking only at Mateo, and a shadow of the yearning he felt flickered in her eyes, too.
Even Verlaine must have been able to see it, because she hurriedly said, “Gage, Mr. Perez, could I talk to you guys for a second?”
They glanced at each other, then back at Verlaine. Gage shrugged. “Yeah, but why?”
“We’re doing a special on this in the Lightning Rod. About how even teenagers need to watch their health, because stuff like this can happen to anyone.” Verlaine’s expression was so serious and businesslike that Mateo had to cover his mouth like he was yawning, just to hide the smile. “Mr. Perez, your eyewitness account would of course be the most compelling—and Gage, you’re the ‘guy on the street,’ the average high school student confronting his mortality for the first time.”
“Confronting my mortality?” Gage didn’t look too thrilled about that.
Dad, though, seized on the idea. “This is definitely something you kids should think about. Come on. We’ll get snacks in the cafeteria. Healthy snacks!”
“Absolutely,” Verlaine said, shepherding them both out the door. “Mmm. Fruit.”
As soon as the hospital-room door swung shut, both Mateo and Nadia burst out laughing. “How does she do that?” Nadia said.
“No idea.” But already Mateo’s attention had returned to Nadia, and to whatever witchcraft had brought him here. “Nadia—what happened? How did you save me?”
She pressed her lips together in a thin line for a moment before answering. “Ginger tried to cast a spell of forgetting. So you wouldn’t remember what you’d learned about her. Of course, she didn’t know you were a Steadfast. You boosted the power of the spell, and basically—you forgot everything. Your body forgot how to live. It was dangerous, way more than she meant it to be.”
It helped a little to know that Ginger hadn’t really tried to kill him. They were hardly friends, but still—she’d given him his first haircut, back in the days when he was so little he’d thought it would hurt. “But you made me remember, huh?”
“I was going to try,” Nadia said, “but I didn’t get the chance. The spell was lifted as soon as I reached you.”
“How?”
But he knew. He knew even before Nadia said her name: “Elizabeth.”
Why? Why would she save him? She was trying to destroy him.
It made him angry, so angry he wanted to stalk out of the hospital right now, go straight to Elizabeth’s house, and demand the answers.
He wanted to shake her by the shoulders until her chestnut curls tumbled around her blank, beautiful face. Wanted to scream at her until he didn’t have any breath in his lungs. Why did you curse me? Why did you make me believe you were my friend? Why did you do all that and then save my life?
The black rage made him tremble, and he lay back on the bed, trying to slow his breathing. If a doctor came in now, they’d think he was having another “seizure” and he’d be stuck in here for another day.
“Hey.” Nadia put her hand on his shoulder, but he was so angry he couldn’t even appreciate the touch. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I mean, no. Physically I guess I’m fine.”
Mateo knew he wouldn’t have to say the rest.
Nadia’s hand slowly slid from his shoulder as she hugged herself. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said absently.
“Isn’t it?”
He shook his head, but at the moment, his fury eclipsed everything else—even Nadia sitting next to him.
Confronting Elizabeth was the worst thing he could do. If she’d restored his memory, she could probably steal it again. And if she started to wonder how he knew about magic, she’d realize Nadia had broken one of the First Laws to tell him. That could only put Nadia in greater danger.
But he knew he’d never feel complete—not for one second of one day—until he’d had some kind of revenge.
Elizabeth had ruined so many lives. She was trying to ruin his. No way was he going to let her get away with it.
No way in hell.
“So, I heard that they were, like, going to put him in the psych ward, but then they figured out the collapse was, like, physical instead of mental—who knew, right? And so they thought maybe he had a brain tumor, and they were going to do emergency surgery, and they were starting to shave his head, and that’s why his hair looks like that.” Kendall Bender led her crew of girls down the hallway past Nadia, who was stashing her stuff in her locker. “But then he didn’t have a tumor and maybe it was a seizure, and I was thinking, maybe there’s something in the food, like, at that restaurant? Because I like the burritos there and all but you can never tell with stuff that’s, like, you know, foreign.”
Nadia didn’t bother contradicting Kendall. Her mind was too full of what she had to do today. Right now, beyond anything else, she needed to get to Mateo.
All last night, she’d tossed and turned. There was only one thing she could do—only one responsible choice she could make—and as much as she hated it, Nadia knew what she had to do. She couldn’t put this conversation off one moment longer.
When she finally saw Mateo, he was walking across the gravel area of the quad. His haircut really was lopsided—Ginger had freaked out midsnip, apparently—but otherwise Mateo looked fine. Amazing, really. When he saw her, his face lit up in a smile that warmed his brown eyes and made something inside her melt.
Just get it out, she told herself. Walk over there and say it.
Already Mateo was coming over to her. Brown leaves caught in the wind skittered across the gravel, in front of her feet. Nadia clutched her hoodie more closely around her and tried to find her strength.
“Hey,” she managed to say as he reached her. “You’re back.”
“When you’re glad to be at school, it’s a bad sign.” He grinned at her, but she couldn’t find the strength to smile back. Instantly Mateo leaned closer. “What’s wrong? Is it Elizabeth?”
“No. I mean, yes, but—not exactly.” This wasn’t doing either of them any good. Nadia forced herself to meet Mateo’s eyes as she said, “I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Challenge Elizabeth. Not if it puts everyone I care about in danger. We have to find some way to convince her we’re giving up. And—I don’t know how, but we’ll figure out a way”—Nadia swallowed hard; this was the worst part—“a way to break the bond between us. You can’t be my Steadfast any longer, Mateo.”
He stared back at her. She’d imagined that he might be relieved, but instead he looked wounded … as wounded as she felt. More than anything, she wanted to take it all back, and tell him that of course they were tied together forever. How could it ever be any other way?
Instead she turned and walked away, refusing to look back.
17
NADIA MANAGED TO AVOID BOTH VERLAINE AND MATEO for the rest of the school day, even though she had to hide in the bathroom instead of eating lunch. It felt cowardly, hiding from them—
—no, all of it felt cowardly, period.
I’m not backing down because I’m scared, Nadia reminded herself. It’s because I’m putting too many people in danger. Dad. Cole. Mateo. Elizabeth’s evil—but that doesn’t make her my problem.
That was all true, or true enough. So why did it make her feel so hollow inside?
When the final bell rang, she didn’t even bother returning to her locker, just shouldered her heavy backpack and hurried across the grounds, not looking back. The crowd of laughing, carefree people didn’t seem to have anything to do with Nadia. Even though she’d learned most of their names by now, worked with a couple of people on school projects, they were still strangers, really. And that was how she wanted it.
But it was so easy to imagine them out on the night of the Halloween carnival, acting crazy in their costumes, laughing like this, until the ground began to shake—
“Nadia!” That was Verlaine behind her. Nadia didn’t want to turn around, but she did.
Verlaine and Mateo ran to her, side by side. Why was it surprising to realize they would have talked about this without her? The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, she told herself. But all she could do was grip her backpack straps tightly and stare at the ground as they came closer.
“Wait up,” Verlaine panted, even though Nadia had already stopped walking. “We need to talk to you about this.”
Mateo said nothing, only looked at Nadia with those dark eyes—brown with a touch of gold.
Nadia managed to say, “I realize you guys both need to understand what was done to you. And maybe I can help with that. But this whole thing about figuring Elizabeth out, taking her on—that has to stop.”
“How can you say that?” Verlaine stomped one Converse-clad foot on the ground. “We’re just supposed to let her go on like she has been? Hurting anybody who gets in her way?”
“If we get in her way, then we’re next.” Although she was talking to Verlaine, Nadia couldn’t look away from Mateo’s face. “We’re all fooling around with stuff we don’t understand—not even me. My mom”—her voice choked in her throat; she spat the bitter words out—“my mom didn’t teach me enough. There’s no one else to teach me. I’m not Elizabeth’s equal. I’m not even close. To you two, maybe it seems like I know everything there is to know about magic, but I don’t. Anything I try to do to Elizabeth is doomed to fail. Do you understand that? Mateo, you—you got hurt two days ago. You could have ended up on a ventilator, in a coma, for the rest of your life. And that was just Ginger coming after you because you knew too much! Because of me. It’s nothing compared to what Elizabeth could do. Do you guys get how far over our heads we are here? If you did, there’s no way you’d fight me about this. You’d know the only thing to do is to run as far away from Elizabeth as possible.”
“How?” Mateo said quietly. “We live here. I’m cursed. There’s no getting away from that.”
“I don’t know,” Nadia confessed. “We’ll have to figure something out.” She’d been up all night asking herself this same question. Dad liked his new job, even if they did scrape by on less money, but she figured he’d still put her and Cole in front of everything else. So if she started talking about how desperately she missed Chicago—and said she wanted to go to Yale or Stanford, someplace crazy expensive—maybe he’d talk to his old law firm and get his job back. It was the only plan she had so far, but it seemed possible.
Verlaine was so thin, so pale—a stretched
“No!” Nadia shot back. “But she already got away with it! I don’t have the power to stop her, and you two—you have to stop believing that I do. You have to stop believing in me.”
She started to turn away from them, but Mateo’s hand closed around her arm, and just like that, Nadia couldn’t move. Feeling him touch her made her want to melt, even though she knew she ought to push him away.
Mateo looked at her steadily as he said, “I can’t do that.”
“You can walk away from Elizabeth if you have to—you’ve already started—”
“That’s not what I mean.” Mateo’s thumb brushed along the crook of her elbow, back and forth, the smallest, gentlest touch she could imagine. “You said I had to stop believing in you. Well, I can’t.”
Nadia refused to cry. She wouldn’t. Even if her eyes were blurring and she couldn’t get a word out because her breaths were coming hard and fast, even if Mateo kept looking at her like that, she wasn’t going to cry.
Mateo kept going. “You’ve already done the impossible. Remember? I’m a Steadfast. Shouldn’t happen. But it has. You’ve already figured out more about Elizabeth than just about anyone else in town ever did. I don’t know enough about all this to say whether you could ever be stronger than her, but—I think you could be strong enough. Nadia, you could be strong enough to do anything.”
She gulped down something that was either a sob or a laugh, and although she still wanted to pull her arm away, she couldn’t bring herself to. She could only look back at Mateo and wish she were anything like the person he thought he saw.
“Okay, so, you two are having a moment.” Verlaine jerked her backpack onto her shoulders in a huff. “Mateo, good luck getting through to her. Nadia, call me when you’re talking sense again.” With that, Verlaine stalked off across the grounds, her silvery hair seemingly a tangled part of the gray fall sky.