The spell was spreading around them now, so vivid and electric that Nadia could feel it as clearly as she would ever have been able to see it. Deep fault lines throughout Captive’s Sound were giving way as Elizabeth took away all the town’s dark magic, took it and buried it in the bottomless pit where her soul ought to be.

And no—Nadia wasn’t strong enough to stop her.

The trick was not to stop her in the first place.

She’d never have seen this if she hadn’t been caught in the cobwebs. The answer there had been to stop fighting, to replace the spell imprisoning her with another that would at least appear to do the same thing.

And yet Goodwife Hale had tried to tell her. In her spidery script, the old witch had written that the strongest opposing force was one that went in the same direction. This was what she’d been trying to say, but what Nadia hadn’t understood until now.

So the answer now was not to block Elizabeth or to fight her. Not to do anything to keep Elizabeth from pulling the magic out from under Captive’s Sound.

What Nadia had to do was replace the stolen magic with magic of her own.

As the smoke swirled around her, Nadia met Mateo’s gaze for one last moment, then closed her eyes. What could be soft enough to slip into all the cracks but strong enough to hold them up?

A spell of liberation. Nothing was as simple, or as powerful, as being free.

Helpless laughter.

Washing away what cannot come clean.

A moment of forgiveness.

Nadia grabbed her bracelet, found the ivory, and dove deep:

Cole calling Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear a douche bag, and having to stagger into the kitchen to hide her laughter.

Trying to clear her mind after reading that letter from Mom’s attorney, the one that said she refused to see them no matter how much Dad begged, and watching Toy Story 3 through eyes that kept filling with tears.

Sitting on the kitchen floor next to her father, in the middle of a pile of rigatoni noodles, finally understanding why he fought her so hard about every single dinner—he only wanted to do something right for them, just once.

The spell flowed out from her in every direction, almost uncontrollable, the way it had been when she first cast it in chem lab—but stronger now, because that darkness didn’t pull at her, and because Mateo was here. Before, they hadn’t known how to shape the magic they created together, but now she could feel him beside her.

Like that day on the beach, she thought. Stronger together than apart.

So Nadia found the dark places of Elizabeth’s magic—from Mateo’s map, from her own spells, and from the new levels of power unfolding within her—found the jagged gaps where Elizabeth’s dark work had been stolen and filled them once more. She left no hollows behind, made everything stronger than it had been before. The ground shifted beneath them, but already she could tell everything was coming right again—

—everything except the house they stood in, which was being consumed by fire, and even now, the floor started to collapse.

They all toppled sideways. Everyone shouted out—Elizabeth, Mateo, Nadia—and then there seemed to be nothing but smoke and horrible, searing heat. Each breath burned Nadia’s lungs, and she reached out blindly for something to steady herself.

She found Mateo’s hand.

He grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. As Mateo covered her body with his, trying to shield her from the burning debris falling around them, Nadia wondered if she’d saved Captive’s Sound but not their own lives.

Mateo tried to shelter Nadia. Even though it seemed pointless, even though there was no way to run out of this place now, if he could give her a chance, buy her only a couple minutes, then he had to try.

As he cradled her head against his chest and closed his eyes tightly against the stinging smoke, he heard Nadia whispering, “Love unbreakable—hatred implacable—hope—”

The floor gave way. Or the world gave way. All Mateo knew was that there was no up, no down, only the fire and the feeling of Nadia nearly torn from his arms. And—and this strange blue light, which seemed to surround them all of a sudden.

Guess that’s heaven, he thought, just before he passed out.

When Mateo opened his eyes again, he did not seem to be in heaven, unless heaven looked a lot like a burned-out version of the caramel-corn stand.

He took a deep breath, then coughed again so hard his ribs ached. But he pushed himself up on his arms to look around. “Nadia?” he whispered.

Mateo couldn’t see her. What he did see was the smoldering ruin that had been the haunted house; it had burned down almost to the foundation. And around the ruins—firemen, bystanders, the smoke-stained remnants of the carnival in a town that seemed to be very much still here. Unless someone had been injured in the fire itself, nobody else even seemed to be hurt. Elizabeth’s apocalypse hadn’t come to pass. Nadia had won.

But had she survived?

He managed to stagger to his feet and start wandering through the debris of the carnival. There were people injured everywhere—minor injuries, to judge by the fact that almost everyone seemed to be conscious and ambulatory—but everything was so chaotic that it would be easy to miss one girl.

But wait.

She might have been a shadow on the ground with her black dress and sooty skin, almost lost in the night. Mateo ran to her, ignoring every ache and cut that told him to stop. As he came closer, the vision from his dream flooded through his mind again: Nadia lying dead at his feet.

It had come true. Elizabeth’s curse held. He’d seen the future, and he’d failed to stop it, and now Nadia—