Steadfast by Claudia Gray
16
NADIA HADN’T FELT THIS WEIRD ABOUT WALKING INTO Rodman High since her first day. Although people buzzed around her, talking and laughing, she could feel their glances glaring on her like a spotlight. Or maybe not a spotlight—one of those lamps from old movies, the ones the 1940s cops shone on suspects to make them talk.
And they made their whispers louder for her benefit. Mateo Perez—that freak.
He’d texted her that morning still completely beside himself because of what had happened. Nadia had played down the first sleepwalking incident, hoping against hope that it was an aberration, but apparently not. The sleepwalking was dangerous enough in its own right—what if he’d wandered into traffic? If this happens in winter, he could freeze to death!—but what worried Nadia most was that the entire town’s paranoia about the cursed Cabot family had now focused on Mateo harder than ever. Mateo had enough burdens to bear; did he have to deal with this, too?
When she turned the corner toward her locker—and, not far away, Mateo’s—Nadia immediately saw a familiar face, if not the one she’d been waiting for. “Verlaine! What are you doing here?”
Verlaine shrugged. “All I can do at the hospital is wait. All I can do at home is cry. So somehow Rodman is the least horrible place for me to be. That’s new.”
Nadia put her arms around Verlaine, reminding herself, She needs this. She needs her friends. Be one. As always, when she overcame whatever dark magic shadowed Verlaine, the impulse surprised her—and apparently Verlaine, too, because it took her a moment to hug back. But when she did, her grip was fierce.
“Nothing’s changed?” Nadia asked.
“Nothing. Uncle Gary’s still asleep. They put him in the same room as Mrs. Purdhy and Riley Bender; supposedly they’re studying them all together. Really I think the doctors don’t know what to do with any of them, and lining up the hospital beds makes them feel like they did something productive.”
“It might be useful,” Nadia said. “If you can get me in there, maybe I can try to figure out a little more about the magic at work.”
“Oh, hey, yeah!” Verlaine actually smiled a little. “I didn’t even think of that.”
Maybe Nadia could help; maybe she couldn’t. But she’d managed to cheer Verlaine up, at least momentarily. Gently she teased, “I can tell you’re worn out. You didn’t even wear one of your vintage outfits today.”
“Excuse me?” Verlaine gestured at the bedraggled stuff she wore. “Torn jeans? Flannel shirt? Nineties grunge all the way.”
“I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy to stop you.” Nadia went ahead and stowed her stuff in her locker. As soon as she shut the door and turned her head, she saw Mateo.
She loved him so much that it was less like she saw him and more like he happened to her—every line of his face new, as if it were that first moment they’d met. Mateo’s dark eyes met hers, and she opened her arms as she went to him.
They embraced fiercely, and he buried his face in the curve of her neck. Everyone in the hallway was staring at them, both at Mateo and the girl who wasn’t afraid of him. Was Mateo the only one in the world who didn’t know how much she loved him, that she would never give up on him no matter what?
But Mateo kissed her quickly then looked into her eyes, and she thought maybe he knew, too.
It was Verlaine he spoke to first, and Nadia couldn’t blame him for pulling away and offering Verlaine a hug as well. “Hey, you’re here. Are you all right?”
Verlaine hugged him back. “If by ‘all right’ you mean I can now go at least fifteen minutes without crying—maybe? We’ll see. How are you? I heard you had another nocturnal adventure. Oh, wait. That kinda sounded dirty.”
Mateo actually laughed. “Unfortunately, no. Unless you mean my feet. They were gross. I don’t even want to know what I walked through.”
He was joking about it. Nadia’s heart swelled with pride at his courage, facing down both the curse and the sneers of those around them. She took his hand, and for a moment as he smiled at her, she thought everything was well between them again, the way it should always have been—but then Mateo’s face fell.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Elizabeth.
Her first thought was that Elizabeth looked terrible, which wasn’t a thought she’d ever had about Elizabeth before. Evil as she was, a sort of warm glow seemed to follow her everywhere, enhancing a beauty that was all the more striking for being so low-key and natural. Even now she was beautiful.
But instead of the gossamer white she usually favored, Elizabeth wore a dress that—well, it had once been white, but now it was dingy, even stained. Her curls had lost some of their bounce. Band-Aids over her knees only slightly disguised a number of cuts. If it had been anyone else, Nadia would have asked whether she was okay.
It’s like she’s forgotten how to take care of a mortal body, Nadia thought. She’s tearing it up as she goes.
Mateo suddenly straightened. His eyes took on the distant look that Nadia had learned to recognize as a sign that he was seeing something through his Steadfast powers—some working of magic that even a witch couldn’t witness for herself. “Oh, my God,” he said.
“What?” Nadia grabbed his arm then, not that he seemed to notice. “What is it?”
One guy in the hallway fell to the floor. Then a girl right next to them did the same. A teacher who came through the door slumped against one wall, coughed up the black slime, and slid down into unconsciousness.
People began screaming, freaking out, running in all directions. Gage immediately grabbed his phone to call 9-1-1; a few others stooped to check on those who had collapsed.
Elizabeth kept walking. As she went past one of the fallen, she would stoop just long enough to dip her fingers in the gunk; her skin smoking from the burn, she would then reach up to her shoulder. By now the scars on her flesh were ragged and horrible, but Nadia could recognize the symbol. It was complete; Elizabeth was just burning the marks deeper and deeper.
She didn’t even pause as she walked past Nadia and Mateo.
And there was nothing—nothing—Nadia could do to stop her.
“What’s going on?” Mateo said.
“Elizabeth’s speeding up. Going faster. The bridge she’s trying to build for the One Beneath—she wants it here sooner. Wants Him here sooner.” That much was clear.
What wasn’t yet clear was just how much faster Elizabeth had begun to work.
In front of La Catrina, Alejandro Perez took the clipboard from his supplier and started checking off the boxes. Then he frowned. “Hey, what’s this? We asked for three cases of tequila, and you only sent us one?”
“We didn’t get our own shipment in on time this week,” said the driver, an amiable guy he knew only as T. J. “Gave you what we had, changed the bill, and we’ll make it up the next time.”
“So much for the two-for-one margarita special,” Alejandro muttered. He’d been trying to think up various promotions to win diners back. Now that there was another victim of this mystery illness, someone who’d had the decency to collapse somewhere else, there was no more reason for people to assume the food at La Catrina could have anything to do with it. But all the same, it would take another few days for business to get back to normal. A margarita special might have made that two days instead of five. Even that much time made a difference to the bottom line.
Maybe a piña colada special? Not very Mexican—but in this town, authenticity didn’t go nearly as far as a two-for-one deal.
He signed off on the modified shipment order, nodded good-bye to T. J., and started hauling in boxes. Too bad Mateo wasn’t here, with his young knees and back; these boxes got heavier every year. But soon Mateo would go to college, get out of this stupid town, and be on his own. So Alejandro either had to get used to carrying boxes or start looking for someone else to hire.
That Gage Calloway is a good kid, he thought as T. J.’s huge eighteen-wheeler began lumbering onto the road. Is he a senior, too, or wo
The rest of the question died as he watched the eighteen-wheeler slowly begin to roll off the side of the road, brake lights never blinking once, until it plowed into the grocery-store parking lot. Metal screeched and glass broke as cars twisted, turned, and bent—finally slowing the truck to a stop.
Alejandro ran for the truck, a few other bystanders following close behind. His first thought was that T. J. must have had a heart attack. But when he reached the door and pulled it open, he realized the truth was far stranger than that. T. J. lay slumped over the steering wheel, feebly pawing at the dashboard while viscous black fluid flowed from his gaping mouth. His jeans had already burned away from the stuff, which was now eating into his skin. The smell made Alejandro want to gag.
“Everybody stay back!” he shouted. “Call an ambulance!” The various people now congregating around the truck mostly did as he said, though one girl insisted on coming close to help—that pretty girl Mateo used to be so close to, Elizabeth Pike. Of course she’d want to help—such a nice kid. But he couldn’t think about her for very long, or about anything other than the blank staring horror on T. J.’s face.
Like the Bender girl, he thought. It’s happening again.
Gage had gotten the hell out of school as quickly as he could; nobody was running around taking attendance while that was going down, and all the teachers insisted the students should clear out instead of trying to help. But as he walked across town, he felt more and more guilty for having ducked out.
What if you have Ebola? he asked himself. They’d shown a documentary about the Ebola virus in physics class (since Mrs. Purdhy wasn’t around to teach it), about which he was still completely freaked out. If you’ve been exposed to Ebola, then you’re exposing everybody else to it, too! You’d be what they call a Patient Zero.
Only then did it occur to him that if he could give other people Ebola, he would have to have it himself. That didn’t help.
Okay. I’m going to assume I don’t have Ebola yet. But it is past time to take some precautions.
He went to the drugstore downtown, where Mrs. Laimuns was Captive Sound’s only pharmacist outside the hospital. She waved at him as he started searching the aisles. “Are you here to pick up your aunt Lorraine’s blood-pressure medicine again?”
“Not this time, Mrs. Laimuns.” Latex gloves—check. And hey, paper face masks, like people wore to the airport in Asia. He ought to grab some of those, too. As he filled his plastic basket, he reconsidered his answer to the pharmacist; going outside meant exposure to Ebola or whatever it was, so he should save his aunt Lorraine the trouble. “Hey, actually, I’ll go ahead and pick up the—”
His voice trailed off as he realized Mrs. Laimuns was no longer standing behind the pharmacy counter. He couldn’t see her at all.
Tinny Muzak played on the pharmacy sound system as Gage slowly walked toward the counter. “Mrs. Laimuns?” No reply.
He got to the drop-off window and leaned over to look inside. There, between rows and rows of medicine, Mrs. Laimuns lay unconscious on the floor, strange, black tar thick on her smock, sizzling against the tile.
In Kendall’s opinion, it was like the doctors actually wanted this hospital room to be creepy. The overhead lights never seemed to be on, having three comatose people together made it feel less like a hospital room and more like a morgue, and the only proof she had that Riley still lived was the beeping of a half dozen machines.
Riley lay on the bed, motionless, with tubes taped into her nose and electrodes stuck to her forehead and chest. Nobody had washed her hair in days, and she didn’t have on any makeup. When she woke up and found out that Kendall just let her lie there for days looking like this, Riley was going to be so pissed.
Well, that was the one thing Kendall could fix.
She glanced over her shoulder to see whether any of the nurses were coming; they’d just been here taking care of everybody’s catheters—so gross—which meant nobody else should walk in for a few minutes. That was all Kendall needed. From her tote bag she pulled a packet of cleansing face wipes and her makeup bag.
“Here you go,” she whispered as she carefully washed Riley’s face, wiping around the tubes. “That’s better, huh?”
Foundation and mascara would be overkill, definitely. But moisturizer had to be a good thing, healthy for the skin, and this one was tinted for just a touch of coverage. Kendall pursed her lips as she brushed the lightest bit of shadow onto Riley’s eyelids, then a little blush onto her cheeks.
She finished by dabbing cherry lip balm on Riley’s mouth. “There. You look so much better. You could go out like this, totally. Well, not your hair, which is, like, seriously unfortunate, but tomorrow I can at least bring in some dry shampoo.”
Riley didn’t look so scary any longer. She looked like herself—the girl who had ruled their high school while still being nice to everybody. Kendall wasn’t as nice as Riley, and she knew it; someday, though, she hoped she might be.
For a moment she remembered sitting on the lid of the commode, opening her eyes wide as her big sister brushed mascara onto her lashes for the first time. But that just made her want to cry, and Kendall was sick of crying. Instead she patted Riley’s hand and said, “I’ll get some nail polish in here, too, because you’re way overdue for a mani-pedi.”
Kendall’s head jerked upright as she heard voices in the corridor. Not normal nurse voices talking about ccs of fluid or whatever—people shouting. People who were afraid.
She went to the door of the hospital room to see half the staff hurrying down the hallway. Everyone was yelling stuff like multiple incoming and everyone to the ER stat and so obviously something very, very bad was going down. It was like a cliffhanger on Grey’s Anatomy. Kendall wondered whether a plane had crashed outside of town or a gunman had shot up a store or something. That was the kind of thing it always was on Grey’s.
Elizabeth Pike was hanging around, too, but that wasn’t so weird. Kendall had seen her around before. Maybe she volunteered here or something.
Then as two nurses went past her, one of them stopped in her tracks. The other one looked back in confusion. “Diana? Diana, are you okay?”
The first nurse staggered against the wall, then slumped to the floor—and that black stuff was all over her, the same stuff that had choked Riley, the exact same thing happening again.
“Somebody help!” said the nurse now leaning over the fallen Diana. “We’ve got another one right here!”
Another one. She said another one. That meant the people coming into the ER—
Kendall looked back at the hospital room where her sister lay, between the other two patients, and realized they were only the first three. Only the beginning.
Faye Walsh was technically supposed to be in her office from eight thirty to three thirty every single day, but in reality, if she didn’t have a student appointment, a fifteen-minute coffee run was okay with the principal, particularly if Faye brought a latte back for her.
The barista held up a cardboard cup and called, “I have a macchiato here for Larissa.”
While the woman in front of her went to get her coffee, Faye pulled out her smartphone, just to double-check her schedule. If she could clear a half hour this afternoon, she’d try again to meet with Nadia Caldani. That conversation was overdue.
Someone near her gasped, and Faye glanced up to see the woman who’d just collected her coffee swooning to the ground, spilling coffee in every direction. But another puddle began to spread outward—the black, burning fluid she’d seen in her office a few days before.
The barista called 9-1-1; a few people bent down to try and help. Faye took a couple of steps backward and, unobtrusively as possible, used her phone to snap a picture.
It was important to document this, to get proof.
She had to be on the lookout for any evidence of witchcraft.
17
WHEN VERLAINE HAD LEFT THE HOSPITAL THE DAY before, it had been a place too qu
Now it was bedlam.
At least a hundred people, maybe more, had crowded into the ER waiting room; everyone was demanding answers about their loved ones or this “mystery illness,” and nobody had any answers to give.
Well, not any answers the crowd was going to get, anyway. The people who knew the truth could be counted on one hand, and included two witches and a demon. Verlaine figured that wasn’t what anybody out there wanted to hear.
She and Nadia had managed to find a slightly less crowded corridor where they could at least hear each other talk. “Elizabeth can’t have been everywhere in town at once,” Verlaine said while they huddled near the vending machines. “Could she? Is there some kind of . . . time-turner spell?”
“Like I wouldn’t be using that every single day if there were. And enough with the Harry Potter stuff, okay?” Nadia leaned against the wall, weary as though she were the one who hadn’t slept. “I doubt Elizabeth made it to every single scene. But she would have made it to a lot of them.”
“Has she completed that disgusting symbol thing she’s burning into her flesh?” Verlaine supported tattoos, piercings, and other body modifications on general artistic principles, but actually using them to summon the forces of darkness was going too far.
“Yeah, but I don’t think completing the symbol is a big deal. I think it’s more about . . . strengthening the symbol. Calling on it. Reinforcing it. Every time Elizabeth burns it deeper into her shoulder, the symbol gets stronger. And so does her spell.”
“Which means what? The One Beneath gets to enter our world?”
Nadia gave her a look like it was bad luck to even say that out loud. Maybe it was. Verlaine decided she’d be a little more careful with her words from now on, just in case. “No,” Nadia explained. “This is just step two of her plan. What she’s doing right now is building a bridge for Him. What she’s building the bridge out of is pain itself.”
“You mean all these people in this hospital—including Uncle Gary—they’re suffering because Elizabeth can use that?” Verlaine hadn’t known it was possible to feel so angry that her head ached and her hands clenched into fists so tight her fingers hurt. But if Elizabeth had been there at that moment, she swore she’d have been able to swing her fists right into Elizabeth’s face, and no dark magic on Earth could have stopped her. “The pain these sick people feel is like . . . bricks, or stones. What she uses to create.”