Spellcaster

Uncle Dave made a small sound in the back of his throat, and Cole put a tentative hand on his shoulder. That was when Nadia lost it. Her eyes began to tear up, and she had to lean against her father.

“—but that’s not what usually happens!” Uncle Gary added hastily. “Lots of people who’ve been through some severe shock go into a coma for only a few hours. Then they come to again and they’re fine. They’re just fine. All ‘coma’ means is that the person won’t wake up. That’s all they can tell us about Verlaine right now. She—she can’t wake up.”

Nadia hugged her father tightly around the waist while she struggled against entirely breaking down. “How did it—” She had to gulp in breaths that threatened to turn into sobs. “What happened?”

Uncle Gary shrugged. “They said her laptop electrocuted her, but a laptop shouldn’t even have enough voltage to do that—and the computer was acting fine when the medics got there. I mean, we’ve shut it down, and Dell is going to be hearing from our lawyers, believe you me, but how could that happen in the first place?”

It hadn’t been the computer, or electrocution. It had been magic. Elizabeth.

Why? Why go after Verlaine, and why now? None of this made any sense.

“Can I see her?” she whispered.

Uncle Dave nodded silently.

“Are we going, too?” Cole asked.

Her father said, “Nope. We’re going to get Verlaine’s dads something to eat.”

Nadia went on tiptoe to kiss her father on the cheek—something she hadn’t done in what felt like a long time—before she made her way down the hospital corridors. They were all incredibly wide, so stretchers could get through; it made Nadia feel even smaller and more powerless than before.

Then she stepped into Verlaine’s room, and that was definitely the worst.

Verlaine was so pale, so still; as she lay there she looked more dead than alive. Machines were hooked up to her hand and her heart even though the little green and blue lines of data they sent up to the screens around her told the doctors nothing. A plastic mask covered Verlaine’s nose and mouth, giving her oxygen, making sure she would keep breathing. Otherwise, at any moment, she might stop.

Nadia gripped the metal rail alongside Verlaine’s bed. “Hey,” she said, but the word hardly even came out. And it was pointless. Obviously Verlaine couldn’t hear.

The door opened, and Nadia looked around for a nurse or doctor—but instead, it was Mateo.

It was like she didn’t even move, didn’t even think. One moment she realized he was there; the next she was in his arms, hugging him as tightly as she could, stifling her tears against the reassuring warmth of his chest. Mateo stroked her hair, whispered wordless sounds of comfort into her ear, and just held her.

When she could speak again, she said, “How did you find out?”

“Kendall Bender was talking at the restaurant, one of the waitresses told my dad, my dad phoned me. I rode my bike out here.”

No wonder Mateo looked drawn; a ride that far on his motorcycle in this kind of cold would have to have been exhausting. But of course, he was almost as worried for Verlaine as she was. Nadia could tell that from the way he looked at her in her hospital bed.

He said, “It’s like—it’s like I didn’t realize she was my friend until now.”

“I know what you mean.” Maybe it was because they’d been so suspicious of each other at first, or because the stuff they’d been dealing with was so intense—but Nadia had never before thought about how funny Verlaine was, or how good some of her ideas had been. How she was one of the only people who had the sense to recognize magic when she saw it and not let anyone talk her into believing it was just a trick of the light.

To have loved and lost. That was what Elizabeth had said, reminding her of the pain of Mom’s abandonment. Had Nadia unconsciously used that to keep herself apart not only from Mateo but also from Verlaine? If so, she’d been a fool; Nadia could see that now. You had to love people while you could, because you never knew how long you had.

Mateo tenderly brushed Nadia’s hair back from her face—his fingertips seemed to paint lines of warmth along her cheek and temple—but his gaze remained focused on Verlaine. “I was wondering about this the other day. Wondering why I don’t think about Verlaine when she’s not there.”

That was a harsh way of putting it, but Nadia knew what he meant. Then the realization dawned on her, and her eyes widened. “You mean—the magic you saw, the old magic that was done to her—you think it has something to do with the way we feel about Verlaine?”

“Or the way we don’t feel about her. The way people are vicious to her when they aren’t to anyone else.”

“If that was magic—then—that would explain why it’s not working now, keeping us apart from her. Because she’s in the hold of an even stronger magic.” Nadia’s mind started putting the clues together. She hadn’t cared for Verlaine, either, when she met her. But then she’d levitated Verlaine’s car and encountered her again—magic masking magic long enough to get her to be okay with Verlaine, if not to care about her as she should. As for Mateo, he’d spoken to Verlaine exactly when the Steadfast spell was taking effect … that, too, had provided enough of a crack in the wall around Verlaine for him to like her. Everyone else either tormented Verlaine, the way Kendall did, or kept forgetting about her, like Dad or Gage. Only now, in the grip of a spell so powerful that it threatened to end her life, could Verlaine be seen for who she was.