Steadfast (8 page)

In the distance he saw the arc of a flashlight sweep through the gloom, and he ducked down. It was very important not to be seen. Why? He didn’t know, couldn’t remember, but fear had seized his heart, made his pulse feel like the thumping of fear itself trying to escape from inside his chest.

But he wasn’t afraid for himself.

Nadia stood nearby, hiding behind the trunk of one of the trees. When she peeked around the corner, a shape in the darkness moved, swinging at her viciously. The blow sounded solid, even wet—the crunch of bone in blood. She fell so limply that he knew she was dead.

“Nadia! No! Nadia—”

Mateo woke in his room, breathing hard. He’d dreamed about losing Nadia before.

This was the first time he’d ever dreamed that she was truly dead.

And he always saw the future.

Not that anybody on Earth or in hell would care, but Asa was having a terrible night.

First he’d had to go to the emergency room with his parents. (He’d decided to think of them that way for simplicity’s sake; besides, the idea of having parents again was novel enough to be entertaining.) Apparently the doctors decided his mother must have had some completely new reaction to the blood-pressure medication she was taking, and wanted to keep her overnight for observation.

“You promise I didn’t hurt anyone?” She’d been teary-eyed and shaky as they settled her in her hospital bed, fixing foam-and-Velcro cuffs around her wrists and ankles just in case she snapped again. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“You were just sick, Mom. People will understand.” Asa smiled at her, trying to be reassuring. It didn’t come naturally to him, but clearly that was what was needed.

How strange, to be able to do that and feel . . .
happy
that she was comforted. Maybe that was some echo of his feelings for the long-ago human mother he could no longer remember. Maybe it was human nature, soaking into him through this human shell.

Regardless, Asa thought he liked it.

Then he and his father had to leave her there and go home, which meant another couple of hours of running interference on the phone (“He can’t talk right now. We’re all very shaken up; I’m sure you understand. Can I take a message?”) while his father Googled the blood-pressure drug to see if it had caused psychotic breaks in anyone else, then called his lawyer to talk about suing GlaxoSmithKline.

Once Asa finally had a minute, he went upstairs to take a shower. There was just
something
about misfired magic that felt sticky against your skin, like flop sweat or spilled syrup.

He stripped off Jeremy Prasad’s designer clothes—the two-hundred-dollar jeans, the cashmere sweater, even the Calvin Klein underwear. How ridiculous, and yet . . . he had to admit, he looked good in those clothes.

As he stood in the bathroom, steam from his shower filling the air, he took a moment to admire his new possession. This body was exceedingly well made, wasn’t it? Long and lean. Taller than either of his parents, thanks to a trick of genetics. Thick, black hair that curled slightly; tawny skin; angled brows that strongly framed large, dark eyes. Sculpted muscles that gave him strong arms and good abs—and the magic that ensnared him here kept this body from aging or degenerating, so he didn’t even have to work out to keep this. Jeremy had done all the sit-ups for him.

Then he felt it—a sickening dip and sway as though he were at sea in a storm. Asa tried to right himself, but the sensation wasn’t coming from the room or the chair; it was coming from within.

It was as though something was turning him inside out, blinding him to his real surroundings, stretching him thin and forcing his attention on one point, one thing—

Elizabeth. She sat cross-legged on her floor, surrounded by glinting points of broken glass. It was as though he were with her, and yet he wasn’t.

He realized she had conjured this, making at least a shadow of him appear before her. But why did it have to hurt so much?

“Would it kill you to get a cell phone like everyone else?” he snapped.

She ignored this. She ignored pretty much everything she couldn’t use. Even the fact that he stood naked in front of her was meaningless to Elizabeth. “There was a disturbance tonight. Magic far too strong for its purpose. You were near it, weren’t you?”

“But not responsible.”

“Nadia?”

“Even though her Steadfast was nowhere near her. It turns out she’s significantly out of her depth.”

Asa told her the whole story, exaggerating Nadia’s panic slightly; it made the telling better, and it seemed to amuse Elizabeth, insofar as anything that ancient and evil could be amused. When he got to the part where his mother had started swinging an ax around, she actually laughed out loud.

“Good,” she said. “The sooner she recognizes her own limitations, the sooner she’ll understand that she has to turn to me.”

He didn’t understand the urgency behind Elizabeth’s desire to convert Nadia Caldani into her apprentice, but it wasn’t his to question. “What next?”

Elizabeth smiled slowly. “She won’t come to me for her own sake. Nadia will only turn to me to save another. The question is who.”

7

ELIZABETH WALKED THROUGH THE STREETS OF CAPTIVE’S
Sound—ignoring those who waved and smiled at her, knowing they would remember her smiling back anyway—until she reached the old blue Victorian house on Felicity Street. There she knocked and waited for an answer.

Nadia’s father opened the door, and this time she really did smile.

He returned the smile, but vaguely. Her protective glamours would allow him only to think of her as one of his daughter’s friends, a sweet girl with chestnut curls. “Elizabeth—that’s the name, right? Nice to see you.”

“Hi, Mr. Caldani. Can I come in?”

“Sure.” For a moment, his expression clouded; probably he was wondering why she was here in the middle of a school day. But Elizabeth knew that confusion would resolve in an instant. Her glamours would make him sure that she’d never be anyplace she wasn’t supposed to be. Mr. Caldani stepped back, allowing her to come inside. “You weren’t mixed up in that carnival business, were you? Sounds scary.”

“I saw the fire.” It had surrounded her. Elizabeth had meant for it to kill her—had meant to die for the liberation of the One Beneath. Such glorious light. “Honestly, it was kind of exciting.”

“It wouldn’t have been as exciting if you were in it, trust me. Now, what can I do for you?”

“Nadia said I could borrow her copy of
Sense and Sensibility
. It’s in her room, but she couldn’t get away to come here with me. Can I get it?”

“Sure. No problem.” He paused again. Was he wondering if Nadia even had a copy of that book? Elizabeth didn’t know whether it existed, nor did she care. All that mattered was that Simon overcome his natural resistance to allowing a near-stranger into his daughter’s room, even when that daughter wasn’t home. He would, of course; he couldn’t help himself. “Come on. I’ll show you the way.”

Together they went up the narrow, winding stairs, the ones illuminated by sunshine through an old stained-glass window. The house was a comfortable one, and—she could sense—it was beautiful in its ramshackle way. Elizabeth remembered when the only houses in towns had been the ones settlers built themselves, when she had lived behind paper windows, atop dirt floors. She had heard of a concept called
nostalgia
—a longing for how things used to be—and thought it was merely further proof that humans were fools. No one with any sense would want to go backward. You could only look ahead.

“Here you go,” Simon said as they went through a door at the top of the stairwell. “Nadia’s bedroom.”

Elizabeth smiled as she turned around. The walls were a soft, warm orange, the bedspread plain white and immaculate. Pressed flowers and leaves filled simple silver frames hung upon the walls. To anyone else, this would look like a simple, pleasant space; to her, it was a sign of an intelligent witch’s work. Orange was a color neutral to spells in a way that blue, red, black, and white weren’t; the neatness indicated a dedication to both Craft and secrecy. But the plants in the frames—that was a brilliant touch. Elizabeth lifted her delicate hand in front of the frames in turn. “Willow. White sage. Lavender. These plants are all for protection, you know.”

“Protection from what?”

“Bad dreams, for one.”

“Huh.” Mr. Caldani looked nonplussed. “Nadia’s really not the superstitious type. Let’s see. Here’s where the books live.”

The shelves were overladen with books new and used, paperback and hardback. He began searching through them, which gave Elizabeth a chance to touch her quartz ring.

Mr. Caldani muttered, “
Sense and Sensibility
? I’m not seeing it—but hang on. It could be anywhere in here.”

She looked at him, concentrated, and cast a spell of desire.

Light flashed in the room, though Mr. Caldani wouldn’t be able to see it. All he would be able to see—all he saw now, as he slowly turned to see her—was how beautiful Elizabeth was.

How incredibly, irresistibly beautiful.

Now he would be blinded to the fact that this was his daughter’s room, his daughter’s friend; he would only see Elizabeth’s willowy body, the perfect oval of her face, the brilliance of her eyes.

He is mine,
Elizabeth thought.
Nadia, your father belongs to me.

“There’s no rush to find the book,” she murmured as she stepped closer to him. “We can hang out in here for a while.”

Mr. Caldani swallowed hard. He was struggling. Fighting it. Sometimes they fought.

“Is it on this shelf, maybe?” Elizabeth stepped next to him, so close that she nearly fit in the angle between his body and the bookshelf. Her shoulder brushed against his chest.

“I—hmm. Don’t see it.”

“I’ll check down here.” She sank to her knees by his side, but Mr. Caldani immediately backed away. Elizabeth frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, of course. But I, ah, have a conference call for work that starts soon, and really—you know, just get Nadia to bring it to you tomorrow at school. How’s that?”

Elizabeth hesitated, then rose. “All right.” She strolled out without a backward glance, saying nothing besides a very ordinary farewell; she pretended not to hear the strain in Mr. Caldani’s voice as he wished her a good day.

The warden-crow circled overhead as Elizabeth walked back home. She hadn’t completed her task today; the spell hadn’t been strong enough to overcome his resistance. Few men would have resisted temptation so successfully.

But there were spells that could take away any man’s will, if she needed them.

Nadia seemed to rely strongly upon her family. If she continued to complicate Elizabeth’s plans—to defy the right and natural path in front of her—then the very things Nadia relied on were the ones that would have to be crushed into oblivion.

When Elizabeth walked out the door, Simon Caldani shut it, dead-bolted it, and sank to the floor.

What the hell is happening to you?
That wasn’t like him. Had never been like him. Simon had always thought guys who dated women much younger than themselves looked a little pathetic; he’d rolled his eyes when one of the other partners at his old firm brought a twenty-two-year-old date to the Christmas party. But at least twenty-two was legal, for God’s sake.

She was his daughter’s age! He’d never imagined he was even the kind of guy who
could
find that attractive, much less the kind who actually
would
. The more Simon thought about that moment upstairs, the weirder it seemed to him. Normally he’d never have let anyone in Nadia’s room without her permission, even a friend. And when he’d found himself attracted to Elizabeth, it was almost as though some kind of . . . trance had come over him, as crazy as that sounded.

The fact is, it’s been way too long since your wife left.

Simon thudded his head against the door, disgusted by himself, and sure of only one thing: He was never, ever going to be alone with that girl again.

“It’s just an experiment,” Nadia said as they waited their turn for “suicide” runs across the gym. PE was such a joy.

Verlaine didn’t look convinced. “An experiment
on me
.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Explain to me again why this is necessary?”

Nadia had known this would be a hard sell, but they had to do it. She needed the experimentee to be someone she knew, somebody who could be questioned thoroughly afterward without it raising too much suspicion. The only other possible candidate was Mateo, and his mind was under enough strain with the burden of the Cabot curse. So she had to get Verlaine on board.

Before she could say another word, though, the coach blew his whistle; their fifth turn was up. So she and Verlaine had to run to the first free throw line, back, half court, back, second free throw line, back—suicide runs
sucked
.

But as they went, Nadia managed to speak loudly enough for Verlaine to hear her over the thump and squeak of tennis shoes on the court. “I have to—try to make—Elizabeth forget stuff. Right?”

Verlaine nodded; her pale skin was already flushed red.

Panting, Nadia continued, “But I have to make sure—I can pinpoint—the spell. Make her forget first—what I want her—to forget most.”

“And this means—I have to forget something?” Verlaine said between gasps.

“Got to be—one thing—you’d like to forget. Right?”

They were on the last leg, the full-court run, and neither of them spoke until they reached the finish. As they collided with the padded back wall, Nadia scooped her sweaty hair away from her face. Verlaine said, “Could you make me forget the time I messed up at my third-grade piano recital, and the whole room went quiet while I tried to think of what to play next, and in that total silence of that crowded church, I farted louder than anybody else you ever heard in your life?”

Nadia bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. “I can try.”

“Then okay. Because that memory is one I could live without.”