Spellcaster
—so, maybe not that profound, then.
“It’s not going to happen for us,” Nadia said, trying to push aside the swell of anger within her. “So forget it. Never mind. Don’t be freaked.”
Verlaine had evidently gone from being excited at the possibility to relieved that it was unlikely. “Okay, I get it, you were just—giving me the ‘in case of emergency’ speech. Like on a plane. They always tell you where the life jackets are, and show you how to calmly put on the oxygen masks—like if those masks fell out of the plane ceiling you wouldn’t all be screaming bloody murder.”
Nadia had to laugh. “Yeah, pretty much.” She pointed with her whole hand, flat like a blade, the way stewardesses did. “That way is the emergency exit.”
“Got it. Okay, so—show me what you’ve got.”
Nothing for it now but to start the spell.
She took down her Book of Shadows, because she still needed the instructions for a prophetic spell. It probably looked pretty impressive as she scattered a circle of whitish-gray powder on the floor. Even better would be the cleansing flame, which was violet and hovered slightly above the powder, glowing brilliantly.
“What is that?” Verlaine whispered.
“A cleansing flame.”
“What’s it cleansing?”
“The air. Also the bone.”
“Bone?”
Nadia pointed at the powder on the floor. “You can buy it in some fertilizer stores.”
“Ew. Um, no offense.”
“None taken. There’s a lot of grossness in witchcraft.”
The cleansing flame began to do its work; the bone powder looked precisely the same, but the light in the room seemed to disappear. Really, it was all being drawn into the one violet flame, which grew larger, brighter, tongued with more forks of fire. It was a blaze now, illuminating them both. Nadia took her seat on the floor across from Verlaine, who obviously realized the moment was near.
“We’re about ready,” she said. “Spellcasting is silent, usually. You can speak spells aloud if you really need to keep yourself together, but mostly it works better when the focus turns inward. So I’m going to go through it without speaking. Okay?”
“Okay.” Verlaine hesitated. “If I do turn into your Steadfast, how will I know?”
“You won’t be my Steadfast. I’m, like, ninety-nine percent positive.”
“Yeah, but just in case of a water landing, tell me where to find my life jacket.”
Nadia grinned despite herself. “There would be a—flare. A surge in the flame. And you’d start to feel it not long afterward.”
“Got it.” Verlaine straightened herself, clearly ready. Nadia hoped she was, too.
Looking straight into Verlaine’s hazel eyes, her fingers closing around the pure silver dangle on her bracelet, Nadia began to go through the ingredients of the fortune-telling spell:
The sight of something wondrous, never before seen.
The breaking of a bond that should never have been broken.
Cold beyond desolation.
Loyalty beyond life.
These were mostly very powerful ingredients; only at this point in her life, she realized, would she have had any chance of casting this. Nadia pulled the memories together and thought them, felt them, as deeply as she possibly could:
The first time she’d seen Cole—when he was still in Mom’s belly, the one time her parents let her come to the sonogram, and suddenly all the boring talk about this baby brother she didn’t really want turned into something real, someone real, her actual true brother practically waving to her before he was even born.
Mom standing at the door, a suitcase next to her, saying, “It’s better this way,” and the horrible sight of her father unable to speak for his tears.
Chicago that year they’d had the “thundersnow,” when the winds had been hurricane-strength and two feet of snow had fallen amid bolts of lightning, and she’d opened the door to the balcony just to feel the storm’s fury, and the wind had nearly torn her away—
Dad on the night of the wreck, crawling through twisted metal and broken glass to grab Cole, never hesitating even though his own ribs were cracked and he had to be in incredible pain—
The magic turned over inside her. Rippled around her. Nadia drew a line in the remaining bone dust and envisioned Captive’s Sound—every street she’d seen, every moment she’d spent here—recreating the place as best she could within her mind and demanding that fate show her what was in store.
Her eyes widened as the bone dust blackened, began to radiate an unearthly heat that seared her outstretched hand—
The attic door opened. “Nadia?”
Startled, Nadia turned to see Mateo poking his head up into her attic.
The violet flame flared—and vanished. Instantly the room’s light looked normal; the magic she’d felt had gone … someplace. The bone dust was just so much black gunk on the ground. Verlaine jerked back, clearly not sure what to do.
Mateo frowned. “Whoa. What was that?”
“What was what?” Nadia answered, too quickly. She tucked her hair behind one ear, glanced back at the pile of bone dust on the floor, and adjusted herself so maybe he wouldn’t see it. Did it look like she was acting weird? Probably.
“Sorry to barge in; your dad said it was okay.” But Mateo’s attention remained on what he’d seen. “I meant, what was that—purple light, and all the sparks?”