Spellcaster (Spellcaster #1) (26 page)

Nadia had been here with him. That was the one thing he now knew for sure, the one thing that made the rest of it okay. If she had been here to check on him, then everything must be okay.

He saw nothing now; he didn’t care. His hand hurt—one constant pinpoint of pain.
The IV
, he thought, without really caring why there was one jabbed through his skin. Mateo’s only real connection with the rest of the world was hearing, though he didn’t bother making sense of what he heard.

“—keep him overnight for observation. We’ll need to do some tests.”

“Of course.” That was Dad. Mateo was sure of that much, and it was such a relief to know who Dad was, to remember him. But why a relief? He couldn’t put it together right now—not with the fog swirling all around him—“But everything looks normal?”

“His vitals are strong. We’re giving him antiseizure medication just in case, but if he doesn’t have another episode, he can go home tomorrow morning.”

That sounded good, Mateo decided. Now he could let himself fall asleep. But wasn’t there a reason he didn’t want to go to sleep? He could remember it now if he wanted to—

—but he didn’t want to. He relaxed and let the fog swallow him whole.

For a long time there was nothing.

Then he saw Nadia again.

They sat on the back porch of some house on the beach—not Mateo’s, but it might have been any of a few dozen strewn along the coast of Captive’s Sound. A fire pit flickered from the sand below, and crystal wind chimes sang with the breeze. It was late at night, and the sky was so clear he could see where the stars met the sea. They were curled up on a swing, and Nadia shivered from the chill
.

“Don’t kiss me,” she said
.

She was cold, so cold. Despite his own shivering, Mateo shrugged off his jacket and slipped it around her shoulders. Nadia’s dark eyes seemed like part of the night that surrounded them, and he couldn’t stop wanting to bury his hands in her black hair
.

Why was this different?

“You’re not dying,” he whispered. “Not this time. It’s okay for me to be with you.”

Nadia smiled up at him as she trailed two fingers along his cheek, a touch that made him feel like he was melting. She smiled even as she said, “I’m dying the whole time this happens.”

Mateo laid one hand along her belly; he could feel the warmth of her skin through her shirt. Slowly he slid his hand toward her back, bringing her into his embrace
.

She leaned against him and whispered, her breath soft against his lips, “If you kiss me, we’re both lost.”

It didn’t make any sense. Dreams didn’t have to make sense.

Just as he bent toward her, though, there was light—“Time to check your vitals!” in a chipper voice—and Mateo wasn’t awake but he wasn’t dreaming any longer, either. He let the dream go easily; the fog wouldn’t let him hold on to anything for long.

At three a.m., about when Verlaine was starting to think she might have calmed down enough to go to sleep, she thought again of Ginger’s note.

RUN
.

“Forget it,” she groaned, throwing back the covers to grab her phone again. Even as she did so, Nadia texted again:
Sorry if I woke you up—can’t sleep
.

Me either. Hey, are we considering fleeing as a possibility? I would be good with fleeing
. She really should have put that in the PowerPoint as Option D.

Nadia didn’t seem to be thinking about escape—at least not enough, in Verlaine’s opinion.
Tell me more about that church fire. The one where Ginger lost her voice
.

I was little. I don’t remember much about it
. As Smuckers jumped up on the bed, Verlaine absentmindedly petted him, trying to remember anything Uncle Gary had ever said about the fire. He was the one who knew pretty much everything that went down around here.
It was the Catholic church—they were in this really old building then, not far from the beach. There was some group meeting in the basement, but just like a women’s club or something. Most of them died. Ginger got out but she never talked after that
.

That wasn’t a club. I’d bet anything that was a coven
.

What? Are you sure?

Ginger’s a witch—and that fire can’t have been targeted only at her. There are more specific spells you could use against one enemy
.

What kind of spells were those? Verlaine wondered if she really wanted to know.

Nadia kept typing.
If Elizabeth only wanted to hurt or warn Ginger, the curse alone would have done it. But the fire striking a whole group of women who met alone … to me, that says coven
.

A whole group of witches—right here in town—and Verlaine had never suspected. Someday soon, she figured she wouldn’t even be capable of being surprised anymore, but not quite yet.
Why would a coven be meeting in the Catholic church? Isn’t that, like, a conflict of interest or something?

They probably said it was a knit night or a book club or something. It’s always easiest to hide in plain sight
.

Her phone screen was the only light in her room; the shadows it cast made everything look unfamiliar. Verlaine realized she was shivering and clutched Smuckers closer, though the fat old cat meowed once in protest.
So Elizabeth just goes around destroying other witches in town, whenever, wherever?

No, because she hasn’t come after me, and she could
.
I wouldn’t be able to stop her
, Nadia replied. That wasn’t exactly reassuring.

Why had she let herself get sucked into this? But Verlaine knew now—witchcraft had played a part in her life long before she’d ever met Nadia Caldani. She wound a strand of her waist-length hair around one finger, over and over, coiling it all; in the phone’s light it shone silver.

Uncle Gary and Uncle Dave kept the one formal portrait of her and her parents framed in the hallway, bigger than any of the many pictures they’d all taken together over the years. So she wouldn’t forget, they always said, like she remembered back that far to begin with. Verlaine was hardly a year old in that picture, chubby and grinning with her dark curls as her mom and dad hugged her tight. She’d lost everything she could see there—the parents, the baby fat, the dark hair, and even the smile.

Was Elizabeth the one who had taken it all away?

Her phone chimed again in her hand. Verlaine looked down to see Nadia’s text:
The witches must have been planning on challenging her. That’s why Elizabeth killed them. She must have left Ginger alive but mute as a kind of warning
.

Warning who?

Anyone else who was coming after Elizabeth
.

Um, isn’t that us?
Verlaine was starting to wonder whether “teen runaway” was the worst thing she could put on her college applications.

But as scared as she was, there was no erasing what she’d learned. Her whole life, Verlaine had been wearing the scars Elizabeth had given her; now, at last, she saw them for what they were.

Her uncles said that Mom had a fantastic sense of humor and had crocheted Verlaine’s baby blanket herself. That Dad used to sing Beatles songs to her when she was a baby to put her to sleep.

They deserved justice.

And if going after Elizabeth Pike was the only way to make that happen—then no matter how scary it was, no matter how dangerous, Verlaine had to try.

Sorry
, Nadia typed.
I didn’t mean to scare you
.

Verlaine’s reply popped up on her phone almost immediately.
Hey, if I need to be scared, scare me. We know what we’re getting into now. Right?

Right
, Nadia said, hoping it was true. But Elizabeth was so ancient—wielded such unfathomable power—that she might be able to come after them in ways Nadia couldn’t even begin to guess. Their only hope was that she’d underestimate them, and that could only take them so far.

Besides—how could Elizabeth underestimate her? With so few skills, so little knowledge, no mother, no teacher, Nadia couldn’t be any real challenge to Elizabeth, and they both knew it.

Then she heard a high, wavering cry from her little brother’s bedroom.

Cole’s awake
, she typed quickly.
Gotta go
. Then she dropped her phone and hurried to Cole before he could wake her father. Her bare feet padded against the old wooden floors, the one loose board squeaking underneath as she reached her brother’s door. “Hey, buddy. You all right?”

He lay in bed, clutching his covers up to his chin, which was always a sign of bad dreams or at least potential monsters in the closet. “No,” he snuffled.

“It’s okay. I promise.” Nadia came to sit on the side of his bed and ruffled his hair with her fingers. “Was it seeing the ambulance tonight? Nobody got hurt, not really, but I guess that was pretty scary anyway.”

“I don’t know,” Cole said. He looked so small, lying there. These days, when he ran around like crazy and could eat almost half a pizza by himself, Nadia sometimes forgot how little he still was. “But I woke up and I wanted Mommy.”

Then he started to cry again—almost like he was ashamed. A little boy in first grade shouldn’t have been ashamed of still wanting his mom. And Mom should have been here for him.

Nadia’s throat tightened, but she didn’t let herself lose it, too. Instead she whispered, “Scoot over, huh?” When he did, she lay down beside him, atop the covers, but still able to hug him tight.

Cole cuddled next to her, even as he said, “I thought I was too big now.”

She’d told him that during the summer, mostly to try to get him used to sleeping on his own again; Dad had said they had to help Cole start acting like everything was back to normal. He did now, mostly. So she could make an exception. “Not if you have a bad dream. Nobody’s so big that they don’t want a hug after they have a bad dream.”

“Okay.” Cole closed his eyes almost right away; he’d always been quick to soothe, but Nadia knew she’d need to stay until he was fast asleep.

Going after Elizabeth meant risking more than her own safety. More than Verlaine’s, more than Mateo’s. It meant risking Dad, and Cole.

She looked over at him, with his chubby cheeks and fat little hands; lined up along the wall were his favorite toys, the race cars and the LEGOs and the sock monkey. Despite Mom’s abandonment, despite the move and everything they’d been through, his world was still so innocent.

Nadia took a deep breath and tried not to think about Elizabeth, or curses, or the monsters in the closet.

The next day, Mateo impatiently went through the various tests the doctors wanted to run. He had to pretend to be concerned, but since last night was definitely not a “seizure,” it was all a huge waste of time.

What he wanted to do was to find out what the hell actually
had
happened to him—what Ginger had done. Nadia would know. But using cell phones near the hospital machines was forbidden, and since she’d be in school until three p.m., he was stuck for the time being. Hours of bad food, useless tests, and the smell of Lysol awaited.

That, and his dad freaking out nonstop. “You’re not using steroids, are you?” he said as he paced the floor. “If you are, you know you can tell me. We’ll deal with it together.”

Mateo somehow managed not to roll his eyes. “Dad. I’m not using steroids.”

“You’re going out for baseball again this spring, right? I know that’s a lot of pressure.”

“Seriously, do you remember where we live? This is Captive’s Sound. If you try out, you’re on the team. They made a couple people try out last year who didn’t want to.”

His father didn’t seem to hear any of this. “You promise me? Because if something’s making you sick, we need to know.”

Mateo nearly snapped at him, but he realized how tired Dad looked; probably he hadn’t slept. Thinking about how badly Dad had been scared made Mateo feel like crap. “I absolutely promise.”

After school was out, Nadia and Verlaine came by—but they got there about five minutes after Gage, who had brought him a flash drive with some TV shows on it and one of those oversize chocolate bars, which at any other time would have been awesome. But as it was, talking about what had really happened was pretty much impossible, and Dad returned long before Gage left. That didn’t give Nadia any chance to explain.

He wanted more than an explanation, though. Mateo wanted her near—close to him, beside him—

The dreams
, he reminded himself. And hadn’t there been one last night? The drugs had dimmed it; Mateo knew he’d had some kind of vision of her again but couldn’t recall the details.

And—he realized—he wanted to.

The visions—the ones that had cursed his family for centuries, the same ones that were beginning to ravage his own mind—Mateo wanted them. He needed them. Because they told him when Nadia was in danger, and gave him a chance to keep her safe. He’d said that before, but he’d never felt it as strongly as he did right now. Before he’d been willing to accept the visions of the future; now he
wanted
them.

Nothing was worth more than Nadia’s safety. If he had to suffer for it—go crazy for it, be like his mother and grandfather before him—then that was just how it was.

“Hey, are you okay?” Gage looked worried. “You kinda went away for a second there.”

Verlaine nodded. “Your eyes did this kind of misty thing.” She shot Nadia a look like,
Is that magic?

Nadia didn’t see it; she was looking only at Mateo, and a shadow of the yearning he felt flickered in her eyes, too.

Even Verlaine must have been able to see it, because she hurriedly said, “Gage, Mr. Perez, could I talk to you guys for a second?”

They glanced at each other, then back at Verlaine. Gage shrugged. “Yeah, but why?”

“We’re doing a special on this in the
Lightning Rod
. About how even teenagers need to watch their health, because stuff like this can happen to
anyone
.” Verlaine’s expression was so serious and businesslike that Mateo had to cover his mouth like he was yawning, just to hide the smile. “Mr. Perez, your eyewitness account would of course be the most compelling—and Gage, you’re the ‘guy on the street,’ the average high school student confronting his mortality for the first time.”