Spellcaster

“Why would Elizabeth do that?” Mateo said. “Cast a spell that made people just—not care about Verlaine?”

Nadia shook her head. “It can’t be as simple as that. Maybe she’s masked in some way? Hidden?”

“From who? And why?”

“Only Elizabeth could tell us.”

“When we take Elizabeth down, will it break the spell on Verlaine, too?”

“Maybe. I hope so.” That was one more thing to fight for. Nadia took a deep breath, then another, steadying herself.

But then Mateo said, “This is my fault.”

“What? No. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

“Don’t blame yourself. Please—don’t.” Mateo’s dark eyes sought hers. “You beat yourself up too much already. And this is something I did. Nadia—I confronted Elizabeth. She knows I know, which means she has to know you told me. I said she wasn’t learning anything from my visions ever again, that I didn’t care how much magic she had, and this … what she’s done to Verlaine … that must be her revenge.”

“You told her,” Nadia repeated dully. Revenge—would Elizabeth do something as extreme as this only for revenge? That seemed wrong to her somehow, but she couldn’t analyze it; she could hardly even think about anything other than the fact that Elizabeth had finally done what Nadia had most dreaded from the beginning: She’d hurt someone, badly, because Nadia dared in some small way to defy her.

Who might have been next? Her father? Cole?

Mateo’s face was so pale that for a second Nadia thought he might get sick. “I did this.”

She tried to fight back the anger welling inside, knowing Mateo wasn’t the true target—only the most convenient one. “No. Elizabeth did this.”

“I definitely didn’t help,” Mateo said. Apparently he wasn’t willing to cut himself any more slack than that. He was looking only at Verlaine now, and it was to her he spoke next: “I’m sorry.”

Nadia could only grip the side of Verlaine’s bed and struggle not to cry.

How could she have gotten everything wrong?

“I’m sorry, too,” Nadia whispered. But Verlaine couldn’t answer.

Elizabeth had worn her chains so long that she’d forgotten how heavy they were. As she stood here in the light of her stove, na**d and waiting, she knew she would miss the weight.

But not for long, Asa whispered inside her skull. Not for long.

The entire house quaked as the spell began. This was the dismantling of her deepest magic—but she was at last ready to let it go.

She would be released from the keeping of the One Beneath.

“You have given me everything,” she whispered. He would hear; He always did. “Every success, every glory. My mistakes were mine alone. My power was only yours.”

Heat flooded through her, whipped around her, as tangible and beckoning as a lover’s embrace. Her curls tumbled around her face while broken glass began to circle in the whirlwind that surrounded her. It glinted in the stove’s orange light.

To think she had only come to the One Beneath out of fear and necessity. She had gone to Him on her knees to plead for the life of her husband—a man she neither loved nor liked, but one whose farmstead had been her lone source of food and shelter. Too many had known of her practice in the Craft, back in those days when secrets were more poorly kept; as a widow, she would quickly have been shunned and left to starve.

But the One Beneath had seen the true potential within. He had raised Elizabeth up, given her the ability to reach beyond any mortal law.

The immortality spell had been the greatest act of love she had ever attempted. Had it succeeded entirely, Elizabeth could have continued in His service for all the ages of man, growing ever stronger, working His will, until the Day of Judgment—when she would stand with Him and find only joy in the hell made for her.

But the spell had behaved in a way she had not predicted.

Instead of ensuring that she would live forever as a witch in full possession of her talents—as the Sorceress the One Beneath needed her to be—the spell had made her slowly, so slowly, turn younger. At first this had satisfied her vanity, but it had not taken Elizabeth long to see where that path would lead.

It led … here. To her own adolescence. To the point where, when she became any younger, her abilities would no longer be manifest. She would possess some little magic, but she would be a Sorceress no more.

What lay beyond that was horrible to contemplate. How pitiful to be a child, bereft of the magic that would allow her to manipulate others into allowing her solitude and giving her what she needed to survive. To spend endless decades being patronized, put in homes, questioned and studied, eternally frustrated by the memory of what she had been and never would be again. Ultimately it would end with her as an infant, forever a curiosity to those around her, and her incapable of standing, eating, or saying a single word.

No. That she could not endure.

So long ago Elizabeth had made this pact with the One Beneath. When the dreams of the Cabots ceased to show Elizabeth in their future, it meant that the death of her magic was but a year or two away. Mateo no longer saw her in his dreams. What that meant for the One Beneath—well, that would only be revealed in time. It was not Elizabeth’s to know. If she could weaken or injure Nadia before Halloween night, or better yet ensure her death in the coming conflagration, she would; He was owed no less. She could be certain that in the end He would deal with Nadia accordingly.