Spellcaster (Spellcaster #1) (16 page)

With his brain in complete overdrive like this, though, he didn’t see how even regular sleep was possible. Mateo thought he could handle everything he’d learned about magic and witches; it was the stuff about Elizabeth that churned his guts and made him want to be sick.

No, Nadia’s weird theories couldn’t be true; he knew that. But all those pictures—all those generations of women named Elizabeth Pike—

Why had Elizabeth never mentioned that she had a family name? That she looked just like her mother and grandmother? It was the kind of thing people brought up from time to time, or told jokes about. And he and Elizabeth were best friends. They shared everything.

Slowly he took up his phone and hit her name on Contacts. As always, she answered on the first ring. “Mateo. What’s wrong? Did you have another dream?”

“Haven’t fallen asleep yet.” He curled on one side, imagining—like he often did—Elizabeth lying next to him. It wasn’t a sexual fantasy, merely comforting—the idea of her so gentle and sweet and close.

And yet now he envisioned her as “Liz Pike,” the sixties coed, or in old-timey Victorian clothes—

“I was thinking about when we were little,” Mateo said. “All the fun stuff we used to do together.”

“Those were good times, weren’t they? Maybe you can think about those while you try to fall asleep.”

“What was your favorite? Out of all those memories.” He needed to hear that—to remember it through her, to know that she treasured those experiences as much as he did.

Elizabeth said, “All of them, of course.”

“Pick one.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

Why was she being so vague? It couldn’t be that she didn’t cherish those memories as much as he did—that was impossible. Elizabeth had proved, time and again, how much she cared about him. If Elizabeth could forgive him for being a freak, then Mateo could forgive her for keeping a few secrets she felt she had to keep.

But I’m not a freak
, he reminded himself.
The curse is real. What happened to Mom, to all the other Cabots—that was something done to us
.

Her soft voice said, “You’ll call me if you have another of the dreams, won’t you? Right away. I don’t want you to worry.”

If she is a witch, the way Nadia says, she knows the curse is real but won’t tell me about it. Not even to make me less afraid of going nuts and killing myself
.

“Okay,” he said. He couldn’t picture her lying next to him any longer. “Good night.”

“Night,” she replied. Funny, how he’d never noticed before now that she never added the
good
in front.

That night, despite all the Tylenol PM, he dreamed.

The entire world was fire
.

Floor. Ceiling. Walls. Doors. Every breath burned in Mateo’s lungs. Red, yellow, orange: They all glowed and flickered around him, strangely alive, as if heat itself could hate him enough to kill
.

Nadia lay at his feet, her dark hair just another burn in the scorched world that now enclosed him
.

Mateo wanted to go to her—to save her, to hold her, something, anything—but he couldn’t, because he was in someone else’s arms
.

Why couldn’t he let go?

From her place on the floor, Nadia whispered, “You shouldn’t have kissed me.”

Desperately Mateo tried to reach her, but he remained held fast—those weren’t arms holding him, they couldn’t be—they were chains—

He awoke with a start.

Then swore.

Then rolled over in bed, punching his pillow, to wait out the long, sleepless hours until dawn.

“You’re positive?” Cole whispered, his covers drawn up under his chin.

Nadia closed the closet doors. “Inspected it top to bottom. No monsters. Absolutely, one hundred percent monster-free.”

He smiled a little, and she came to his bedside and ruffled his hair. As Cole relaxed, he said, “Can we have mac and cheese tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is a pizza night. I won’t be here. But I bet Dad will order all the toppings you want. You should pick some crazy ones. Like—pineapple and anchovy!”

“Ewww.” Cole wriggled in delighted disgust. “Where will you be?”

Diving in the sound for God knows what
. “Out with some of my new friends. I’m lucky to have met so many people right away. What about you, buddy? Do you like the kids at school?”

Cole started telling her all about his new friends, and a birthday party he had this weekend; Nadia felt her phone vibrate in her pocket but ignored it, letting her little brother go on and on until his words came slowly, and his eyelids had begun to droop. He was worrying about the monsters less and less now. Maybe he was finally back to being a normal little kid. She hoped so. He deserved it. Mom had taken enough away from her and Dad—it wasn’t right if she took away Cole’s ability to feel safe ever again.

Only when he was conked out and she’d shut his door behind her did she look down and see that she had a message from Mateo. Instantly she hit Call Back. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Hey.” He sounded almost as sleepy as Cole had. There was something about his voice when it was sleepy—warm and not quite controlled. Nadia found herself leaning against the wall, making little circles on the floor with her foot. “Sorry we left things so weird. We seem to keep doing that.”

Nadia forced out the next: “I don’t mean to say anything bad about Elizabeth.”

“Listen, I admit—Elizabeth hasn’t told me the whole truth. I know she can’t. I get that. I also know you’re not making all this up. Before I can talk to Elizabeth, really talk about this, I have to know what she’s dealing with. The more I know, the more she’s likely to tell me. Right?”

“Right.” Why did he have to be so focused on Elizabeth? Nadia focused on the most important thing. “I want to go diving near the lighthouse. To search. Tomorrow night, if I can.”

She expected him to argue. Or hesitate. To come up with reasons they should ask more questions first.

All Mateo said was, “I’m with you.”

All day, Nadia’s mind was on the night’s dive. Her body, unfortunately, was stuck in school, and every class seemed to drag on and on forever. A counseling session with Faye Walsh seemed likely to bore her to actual, literal death, until Nadia came up with the idea of telling her that she was working with Verlaine on digitizing the back issues of the
Lightning Rod
—that was an extracurricular project, right? Apparently it counted, at least enough to get Ms. Walsh off her back for the moment.

Her head still in the clouds—thinking of what to wear, when to go, what to tell her father—she drifted down the hallway toward her last class, when suddenly Elizabeth stepped directly in front of her.

Nadia stopped short. Elizabeth regarded her without malice or curiosity. With her chestnut curls long and loose and her unfashionable airy dress, she ought to have looked unkempt, even tacky. Instead, there was an incredible stillness to her. Her beauty was so precise that it might have been plotted on a sketch pad with compass and protractor, every measurement ideal and yet impersonal. Looking at Elizabeth was like looking at a statue of some ancient goddess that could smite you at a glance.

“Your mother is gone,” Elizabeth said.

How did she know that? Nadia struggled for words. “That’s—none of your business.”

Elizabeth cocked her head. “Your father forgot to mention my visit, didn’t he?”

Wait—Elizabeth was
in my house? Nadia felt her arms tightening around her books, as if using them to shield her heart.

“People often forget where I’ve been,” Elizabeth continued. “I prefer it that way. Once they’re aware of me—of what I can do—it’s harder. But I could make you forget about me. Forget my name. Forget your own name, if I chose.”

Every bad thought she’d had about Elizabeth was true. Nadia remembered Mateo—the danger he was in because of the curse, how vulnerable he was to Elizabeth’s manipulation—and that plus her fear for her dad seized her, turning her fear to rage. “Tell me what you’re doing to this town. What are you after? What do you want?”

“Nothing I haven’t earned.”

“Then what are you doing to Mateo? You’re friends. You have to care about him, at least a little. Why haven’t you told him about the curse? Why aren’t you protecting him from it?”

To her surprise, Elizabeth smiled. The expression was fond, in a patronizing way—like how she might look at a puppy before she petted its head. “You’re very young. You don’t have your full power yet, and you have no teacher to guide you. So you’ll never be a real witch. You and I both know that. So why are you prying into my life? And Mateo belongs to me in ways you could never even begin to understand.”

“He’s not your property,” Nadia shot back.

“Oh, but he is. You know I can make people forget, Nadia. I can also make people remember. If I wish it, Mateo will ‘remember’ that he’s in love with me. That he always has been. He’d be so intensely in love with me that he’d do anything I asked, as quickly as a snap of my fingers.” Elizabeth’s eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, like someone remembering a good joke. “They say it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. But you’ve loved and lost, haven’t you? You know how it hurts. Are you going to keep investing all that emotion in Mateo, knowing I can separate you two forever at any moment I please?”

Loved and lost. Nadia had gone out with guys, had cared about a few, but she’d never truly fallen for someone—not the way she sensed she could fall for Mateo. The only love she’d lost was her mother’s love.

And that loss had gutted her beyond anything else Nadia had ever experienced or imagined. It still hurt so badly, every single day—

The thought of setting herself up for that kind of pain again made Nadia feel faint. She put one hand out to steady herself against the cinder-block wall of the school. Elizabeth’s chin lifted—she’d seen Nadia’s weakness, and Nadia hated herself for it.

Elizabeth said only, “For your own sake, you should move on. From me, from this town. Keep your family safe. Haven’t you been through enough?”

Then she simply walked away.

Would that warning be sufficient?

Elizabeth thought so. She doubted a slip of a girl like Nadia Caldani represented any real danger in the first place; any complications from Nadia’s crush on Mateo would be minor and easily corrected with spells of forgetting or compulsion. Nadia would never tell Mateo about magic, or therefore about Elizabeth’s own witchcraft—someone so earnestly self-righteous would never break one of the First Laws.

And yet Elizabeth had to think of another besides herself.

Were Nadia to turn her avid curiosity away from Elizabeth and onto the magic she must, by now, have sensed beneath the chemistry lab—

No, that would not do.

Quickly Elizabeth cast a simple spell to shield the chemistry lab better. No magic on earth was capable of shielding that much power for very long, but she only needed another few weeks now.

I protect you
, she thought to the last One she would ever love.
I stand between you and all who would oppose you, weak or mighty
.

The spell shimmered out across the school, settling deep within the earth, where it could do the most good.

Now, to cover her tracks. Briefly Elizabeth considered having Nadia forget everything about her. It would be cleaner—but probably short-lived. If Nadia had figured out this much already, she’d probably manage to figure out that Elizabeth was a witch again—and again—and again. Repeated confrontations: What a bore.

Besides, Nadia’s knowledge was no more threat than Nadia herself, now that the Chamber was protected. Elizabeth needed only to ensure that would continue.

So she sent out a spell of forgetting, highly targeted, highly specific—and sufficient to make sure Nadia Caldani could do nothing to interfere with Elizabeth’s plans, in even the slightest way.

Nadia stopped in her tracks, books in her arms.
Did I forget something?

She’d been freaking out about Elizabeth facing her down that way—so much that apparently she’d lost track of something else. And it was important, too. Did it have to do with chemistry class, maybe?

I bet there’s an assignment I forgot to write down
, she thought, and sighed. She’d have to ask Mateo about it later.

The neighbors looked at Mateo warily when he asked to borrow the boat, but then, that was how they always looked at him. As soon as they said yes, he texted Nadia:
Meet me at sunset at the boathouse. Is Verlaine coming?

I didn’t tell her about it
, Nadia replied, and Mateo felt slightly relieved. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Verlaine—he kind of did, which surprised him, since as long as he could remember, she’d been the only kid more outcast than he was in Captive’s Sound. But whatever they found in the ocean—if it explained more about who Elizabeth really was, what she was keeping from him—then he wanted to talk about that with Nadia, alone.

Already he felt like he could tell Nadia everything.

What was it about someone that made you know, just know, your secrets were safe with them? Mateo had come to know Nadia first in his dreams, and in those dreams he’d felt—protectiveness, trust, even something that might be love. But those had been only nightmare visions, the emotions experienced there as fleeting as sleep. What was stirring between him and Nadia now—that was real. It could endure. Could he trust that feeling, and trust her?

Walking out to the water that evening made him shiver. Not from the chill in the air—though it was coming, fall already threatening to turn into winter with September not even quite over—but from the view, the look at his hometown that revealed all the evil he’d always sensed but never before seen.

Being a Steadfast meant more than strengthening Nadia’s powers. It meant facing the world for what it really was—filled with magic, more dangerous and far stranger than anyone could ever guess.

Even during the daytime, the sky overhead was different than it should have been. Dingier. Lower. When he looked at it, Mateo had the uncanny sense that it was looking back. At first he thought he could even see the reflection of that gloom on the waters, but then he realized they were poisoned in the exact same way. Staring at the ocean, the waves seemed not blue but a slick, iridescent black, as if in the aftermath of an oil spill.