Spellcaster

Carefully Nadia took the scissors in one hand and combed her fingernails through the very back of his hair. Should she just—even it out? That seemed obvious enough. The metallic scrape of the blades against each other made her bite her lower lip, but then the first lock of hair fell away.

There were ways to use locks of hair in love spells—

“Thank you,” she said quietly as she made the next snip. “For believing in me. After what you’ve been through—everything that’s happened—I wouldn’t blame you if you hated witchcraft. And witches.”

“I did, for a little while. Or thought I did. But that was only Elizabeth.”

Nadia brushed some hair past his ear, feeling the curve of it against her thumb. She checked the other side of his head and decided to risk another snip. “I know that must have been hard.”

“Yeah.” Mateo swallowed hard. “I thought she was my best friend. All those great memories I have of us growing up together—it’s hard to believe they were only lies.” He hesitated. “Do you think she erased other memories? You know. Other people I used to be friends with. So I’d really think she was all I had.”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t decide what would be worse. Her wiping out whatever happy memories I ever had, or whether—whether there weren’t any.” He breathed out; his shoulders rose and fell, and she paused in her work, only for a moment. Then Nadia bent closer to him to start again.

It was easier, somehow, talking to him when they didn’t have to look each other in the eyes. So she kept her concentration on the fringe of dark hair between her fingers as she snipped. “You have the right to feel betrayed.” The next words stuck in her throat, but she got them out: “Elizabeth made you think that you loved her.”

He hesitated before saying, “It was never like that between us. You get that, right?”

Once again Nadia remembered Elizabeth saying she could make Mateo love her at any moment she chose. Make him believe he’d always loved her. There was no reason for her to do that, Nadia knew, no reason it would increase Elizabeth’s control—but she would do it just to be mean. Just to make sure Nadia hurt.

“Yeah, you told me,” she said briskly. “But there’s more than one kind of love. Losing the love of a friend—that’s bad enough.”

Mateo breathed out. “Sometimes I think the only reason I’ve been able to keep myself from totally losing it is that she never made me … want her. Kiss her. Anything like that. If she had, I couldn’t take it.”

“You’ve had too many people using magic to screw with your head already. That’s one more reason to break the Steadfast spell. So your thoughts can be your own again.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t break that spell—not for a long time, maybe ever.”

“Not without—sacrificing my magic.”

Nadia knew what that meant. Destroying and burying her Book of Shadows. Removing all the enchantments from the attic. Taking apart her bracelet. Never having the assurance of even a casual spell again. It felt like ripping out her own heart.

But if that was what it took to keep her family safe—and to set Mateo free—

“Then I don’t want you to break the spell,” Mateo said.

“I’m ready to do it.”

“Well, I’m not. This Steadfast thing—what we did that day on the beach, what we were together—it was amazing. It felt like I’d been waiting my whole life to be a part of something like that.”

Me too, Nadia wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. She combed one hand through his hair, shaking out the loose strands, checking her work—hey, this looked pretty good. But her fingers trembled, and her breaths were coming shallow and fast as she struggled against tears.

“Don’t take it away from me,” Mateo said. “Or from yourself. As scary and as weird as this is, being your Steadfast—I know it’s what I was meant to do. Like being a witch is what you’re meant to do. It’s a part of us. You can’t just … end it like it never happened.”

Nadia sat back and set the scissors down. “You know I’m telling you the truth about how dangerous it is.”

“Yeah. I do. You want to protect the people you love. I do, too. But we fall apart or we stand together, right?”

It flowed into her like sunlight, took her tears away. If Mateo could bear the curse, and still have the courage to stand as her Steadfast and take Elizabeth on—how could she do any less? She still owed Dad and Cole all her protection, but with Elizabeth’s evil unfolding everywhere around them, the only thing for Nadia to do was fight. At least she wasn’t fighting alone.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You’re right. We stand together.”

“Together.” Mateo held his hand out, and she took it. When their eyes met again, Nadia flushed with warmth. She kept waiting for him to say something else, but he didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t, if he felt as shaky as she did. If the feeling of his hand in hers did half as much to him as it did to her—

Once again she remembered Elizabeth standing in the hallway, promising to make Mateo love her if it suited her purposes.

If Nadia leaned forward right now—the way Mateo had begun to—if she kissed him and they were together, would Elizabeth know? She’d sensed the spell of forgetting right away; who could guess how deeply she was wound into Mateo’s mind?