Steadfast

19

DESPITE HER MISERY, DESPITE THE NEARBY CDC WORKERS taking blood samples as she, Mateo, and Verlaine waited their turn, Nadia almost had to smile as she saw Verlaine gaping in shock. “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Wait the what the how the?”

Nadia repeated, “Elizabeth told me that my mother didn’t just leave. Apparently she traded our family away for some kind of magical power; I don’t know what. But I have to find out.”

“Traded you?” Mateo held up his hands like he was trying to stop that information in its tracks; Nadia knew how that felt. “You mean she gave you away to get power of her own?”

Nadia nodded. “Gave up her kids, gave up her husband. All this time I thought Elizabeth was the only dark witch I ever knew, but now I’m wondering. Because who does that? What kind of person does that?”

Her voice broke, and Mateo took her hand in his. That simple touch did her in. Tears sprang to her eyes, and it took her a moment to get her composure.

“You okay?” Mateo said.

“No.” Nadia tried to laugh, but it came out strange.

Verlaine finally found her voice. “I don’t get it. You said she traded you guys.”

“Right. I don’t know what for.”

“Yeah, I understand that but, Nadia—who did your mother trade you to?” Verlaine glanced around the crowded gymnasium, making absolutely sure nobody was paying any attention; they weren’t. Everyone was too tired and freaked out to notice what was happening right in front of their noses. Verlaine continued, “That’s what a trade is, isn’t it? An exchange. If she gave you guys up for something else, did she maybe swear you over to someone else?”

“That couldn’t be true.” The response was automatic, and as soon as it was out of Nadia’s mouth, she began to doubt it. Was this situation somehow even worse than she’d thought?

Counting off on her fingers, Verlaine said, “You meant to stop Elizabeth on Halloween. Not only did you not stop her, you inadvertently wound up helping her. You’ve tried to kill her twice now. Most people wouldn’t look at their attempted murderer and say, ‘Hey, that’s exactly who I want on my team.’ Elizabeth’s still trying to recruit you. She knows something you don’t. Do you think—maybe—your mom traded you to, well . . .”

Verlaine pointed down at the floor. Nadia and Mateo both stared.

“By that I mean hell,” Verlaine said. “In case it wasn’t obvious.”

“It was.” Nadia’s head had begun to spin. Maybe that was sleepless nights and stress messing with her, but she didn’t think so. “I didn’t even think that was possible.”

“We don’t know that it is.” Mateo shot Verlaine a dirty look; she responded by shrugging, like, Just saying. “Listen. Your mother can’t have traded you to the One Beneath. If she had, He’d already have you. Instead Elizabeth keeps trying to get you to join her. So you can’t belong to Him.”

She clutched at that fragile hope. “You really think so?”

“Yeah. I do.” Mateo’s hand tightened around hers, and Nadia managed a smile for him.

Verlaine just said, “Wait. How are you going to confront your mother? She’s nowhere near here.”

“I’m going to have to get out of town.”

Mateo gave her a look. “You noticed the quarantine around the town, right?”

“Okay, yeah, that makes it harder, but still—I have to do it,” Nadia insisted.

“I thought you didn’t even know where she was,” Verlaine said.

“I didn’t. But after Elizabeth said that—I kinda went through my dad’s stuff. Got an address. She’s still in Chicago, actually. Twenty minutes from where we used to live.”

“Which brings us back to where you’re trying to get out of a town under quarantine.” Mateo’s eyes shifted sideways, toward the nearest set of medics from the CDC; they’d worked their way to a table not far off.

“I’m a witch. I have ways around barricades.”

“Yeah, but after the barricades, you have to travel all the way to Providence, get on a plane, get a hotel room in Chicago, all of that. You’re going to need cash. Do you have a credit card?”

“Oh. Right.” Magic couldn’t solve every problem. “No credit cards—Dad won’t let me get one until college. I have a few hundred bucks in my checking account.”

“Won’t be enough,” Verlaine said. “I can swing you some, though, no worries.”

“Me too. Dad pays me the same as any other server.” Mateo took a deep breath, as though preparing himself for a needle stick or something else that would hurt. “Don’t worry. We can do it.”

It was too much. Nadia hadn’t realized how fragile her hold on her emotions was until that moment, when her throat choked up and her hands started to shake.

Verlaine leaned closer to her. “Hey. Are you okay?”

“I don’t deserve you guys.”

Mateo’s fingers closed around hers. His touch anchored her again, as though she could once more feel the ground beneath her.

Verlaine said, “Well, no kidding. We are pretty awesome.”

At least she could still laugh.

I shall never understand the madness of this world, Asa thought.

Captive’s Sound had been turned upside down by these strange people who wielded needles and microscopes, who would try to find a cure for Elizabeth’s dark magic. They would try and fail, and yet he admired the effort. In his day—distant though that was, and fragile as the memories had become over centuries of disuse—humanity was helpless before plagues and pandemics. Sickness swept across the land unchecked, mowing down lives the way a scythe mowed wheat. Now humanity had found the tools to fight back against disease and death.

Not that you could ever defeat fate. Death waited; that would never change. But Asa liked that humanity fought anyway. Elizabeth would have called it misguided; he thought of it as valiant.

What bewildered him were the reactions of the townspeople. Fear should have galvanized them, stirred them to protect themselves. He would have thought at least a few would recognize the marks of witchcraft and begin to suspect others in their midst.

They would never suspect Elizabeth—her glamours had seen to that. But he’d expected to see at least a little random harassment of the innocent-yet-marginalized. Torches. Pitchforks. The classics.

Instead the people of Captive’s Sound had been stunned into passivity. They’d turned as stupefied as rabbits caught in a hunter’s snare. All around him, they shuffled along the sidewalks, staring at nothing. What little fire remained in them only sparked when they had to line up for supplies, food, and the like. Now that stores and restaurants couldn’t receive new shipments, these people whose tags and vans read CDC were the only ones who could provide the basics of life. They couldn’t imagine how much worse it would get.

They were about to learn, courtesy of Elizabeth.

He ought to have delighted in that, reveled in the explosion of fear and fury that was to come. Instead he could only think of Verlaine trapped in the midst of it. . . .

No. No more. Elizabeth could not glimpse this in him—this unbidden, overwhelming feeling that smoldered within at the very thought of Verlaine. That would be an excuse for further tortures, and this time, Verlaine might be made to suffer with him.

Besides, he’d just seen Mateo walking along the other side of the street, which meant he had work to do.

Asa strode across the street, ignoring traffic; horns honked, but naturally everyone braked to make way. At the sound of the horns, Mateo glanced over, then looked wary. He was learning.

“You seem to be in a good mood for a man under siege,” Asa said as he fell into step beside Mateo. “I would imagine you’ve got a bit of time off. Maybe that’s why you’re so cheery.”

“Time off?” Mateo stopped walking when they reached the ATM at the corner. He took out his wallet, then gave Asa a look.

“What, you’re afraid I’ll look at your PIN?”

“Like you wouldn’t.”

“It’s three-four-nine-eight,” Asa said, casually readjusting his scarf.

“. . . How did you know that?”

“Demon. And yes, I figure you’ve got some time off, as La Catrina can’t possibly stay in business like this.”

“We’ve got another couple of days.” Mateo at least had enough sense to go on with his withdrawal, punching the keys almost without looking. “Though tonight we’re only going to be able to serve tamales de pollo, and tomorrow—maybe just piña coladas; I don’t know.”

“I should imagine people feel like getting drunk,” Asa said amiably. “And my, what a lot of cash you’re taking out. Curious thing to do, at a time and place when you can purchase virtually nothing.”

Mateo stepped closer, and though he was a few inches shorter than Asa, and only a human, he managed to be threatening anyway. “Stay out of this.”

“Someone’s leaving town.” Asa leaned in even nearer, until he could whisper and still be heard. “Someone’s running far, far away, and I don’t think it’s you.”

“If you tell Elizabeth one word about this—”

“You’ll be as powerless as you are right now.” Asa leaned against the edge of the cash machine. “Besides, when will you understand? I hate Elizabeth even more than you do. If Nadia’s little excursion works against Elizabeth’s will—well, I’d offer to drive if I didn’t have hell’s legions to serve, not to mention that medieval history test next week. Study buddies, you and me? Up for a late-night cram session?”

For a moment, Mateo looked so angry that Asa wondered if he’d be struck. “You leave Nadia alone,” he said. “I swear to God, if you get in her way, I’ll find a way to hurt you. And don’t tell me there’s not a way. If there weren’t, Elizabeth wouldn’t have you doing her bidding, would she?”

With difficulty, Asa kept his smile on his face, but he could tell by the satisfaction in Mateo’s gaze that he’d glimpsed Asa’s anger, and his helplessness.

One of the ironies of being a demon was that you were infected with all the pride of hell just as you were humbled for eternity. That didn’t mean Asa couldn’t teach Mateo a lesson.

“Nadia’s leaving town,” Asa said. “Obviously she thinks she can learn something damaging about Elizabeth that way.”

Mateo didn’t speak. He wanted to contradict Asa, though; that much was clear in his poorly disguised smile. So Nadia was going after the mother, then . . . and they hadn’t yet guessed what ammunition that could give them against Elizabeth. No need to enlighten them, either. Asa had something better in mind.

So he continued, “So, Nadia’s going to talk to her mother. The mother known for deals with darkness.”

That broke through the silence. “What do you know about it?”

Asa held up his hands in the time-out symbol. “Very little, and there’s even less I could do about it. But remember what I told you about Nadia wanting power. Right now she wants it for all the right reasons, but how long will that be true?”

Mateo shook his head. “You don’t know her.”

“I know humanity. Better than knowing individuals any day. Saves time, at any rate.” He continued, “Ask yourself this, Mateo—if Nadia does what it takes to defeat Elizabeth, if she becomes what she’d have to be to bring a Sorceress down, then will she still be the girl you fell in love with? She might come back to you, but will she come back as someone you’d still love, or someone you’d fear?”

With that, Asa turned to go. For a moment he thought Mateo might follow him, but he didn’t. The damage was done.

Mateo drove Nadia out on the back road himself, just after midnight. The barricades were up there, too, but without any streetlights or businesses around, they at least had darkness on their side. Once they went as far as Mateo thought safe, they shut off the motorcycle and walked it off the road, into the woods.

Nadia’s backpack was slung over her shoulders, the straps pressing deep into the down jacket she wore. Her thick, black hair was in a loose knot at the nape of her neck, and her cheeks were so reddened by the chill that he could see the flush clearly despite the scanty moonlight. She looked not at him, but at the far-off checkpoint blocking the road. At this distance the barricades and vehicles were just dark shadows, nothing more.

“What did you tell your dad?” he asked.

“That I was going to stay with Verlaine for a couple of days to help out while Uncle Gary’s in the hospital. Right now he can’t get to his job anyway, so he can be around for Cole. Verlaine’s going to cover for me if he drops by there.”

“Got everything?”

She nodded, and at last she turned back to him. “Thanks to you.”

Mateo patted the handlebars. “You walk it at least half a mile past the checkpoint, out in the field. Then get it back on the road and go. You know the way to Providence?”

“Yeah. I go to the airport, put your motorcycle in long-term parking, and then I can pick up my ticket.”

“And you remember everything I taught you about the bike. Really, riding it is easier than it looks.”

“Right.” But Nadia didn’t look too sure. It hardly mattered; this was their only shot.

Only then did Mateo realize he was still thinking of this as their chance, their risk, not hers alone.

“Mateo—thank you.”

He shook his head. “You’d do the same for me.”

“Not just for the bike, or the loan, or the ride. For believing in me, despite everything.”

The thing was, Mateo had his doubts. He didn’t know what temptations Nadia was about to face, or whether she could resist them. Whether any of this would be enough to conquer Elizabeth or the One Beneath.

But he’d made a decision. Mateo knew he couldn’t test Nadia; he could only test himself, and his love for her.

So he had to trust her enough to let her go.

“You can do it,” he said.

Only now did he recognize the forest where they stood. He’d seen it in his dreams. In that vision Nadia had said she might never return—but had that been a metaphor, a sign that she would not return as the girl he knew and loved, but as someone else entirely?

Nadia clutched at his jacket, pulled him close, and kissed him so hungrily, so hard, that he knew she felt the same desperation he did. For a moment he could only think of the first time their lips had met—when she’d been trapped underwater, and he’d had to breathe for her. It was like that now, as though they were keeping each other alive.

The wind picked up around them again, so hard it nearly knocked him over. They broke the kiss, clinging to each other in the gale. And yet there was something about this—a shimmer in the wind that meant it wasn’t only natural. His Steadfast abilities told him another force had caused that . . .

. . . but in this Sorceress-haunted town, when wasn’t magic at work?

He met Nadia’s eyes again, willing himself to be strong for her. When he repeated the words, his voice was near breaking: “You can do it.”

“If I can, it’s because of you,” Nadia said, and she turned away.

Then he watched her walking the cycle out off the paved road, into the dust and brambles all alone, until her shadow was just one more sliver of the night.