Spellcaster

Nadia pushed through the still-murmuring crowd, straight for Ginger, whose eyes widened. She turned to go, but Nadia called out, “Ginger! Wait!”

Ginger just walked toward her car faster, but Nadia caught up with her, running too fast to stop easily; she had to catch herself against the side of the car with both hands. Verlaine was right behind her, but she grabbed one of Nadia’s arms as if to pull her back. “Nadia, think,” she whispered. “Whatever she did to Mateo—what if she does it to you, too?”

“She won’t,” Nadia said loudly. “I bet she can’t even if she tries.” Every protective spell she’d ever learned seemed to flood into her mind at once, and she raised one hand—the hand with her bracelet, all its pendants and stones promising that the power was hers if she only chose—

But Ginger’s eyes widened as she saw the bracelet. Different witches kept their materials close in different ways—jewelry, bands on belts, stones in small sacks kept in pockets or purses—but each way was easy enough to recognize if you knew what you were looking at, and Ginger did.

For a few moments they simply stared at each other. Then Ginger grabbed a pad of paper from her handbag and scrawled a note, which she defiantly held straight in Nadia’s face: You told a man about the Craft.

“He had to know,” Nadia said. But she couldn’t explain that Mateo was her Steadfast; Ginger wouldn’t believe her, and since even Nadia didn’t yet understand how it was possible, she didn’t want to get into it, particularly with a witch she wasn’t sure she trusted. “Because of the curse on his family.”

Ginger shook her head; clearly that wasn’t a good enough reason.

Verlaine huffed, “Why are you explaining yourself to her? She’s the one who hurt Mateo!”

“I broke one of the First Laws,” Nadia said quietly, never taking her eyes from Ginger’s face. The ambulance’s siren was too far away now, almost gone. What was happening to Mateo? “I have to answer for that. Always. Forever. But I’ve never used my powers to harm another human being. Ginger, what did you do to him?”

Ginger’s face crumpled, like she might cry. With a shaking hand, she jotted out another note: It was only a spell of forgetting. Amnesia—for today, maybe a few days before—no more. So he wouldn’t know about me.

Nadia held the note as she and Verlaine read it together. “But that shouldn’t have made him collapse. Dizzy for a second, maybe—confused—not anything that would make them call an ambulance.”

Quickly Ginger wrote: I don’t know what happened. It wasn’t meant to hurt him.

But already Nadia’s mind was working fast. With a warning glance at Verlaine, who seemed to understand she should remain quiet, Nadia said, “I—I have a Steadfast, one who was near you when you cast the spell.”

Ginger’s eyes widened, and Nadia knew that they’d both seen the same thing. A spell of forgetting, on its own, was simple but strong; it could erase a day’s events beyond any recovery. But if a Steadfast amplified that spell—even a Steadfast not sworn to that particular witch—then it could be far more devastating. Mateo would have forgotten everything about himself. Everybody he’d ever known, every place he’d ever been. He probably no longer remembered how to speak or stand.

At this moment, his body might be forgetting how to breathe.

Nadia steadied herself against Verlaine as she said to Ginger, “Drive us to the hospital now. You have to lift that spell on Mateo as soon as possible. If you don’t—”

“What?” Verlaine whispered. “What happens? Could Mateo die?”

“I doubt it.” If only Nadia could draw any comfort from that. “But he could turn into a vegetable. He might never walk or talk again. Never remember who he is. The person Mateo was—that will be lost, forever.”

Elizabeth lifted her head, suddenly alert.

The bonds of the curse on the Cabot family—yet another of the constants of her world, a presence in her life as unchanging and guiding as the North Star—had suddenly fallen slack.

Nadia Caldani cannot have broken the curse. She doesn’t have the power. She couldn’t. Even as anger rippled through her, Elizabeth realized—no, the curse remained. But the ties that held Mateo close to her, kept him under control … some powerful magic had disturbed them. And even through the murk now separating her from him, Elizabeth could tell that Mateo was in serious physical distress. Perhaps even mortal danger, though she couldn’t be sure. That stupid girl must have tried some spell beyond her ability, thinking her little Steadfast friend gave her the strength to do anything she wanted.

Well, Mateo Perez couldn’t die yet. She wasn’t done using him up.

Elizabeth rose lazily from her place on the floor. In her mind, no less sarcastic for the voice being mere thought, the demon spoke: Will you run to his rescue? Play the noble heroine?

“Silence, beast.” Elizabeth had ceased to see the point of humor some two centuries before; already she was eager to find him an appropriate vessel, the better to house him where she need not hear his endless mockery. “I don’t have to run anywhere for a rescue.”

She unbuttoned the front of her white dress, then let it fall from her body onto the floor; she wore nothing underneath. Her wood stove was only a few steps away, and as always her bare feet found the slivers of floor not covered with glass. Then, with bare hands, she pulled open the metal door of the wood stove. It took more than heat to burn her now, and besides—what glowed and crackled within was not wood.