Steadfast

10

AS PEOPLE PUSHED PAST THEM IN THE HALLWAY, HURRYING to their morning classes, Nadia smoothed Mateo’s hair back with her hands. “Night terrors can happen to anybody,” she said. “Lots of people try to act out parts of their bad dreams. You don’t know that it had anything to do with your curse.”

“It wasn’t a regular nightmare,” Mateo insisted. “It was one of the visions, but this time it made me do something dangerous. Almost crazy.” He still looked shaken, and Nadia caught others staring and whispering. The mad Cabots, the ones who always went insane—that was the reputation Mateo had had to live with his whole life. Now he’d come to school with his clothes slightly askew, his entire body tense, going on and on about his rude awakening that morning. Nadia realized now that this was one of the ways the curse worked against its victims: It scared them. Then when others saw how unstable they looked, that began the cycle of alienation, whispers, rejection. Someone left so alone while scary things were happening to them—well, no wonder they freaked out.

But Nadia knew the truth. Mateo wouldn’t have to bear this alone.

“Listen to me,” she said, reaching up to take his face in her hands. “The curse dies with Elizabeth’s power. Got it? When we take her down, you won’t have to worry about the dreams getting stronger. You’ll never have to worry about them again.”

Verlaine hesitantly raised her hand. “So, do we have a firm date for this take-Elizabeth-down plan?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Whoa.” Verlaine’s eyes widened. “I was being sarcastic. Are you kidding? Tomorrow night?”

“Yeah. I’m ready.” Was she? Nadia had learned how to focus the spell of forgetfulness more sharply; at this point, further delay probably just gave Elizabeth more time to catch on. Now that Mateo’s condition had worsened, her resolve hardened into certainty. “We need a location over water—it’s not like I couldn’t cast the spell without that, but over water would be ideal.” And, in this case, nothing less than perfection would do. “We could take a boat out, but it’s been so windy. The sound’s too rough. Is there, like, a bridge we could go to? One nobody is likely to drive over while we’re there? Someplace out of the way.”

Mateo and Verlaine, the two locals, exchanged a look. It was Mateo who said, “I guess there’s Davis Bridge.”

“Out to Raven Isle,” Verlaine added. “But do we have to actually be on the bridge? Because it’s pretty run-down. Nobody’s used it to go to Raven Isle for years now, not even on a dare.”

Nadia brushed this aside. “It doesn’t have to stand for much longer. Tomorrow night, and that’s all.”

She felt suddenly free. Imagine—forty-eight hours from now, they might be free from Elizabeth forever. Mateo smiled tiredly, and she knew he was trying hard to believe it, too.

When Novels class was over, Verlaine was able to catch up to Asa on the way out. “You need to tell me what’s going on with Mateo.”

Yeah, okay, they were going after Elizabeth tomorrow night—but Asa didn’t know that, and Verlaine figured the more information they had to work with, the better.

“Why would I ever do that?” Asa shrugged on his backpack as though the books weighed nothing; he turned and walked backward through the hallway, never running into anyone. The crowds just parted around him, perhaps sensing the strange heat from his skin. “You’re desperate for someone to talk to, aren’t you?”

That hit too close to the bone. Verlaine stopped walking. “At least I’m not Elizabeth’s slave. And if I were, I’d try to do something about it. Not just sit and smirk and pretend I’m something besides her dog on a leash.”

So that was what it looked like when you wiped the smile off that face. She’d never scored a point off Jeremy Prasad, but apparently she did better when it came to demons from the furnace of hell.

Asa had stopped walking, too, now. He leaned toward her, close enough for her to feel that searing heat, to see the blaze in his dark eyes. “You think it’s so simple, throwing off the shackles of the One Beneath? You think you understand damnation? Slavery? Eternity? You understand nothing.”

“I understand that you hate Elizabeth as much as we do,” she shot back.

“Meaningless. Irrelevant. And foolish, too. You’re still mostly arguing with the worthless boy who used to live in this body, instead of with me. I don’t think you’re ready to understand what I am, or what I can do. But you will.” Asa’s smile was feral now. Dangerous. Verlaine realized she was holding her books in front of her chest like a shield, but she managed to keep a straight face, even as he whispered, “You think you have nothing to lose. But you are so, so wrong.”

Nothing to lose. Those words kept ringing inside her mind, taunting her, as Asa strolled away.

Verlaine tried to distract herself and take part in journalism class, but that went about as well as it usually did. “So, we should try to find out what Mrs. Purdhy and Riley have in common. Did Riley come to see her, maybe? You know, talk to an old teacher? This could be some disease she brought home from Brown. And we ought to see if there have been any reports of illnesses there that involve weird black . . . stuff.”

It was like she was sitting in a bell jar, none of her words escaping. Desi Sheremata, who had inexplicably been named editor despite hardly caring about the Lightning Rod site, pulled up a sample home page that was all old photos of Riley Bender from previous years’ annuals. The headline, centered over a picture of Riley in her homecoming crown, said Our Prayers Are With Her. “I was thinking we could have a text box where people write in their good wishes for Riley, you know?”

Everyone else nodded and smiled, like that was a really great plan instead of not journalism at all. Mr. Davis only said, “We’ll want to moderate comments. Even with a tragedy, people will troll.”

Especially with a tragedy. People seemed to get uglier in response to real emotions, at least in Verlaine’s experience. Because nobody ever much noticed when she was hurting unless they wanted to make it worse for her.

Nothing to lose.

Verlaine raised her hand. “What about the investigative piece on the Halloween carnival? We’re still running it, right?”

“Nobody actually got hurt,” Desi huffed. “So it’s kind of old news.”

“It wasn’t even two weeks ago!” Okay, nobody else here knew it had actually been the work of one of hell’s minions, aka Elizabeth Pike, but still, a huge fire in the middle of town had to count as newsworthy if anything did.

Desi folded her arms. “I think you’re more interested in a byline than in what happens to Riley Bender.”

This was pretty massively unfair, given that Verlaine was one of the only people trying to deal with the person actually responsible for hurting Riley—but she couldn’t say that. Even if she did, nobody would listen. Instead she scrunched down in her desk and folded her arms in front of her chest. A few people snickered, but then Mr. Davis got them all talking about which pictures of Riley would be best for the montage.

So much for asking whether they were even going to try to cover the not-quite-an-ax-massacre at town hall. Only in this room did attempted murder not count as news.

A byline? They thought she only cared about a byline? As if anybody would have paid attention to her regardless. Verlaine only wanted people to start thinking about how weird Captive’s Sound actually was, to recognize that all these events were part of a larger, scarier pattern. But Elizabeth’s magic wouldn’t let them see that.

Just like Elizabeth’s magic wouldn’t let them see Verlaine for herself.

Nobody pays any attention to anything I do, no matter how hard I try, no matter how good it is. Even my best friends hardly notice me—and I know they don’t mean it, but it doesn’t matter, because the magic works on them, too. I might as well not even talk. Or show up.

Or exist.

That was usually the point where Verlaine reined herself in. Where she told herself that everything could change, that someday she’d go off to college and people would be nicer. Thinking about college and the better life she could create for herself there was the only way she made it through Rodman High.

But now she knew—it wasn’t true.

Nothing was going to change in college. Nothing was going to change, ever. The magic Elizabeth had worked, the magic that prevented anyone from caring about Verlaine—that was permanent. It would last forever.

No one would ever, ever care about her any more than they did right now, today. She was going to spend the rest of her life on the outside looking in. This horrible, clawing loneliness inside her, the thing she battled every single day . . .

The loneliness was going to win.

Verlaine drew her knees up in her chair and huddled into a ball, right there at her desk, because otherwise she would break down and cry.

Nobody noticed. And she knew nobody would have noticed if she’d cried, either.

Nadia used one of Cole’s purple markers to try to draw the shape again. Last night she’d made notes, but they weren’t quite right. Were the lines on Elizabeth’s shoulders a little more—curved, maybe?

“This tea tastes a little funny.” Her dad squinted down at the cup she’d made for him. “Are you sure this is the same stuff?”

“Absolutely,” she said. Just with a special ingredient added.

She put down the marker and touched the pearl charm on her bracelet. Betrayer’s Snare was another spell she’d never cast before; it could only be used in certain situations, and she wasn’t sure whether the seduction Elizabeth was attempting was even one of them. Tonight was her first chance to cast it—you needed the moon at three-quarters to be sure the spell would take root.

Hopefully, as of tomorrow night, Elizabeth wouldn’t be an issue any longer. But Betrayer’s Snare couldn’t hurt Dad, and Nadia didn’t want to take any chances.

An unkindness returned.

An unwanted message received.

A danger unseen until too late.

Nadia kept her eyes on her father as she pulled up the memories:

Toddler Cole pulling her hair one time too often, shouting at him that he was a little brat, and watching his face crumple.

Mom saying “It’s better this way” as she walked out the door for the last time.

Jerking back in horror as cobwebs closed over her face and body, entrapping her in Elizabeth’s run-down old house, and Nadia realizing Elizabeth’s Book of Shadows was an enemy in its own right—

Nothing happened. Dad still looked vaguely preoccupied. The only way to tell if Betrayer’s Snare worked was if the person you were trying to protect stayed safe. Right now, Nadia thought, that didn’t feel very comforting.

Cole came back into the room. When he saw that Nadia had stopped coloring, he started whining, “You didn’t draw the zebra. You promised you would make a zebra!”

“I’m on it, buddy.” Cole acted out when he was tired, and he was probably the most exhausted member of the family—which was saying something. He’d been torn apart last night, sobbing until after two a.m. Nadia and her father had taken turns sitting with him. It had been hard for her to focus on calming Cole down. She kept remembering Elizabeth’s taunts, noticing how her dad’s mind seemed to be . . . someplace else. She knew it wasn’t anything Dad had control over. He was in the grips of a spell most people couldn’t have fought off even this long. But still—yuck.

Was it only a few days ago that she’d been grossed out by imagining her dad dating again? If he took up with some normal forty-year-old woman now, Nadia thought she’d offer to babysit every night of the week. Anyone but Elizabeth. Anything but that.

“You’re not drawing my zebra!” Pouting, Cole grabbed the red marker and deliberately made an ugly mark across her design.

That should have earned him a time-out. Instead Nadia gasped. “Cole, that’s good. That’s really good.”

“It is?” He seemed too surprised to remember he was in a bad mood.

“It is!” Nadia grabbed the piece of paper and bolted for the stairs. “Dad, can you take Cole Patrol for a minute? I’ll be right back down!”

She took the steps two at a time, yanked down the attic ladder, and climbed up as fast as she could, pulling the ladder up behind her. Goodwife Hale’s Book of Shadows sat there next to her jar of Hershey’s Miniatures, and Nadia helped herself to a Mr. Goodbar as she started flipping through.

Slowly, slowly—the pages are fragile—there. Nadia’s eyes widened as she smoothed out the crumpled paper she and Cole had both drawn on. Although she couldn’t yet be sure, it looked a lot like this symbol Goodwife Hale had sketched four hundred years ago. If this was what Elizabeth was trying to create—

Nadia quickly copied the symbol into her own Book of Shadows, making sure she matched every line, every angle. Beneath it she wrote the same words Goodwife Hale had written:

This sign shall mark His path.

The whole next day, Mateo could hardly pay attention in class. Part of that had to do with how people were still staring at him; more of it was the memory of waking up outside in the cold, alone, damaged from nightmares he knew would soon come back.

But as the hours wore on, as he slammed through homework right after school, his excitement grew. Nadia felt so sure about this spell of forgetting. Mateo knew firsthand just how powerful that spell could be. Yeah, it seemed almost too simple—but sometimes the most complicated problems had simple solutions. In fact, the simple ones were often the hardest to see.

If they could take Elizabeth out, lift this curse, protect everyone, make sure Nadia would be free from her corrosive influence forever—

And then what? Elizabeth would still be alive. She wouldn’t have her powers anymore; she might not even remember being a witch. What if she just turned into an ordinary girl?

Could he stop hating her? Could he even . . . help her?

His entire mind recoiled from it. Elizabeth had murdered his mother. He could never forgive her, not for that.

They all met out by Davis Bridge just after dark. The wind was even sharper than usual, and Mateo shivered in his jacket.

“Guys—” Nadia stood there, gaping at the warped wood planks and battered metal frame that was, or had been, Davis Bridge. In several places, he could see through the wood to the churning water of the sound beneath. “You said this was a bridge. Not . . . an ex-bridge.”

Verlaine shrugged, apparently comfortable in her leopard-print coat. “Over the water, you said. Over the water, we provided. Besides, yeah, it looks scary as all get-out, but it’s stood for more than a century. What are the chances it’s going to plunge into the ocean tonight?”

The wind blew harder, and the entire bridge shuddered in the gale. For a few long seconds all three of them stared at the bridge. Finally Mateo said, “Maybe we should get a boat after all?”

“No.” Nadia squared her shoulders. For someone so little, she could look fierce when she made up her mind; Mateo loved that look. “We’re here. This is the time. Let’s try it.”

Verlaine was the one who suggested they should spread out, so the bridge didn’t have to support the weight of all three of them in any one spot. Although Mateo wondered for a moment whether Verlaine needed to be out there at all since she wasn’t a Steadfast, that hardly even took shape as a conscious thought within his mind. Nadia was going to do something dangerous; they were going to be by her side. That was all there was to it.

He drew Nadia close and gave her a quick kiss. When she smiled up at him, he whispered, “For luck.”

He went first, inching out along one of the steel beams that seemed less crooked than the others. The last light of day clung to the edges of the clouds on the western horizon; otherwise inky blue had claimed both sky and sea. Mateo glanced down to see the whitecapped waves beneath him, then decided not to look at them again. Nadia came next, walking more confidently on the battered old boards than Mateo thought was wise—but she didn’t fall through, didn’t even stumble. Verlaine took up the rear, barely edging out onto the bridge. But she was far enough for Nadia to reach in a few steps. If any one of them ran into trouble—or, God forbid, the bridge started to collapse—they could form a human chain to keep them all safe.

The wind snatched at Nadia’s hair, sending her black locks swirling upward, away from her heart-shaped face, as she closed her eyes. Mateo found it fascinating to watch her cast a spell. No, she didn’t utter spooky incantations in Latin or anything like that—but still, there was something about her expression at that moment. That ultimate concentration, the way she seemed to forget all the cares of this world and become part of the next: It captivated Mateo. Sometimes it frightened him a little. But it was always, always beautiful.

Then he saw magenta light spiraling out from her, like a flower unfolding amid the storm, and Mateo knew his Steadfast power had revealed her true power at work—battling Elizabeth at last.

Elizabeth was depositing the eyes of her latest crow in her jar when she heard a rustling from the back room.

Cocking her head, she walked through her house to find her Book of Shadows fluttering on the floor, like a dying bird. As she knelt by its side, however, it fell open to almost the first page, to one of the spells she’d learned as a child: a spell of forgetting.

Even as she looked down at it, she felt a strange fogginess descend upon her thoughts—as though she were sleepy, or dizzy, or—

Instantly she called upon a spell of repulsion. The fog dissipated in an instant, and Elizabeth gaped in shock at Nadia’s audacity. That child had thought to undo her with one of the most basic spells . . . and had she not been warned, it could even have worked. The memories Nadia had selected must have been strong; no doubt she was on a bridge or in a boat, using the fluidity of the water to strengthen her magic further. It really could have worked, which enraged Elizabeth.

And yet she was reminded: Simplicity was sometimes the best weapon.

So Elizabeth cradled her Book of Shadows in her arms as she rose to her feet again and cast another very simple spell: a spell to move water.

“Did it work?” Verlaine cried.

“I’m not sure,” Nadia said. The wind was so sharp she felt as though it were trying to carve her flesh from her bones. Yet still she didn’t budge. It seemed to her as though she ought to feel some change in this town, some sign that Elizabeth had been affected.

Then she felt the bridge rock beneath her feet. She staggered to one side and heard Verlaine cry out.

“Nadia?” Mateo called. The bridge swayed again, as though it were a horse trying to buck them off. “The waves are higher—it’s like the tide’s trying to come in all at once!”

It didn’t work, Nadia realized. Elizabeth knows. She’s doing this.

And the bridge collapsed.