Steadfast

6

“FREE CHIPS,” GAGE SAID THROUGH A CRUNCHY MOUTHFUL. “Free salsa. To what do I owe the honor?”

“To Tuesday nights usually being the slowest of the week at La Catrina.” Mateo was wiping down the next table, getting it ready to turn over—though from the looks of things, it would be a while before it was filled. The red leather booths were mostly empty; the brilliantly colored skeletons on the walls almost had the place to themselves. Gage was the only person in Mateo’s section at the moment. “Also to my girlfriend being at the town hall meeting with Verlaine.”

“Verlaine—that’s the girl with gray hair, right?” Like most people, Gage didn’t seem to be able to remember Verlaine for very long. “Girlfriend, huh? You and Nadia sound serious.”

“Definitely.” Mateo knew he was starting to grin, and that he was probably going to get teased about it, but he didn’t care. “As serious as it gets.”

“Whoa, whoa. Check yourself. ‘As serious as it gets’ is my grandparents, who just had their fifty-third anniversary.”

“Okay. As serious as it gets before that.”

Gage shook his head. “Listen, don’t bite my head off for this, but it wasn’t that long ago that you and Elizabeth Pike were acting like you were way more than friends.”

The memory made Mateo’s gut turn over. At Gage’s party, he’d passionately kissed Nadia . . . at least, someone he’d believed to be Nadia. But Gage and everyone else there had seen the truth: Mateo had been in Elizabeth’s arms the whole time. Elizabeth had cloaked herself in magic and tricked him into thinking she was Nadia.

“That was a one-time deal,” Mateo said. “One time only. The biggest mistake ever.”

“So Elizabeth’s available again?” Gage looked hopeful.

“Seriously, don’t go there.” Although Mateo seriously doubted Gage would ever get up the courage to so much as talk to Elizabeth, or that Elizabeth would pay him any attention if he did, his friend’s old crush on her was so powerful that he felt like he should warn him off just in case. “Trust me on this.”

“You aren’t talking like you’re totally over Elizabeth. Or even slightly over her.”

“There’s nothing to get over,” Mateo said, temper rising—but he bit it back just in time. Gage Calloway was the closest thing he had to a best friend besides Nadia, and it wasn’t Gage’s fault he could never know the truth about what had happened with Elizabeth, or what she really was. “I promise.”

Gage shrugged as he dug another chip into the salsa. “All I know is, Elizabeth better be on the same page about you guys being ‘over,’ or you’re setting yourself up to be the guy in a Taylor Swift song.”

“She’s on the same page. That much I know for sure.” At least he didn’t have to worry about her touching him ever again.

Mateo’s phone buzzed in the pocket of his black apron. He lifted it to see a text from Nadia. As the messages kept coming, line after misspelled, rushed line, his eyes widened.

“Uh-oh,” Gage said. “Girlfriend drama?”

Now Verlaine had just sent him video of—whoa. “You could say that.”

“I should never have tried a brand-new spell in an emergency.” Nadia leaned against the side of the building, her face still streaked from her earlier tears. They stood in the alleyway behind La Catrina, in the harsh circle of light from a nearby streetlamp; everything else around them was dark.

There were shapes and shadows around them only Mateo could see—like faces made of darkness, staring all the while—but he was learning to put those aside when he could. Right now Nadia needed him. “You were trying to help Mrs. Prasad. You did your best. You couldn’t have known that was going to happen.”

“I could’ve known if I had enough practice.” She pushed her thick, black hair back from her face, like a little girl awakened from a nightmare. “Instead the exact same demon I was trying to expose? He had to fix everything.”

“You said he just . . . gave you an extra minute. You’re the one who saved the day.”

“If Asa hadn’t done it, Mrs. Prasad probably would have killed somebody, and it would have been my fault.”

Mateo took her by the shoulders. “No. Nadia, come on. Snap out of this. You and I both know who’s really responsible. Elizabeth is the one who killed Jeremy. She’s the one who put a demon in his place. This is her fault. Only her fault. So stop beating yourself up about it, okay?”

Nadia shook her head. “It’s not that simple.”

“Yeah, it is.” He folded her close against his shoulder. His fingers were woven through the thick silk of her hair, cradling the back of her head. He tried to imagine all the thoughts within her brain, the countless strands of hope and grief and love and fear interwoven there, so infinitely more complex than he could ever begin to understand. And yet there was nothing he wanted more than this—to know her. His lips against her temple, Mateo murmured, “You try to take care of everyone, all the time. Then you get mad at yourself when it’s impossible.”

“Someone has to stop Elizabeth, and there’s no one else.”

“Which is why you need to relax sometimes. Let us take care of you for a change.” He kissed her forehead, then her cheek. “Tonight—okay, you made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. Yeah, there was a big scene, but it sounds like it’s going to blow over.”

Nadia’s dark eyes gazed up into his, still so hesitant, so doubtful, that his heart ached to see it. Why did she keep taking the weight of the world onto herself, until she nearly broke under it?

“It’s not just that,” she whispered. “Every time I run into something else I don’t know, it reminds me that I lost my teacher.”

She said no more; she didn’t have to. He knew her only teacher in witchcraft was her mother. When they’d first met, Mateo had thought Nadia was coping reasonably well with her mother’s abandonment of the family. He’d slowly learned that wasn’t true. In some ways she had only just begun dealing with it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It sucks. I’d change it for you if I could.”

“I know.” She wound her arms more tightly around his waist, and then brought their mouths together in a kiss. Mateo opened his lips, kissed her deeper, breathed in the scent of her skin.

They’d had so little time. That first night, after the fire, they’d gone back to her house—

Her mouth under his, her body next to his. Their skin smelled like woodsmoke and blood. Mateo wrapped in her embrace, feeling her body shake with emotion and exhaustion. “I love you,” said and heard, over and over until their voices mingled together. Curled together in her bed, still clothed and too tired for more, but somehow complete. Knowing they’d be together, completely, before long—

But that certainty had been an illusion.

Since then, they’d had to take care of Verlaine, deal with Elizabeth, confront the new demon in their midst . . . it felt like the whole world was trying to tear Nadia away from him almost as soon as he’d found her.

But there was no way he was going to let that happen.

Mateo slipped his hands beneath the hem of her sweater to grasp her right at the waist, his fingers against warm, bare skin. Nadia made this little gasp against his throat that did something to his pulse, made him go warm all over. He leaned into her more, the two of them fusing together in their embrace.

When they broke apart, Mateo was breathing hard, but he had to smile. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah.” Nadia laughed, a little self-conscious—but he saw that flush in her cheeks. “You know how much I love you, right?”

“Maybe as much as I love you. But maybe not. Because I’m not sure that’s even possible.”

The back door opened; Mateo and Nadia broke apart, at least enough to be decent. It was Dad, who said nothing but gave them both a look. “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you just got an eight-top.”

“Eight?” Large parties were the worst. Besides—“It’s almost nine o’clock! We close in half an hour.”

“They’re here, and they’re hungry, and unfortunately for young love, I let the other server leave early tonight.” His dad pointed a finger at him. “Could’ve been you if you’d asked first.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll be right there.” As the door swung shut, Mateo turned back to Nadia. “I’m sorry. This sucks.”

“It’s all right.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Lots better,” she promised, even though that wasn’t exactly the same thing.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Find a spell I can use to take down Elizabeth,” Nadia said. “And figure out how in the world I’m supposed to practice that before I use it against her.”

It was as though Mateo’s embrace had healed her. Restored her. Nadia returned home energized and ready to work. Even though she had to go through an entire paternal interrogation the moment she walked in the door (“Are you kidding? An ax? What is it about this place?”), Nadia’s mind never stopped racing with possibilities. By the time she was back in her attic, she was already halfway into a plan.

Weirdly it was the whole fiasco tonight that had set her on this path. Nadia now knew she shouldn’t try to find a new spell, however powerful, and use it against Elizabeth. It took time to get to know a spell, to learn how to work with it and discover all the possible repercussions. She’d forgotten that tonight—not much chance she’d ever forget it again.

What Nadia needed was a familiar spell, one that was totally known, totally reliable . . . but could be made stronger, and used for a sneak attack.

Such as a spell of forgetting.

Nadia had used these spells only sparingly; her mother had warned her that if she ever used them on her parents she’d be in Big Trouble, and since Mom had possessed the powers to double-check whether she’d been spelled, Nadia had never broken that rule. But she’d pulled it out to make people at school forget cruel nicknames they’d invented for her and her friends, to break up a near-fight one time on the “L,” and even to get out of detention for talking in class, once back in Chicago . . . a successful spellcasting she’d never shared with Mom.

Last month, a witch in town had used this spell against Mateo with near-disastrous results. She hadn’t known Mateo was a Steadfast, hadn’t known he would make her spell far more powerful than it had ever been before. Instead of forgetting that he’d found another witch, Mateo had forgotten everything: his name, how to speak English, how to stand, nearly how to breathe.

Nadia doubted a spell of forgetting could wreck Elizabeth that badly. Surely she would have some defenses. But if Nadia intensified the spell, and had Mateo with her, they could probably take away some of Elizabeth’s memory. A lot of it.

Including, no doubt, much of her magic . . . quite possibly whatever magic she was using now to hurt Mrs. Purdhy. Enough to undo whatever her real plan was.

It was worth a try.

“Watch your back, Elizabeth,” Nadia muttered as she got to work.

As he rode his motorcycle home, Mateo did his best not to see the dark magic that still bound Captive’s Sound.

He was Nadia’s Steadfast. That meant he had a window to magic’s true nature, one even a witch couldn’t match. His first few days as a Steadfast, the signs and portents had terrified him, but by now they were all too familiar.

Every time he looked at the sky, he saw the strange, roiling film between the town and the stars—the thing that seemed to seal them off from the rest of the world. Every time he glanced at the town hall, there was a strange, glowing energy around the building, almost like fire. Lines blazed deep in the ground, the concentric rings that centered in on the site of the Halloween carnival—the leftover target from Elizabeth’s attempt to kill them all.

By now, Mateo could gun his motorcycle motor and drive past things like that without a second thought.

However, it became harder when he went home and got ready for bed. Maybe Mateo was learning how to be a Steadfast, but there was no learning how to bear the Cabot curse.

His Steadfast abilities allowed him to actually see the curse now, every time he looked in a mirror; it writhed around his head like a dark halo, one made of snakes and thorns. When Mateo looked at it, he knew that Elizabeth’s curse ticked within him like a time bomb. He knew that eventually, like his mother, grandfather, and great-grandmother before him, like all his ancestors going back to colonial times, he would go mad from the burdens of his visions—the ones that showed him slivers of the future.

Mateo could avoid seeing himself in the mirror as he washed his face and brushed his teeth. He could take a couple of Tylenol PMs in the hopes of sleeping more deeply.

But he couldn’t keep himself from dreaming.

Verlaine lay crumpled on the ground, crying so hard that the sobs racked her body. “How could you?” she said, to someone or something he couldn’t see in the blur. “You had to take this, too. You had to take the only thing I ever had.”

He tried to push forward, to see who it was who’d done this to Verlaine, though he still didn’t know what had been done, what she might have lost. Instead Verlaine seemed to disappear as he stumbled—not through the strange, misty blur that had surrounded them before, but through a forest. The dead of night. Twigs snapped under his feet, and thick oak trees and pines surrounded him on every side like the bars of an oversize cage.

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.”