Spellcaster

Verlaine was doing a much better job of acting natural. “What purple light?”

He paused, then shrugged. “Guess it was something about—you know, it’s dark in the hallway and then you come up here—”

“Like how you see red after a camera flash,” Nadia agreed. “Definitely. Happens to me all the time. By the way—what are you doing here?”

Did that sound unfriendly? She hoped not. But it was a pretty good question.

“Does this look familiar?” Mateo held up a cell phone identical to hers—wait.

“I never took it out of my backpack!” Nadia protested, going to pick up her pack to prove her point. That was when she discovered a brand-new hole in the side pocket. “Oh, great. Wow. I’m glad it fell out at La Catrina instead of on the side of the road or something.” Blushing—in embarrassment, in the shock of near-discovery, because Mateo was near, for a dozen reasons—Nadia gave him a sidelong glance. “Thanks.”

He smiled, but awkwardly. “So. I should get going. It’s late. I told my dad I’d be back to help close up. But we should, um, talk sometime. Yeah. Right?” Mateo sounded so awkward, and yet nothing like the guys at school who had no idea how to ask a girl out. There was something else behind his hesitation, something heavier. Nadia could sense the barriers he put between himself and the world, and how hard it was for him to reach past them. And there was something about his eyes—something lost, something hunted.

Something she wouldn’t understand tonight. So maybe she should stop staring at the guy.

“Definitely. We’ll talk. See you around,” Nadia said.

And then Mateo was gone, back down the attic ladder, the door shutting atop him.

Verlaine said, “Do the two of you usually affect each other like that?”

“Like what?”

“You know—big Bambi eyes, all bashful, kind of gooey—”

“I wasn’t gooey,” Nadia protested as she took her seat next to Verlaine again. “Wait. Did you think Mateo was, um, gooey?”

“We’ll figure it out later,” Verlaine said impatiently. “The flame definitely flared. Completely. You saw it, right? Am I your Steadfast now?”

“I—don’t know. I doubt it.” But Verlaine was right; Nadia had seen the flare for herself.

“Wouldn’t I feel it? I don’t feel any different.”

Nadia shrugged. “We’ll have to check to make sure.”

Something quick and simple would be best: Reigniting the cleansing flame, maybe? Nadia pinched a bit of the bone dust between her fingers; it was still warm. Bone had a slight oiliness to it that set it apart from sand or ash, a reminder that it had once been alive.

If Verlaine were her Steadfast, even brand-new, then the flame would flare up instantly, and brighter than ever before. Nadia snapped her fingers, feeling the bone crumble and spark between them—

—but a spark was all she got.

“It didn’t take,” Nadia said. “We’ll have to try again.”

Verlaine shook her head, suddenly panicked. “What if it took, but it’s Mateo Perez instead?”

“Impossible.”

“What are you talking about? He came in just when the flame went foomp and flared up. He could be your Steadfast now!”

Nadia shook her head. “Couldn’t happen. No man can ever be a Steadfast, no more than a man can be a witch. They’re magic-blind, all of them.”

“All of them?” Verlaine didn’t look convinced. “You can’t be sure.”

“I can be absolutely sure, and so can you. It’s one of the absolute truths of witchcraft. It’s been true as long as there have been witches, so about as long as there’s been human history. No men. Not one. Not ever. Some people say it’s because a witch went evil and cursed them all way back at the start of civilization, but that would have been one badass curse. There’s all kinds of theories. But the old books all say ‘no man conceived of woman’ can ever know or use magic. And it’s true.”

Verlaine frowned. “Isn’t that sexist? You know, reverse sexism?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. We have bigger problems, okay?” Nadia kept staring down at the black, oily smears on her fingertips. “The spell.”

“Oh, right. Yeah! You told the fortune of Captive’s Sound, and … that is not a good expression on your face.”

Slowly Nadia shook her head.

“I would call that a bad expression. Very bad.” Verlaine began twisting the ends of her long, silvery hair between her fingers, her nails tugging at a small tangle there. “But—you didn’t see much. You couldn’t. It just turned black, that’s all.”

“It turned black,” Nadia said. “Nothing more. That means there’s only one thing waiting in this town’s future.”

Verlaine’s eyes were wide. “Which is not good.”

“Which is destruction. Complete and total.” Nadia stared down at the black oily soot on her hand, which was about as much as would be left of Captive’s Sound in the end. “I don’t know when it’s coming. And I don’t know why. But it’s coming.”

Anxious to be done with his work for the night, Mateo tied off a bag of garbage in the back room at La Catrina and stepped out into the alley.

His eyes widened, and the garbage bag slipped from his fingers, landing on the pavement with a wet crunch.