Spellcaster (Spellcaster #1) (35 page)

He knew there was no point in trying to run. Even before she’d bound him to her—Why had he consented to it? Why hadn’t he known then that this wasn’t Nadia’s style, that Nadia would have insisted on making plans first thing?—Elizabeth would have been able to prevent him from getting away. So he said the only thing that mattered. “You have me. So you don’t have to go after Nadia. Leave her alone.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “It’s much too late for that.” Then she stooped down to pick up a seashell—a wide, flat one with a sharp, undulating edge. “This will work. The cuts needn’t be fine.”

Mateo watched, horrified, as she went to Jeremy’s body and flipped him over on his back. Jeremy’s face—slack and vacant, sand stuck to the skin—was the most gruesome thing he’d ever seen.

Or it was until she brought the corner of the seashell to Jeremy’s eyes, and then he couldn’t watch any longer.

Gage’s party seemed to be in full swing already by the time Nadia arrived. She realized she’d gone slightly overboard; most people were in jeans or cords and sweaters, and she’d put on a black dress with a fairly short skirt. Heels, too. Black played a bigger part in her wardrobe than most people’s in town. Probably that was the Chicago city-dweller side coming out. But being overdressed would be worth it to watch Mateo’s expression change when he saw her looking like this.

Though of course they were meeting up here primarily to make plans. Everything else came after that.

But it still wouldn’t hurt to look good.

She weaved through the crowd of people—couples hanging all over each other, girls trying to get six or seven of them together in one hug for a photo. For a moment she remembered that Verlaine was supposed to be there with her, the first party she’d ever been invited to; the wrongness of what had happened to Verlaine would never stop making Nadia feel slightly sick.

In need of comfort, or at least someone else who understood, she kept searching for Mateo in the dark. He would hate this kind of scene as much as she did—

Nadia smiled as she realized that Mateo would be outside waiting for her. It was what she would have done, another way they were alike.

So she stepped outside onto the porch that wrapped around the house. Below, in the sand, some people were crumpling up newspaper and throwing it into a fire pit, trying to keep a sputtering blaze going. Only a couple of people hung out on the porch itself, and Nadia made her way around back.

But Mateo wasn’t there. Instead, sitting on a broad wooden swing, looking kind of forlorn, was Gage.

She ought to say hi, at least. “Hey. Great party.” Hopefully that sounded convincing.

“I guess.” Gage shrugged. Apparently he wasn’t having a great time.

“Have you seen Mateo?”

Gage’s depression seemed to deepen. “Yeah. I saw Mateo.”

Nadia went to him. “What do you mean? What’s the matter?”

“Oh.
Oh
. This is—awkward.” Gage ran one hand over his braids as he sat up straighter. “Um, listen. I don’t usually gossip, right? But better you hear this from me than Kendall Bender.”

“Hear what?”

“Mateo—I kinda thought you two were—were maybe—you know. But he hooked up with someone else tonight.”

It hit her like a slap. That couldn’t be true. It
couldn’t
.

Gage leaned over, forearms on his knees, to stare down at the porch. “Thing is, he always said he didn’t like her that way. And I always had a thing for her. Mateo knew that. Yeah, they were best friends—I should’ve figured—but still. After all those months he told me to make my move on Elizabeth, to see him getting together with her at my own party—it got to me, I guess.”

“Wait.” Nadia grabbed Gage by the shoulders, clearly startling him, but she didn’t care. “Are you telling me Mateo left here with
Elizabeth Pike
?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Looked pretty possible from where I was standing.”

There was no way he would ever have willingly gone with her. Elizabeth had him—whether through a spell or a threat, there was no way to know. But Elizabeth was holding Mateo prisoner. She’d already tried to kill Verlaine. And now—now she had Mateo’s Steadfast power to make her even stronger tomorrow night—

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Gage sighed. “But really we should have seen it coming.”

“Which way did they go? Tell me!”

“Seriously, don’t go after them. You’ll only feel worse.”

“Gage, this is important.”

He couldn’t have guessed what she truly meant by that, but his expression changed slightly, like he finally got that this wasn’t as simple as a party hookup. “I—I’m not sure. Her house, I’d guess.”

Nadia didn’t even say thank you, just got up and ran.

Dammit, dammit, why did she pick tonight to wear high heels? Every single step she took on the high, winding coastline road stabbed up through her feet and knees, but Nadia never slowed down. She went up the steps to the main road, wobbled on one heel, and nearly fell—so she stopped only long enough to kick off one shoe, then the other, before taking off running again. Concrete started ripping at her tights, bruising her feet, but it didn’t matter.

Next Christmas she was asking for a car.

Mateo’s
my
Steadfast. Not hers. That means he’ll give my spells more strength than Elizabeth’s. And she won’t be expecting me. That’s all I’ve got going for me. Is that going to be enough?

It has to be. I’ve already lost Verlaine, already let her down, and I can’t lose Mateo, too—

Finally Nadia reached the street where Elizabeth lived. She’d been here before—had jealously spied on Mateo and Elizabeth together. That felt so childish now, so pointless. But even then she’d known that approaching Elizabeth’s house might be dangerous. Waiting inside could be protective spells, wards, and watchers, omens Nadia might not even recognize.

But Mateo might be inside, too, in danger, and that left her no choice. Nadia went up the steps without hesitation and tried the door. It was unlocked. What she saw was … a completely normal, nicely furnished house. Like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Not what she’d been expecting.

No. This wasn’t right. It had to be a glamour at work.

Nadia touched her bracelet, went through the simple thoughts necessary to construct a spell of disillusion, and watched as the Pottery Barn facade melted. In its place was—a ruin.

Holding her breath, Nadia carefully stepped between the shards of broken glass and mirrors. Her feet—now effectively bare, as her tights had been all but shredded away—could feel a layer of thick, oily dust underneath. If she put even one foot wrong, though, she’d feel even worse when glass stabbed through her foot.

She heard nothing, but that was meaningless. Elizabeth might have taken Mateo’s voice the same way she had Ginger’s; even now he could be trying to warn her but unable to speak a word. In any room, around any corner, Elizabeth could be waiting. Watching.

The house was almost entirely dark; the light Nadia found her way by came from an old-fashioned wood stove in one corner of the large front room. Yet the light it cast didn’t flicker like flame—it was almost eerily steady, and there was a strange cast to it, as if the yellow were too close to green. And the heat of it almost seemed to sear the skin, though it was a dozen feet away.

Don’t look at it
, Nadia told herself. Whatever it was, however unnatural that burning might be, that couldn’t matter now. All that mattered was finding Mateo if he was here, and getting out again as fast as possible if he wasn’t.

Carefully she edged her way along one wall, trying to push some of the broken glass out of the way with her toes. There were the stairs—but they were so rotten, more spiderweb than wood by now, that surely Elizabeth and Mateo couldn’t have climbed them.

Here was a back room. Hand trembling, Nadia reached out for the doorknob and turned it slowly, so slowly.

She pushed the door open. Hinges creaked, and her breath caught again in her chest. The stove’s light barely reached this room, its heat, either; the chill of the shadows inside turned Nadia’s breath to a cloud.

If they’re in there, they know you’re here. Elizabeth knows. Step inside and find out
. At least there was no glass on that floor.

Nadia walked inside. The room was completely empty except for spiderwebs—countless spiderwebs, so thick they’d covered the windows, and a couple of the walls, completely. She breathed out, a sigh of both relief and disappointment. If Elizabeth hadn’t brought Mateo to her house, then where might they have gone?

But wait, there was something in the far corner. Nothing Mateo would have left behind, though, just a—

—a book.

Elizabeth’s Book of Shadows.

A spiderweb brushed against her arm, making her jump. Nadia flicked it away.

But it stuck. As did another. And another.

The spiderwebs were weaving around her, so fast she couldn’t even kick them away, so fast that already Nadia could hardly move. She lunged for the door, but it was too late; already she was tangled in the stuff, spiders crawling among the silvery threads that bound her on every side.

She was trapped. There was no saving Mateo, no saving herself.

Elizabeth had them both now.

“COME ON,” NADIA WHISPERED, TEARS OF SHEER EXERTION
rolling down her face. “Just—a few more inches—”

She reached desperately for the doorway of the room where she was trapped, fingers extended, every joint in her hand and arm aching. If she could only get hold of one of the shards of glass lying right outside, maybe she could start to hack away at the cobwebs surrounding her. Already she could hardly see the lower half of her body, and her left leg was going numb. Nadia had let herself fall to the floor, knowing the glass was her best chance, but now she wondered if she’d wind up mummified here, swaddled in gray filmy stuff, spiders all over her.

Already Nadia had tried to cast spells to liberate herself, but the Book of Shadows’s protections were ancient and primal. Her magic skittered across it like a raindrop across the windshield of a car, without any chance of getting in and changing anything.

Worst of all, she felt as if it were
staring
at her. Enjoying her fear and pain.

Nadia clutched desperately at the spiderwebs, trying to pull them away; little legs scrambled through her hair, and she screamed. How long had she been screaming? It seemed like forever, and it seemed like she pulled away handfuls of cobwebs every second, but there were always more around her, bearing her down.

Elizabeth walked into the ocean again; her blood would still be strong here. It would work.

Mateo followed her. He couldn’t help it. The frigidity of the waters affected him more than it did her. As the tides splashed over their waists, up toward their shoulders, he said, voice shaking from the severe cold, “Are you—going to—drown us?”

“We will die by fire,” she promised. “Silence. I have work to do.”

The eyes in her hand were smooth against her palm. They knew her blood, and again they would see.

“You might as well kill me,” Mateo said. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? What you did to Mom, my grandfather, Jeremy. What you tried to do to Verlaine. You use us up and throw us away.”

“Yes. But I haven’t used you up yet. Your curse is a part of me, Mateo. As long as I live, so does the curse.”

Enough distractions. This spell—even for her, this was difficult. Elizabeth had to bring all her concentration to bear, though she knew it would mean her hold on Mateo lessened for a moment. No matter. She knew her duty.

As the eyes drifted away into the tides, she felt the cord between her and Mateo—not break, but bend and stretch, giving him slightly more liberty. He felt it, too, or saw it; he was a Steadfast, after all.

Mateo threw himself at her, bearing them both down underwater. A wave came in, tossing them hard against the shells and sand; Mateo struggled for purchase, trying to get enough grip with his feet to anchor her against the ocean floor and drown her. Elizabeth could have laughed at his foolishness.

Another wave—and this one knocked them both into a roll. Now Mateo dragged her from the water by her wrist and hair before clutching her around the throat with both hands. His knees pressed down on her legs, pinning her.

“I can kill you.” His voice shook. “Don’t think I can’t. After what you did to my mom—I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

“No, you won’t.” She could still whisper. He wasn’t even bearing down hard enough to cut off all her air. Angry as he was, justified though he thought himself, Mateo was not the kind of man who could easily take life, not even to end the curse that kept him prisoner. “You’ll hate yourself for it.”

Mateo paused. Water dripped from his hair, from his eyelashes. His entire body shook with the tension. “You’re right. I will. But if I can protect Nadia—protect everyone—then I have to do it. I have to.”

He was talking himself into it. So, he had more resolve than she’d thought.

Too bad he was only a human.

Elizabeth pulled the spell taut again, sent him staggering to the side, then to his knees in the sand. No matter how hard he struggled to rise again, he couldn’t. She ruffled his hair as if he were a small boy. “You only had a second,” she confided. “And you’ve lost your chance.”

Oh, the despair in his eyes was sweet. Elizabeth warmed herself by it.

The first thing Asa felt was pain.

Not the agonies of hell, not any longer—that would have been familiar to him. No, this felt more like … like he’d banged his nose on something.

He had a nose?

He opened his eyes and looked around. Apparently he was lying on a beach, sand all over him (scratchy—he also felt scratchy! Even that was a treat after so long without a body). A puddle next to him smelled strongly of beer.

Pushing himself into a seated position, Asa looked down at the body the Sorceress had provided for him. He was male—not that it mattered so much, but he’d been male before, when he had been what you’d call “alive,” so at least he was familiar with the equipment. Apparently he was tall. His skin was a deep, tawny shade of tan.