Spellcaster

She raised an eyebrow.

“Do you—do you believe in magic?”

It was vague enough to mean anything. A song lyric. A joke. If Ginger didn’t understand, Mateo figured, she’d laugh or shrug. Blow it off.

But Ginger went stiff. Her usual ease had vanished; now her face was pale, and she didn’t seem to know what to do.

That meant he was onto something, right? Had to. Mateo decided to venture one more comment, something that would seem totally innocent to anybody who wasn’t knee-deep in witchcraft: “I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. Hey, you know Elizabeth Pike, right?”

The razor clattered to the linoleum floor, where it buzzed and jittered amid the scraps of his shorn hair. Ginger jerked away, backing up with wide eyes, until she thudded into the far wall.

“Hey—don’t be scared.” Mateo got up, held out his hands. He felt stupid trying to do this with a black plastic apron around his neck, so he quickly took that off. “It’s okay. It is, really.”

Ginger slid along the wall to her front desk, like she was going for the phone to call 911. Did she think he’d gone crazy, like all the Cabots? Or was her fear much deeper—because it was based in the truth?

Mateo tried, “Is this—are you freaking out because—because of—?” He gestured toward her throat.

That was obviously the last straw for Ginger. Grabbing a pen and an appointment card from the desk, she scrawled something, then held it up for Mateo to see: GET OUT!

He got out.

Running down the street, beneath the roiling sky and the chained houses—the whole surreal landscape he was learning to recognize as the truth of his hometown—Mateo grabbed his phone out of his pocket and hit Nadia’s name. She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Ginger.”

“What?”

“Ginger Goncalves. The woman who cuts my hair. Either she’s a witch or she knows about them, but either way, she’s cursed, too.” As he hurried along the sidewalk, free hand balled in the pocket of his letter jacket, Mateo described her version of the halo—the coiled black noose around Ginger’s neck. “Maybe I should have asked her about it differently—I don’t know.”

“You did the best you could,” Nadia said. Her voice was soft. “She wouldn’t have been able to understand why a guy was talking to her about it. You’re the one and only man in the club, remember?”

Mateo thought about that for a second. “You mean, you’re pretty sure Ginger’s a witch, too?”

“I always knew there would be more in Captive’s Sound. Even if Ginger’s not a witch herself, she knows about the Craft through … her mother, maybe, or a close friend. And she has to know someone who teaches. I’ve got to talk to her!”

“I’d give her a day or so to calm down. She was about ten seconds from coming after me with the scissors when I got out of there.”

“Oh—okay.” Obviously it was killing Nadia to wait even a day. But then the whole tone of her voice changed. “But if Elizabeth cursed her, took away her voice—”

Nadia didn’t finish the rest. She didn’t have to.

If Elizabeth had torn the voice out of one witch, what might she do to Nadia—to all of them—if they got in her way?

The points and edges of the broken glass shimmered in the light from the stove, creating the illusion that Elizabeth sat in a lake of fire. Legs crossed, bottle of water at her side, she carefully drew one finger along the nearest shard until blood beaded up fresh.

With her cut finger, she finished drawing the final arc of her design amid the glass. Then, with the last droplets of blood, Elizabeth completed the final letter of a name neither she nor any other mortal could ever speak aloud:

ASAEL.

The name of a demon. Of a sworn servant and vessel of the One Beneath. Keeper of his will, walker of his domains—

—and now, her bonded ally.

You summon me again, he said inside her mind. Possessing no earthly body, he could not speak any other way. It’s been a long time. Aren’t you an infant yet?

“I did not summon you for conversation.” Elizabeth took a deep gulp of water. Already, her fast-regenerating body was healing the cuts on her fingers, leaving only faint pink lines behind to show where she’d shed the blood for the elaborate pattern in front of her. “I have need of you, Asa.”

You taunt me. So, so close to saying my name, and yet you never will. But you could, you could—

“The One Beneath himself is releasing me from his service!” Elizabeth snapped. “I serve him now for loyalty, not as a mere slave. So remember your place.”

I am his slave, not yours. I will work with you, not for you. There is a difference, Goodwife Pike. Remember it well.

Elizabeth did not need a demon underling to tell her the finer divisions of power among the servants of the One Beneath. She knew her place with him. He treasured her beyond all his others, was freeing her in resignation and understanding. Her last act for him would be her greatest. They would be united again when at last, at long last, her work here was complete.

“You know what I am trying to do,” she said. “You know how close I am to success.”

On Samhain the end comes.

“Yet there is a strange energy at work here. Another witch—more powerful than she should be. A shift in the balances.”

One you don’t understand. Asa sounded positively delighted. And the other witch is only a girl.