Spellcaster

  Once they were alone, Nadia whispered, “Mateo, you aren’t listening.”

  “You’re not talking. Your fear is.” He breathed out. “Listen. Can we go somewhere? Hang out for a while? We could talk about this better if we weren’t about forty feet from cheerleader practice.”

  “My house. Dad’s at his hearing, and Cole’s over at a friend’s for a while.” Nadia realized that she needed to be at home; more than that she needed to be in her attic, surrounded by the tools of her Craft. It was the Craft that had shaped her life so much so far, that had brought Verlaine and Mateo to her. It was the Craft she was coming close to abandoning.

  So it was the Craft she needed to confront now—and when she did, she wanted Mateo beside her.

  “The last time I was here I thought it was bigger,” Mateo said as he stooped his head; the sloping roof of the attic meant that he could only stand up straight at the very center. “Of course, the last time I was here I was seeing my first magic spell. So I guess I got distracted.”

  Nadia sat cross-legged on one of the oversize pillows on the floor; normally she popped her phone into the dock she kept in the corner, both for the music and to make sure her father and Cole wouldn’t overhear anything they shouldn’t. Doing that now felt like trying to set a mood or something, though, so she didn’t. But that meant Mateo took his seat across from her in a silence that felt heavy and strange.

  Yet not awkward. Mateo—even though he was a guy, even though they couldn’t agree on what to do or how to do it—he belonged here.

  Didn’t mean she knew what to say to him.

  Their eyes met, and she looked at him from a different angle than before—and then it was hard to meet his eyes. Mateo said, “Okay. Where do we start? You’re finally smiling, so I guess we’re on the same page.”

  “It’s not that.” Nadia tried to cover her mouth with her hand, the better to disguise her smile. “Momentary distraction. Sorry.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s just—” She put this as gently as she could. “Ginger really shortchanged you on that cut.”

  “Is my whole head still lopsided?” When Nadia nodded, Mateo groaned. “Great. I’m trying to have a serious discussion while I look like an idiot.”

  “You don’t. Look like an idiot, I mean.” Nadia hesitated. His hair was the least of their concerns—something for her to focus on instead of the bigger issue—but maybe it was better to get rid of any distractions. Besides, Mateo really did need some help. “Hey. I keep some scissors up here. Let me finish it.”

  “Cut my hair?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard. I could try,” she said. “Only if you want me to.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  Nadia leaned over to one of her toolboxes (she used ones from the hardware store—less suspicious and supersturdy) to get her scissors; Mateo slipped off his letter jacket, revealing the hard lines of his chest and arms beneath a long-sleeved black T-shirt. At first she was startled—by how amazing he looked, how close he was, the fact that he was taking his clothes off—but then she thought, He doesn’t want to get hair all over himself. Obviously. Don’t be an idiot.

  But her pulse was pounding as she took the scissors, and grabbed one of her drop cloths to drape around his shoulders.

  When she slipped her arms around his neck, he shifted his weight—surprised the same way she had been, she thought, by how close they were. Just thinking that made her cheeks flush hot, and Mateo wasn’t looking her straight in the eyes any longer, either. He said only, “You’ve cut hair before, right?”

  “Sure. Plenty of times.” No need to tell him that the hair she’d cut had belonged to her old Barbie dolls, which all looked demented afterward.

  Nadia tentatively reached toward him, her fingertips barely short of his hair, until finally she ran her hands through it. Mateo’s hair felt like warm silk against her palms. At her touch, he closed his eyes. Him reacting like that—it made the silence in the room softer, something that could hold them both.

  Carefully Nadia took the scissors in one hand and combed her fingernails through the very back of his hair. Should she just—even it out? That seemed obvious enough. The metallic scrape of the blades against each other made her bite her lower lip, but then the first lock of hair fell away.

  There were ways to use locks of hair in love spells—

  “Thank you,” she said quietly as she made the next snip. “For believing in me. After what you’ve been through—everything that’s happened—I wouldn’t blame you if you hated witchcraft. And witches.”

  “I did, for a little while. Or thought I did. But that was only Elizabeth.”

  Nadia brushed some hair past his ear, feeling the curve of it against her thumb. She checked the other side of his head and decided to risk another snip. “I know that must have been hard.”

  “Yeah.” Mateo swallowed hard. “I thought she was my best friend. All those great memories I have of us growing up together—it’s hard to believe they were only lies.” He hesitated. “Do you think she erased other memories? You know. Other people I used to be friends with. So I’d really think she was all I had.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t decide what would be worse. Her wiping out whatever happy memories I ever had, or whether—whether there weren’t any.” He breathed out; his shoulders rose and fell, and she paused in her work, only for a moment. Then Nadia bent closer to him to start again.

  It was easier, somehow, talking to him when they didn’t have to look each other in the eyes. So she kept her concentration on the fringe of dark hair between her fingers as she snipped. “You have the right to feel betrayed.” The next words stuck in her throat, but she got them out: “Elizabeth made you think that you loved her.”

  He hesitated before saying, “It was never like that between us. You get that, right?”

  Once again Nadia remembered Elizabeth saying she could make Mateo love her at any moment she chose. Make him believe he’d always loved her. There was no reason for her to do that, Nadia knew, no reason it would increase Elizabeth’s control—but she would do it just to be mean. Just to make sure Nadia hurt.

  “Yeah, you told me,” she said briskly. “But there’s more than one kind of love. Losing the love of a friend—that’s bad enough.”

  Mateo breathed out. “Sometimes I think the only reason I’ve been able to keep myself from totally losing it is that she never made me … want her. Kiss her. Anything like that. If she had, I couldn’t take it.”

  “You’ve had too many people using magic to screw with your head already. That’s one more reason to break the Steadfast spell. So your thoughts can be your own again.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t break that spell—not for a long time, maybe ever.”

  “Not without—sacrificing my magic.”

  Nadia knew what that meant. Destroying and burying her Book of Shadows. Removing all the enchantments from the attic. Taking apart her bracelet. Never having the assurance of even a casual spell again. It felt like ripping out her own heart.

  But if that was what it took to keep her family safe—and to set Mateo free—

  “Then I don’t want you to break the spell,” Mateo said.

  “I’m ready to do it.”

  “Well, I’m not. This Steadfast thing—what we did that day on the beach, what we were together—it was amazing. It felt like I’d been waiting my whole life to be a part of something like that.”

  Me too, Nadia wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. She combed one hand through his hair, shaking out the loose strands, checking her work—hey, this looked pretty good. But her fingers trembled, and her breaths were coming shallow and fast as she struggled against tears.

  “Don’t take it away from me,” Mateo said. “Or from yourself. As scary and as weird as this is, being your Steadfast—I know it’s what I was meant to do. Like being a witch is what you’re meant to do. It’s a part of us. You can’t just … end it like it n
ever happened.”

  Nadia sat back and set the scissors down. “You know I’m telling you the truth about how dangerous it is.”

  “Yeah. I do. You want to protect the people you love. I do, too. But we fall apart or we stand together, right?”

  It flowed into her like sunlight, took her tears away. If Mateo could bear the curse, and still have the courage to stand as her Steadfast and take Elizabeth on—how could she do any less? She still owed Dad and Cole all her protection, but with Elizabeth’s evil unfolding everywhere around them, the only thing for Nadia to do was fight. At least she wasn’t fighting alone.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You’re right. We stand together.”

  “Together.” Mateo held his hand out, and she took it. When their eyes met again, Nadia flushed with warmth. She kept waiting for him to say something else, but he didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t, if he felt as shaky as she did. If the feeling of his hand in hers did half as much to him as it did to her—

  Once again she remembered Elizabeth standing in the hallway, promising to make Mateo love her if it suited her purposes.

  If Nadia leaned forward right now—the way Mateo had begun to—if she kissed him and they were together, would Elizabeth know? She’d sensed the spell of forgetting right away; who could guess how deeply she was wound into Mateo’s mind?

  If Elizabeth realized Nadia and Mateo were together, she might take Mateo back. She might make him believe that he’d always loved Elizabeth. Could Nadia bear that? Once again she remembered Elizabeth’s words to her: You’ve loved and lost, haven’t you?

  And Mateo had said the only thing keeping him from losing it was the fact that Elizabeth hadn’t deceived him in this one, last, terrible way.

  Nadia pulled back. Mateo blinked, obviously caught off guard.

  “Nadia!” Cole’s voice sang from downstairs. “Are you home yet?”

  That broke the sudden awkwardness, and both of them started to laugh from embarrassment. “Little brothers,” Nadia said. “They have amazing timing.”

  “Apparently.” But even though they were smiling, she could feel the uncertainty still between them.

  Mateo wasn’t sure how he’d expected this whole weird day to end, but it definitely hadn’t involved LEGOs.

  “These are big-boy LEGOs,” Cole said proudly. “Not the stupid ones for little babies. Dad let me get the real ones a year ago.”

  “I can see that. Is this the Millennium Falcon we’re building?”

  “Yeah. Or it can be a castle.”

  Really it sort of looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, even if it had Chewbacca in it. Mateo figured it didn’t matter as long as he kept sticking more LEGOs on.

  He sat with Cole in the middle of the Caldanis’ living room floor, keeping him busy while Nadia talked things through on the phone with Verlaine. Apparently Cole’s friend had gotten sick, which made for an unexpected afternoon of babysitting.

  Which was definitely not what he wanted to be doing right now. He wanted to be back in that attic, with Nadia’s hand in his—back in that moment so he could find out exactly how she felt about him—

  But life got in the way sometimes, and that was just how it was. Mateo didn’t mind keeping Cole busy; he was a fun little kid. Also, maybe Mateo was way too old for LEGOs, but that didn’t mean he didn’t sort of like them still.

  And, just as obviously, Nadia needed to talk to Verlaine almost as much as she’d needed to talk to him.

  “I’m really sorry,” Nadia said into her phone for about the eighteenth time. “I had to think about my dad and Cole, you know? And how they could be affected by—um, by our science project. And where are you?” Then she opened the front curtains. “Oh, okay. Come on in.” She put her phone back on the counter. To Mateo she said, “I asked Verlaine to pick up some Slushos, but I don’t know. She’s still pretty hacked off.”

  “We can live without Slushos,” Mateo said.

  Cole sighed. “Speak for yourself.” Mateo laughed and ruffled his hair.

  Nadia opened the front door as Verlaine came up the steps, gray hair in a ponytail, a scowl on her face, and a tray of Slushos in her hands. “They’re all cherry,” she said. “Take them or don’t.”

  “Yes!” Cole did his version of an end-zone touchdown dance, while Mateo rose to his feet.

  “How are you doing?” he asked her, and just like that, Verlaine’s expression softened. They’d spoken only briefly this afternoon—the first time they’d ever had a lengthy conversation without Nadia there, even though they’d known each other almost their whole lives. But that had been enough for him to know how betrayed she felt, and how lonely. As suspicious as she was of Nadia, witchcraft, and the rest of it, this was the one time in Verlaine’s life she’d ever been included in something.

  How come I never talked to Verlaine before? Mateo wondered. She’s smart. She sees a lot. So why is it like I always forget about her? A six-foot-tall girl with crazy clothes and silver hair—it’s not as if she doesn’t stand out.

  “I’m okay.” Verlaine handed Cole his Slusho and took a slurp from hers. “Better now that I’m not being abandoned to investigate my parents’—I mean, our science project all on my own. Plus the whole thing with, um, with Elizabeth.”

  “Is Elizabeth your girlfriend?” Cole said to Mateo. He looked all kid-innocent, but there was mischief in his eyes to go with the pink Slusho mustache. “Nadia said she was.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Mateo said.

  Nadia quickly interjected, “Cole, wouldn’t it be fun to play in the yard for a while?”

  “I’m not supposed to take snacks outside because of that time I got gravel in my sandwich.”

  “I wouldn’t tell. Just this once!”

  Cole grinned as he sat in the nearest chair, kicking his legs back and forth. “Nope. I like it here.”

  Mateo had always wished he weren’t an only child, but now he wasn’t so sure about that. They’d have to be careful about how they said things. “So our … science project is about the sinkholes in town. And what might be pulling the town out from under our feet.”

  Nadia gasped, so sharply that Mateo thought she might have hurt herself. He leaned toward her, concerned, but instead she thumped her hand fast against the wall. “Oh, that’s it. That’s actually it.”

  Verlaine stared at Mateo, who shrugged. “That’s what?”

  Nadia grabbed the remote and turned on the television; almost instantly, Cole wandered toward it like a kid hypnotized. Then she gestured them closer and whispered, “Goodwife Hale’s—book. She said something about this, about the framework of this town being built on mag—on, uh, magnetism.”

  “He’s not listening!” Verlaine whispered. “Magic. It’s built on magic?”

  “I think so,” Nadia continued. “That’s what Elizabeth’s doing. She’s ripping out that old magic. Pulling the town out from under us.”

  “With the sinkholes,” Mateo said, trying to make sure he had this straight.

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. The way this town is sick on the inside—and all the curses she’s laid, whatever the hell that is buried beneath the chemistry lab—there’s magic everywhere here, do you understand?”

  “We do now,” Verlaine said, “but where are you going with this?”

  Looking straight at Mateo, Nadia continued, “You said the magic was a part of us. That it wasn’t meant to be taken away. That’s true for this whole town. See? Captive’s Sound has been cursed and enchanted for so long that it’s—it’s literally lying on a foundation of magic. Elizabeth’s stripping away her own spells. She’s removing the framework.”

  He could kind of see that. “Why?”

  “The One Beneath must want it. I don’t know what for. They say sometimes he demands death for its own sake.” Nadia said that so quietly, so matter-of-factly, that it sent a chill along Mateo’s spine. Next to him, Verlaine shuddered. “But now I know some of the spells she must be using. That means—that means I
have an idea what to do to stop her.”

  “This sounds dangerous,” Verlaine said.

  “It is.” Nadia nodded slowly. “But it’s worth a try.”

  Mateo felt the urge to tell her not to do it—whatever it was—to get between her and Elizabeth if he could. But he knew he couldn’t. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to try to turn the spell back on her,” Nadia said, her dark eyes lighting up. “Unmagic her, at least a little bit. We’re going to fight fire with fire.”

  18

  “A STEADFAST,” ELIZABETH MURMURED.

  She stood on the shore, on a patch of beach so rocky that no houses had been built very near. Her legs were thigh-deep in the water; the sharp fragments of shells underneath her bare feet cut into her flesh. Droplets of her blood would be mingling with the seawater even now. The One Beneath could claim the entire sound as her blood soon.

  He needs so little to claim us, Asa said. Does that never seem unjust to you?

  “Silence, beast.”

  The more she thought about the identity of Nadia Caldani’s Steadfast, the less certain she was. Verlaine Laughton was the obvious choice, the only girl she had seen regularly in Nadia’s company. Yet she was so new to Nadia’s life—such an unusual person to reach out to.

  They might have known each other before, Asa chimed in. Did you ever consider that? People talk via computers now. The witch and Verlaine could have been friends online.

  Elizabeth had never used a computer in her life and did not intend to begin at this late date. As cold sea spray stung her face, she considered the possibility of some past acquaintance between Nadia and Verlaine. It seemed unlikely. They had not greeted each other that first day at school, and their attitude toward each other during the few days Elizabeth had observed them early in the semester—it was more wary than warm. No, they had been strangers before.

  Yet what kind of a Steadfast could Verlaine Laughton be? Bereft as she was, could she even hold the power? Elizabeth supposed it was possible—this was something she’d never tested—though she found it surprising.