Steadfast (3 page)

When Mateo nodded and smiled, she knew he understood without her even having to explain. He whispered, “Then give me a good-bye kiss.”

Their lips met gently at first, but then their mouths parted slightly and the warmth and taste of his mouth seemed to be the only thing in the world. Nadia leaned into his embrace, clutching him closer. The kiss deepened—but then a rush of cold wind raked across them, rattling tree branches and chilling them to the quick. Leaves swirled up around them so fast and thick that for a moment Nadia thought they were being rushed at by a flock of birds. She and Mateo stepped back from each other in their surprise, then laughed at how weird that had been.

And I thought Chicago winters were bizarre,
Nadia thought.

Mateo kissed her again, sweet and swift. “Okay. Come on, let’s get you home.”

“We went to Chelsea Piers!” Cole said as he towed his little backpack upstairs, Nadia by his side. “We got to go wall climbing
and
ice skating both!”

“Awesome!” She ruffled his hair. “You had a good time, huh?”

“Definitely.”

Her father called from the hallway, where he was hefting the suitcase to his room. “Velma’s totally all right?”

He could never recall Verlaine’s name correctly. Dad wasn’t very absentminded; in fact, he was pretty sharp. Nadia wondered if his inability to remember his daughter’s best friend was part of the strange spell that surrounded Verlaine.

She said only, “Apparently Verlaine’s fine. The hospital says there’s no permanent damage. She’s still kind of weak, though.”

“Well, thank goodness she woke up. Scary stuff.” He appeared in the doorway of Cole’s room, where Cole was “unpacking” by taking his stuff from his backpack and throwing it on the floor.

Nadia thought her dad looked completely wrung out; a few straight days of handling Cole on your own could do that to you. She laughed. “Did you get a moment to yourself the whole time?”

“Oh. Well.” His face colored slightly. “Remember how the Paulsons moved to New York just before we moved here? I, ah, called Ethan’s mom while we were in town, so he and Cole could get together and play. Thought it would be fun for him to see one of his old friends, you know?”

Never pausing as the mess around him increased, Cole said, “We all went and got pizza.”

Nadia wasn’t quite seeing the reason for her father’s awkwardness until, with a start, she remembered that Mrs. Paulson had been widowed a couple of years ago. “Wait. You went on a date?”

Dad gave her a look that clearly meant
Not in front of Cole!
but her baby brother was oblivious. In a low voice he said, “No, it wasn’t a date, but—once we got there, I realized Gretchen maybe thought it was, and . . . I think she felt rejected, and it kind of put a damper on the evening.” He frowned. “That’s too much information, isn’t it?”

“No,” Nadia replied in a small voice, though she profoundly wished she’d never heard a word of it. Okay, Dad hadn’t been MILF-hunting in New York, but how long would it be before he started dating?

Even though Mom was long gone, even though she’d made her desire for the divorce emphatically clear, Nadia couldn’t imagine seeing her father with someone else.

Obviously Dad had picked up on her mood, and blessedly changed the subject. “How was the Halloween carnival? You made it, right? Not snowed under by homework?”

“Oh, did you not hear?” Nadia had thought it might make the news, but that had been stupid of her. Like anywhere else in the whole world would pay attention to Captive’s Sound. “The haunted house burned down.”

“What?”

“To the ground. Nobody knows what happened.” Which was putting it lightly. “There’s some big town meeting about it soon.”

Simon Caldani shook his head in disbelief. “Well, thank God we didn’t go. Wow. You were right about that being unsafe.”

“Mmm-hmmm.” Nadia nodded. Before they’d gotten home, she’d loosened her ponytail so that her thick, black hair fell around her face and hid the small cuts and bruises. “Good thing Cole was nowhere near it.”

“At least nobody died,” Dad said as he went to stand by Cole and the pile of dirty clothes he’d created. “Hey, buddy, remember how we talked about the laundry hamper?”

She hugged herself as she turned away. Someone
had
died—not as a result of the carnival fire, but by Elizabeth’s hand. A guy from her class, Jeremy Prasad, had been murdered; Mateo had been there, enchanted by Elizabeth and unable to stop her. It was weird that she hadn’t heard any town gossip about it; even the somnolent newspaper, the
Guardian
, had roused itself enough to cover the haunted-house disaster, but had reported nothing about the suspicious death of a seventeen-year-old.

Maybe the body hadn’t been found yet. They’d been on the beach; maybe Jeremy’s corpse had been carried away by the tides.

Nadia closed her eyes, overcome for a moment by the horror of it. She hadn’t liked Jeremy Prasad much. Nobody could. He’d been a snob, a sexist, and a bully. But in the end, he’d been cut down for no reason at all.

Mateo had said Elizabeth gouged out Jeremy’s eyes.

Why the eyes? What magic is that a part of? Was it part of what she was really up to on Halloween, or something else?

She didn’t know, couldn’t guess. Once again she had to deal with the fact that she’d never completed her training—and with her mother gone, totally incommunicado, her chances to learn anything more about witchcraft were severely limited. The secrecy surrounding witchcraft meant she didn’t even know another adult witch who was willing to train her.

Except Elizabeth herself.

If I had one more chance to talk to Mom, what would I say? Ask her why she left? Bitch her out for abandoning us? Make her find me another teacher? Find out why she doesn’t love Dad anymore? Get her to explain Elizabeth’s real plan? Tell her Cole’s had nightmares ever since she walked away?

I want to ask it all. I’ll never get to ask any of it.

Nadia rubbed her temples. Her head was starting to hurt.

But that night, once her dad and brother had fallen asleep, she crept up into her attic workspace. There, beneath her painted blue ceiling, fortified by a couple of Hershey’s Miniatures, Nadia began the work of scouring through her resources again. Right now that was just her Book of Shadows and one that had belonged to a Captive’s Sound witch from centuries before, Prudence Hale. Still, that gave her a place to begin.

Before Halloween, Nadia’s energies had naturally been devoted to stopping Elizabeth’s destruction of Captive’s Sound. She intended to change her focus; from now on, it was going to be all about stopping Elizabeth, period.

If only there were a spell to just de-magic another witch, or remove evil intent, or
—but she stopped herself. The highest level of witching magic was spell creation; that was when a witch invented her own spells instead of relying on those handed down through the centuries. Most witches never ascended to those heights. Mom had said that only a couple of witches in a century mastered magic so completely.

(When she was little, Nadia had protested that if it
could
be done, then she should try to do it. Mom had laughed and told her to worry about that when she was big enough to brush her teeth without being reminded.)

There was no point in dreaming of something that could probably never be. Nadia needed to find a weapon against Elizabeth here and now.

And when she found that weapon, she intended to use it.

School had been canceled on Monday due to the carnival fire. It made no sense, but Nadia figured in Captive’s Sound, people made the most out of every bit of excitement they got. Now, though, Rodman High’s students had returned, and the rumors could really get going.

“So, I heard that some guys were smoking in there,” said Kendall Bender as she walked down the hallway, holding court, trailed by rapt listeners. “And also, like, apparently they’re worried about arson, and maybe there was some faulty wiring, too. Plus some people said they saw lightning? Which, you know, it wasn’t raining, like, at all, but maybe it was heat lightning, if heat lightning can start fires.”

Well, at least people didn’t have any idea what was really going on.

What with all the chaos and chatter in the hallway, she found Mateo only a few moments before class began, and Verlaine just after that. Mateo held out his arm for Verlaine to take hold of, an old-fashioned gentleman’s move that made Nadia smile.

“I can’t believe I’m actually happy to see Rodman High,” Verlaine said. Today her clothes were from the 1940s—a dark brown skirt with a silky, red shirt that tied in a bow at the neck. “Maybe at this point I’m just glad for a little bit of normal, you know?”

They turned the corner—and nearly ran into Jeremy Prasad.

“Long time no see,” said the dead guy with a smile, before heading off to class.

3

VERLAINE MANAGED TO WEDGE HER PHONE BETWEEN HER
copy of
Great Expectations
and the end of the desk. Sound to silent—okay—let the texting begin.
How is Jeremy alive?

Maybe it didn’t really happen,
Nadia texted back.
Mateo might have seen some . . . nightmare vision, because of being my Steadfast. Elizabeth was doing some intense magic that night. Who knows?

That made sense. Relaxing slightly, Verlaine peered over the cover of her book at Jeremy, who sat in front of her, one row over.

She’d spent a lot of time in Novels class watching Jeremy Prasad. This was partly because Novels class was a no-brainer to anyone who actually read for fun; Verlaine had usually gone through the assigned book three or four times before the rest of the class had found its way to Chapter Two.

But it was mostly because she liked looking at him.

It was one of the things she hated most about herself—the involuntary attraction she’d always had to Jeremy Prasad, one so strong that even his obnoxious personality couldn’t overcome it. Her mind was well aware that he was arrogant, entitled, mean-spirited and more than a bit slutty, and despised him for all of it. (Except the slutty bit, because slut-shaming was a tool of the patriarchy, even when applied to guys.) Her mind definitely had all Jeremy’s flaws down pat.

However, her body only knew that he was completely scorching hot. Whatever it was about him—whether it was his angular cheekbones, his dark skin, that thick, shining, curly black hair he wore just the tiniest bit long, his lean, wiry body—well, there was something about him that got to Verlaine on a level she couldn’t entirely control.

She justified this the same way she usually did.
I’m not responsible for . . . involuntary hormonal tsunamis. Besides, given all the crap Jeremy dishes out, especially at me? He
owes
me a nice view.

Today he was living up to his end of the bargain in a black sweater cut close to his body. . . .

“So, here we meet Miss Havisham,” said Mrs. Bristow. “What’s the first thing that strikes you about her?”

“Um, she’s crazy?” someone said in the back, and most of the class snickered.

“Fair enough.” Mrs. Bristow wrote
Insanity
on the board. “But she’s not out of control, or even delusional, is she?”

“I’d argue that she’s delusional,” Jeremy said.

Verlaine sat up straighter. Jeremy had never volunteered to speak in class before. Not in Novels, not in any other subject.

Mrs. Bristow looked as surprised as Verlaine felt, but she recovered quickly. “Okay, Jeremy, why would you say that?”

He doubled down on the surprise factor by not giving a smart-ass answer. “Well, she blames the man who jilted her for ruining her life. He hurt her, of course, but he didn’t ruin her life. She could easily have found someone else or done something productive with her time. Instead she locks out the world and surrounds herself with memories of how someone wronged her. Miss Havisham didn’t give herself any more chances for happiness. So I think she’s delusional for blaming anybody else. She ruined her own life.”

“That’s—very good.” Mrs. Bristow blinked. “Excellent insight.”

It was the first evidence Verlaine had ever had that Jeremy might have a brain in his head. She had a lot of evidence to the contrary. And he’d been polite, even pleasant, when he spoke—

Quickly she snatched her phone again and texted,
There’s NO WAY this is really Jeremy Prasad.

“Verlaine’s right,” Mateo said as he and Nadia headed toward chemistry class. “I know what I saw, Nadia. It wasn’t a dream, a vision, anything like that. It was the most real thing ever. Jeremy Prasad is dead.”

“And he’s also walking straight toward us,” Nadia said.

Mateo glanced up to see she was right; Jeremy seemed totally unbothered as he sauntered toward class, just like always, except for the disappearance of his usual smug expression.

Still, when Mateo looked at him, all he could envision was the way Jeremy had fallen into the wet sand, utterly lifeless. As he passed them, Jeremy just nodded like any other guy would—any other guy but Jeremy, who seemed to come up with snide comments for every occasion.

Mateo pulled Nadia close; it wasn’t like Jeremy-or-whatever would try anything right here, but he felt better trying to keep her safe. It had only been a few nights ago that she’d been lying unconscious at his feet. He’d thought she was dead. He’d been given a glimpse of his world without Nadia, and he didn’t ever want to see it again.

“Raising the dead,” he said. “Can witchcraft do that?”

“No. At least not any way you’d ever want them to be raised. I’m going over the alternatives, and all the ones I know are . . . extremely, extremely bad.” Nadia went pale; her arms tightened around Mateo. “And it just got worse.”

Mateo glanced over his shoulder and saw Elizabeth walking into class.

Nobody else looked remotely surprised to see her; why would they? She attended school as though she were any other student. Granted, she was out a lot of the time, because she could make the teachers and other students forget her absences completely—but that only made it weirder that she chose to come at all.