Steadfast

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.

And of course, Elizabeth was still his lab partner.

“Ah, young love,” said Mrs. Purdhy, who had walked up while they were distracted. Mateo and Nadia pulled apart slightly. “What a beautiful sight. Also, what a stupid reason for a tardy. You two want to get into class?”

“Oh, yeah, right.” Nadia shared a glance with Mateo. They were stuck.

As they walked in, Jeremy was arranging the stuff for today’s experiment neatly on the lab table he shared with Nadia. (Oh, crap, how did I forget that he’s teamed with Nadia?) Elizabeth went calmly to her own table to wait for Mateo, staring at him the whole time he approached. She didn’t so much as glance at Jeremy.

Memories flickered through his mind: the two of them as eight-year-olds, making cookies and giggling. Swimming together in the surf on a blazing-hot summer afternoon. Hiking around Breakheart Pond two years ago, on a cool, bright autumn day much like this one.

Those were some of the happiest memories of Mateo’s life—and each and every one was fake.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he muttered as he came to the table.

“Learning about—” She squinted at the board. “Combustion, apparently.”

“Stop lying to me!” That came out too loudly; a few people turned their heads in his direction.

Elizabeth just smiled and pushed up the sleeves of her cardigan. Her hair was a little disheveled, her cardigan not quite on straight. Had she always been like this? Slightly askew? “I doubt you’d like the truth any better. But don’t worry, Mateo. I’m not here for you today; I’m not even here for her.” She nodded over at Nadia, who was currently watching the un-Jeremy obediently start filling out today’s worksheet. “I have my own reasons.”

From the front of the room, Mrs. Purdhy started lecturing. “Okay, everyone. We got an inadvertent lesson about combustion over the weekend—” People groaned at the bad joke, and she nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Work with me here. Today’s lesson is going to be a lot more controlled than that, and hopefully a lot more fun.”

Between Elizabeth standing there next to him like nothing was going on and the dead guy right by Nadia, Mateo could hardly pay attention to what else the teacher was saying . . . but then he realized she’d stopped talking.

He looked toward the front. Mrs. Purdhy was standing very still, her eyes wide with what he knew was fright. She wasn’t looking at Elizabeth or Not-Jeremy, not at anything in particular. Her eyes seemed glazed with fear.

People started glancing at one another, looking for confirmation that this was definitely weird. After a moment, Kendall Bender raised her hand and said, “Um, Mrs. Purdhy, do you know you’re, like, acting all weird?”

There was no answer. Slowly Mrs. Purdhy lifted one hand to her throat, like she might be about to cough.

“Ma’am?” Kendall’s voice was a little quieter. “Are you okay?”

Mrs. Purdhy opened her mouth. A drop of liquid appeared at the corner of her lips and trickled down her chin—black as tar.

People started to swear. A few students in the front row shoved their desks backward or hurried to the rear of the classroom. One guy started filming it on his phone. Someone else dashed into the hallway and started yelling for the school nurse. Nadia pushed toward the front, to Mrs. Purdhy’s side. “Are you all right? Can you talk?”

Mrs. Purdhy showed no sign she could hear, or see, or take in anything besides whatever was happening to her. The liquid coming out of her mouth increased—a slow pour, thick as chocolate syrup, and getting thicker by the moment. Black streaks were beginning to rain down her shirt. When droplets hit the floor, the linoleum made a horrible sizzling sound.

Mateo turned to Elizabeth. “What the hell are you doing?”

Elizabeth never even glanced sideways at him. “I told you I wasn’t here for you.”

With a gurgling cry, Mrs. Purdhy clutched at her throat and passed out. Nadia caught her and eased her to the floor.

To hell with Elizabeth. Mateo ran to Nadia’s side; somebody else had to help. As he knelt beside them, careful not to touch whatever that gunk was, he saw that Nadia had pillowed Mrs. Purdhy’s head on her knees—the better to take hold of her bracelet and cast some kind of spell. Mateo wrapped his arms around Nadia’s waist, knowing that the closer they were, the more she would be able to draw upon the increased power he gave her as her Steadfast.

But after a moment, Nadia whispered, “I can’t get at it. Whatever it is—it’s too strong.”

Mateo looked down at Mrs. Purdhy, who was beginning to convulse on the floor. As he pressed down her arms to keep her from hurting herself, he thought for a moment that the tarry stuff coming out of her had streaked all along her face and hands. Then he realized that the black streaks were beneath her skin, widening and darkening like grotesque veins.

What’s happening to her? He looked at Nadia, who shook her head in despair.

Then the school nurse came in, and she shooed them off, and it turned out Kendall had called 9-1-1 because the paramedics showed up about ninety seconds after that. Within a few minutes, they were running down the hallway with Mrs. Purdhy on their gurney, and in the panic nobody had thought to send in a substitute or anything else. People huddled in the room, crying, talking, or posting details on Facebook.

Nadia curled into Mateo’s embrace. “I feel so helpless.”

“If anyone can help her, it’s you.” He stroked his hands through Nadia’s black hair. “Don’t blame yourself. We know who’s really to blame.”

As Mateo turned his head to glare at Elizabeth, he saw her walk through the other students to the black puddle on the floor where Mrs. Purdhy had fallen. Everyone else was leaving that gunk severely alone; no doubt a custodian would show up any second to mop the floor clean, but Mateo wondered if it would disintegrate the mop or something. Whatever that crap was, it wasn’t good.

Elizabeth went to her knees beside it and pulled her cardigan half-down, exposing her shoulders. Then she dipped two fingers into the stuff. Smoke rose from her nails as she raised her hand and painted two stripes on the very top of her arm. The skin there burned so quickly that he could smell it—the disgusting odor that came from cooking meat that had gone bad.

Nobody else paid attention. Nobody else could even see what Elizabeth was doing; she had willed them not to see. Her power was so vast that she could do her worst right in front of people, without them ever knowing a thing.

But once you knew the truth, Elizabeth’s power became easier to see. Mateo and Nadia both stared, and Nadia whispered, “She’s burned.”

The red streaks on Elizabeth’s arm bubbled, immediately blistering. A surge of sympathetic pain lanced across Mateo’s shoulder; his nerve endings didn’t understand that she didn’t deserve sympathy.

And the light that shimmered around her as she did it—the glow of it was febrile and sick. Mateo understood instinctively that this was something only he could see with his Steadfast power. So he stared at it long and hard, this orange halo that melted around her for a moment and was gone. Tell Nadia this. Tell Nadia everything.

Elizabeth simply pulled her cardigan back on and walked out of class. As usual, nobody noticed.

For a few moments, Mateo and Nadia could only look at the doorway she’d walked through. Mateo’s mind kept replaying that horrible gurgle Mrs. Purdhy had made—like she was both trying to breathe and trying to scream.

Whatever had happened to her was Elizabeth’s fault. Just like the curse, and Mom’s death, and everything else in Captive’s Sound. All because of Elizabeth.

Then Jeremy came up beside them, gesturing in the direction Elizabeth had gone. “What a bitch, huh?”