Spellcaster

He smiled a little, and she came to his bedside and ruffled his hair. As Cole relaxed, he said, “Can we have mac and cheese tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is a pizza night. I won’t be here. But I bet Dad will order all the toppings you want. You should pick some crazy ones. Like—pineapple and anchovy!”

“Ewww.” Cole wriggled in delighted disgust. “Where will you be?”

Diving in the sound for God knows what. “Out with some of my new friends. I’m lucky to have met so many people right away. What about you, buddy? Do you like the kids at school?”

Cole started telling her all about his new friends, and a birthday party he had this weekend; Nadia felt her phone vibrate in her pocket but ignored it, letting her little brother go on and on until his words came slowly, and his eyelids had begun to droop. He was worrying about the monsters less and less now. Maybe he was finally back to being a normal little kid. She hoped so. He deserved it. Mom had taken enough away from her and Dad—it wasn’t right if she took away Cole’s ability to feel safe ever again.

Only when he was conked out and she’d shut his door behind her did she look down and see that she had a message from Mateo. Instantly she hit Call Back. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Hey.” He sounded almost as sleepy as Cole had. There was something about his voice when it was sleepy—warm and not quite controlled. Nadia found herself leaning against the wall, making little circles on the floor with her foot. “Sorry we left things so weird. We seem to keep doing that.”

Nadia forced out the next: “I don’t mean to say anything bad about Elizabeth.”

“Listen, I admit—Elizabeth hasn’t told me the whole truth. I know she can’t. I get that. I also know you’re not making all this up. Before I can talk to Elizabeth, really talk about this, I have to know what she’s dealing with. The more I know, the more she’s likely to tell me. Right?”

“Right.” Why did he have to be so focused on Elizabeth? Nadia focused on the most important thing. “I want to go diving near the lighthouse. To search. Tomorrow night, if I can.”

She expected him to argue. Or hesitate. To come up with reasons they should ask more questions first.

All Mateo said was, “I’m with you.”

All day, Nadia’s mind was on the night’s dive. Her body, unfortunately, was stuck in school, and every class seemed to drag on and on forever. A counseling session with Faye Walsh seemed likely to bore her to actual, literal death, until Nadia came up with the idea of telling her that she was working with Verlaine on digitizing the back issues of the Lightning Rod—that was an extracurricular project, right? Apparently it counted, at least enough to get Ms. Walsh off her back for the moment.

Her head still in the clouds—thinking of what to wear, when to go, what to tell her father—she drifted down the hallway toward her last class, when suddenly Elizabeth stepped directly in front of her.

Nadia stopped short. Elizabeth regarded her without malice or curiosity. With her chestnut curls long and loose and her unfashionable airy dress, she ought to have looked unkempt, even tacky. Instead, there was an incredible stillness to her. Her beauty was so precise that it might have been plotted on a sketch pad with compass and protractor, every measurement ideal and yet impersonal. Looking at Elizabeth was like looking at a statue of some ancient goddess that could smite you at a glance.

“Your mother is gone,” Elizabeth said.

How did she know that? Nadia struggled for words. “That’s—none of your business.”

Elizabeth cocked her head. “Your father forgot to mention my visit, didn’t he?”

Wait—Elizabeth was in my house? Nadia felt her arms tightening around her books, as if using them to shield her heart.

“People often forget where I’ve been,” Elizabeth continued. “I prefer it that way. Once they’re aware of me—of what I can do—it’s harder. But I could make you forget about me. Forget my name. Forget your own name, if I chose.”

Every bad thought she’d had about Elizabeth was true. Nadia remembered Mateo—the danger he was in because of the curse, how vulnerable he was to Elizabeth’s manipulation—and that plus her fear for her dad seized her, turning her fear to rage. “Tell me what you’re doing to this town. What are you after? What do you want?”

“Nothing I haven’t earned.”

“Then what are you doing to Mateo? You’re friends. You have to care about him, at least a little. Why haven’t you told him about the curse? Why aren’t you protecting him from it?”

To her surprise, Elizabeth smiled. The expression was fond, in a patronizing way—like how she might look at a puppy before she petted its head. “You’re very young. You don’t have your full power yet, and you have no teacher to guide you. So you’ll never be a real witch. You and I both know that. So why are you prying into my life? And Mateo belongs to me in ways you could never even begin to understand.”

“He’s not your property,” Nadia shot back.

“Oh, but he is. You know I can make people forget, Nadia. I can also make people remember. If I wish it, Mateo will ‘remember’ that he’s in love with me. That he always has been. He’d be so intensely in love with me that he’d do anything I asked, as quickly as a snap of my fingers.” Elizabeth’s eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, like someone remembering a good joke. “They say it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. But you’ve loved and lost, haven’t you? You know how it hurts. Are you going to keep investing all that emotion in Mateo, knowing I can separate you two forever at any moment I please?”