Spellcaster

All at once, he remembered Nadia so strongly that it was like she was right there with him—close enough to touch. She’d told him that he’d reacted to Elizabeth, that his Steadfast abilities had allowed him to see something unearthly in her. Something true. But when he’d reacted to that, she’d made him forget.

Don’t react this time, he told himself as the hallucinatory flames flickered and parted. No matter what Elizabeth looks like. No matter what she really is. Don’t react.

Elizabeth stepped closer to him, and he saw her—really saw her, for the first time.

She wasn’t the aged, withered thing she ought to have been after four hundred years. No, her body looked like hers—if anything, she was even more beautiful.

But she was hardly even human.

Her skin seemed to be made of molten gold, shining and swirling and dripping along her bare limbs. Her curly chestnut hair was now a truer fire than the imaginary flames that surrounded him. Smoke swirled around her, forming her garment and her shroud. The lines of her face—while recognizably hers—were altered, with the nose almost flat and the cheekbones higher; the eyes were too large, and tilted like a cat’s. It was as if she were half-transformed into some kind of animal—a hunter, a predator. He could imagine blood dripping from that smile. Nothing he had yet seen as a Steadfast—not the scum over the sky, not the strange horned beast in the alleyway behind La Catrina, not even the halo of soot and blades around his head—had disgusted him as much. Or frightened him as much.

Mateo didn’t react. His face remained totally expressionless, and he kept his voice even. “I’m sorry I haven’t called. It’s been—scary.”

“You know you can always talk to me.” In her voice he could hear the rustling of dead leaves, the slithering of snakes. Her wet-gold hands cradled his face, and Mateo had to fight not to flinch. Yet she didn’t burn him; her touch felt just the same. “Tell me about your dreams.”

All the words he’d meant to say to her were gone now. Mateo knew he was powerless against this … thing that had masqueraded as his friend, as a regular human being. There was no point in shouting his hatred at her, or in begging her for explanations. Something like this didn’t explain. It took what it wanted and destroyed everything that got in the way.

Which meant she could never know Nadia was in the way.

So he went to his last dream and focused on that, only on that. “I dreamed of fire.”

Her eyes glinted as in triumph. “A terrible fire?”

“Yes.”

Elizabeth cocked her head to one side, a gesture so like the friend he remembered that his blood ran cold. “Does the fire kill Nadia Caldani?”

He remembered the sight of Nadia lying amid the fire, her dark hair curling like smoke. “Yes. It does.” Was he making Nadia sound too important in the visions? Would that make Elizabeth go after her? Desperate to protect Nadia, he improvised quickly. “Not only Nadia, though. I dream of everyone here in town—everybody dying.”

“Even me?”

Let Elizabeth be scared along with everyone else for a while. “Yeah. Even you. That’s why I haven’t called. I didn’t want to tell you.”

She flinched. “But you never dream of me any longer. You said so.”

Crap. He’d gotten it wrong.

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed, and he knew she’d realized he was lying.

Mateo tried to find the words to correct himself, to come up with anything to cover his tracks. But he couldn’t speak.

Literally, he couldn’t. His mouth wouldn’t open; air wouldn’t move through his larynx. He felt as if Elizabeth’s fingers had curled around his throat so tightly it was impossible even to breathe—but she just stood there like before, the same blithe smile on her face.

“Tell me the truth,” she said.

“No, I didn’t dream of you in the fire. I only said that because I wanted you to be scared.” What the hell? Mateo tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. It was as if he were a puppet in Elizabeth’s hands.

“Why would you want me to be scared? We’re friends.”

As desperately as Mateo attempted to keep his mouth shut, it was impossible. “No, we’re not. You just use me.”

Elizabeth cocked her head. “Who told you that?”

“Nadia.” Damn it!

“Still meddling.”

But the look on Elizabeth’s face was more amused than alarmed. She might as easily have found one of her cats burrowing into the clean laundry. Mateo’s heart sank as he realized that Elizabeth wasn’t afraid of them or of anything they could do. They weren’t a threat as far as she was concerned—and he figured she was probably right.

Her fingertips smoothed along his cheek, half a caress, as she whispered, “Go back to the dream about the fire.”

Wait—where was he?

Mateo stumbled and barely caught himself from falling. As his vision cleared, he saw Elizabeth standing in front of him—golden, inhuman, horrific—and just barely controlled his panic. What did I tell her? Something about the dreams. I told her that I saw her in my dream of the fire, that she died, too. Did she believe me?

Apparently she had. Elizabeth turned around, smoke billowing around her, and walked back into her house without another word.

Probably she’d always dismissed him just like that, and he hadn’t remembered.

Legs shaking, Mateo made his way back toward home. He got all the way to the beach before the cramping in his gut took over, and then he fell down and retched and retched. And yet even when he couldn’t vomit any longer, when he lay there with sand on his face, he knew he hadn’t gotten all the poison out.