Spellcaster (Spellcaster #1) (21 page)

“This is about Elizabeth, isn’t it?” When Mateo turned to stare, Gage shrugged. “You guys were hand in glove all summer; you haven’t gone near her for weeks.”

“Nope.” Once again he thought of the monstrous, unearthly thing Elizabeth really was. Saw the waxen, gilded animal face that shone out from behind her skin. Mateo shuddered. “I’ll go near her again sometime. Promise you that.”

Mateo was pretty sure the first time he acknowledged who Elizabeth really was, what she could really do, he was going to kill her. Really. With his hands. He had always thought he could never do that, kill someone, except maybe in a war but maybe not even then; now he spent about half his waking hours imagining what it would feel like to get his hands around Elizabeth Pike’s throat.

Which was a gross thing to think about. It was like letting a monster sit inside his head and give him notes. But he didn’t seem to be able to throw the monster out.

Gage said, “That sounds like, I don’t know, what did they used to call it? A lovers’ quarrel.”

“You still want to ask her out, don’t you?” Mateo gulped down some more of his drink; it tasted foul, but that didn’t matter. “Stay away from Elizabeth Pike, man. Trust me on this.”

Gage held up his hands, as if in surrender. “Hey, I know the guy code. I’m not going anywhere near your ex.”

“We were only friends,” Mateo said, though the last word stuck in his mouth. All it meant now was that he’d never kissed her. That was the only lie she’d spared him. Why did she stop there? Probably it just would have been too much trouble.

She only took the trouble to pretend to be the one real friend he’d ever known.

“Still. I respect that you need some boundaries there. Okay? But you’re not acting like yourself, and now you want to party with the same stupid people I know you hate. You’re cutting school. No matter what went down with you and Elizabeth, maybe it’s time to get a grip.”

Easy for Gage to say—

But then Mateo realized that he might have had one real friend after all.

He and Gage hadn’t known each other that long, and this was definitely the longest conversation they’d ever had—but Gage was trying to look out for him. This was not an easy talk to have with someone, but they were having it.

Not that it was any of Gage’s business what he did. But—maybe the guy had a point.

Besides, Mateo was past ready to drop this whole scene. The school had called Dad, and he was sick of getting yelled at. He didn’t even enjoy drinking like this. It made him sick and stupid, and feeling either way sucked.

Maybe he was just
done
.

“You’re right.” Mateo sucked in a deep breath that smelled of salt air. “You’re totally right. I’m standing around feeling sorry for myself, instead of—”

Instead of spending time with Nadia.

Learning whether he could truly trust her, or any witch.

Finding out what it meant to be her Steadfast, and seeing whether he could help her take Elizabeth down.

“Instead of doing what I should be doing,” he finished.

Gage smiled a little. “Can we start with ditching this party? I can drive. We could get some sliders at the White Castle, maybe.”

“Yeah. Let’s.” Mateo tossed his cup into the nearest can. No need to tell Kendall good-bye.

“Come on. Race you!” Gage took off, and Mateo tried to catch him. When Gage started laughing, it felt for one moment like everything was okay—like Mateo was just a guy, no different from anybody else.

But overhead, the stars twisted in the horrible, roiling sky.

“Draw Four!” Cole slapped down his Uno card, and both Nadia and her dad groaned in mock horror.

While her little brother cackled in glee, Dad said, “You sure you didn’t stack the deck?”

“Nope.” Cole’s feet swung back and forth beneath the dining table’s bench. “I’m just that good.”

As Dad laughed, Nadia heard her phone chime with a text message, but she ignored it for the moment. Cole hadn’t been sleeping well lately—not the nightmares, not like before. But he was restless, getting up two or three times a night to ask for water or turn on random lights. That was a bad sign, one Nadia recognized as well as her father by now. They were concentrating on Cole now, trying to get him back to the good place he’d been in just after the move.

And worrying about Cole meant she didn’t have as much time to worry about everything else.

“So tomorrow I thought I’d make chicken soft tacos,” she said as she threw down a card. “What do you say to that?”

She’d expected Cole to cheer and Dad to simply agree, but Dad was the one who answered first. “You’ve been spending too much time in the kitchen lately. You should be going out. Having fun. If you want tacos—why don’t we go to that Mexican place in town? La Catrina? That’s the one.”

Nadia felt it almost like a slap.

“And that guy works there, right?” Dad gave her a look as he played his own card. “Mateo. The superhero.”

“He’s not a superhero,” Nadia insisted, though even now she couldn’t forget how Mateo had looked in the first moment she’d seen him, his face illuminated by lightning.

“Ah, but he’s not available. I forgot.” There was no way she was going to correct Dad on that one; if he found out Mateo wasn’t dating anybody, he was likely to suggest Nadia should propose. “Well, we could eat out somewhere else. Drive over to the next town, get some pizza, maybe. If La Catrina is a, I don’t know, a sensitive subject.”

“Pizza!” Cole crowed, before playing his Reverse card.

Between her brother the cutthroat Uno prodigy and her dad in look-I’m-so-sensitive mode, Nadia thought she needed a break from the table. “Hang on. I’m gonna check my phone.”

Obviously the text would be from Verlaine. They weren’t friends, exactly—there was something about Verlaine that kept Nadia feeling oddly distant—but they got along, and they were partners in figuring out whatever it was Elizabeth was up to. So this text would be either about the weird patterns of disasters spreading through Captive’s Sound and what they might mean—or questions about Novels class. Everything had been quiet today, so Nadia figured it was about Novels class, even though it was weird for Verlaine to be worrying about homework on a Friday night.

Instead, the screen read,
Message From Mateo Perez
.

Nadia sucked in a breath. For a moment she just stared down at the screen. Then she thumbed the message open to see:
Meet me tomorrow at the beach? By my house. My lunch shift ends at 3
.

Nadia wanted to go there tomorrow and just smack him. Mateo didn’t get to ignore her for a whole week and then just command her to show up at his convenience. No way.

And yet—seeing the message made Nadia feel as if something tight around her chest had finally gone slack and let her breathe.

Even if she did only show up to give him hell—she knew she’d show.

It was the kind of a Saturday that felt like a Monday. The sky hung low with gray, rain-thick clouds that threatened to burst at any moment, and the gusty wind was a reminder that winter wasn’t too far away. Dad took Cole to see some movie with computer-generated frogs or something, so she didn’t have to make up an excuse about where she was going.

Of course, she could have just told her father she was meeting Mateo—but that would have led to more Mr. Sensitive. No thanks.

Nadia hugged her shearling jacket around her as she walked from Oceanside Road toward the patch of beach nearest Mateo’s house. The homes here weren’t like beachfront property she’d seen elsewhere; normally, only the wealthiest could afford houses with ocean views, and the architecture proved it—vast decks of gleaming wood, windows so huge they appeared to be glass walls, that kind of thing. But it was obvious that the homes here were as ordinary and weather-beaten as any others in Captive’s Sound.

Apparently there’s tons of summer vacation business in towns nearby
, Dad had said, back when he was explaining the big move.
But it’s never taken off in Captive’s Sound, for some reason. That makes it cozier. And more affordable
.

Yeah, Dad probably got a bargain on the house in the town being eaten alive by dark magic. Nadia could imagine the real estate listing.
Cursed Victorian! 3 bd/2 bth, zoned inside soul-sucking net of evil. Act now!

As she neared Mateo’s house, she heard the now-familiar roar of a motorcycle and turned to see him driving up. Nadia hugged herself more tightly and stood very still the whole time he shut off his bike and dismounted. She took not one more step toward him. He’d have to bridge the rest of the distance.

“Hey,” Mateo said as he took off his helmet. His expression was hard to read. “Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for asking me.” Nadia didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands all of a sudden, so she stuffed them in her jacket pockets. “How are you doing?”

Mateo opened his mouth, closed it, then shrugged. “Great. Terrible. Both at once, most of the time.”

“Yeah. I know how that feels.”

For another moment they just stared at each other. This was worse than the few haunted glances they’d exchanged in the halls at school, on the days when Mateo bothered to show up. Then Mateo finally said, “Come on. Let’s walk.”

They went to the shoreline, where the sand was no longer loose enough to drag against their shoes but packed hard by the departing tide. The ground underneath was still soft enough to hold the faint impressions of their footsteps, side by side.

“The worst part is what I feel when I see Elizabeth,” Mateo said, staring out to sea. “I didn’t know I could hate like that. Maybe I have the right to hate her, but inside it feels like—it feels like that sky looks.”

He pointed upward. All Nadia could see was an ordinary gray sky, but she knew Mateo’s Steadfast ability showed him its true nature. “Describe it to me.”

“It boils. With a film across it, a scum—like soup that’s gone too hot on the stove. Except whatever this is drains the light. Sucks it in. It’s like watching poison poured over us all, over and over again. Be glad you can’t see it, Nadia.”

She was. But she wouldn’t say so. Her spell had done this to him; that meant what he had to see was her responsibility, and always would be.

He continued, “But there’s a good part, too.”

“Yeah?”

It took Mateo awhile to find the words—a long silence between them that was broken only by the crashing of the waves and the shrieking of gulls. “I don’t know if I can make you understand what it’s like to know that I’m not crazy. That the visions are true. No matter how evil that reason is, it’s real, and now I can fight it. At least, I can if you help me.”

Their eyes met; as one, they slowed their steps and simply faced each other. Nadia finally said, “Does that mean you—you trust me?”

“I have to.”

It was like another slap in the face, but how could she blame him?

Then Mateo added, “And you’ll have to decide whether or not to trust me.”

“Why wouldn’t I trust you?”

He glanced down at the sand, breaking eye contact, like he was ashamed. “Because I haven’t told you everything.”

“What else is there to tell me?”

“I’ve seen you in my dreams. My visions of the future.”

Nadia frowned. “You told me that part.”

“I didn’t tell you the part where I’ve seen you die.”

The ground seemed to drop out from under her. “ … What?”

“More than one dream. More than one way you might—it might happen.” Mateo paced back and forth in front of her, talking with his hands as he struggled for words. “So it’s not like I know exactly when, or how, or even for sure. You’re not the only one I dream about, either—but you’ve been showing up more and more, and I know you’re in a lot of danger. I knew that before I ever laid eyes on you. Once I thought—I thought if I stayed away from you, if I weren’t there to see any of the stuff my dreams said I would see, then you’d be safe. Right? But one of the visions showed you struggling underwater, and I didn’t even get what that was until we went diving in the sound. Then I realized what kind of trouble you were in, and what I had to do to help you. So maybe some of the dreams let me protect you. I don’t know. All I do know is that I should’ve told you this a long time ago.”

It was creepy. And then some. Nadia took a deep breath, then another, making sure she felt steady.

Mateo now looked like he expected to have to catch her when she fainted. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I should’ve said something. I was trying so hard not to believe it—”

“We have to believe in your dreams. That’s how you saved me from the wreck, and on the night of the dive.” Yes. That was what she had to hold on to. Nothing else mattered. “Your dreams are a curse to you—I know that. But they might be the only thing that keeps me safe.”

“Then they’re worth it,” he said, as if that were as obvious as day following night. Something warm and stealthy turned over inside Nadia’s chest.

In truth, though, she wasn’t particularly frightened of the visions themselves. Yes, it was unnerving hearing that a guy who could see the future mostly saw her in a whole lot of trouble. But the dreams could be symbolic rather than literal; the one where she had been “floating” rather than drowning proved that.

No one vision worried her as much as the fact that he’d seen lots of ways she might die—that she played such a large part in the dreams he’d had so far. Why should she be so central to whatever was happening here in Captive’s Sound—in whatever danger seemed to be approaching? October thirty-first wasn’t far away now. That was frightening enough to think about, especially whenever she looked at Verlaine’s careful maps and the target drawn over the town. But why would it focus so strongly on her?

Worst of all: He’d talked about his dreams with Elizabeth. Maybe Nadia didn’t know why she mattered so much—but by now, Elizabeth might.

Mateo studied her face for a second and seemed to decide they needed to talk about something else. “Okay, apparently I’m your Steadfast. And a Steadfast makes you more powerful, right?”

Changing the subject—definitely a good idea. “Remember that whole scene in chemistry class? Doesn’t normally happen after a spell of liberation. So, yeah. When you’re closer, my magical power should be, um, amped up.”