Steadfast

by Claudia Gray

  Laughter at a time of sorrow.

  Bloodshed at a time of joy.

  Salvation at the moment of despair.

  Nadia kept her gaze on Mrs. Prasad as she lived each emotion in turn:

  Packing to leave Chicago forever, going through the dressier clothing Mom had left behind, watching her dad’s face fall with every nice gown or glittery shoe Nadia pulled from the closet to reluctantly throw away, until he said, “I guess I could perform a drag show,” and then the two of them rolled on the floor laughing until they cried.

  The laughter at the Halloween carnival, popcorn and cotton candy in everyone’s hands, all the little kids running around in their costumes, never realizing what was about to unfold within the haunted house.

  Being trapped underwater in the sound, seaweed tangling around her ankles, binding her with the force of a magic so old she couldn’t fight it, desperate to breathe and sure she was about to die—until Mateo found her there in the cold and dark, pressed his mouth to hers, his breath to hers—

  Mrs. Prasad screamed.

  Everyone in the room turned to stare—except Nadia, who had been staring already. But she hadn’t expected a reaction like this. Suspicion, maybe. Trepidation. Caution, which would be a good thing around a demon from hell.

  Instead Mrs. Prasad had gone straight to full-blown panic.

  “Get away!” she cried, plowing over a few other people as she tried to back away from Asa. For his part, though he must have sensed what was going on, he looked nearly as shocked as everyone else. “Get away from me!”

  Mr. Prasad’s voice came over the microphone from the city-council podium. “Honey? Honey, calm down. Nobody’s making this personal.”

  But Mrs. Prasad had completely lost it. Her screams kept rising in pitch, and when Asa rose as if to go to her, she staggered back like she might pass out.

  It’s too much, Nadia realized in horror. This spell’s too powerful. She’s seeing the demon within in a way that I can’t—a way even Mateo can’t. That’s going to drive her crazy, if it hasn’t already. I have to take it back!

  Quickly she grabbed her quartz charm and called up the first useful spell she could think of: a spell of equation, one that witches sometimes used to cover up evidence of their magic, to convince people that the phenomenon they’d just seen was something totally regular—that the thing that had seemed so different to them a moment before was in fact just like everything else around them. This, too, was one Nadia had never cast before, but this seemed like the time to try it.

  Snow turning into rain.

  A fear suddenly realized to be false.

  The interruption of the extraordinary by the ordinary.

  Nadia closed her eyes, the better to concentrate:

  Mom saying, “Oh, shoot,” as she stood on the balcony of their Chicago condo one unexpectedly warm Christmas, as the snow that would have made the day perfect vanished into rain, turning the whitening scene below almost instantly gray.

  That time on the bus when she’d been sure this weird guy was following her, and it was only the second week her parents had let her take the bus on her own, and her heart had been pounding as he got off the bus behind her, but then he’d walked right past her into the Billy Goat Tavern and she’d laughed at her own stupidity.

  The moment in her attic when she’d just finished cutting Mateo’s hair, and they’d never been so close for so long before, and they leaned into each other for what would have been their first kiss—except that Cole came in, and they’d laughed and pulled apart even though she still yearned for him so badly it hurt—

  “Oh, my God!” Mrs. Prasad screamed. She didn’t sound better. She sounded a whole lot worse.

  Nadia opened her eyes—just in time to see a crazed Mrs. Prasad run straight to the emergency fire ax and break the glass with her elbow.

  “She isn’t—” Verlaine gasped. “Oh, crap, she is!”

  Mrs. Prasad swung the ax at the people nearest her; everyone started to run and shriek. Horrified, Nadia realized that the spell of equation hadn’t made her see Asa as normal again; instead Mrs. Prasad thought everyone in the room was a demon.

  And she was now trying to kill them.

  What was she going to do? She had no idea. What spell could she cast for this? Even if she could think of one, which she couldn’t, Nadia knew she’d just screwed up her last two spells in ways she didn’t even fully understand. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known before this that her training was incomplete, that she didn’t know everything she needed to know, but never before had she done anything that went so incredibly, dangerously wrong.

  “Somebody stop her!” one guy yelled, and a few people tried to get nearer, but Mrs. Prasad seemed like a woman possessed. She kept swinging, kept advancing, eyes wide with terror but never flinching from her homicidal determination. Wildly Nadia thought that if she ever were surrounded by demons, she’d want Mrs. Prasad by her side.

  Then Asa was next to her, his breath warm against her ear as he stepped behind her. “I think someone’s gotten a little ahead of herself.”

  Snap! The entire room went motionless again—even Verlaine this time, who was frozen in place with her phone held up to get video of the entire incident. Mrs. Prasad had halted midslash, someone who’d been trying to leap away suspended in midair in front of her. People’s hair and dresses and coats were spiraled out around them from their attempts to flee. Only Nadia and Asa were able to move.

  Nadia turned toward him; he was standing too close for comfort, so close he was only inches away. “What are you doing?”

  “What are you doing, more like. Let me guess. You meant to kindly inform Jeremy’s mother that her son was, perhaps, no longer with the living. Why you thought she’d enjoy that knowledge is beyond me, but it’s the only sensible possibility.” Asa raised an eyebrow as he glanced at Faye Walsh next to them, paused in place as she attempted to crouch and take cover behind her seat. “If ‘sensible’ comes into this. Which I doubt.”

  She wasn’t taking lectures from a demon. “You don’t think it’s sick, walking around in his skin, not letting her know her own child is dead?”

  “What I think is irrelevant. I didn’t ask for a role in Elizabeth’s little dramatic production, but I play it as best I can. Let the Prasads live without grief while they can. I promise you, it can’t be for long.” His expression had been unreadable for a moment there—almost angry—but a mocking smile spread over his face. “I bet you’re weaving more memories of Mateo in with your spell ingredients. Aren’t you? Love is powerful, Nadia. Maybe more powerful than you realize. Certainly more than you can control.”

  This chaos—this was because she loved Mateo so much? Nadia felt a sick sort of shiver inside. “Why are you talking to me now?”

  “So angry. So rude. And here I am, helping you out.”

  “Helping?”

  Asa held out his hands, gesturing at the entire frozen-in-place scene around them. “Giving you a moment to get your bearings, to think how you might undo the worst of what you’ve done? Very useful, if you’ll take advantage of it. But I’d hurry up, if I were you. My existence is eternal, but my patience isn’t.”

  Nadia knew better than to trust a demon’s word. “Why would you help me?”

  “You know, just because Elizabeth brought me here doesn’t make me her servant,” he said, very quietly. He stepped even closer, tilted his head, as if studying her expression; she could feel the heat radiating from his body, even through her clothes. “I serve the One Beneath, not her. Yes, if she commands me to do something that helps them both, I have to do it. But that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of acting on my own. Serving my own purposes. Even working against her, if it doesn’t betray my unholy lord and master. You think I’m your enemy, but there are ways I could be a very powerful ally, Nadia.”

  For a moment she paused. Could Asa be telling some sliver of the truth?

  But she said only, “You need Mrs. Prasad to believe in you again, or else
you’ll have blown your cover. You’ll be punished.”

  He smiled mirthlessly. His black eyes seemed to look through her—as though he knew what she looked like without her clothes. “You say it so easily. What do you think the punishments of hell are like? Have you ever considered that?”

  Her heart thumped wildly in her chest. “It doesn’t matter. I have to make Mrs. Prasad forget it for her own sake. So I guess it’s your lucky day.”

  “Only if you think fast.” Asa held up his hands, obviously about to allow time to resume.

  Nadia went for her bracelet again, this time reaching for the aquamarine charm. A spell of forgetting was simple, really. Basic. And one of the first lessons she’d learned, one she ought to have remembered before now, was that the simplest way out was almost always the best.

  Snap! People were screaming again, and she heard the chunk of the ax against wooden seats, but Nadia kept concentrating on the spell.

  Letting go of what was once irreplaceable.

  Smiling through pain.

  Making right a wrong.

  “Are you seeing this?” Verlaine yelled, backing away from the fast-approaching Mrs. Prasad. She was still filming. “Nadia, move!”

  Packing a box for Goodwill full of Mom’s stuff, and dropping in the heart-shaped locket she’d given Nadia on her thirteenth birthday, the one Nadia had thought was so beautiful that she’d wear it forever.

  Joking about her broken arm after coming home from the hospital, and letting Cole be the first to sign her cast, in green crayon.

  Coming to see Verlaine in the hospital, finally acting like the friends they would’ve been all along but for the dark magic, and seeing Verlaine’s face light up.

  Mrs. Prasad stopped. Slowly she lowered the ax. Nobody moved, or spoke, or even seemed to breathe. Then Mrs. Prasad said, “Where am I?”

  “You’re okay, Mom.” Asa went to her immediately, putting one arm around her shoulders while with the other he took the ax. People sighed in relief as he handed it to someone nearby. “It’s okay. I think those new meds of yours aren’t good. You just need to lie down.”

  A wave of voices rose—people either expressing sympathy or anger or bewilderment. Really, though, Nadia could tell most people were just relieved it was over. Nobody seemed to be asking any more questions about the Halloween carnival. Asa shepherded Mrs. Prasad toward the door, Mr. Prasad falling into step alongside them.

  Nadia looked down at the aquamarine charm, still held between two of her fingers. She didn’t think Mrs. Prasad had full amnesia, though she’d have to check later. Her spells had been so powerful before—

  —could Asa be right? Could her love for Mateo be throwing her off balance?

  “Nadia?” Ms. Walsh stepped closer. “What are you doing?”

  She was staring down at the bracelet, the one with all the charms Nadia required to practice witchcraft.

  “Holy Christmas, what was that?” Verlaine came up, already looking at the playback of the video on her phone. “This town is getting even weirder. Now we have possessed PTA moms wielding axes.”

  Nadia let her hands fall to her side. To Ms. Walsh she said only, “We should get out of here. Let them sort things out.”

  Which didn’t make much sense, but Ms. Walsh simply nodded. She backed away slowly, never taking her eyes off Nadia. The bracelet of charms around Nadia’s wrist had never felt so conspicuous before; she always thought of it as looking like just another piece of jewelry, but now she felt as though she were wearing a flashing sign that proclaimed her a witch.

  That was ridiculous, of course. But as she watched Ms. Walsh go, one thought flashed through Nadia’s mind: She knows.

  6

  “FREE CHIPS,” GAGE SAID THROUGH A CRUNCHY MOUTHFUL. “Free salsa. To what do I owe the honor?”

  “To Tuesday nights usually being the slowest of the week at La Catrina.” Mateo was wiping down the next table, getting it ready to turn over—though from the looks of things, it would be a while before it was filled. The red leather booths were mostly empty; the brilliantly colored skeletons on the walls almost had the place to themselves. Gage was the only person in Mateo’s section at the moment. “Also to my girlfriend being at the town hall meeting with Verlaine.”

  “Verlaine—that’s the girl with gray hair, right?” Like most people, Gage didn’t seem to be able to remember Verlaine for very long. “Girlfriend, huh? You and Nadia sound serious.”

  “Definitely.” Mateo knew he was starting to grin, and that he was probably going to get teased about it, but he didn’t care. “As serious as it gets.”

  “Whoa, whoa. Check yourself. ‘As serious as it gets’ is my grandparents, who just had their fifty-third anniversary.”

  “Okay. As serious as it gets before that.”

  Gage shook his head. “Listen, don’t bite my head off for this, but it wasn’t that long ago that you and Elizabeth Pike were acting like you were way more than friends.”

  The memory made Mateo’s gut turn over. At Gage’s party, he’d passionately kissed Nadia . . . at least, someone he’d believed to be Nadia. But Gage and everyone else there had seen the truth: Mateo had been in Elizabeth’s arms the whole time. Elizabeth had cloaked herself in magic and tricked him into thinking she was Nadia.

  “That was a one-time deal,” Mateo said. “One time only. The biggest mistake ever.”

  “So Elizabeth’s available again?” Gage looked hopeful.

  “Seriously, don’t go there.” Although Mateo seriously doubted Gage would ever get up the courage to so much as talk to Elizabeth, or that Elizabeth would pay him any attention if he did, his friend’s old crush on her was so powerful that he felt like he should warn him off just in case. “Trust me on this.”

  “You aren’t talking like you’re totally over Elizabeth. Or even slightly over her.”

  “There’s nothing to get over,” Mateo said, temper rising—but he bit it back just in time. Gage Calloway was the closest thing he had to a best friend besides Nadia, and it wasn’t Gage’s fault he could never know the truth about what had happened with Elizabeth, or what she really was. “I promise.”

  Gage shrugged as he dug another chip into the salsa. “All I know is, Elizabeth better be on the same page about you guys being ‘over,’ or you’re setting yourself up to be the guy in a Taylor Swift song.”

  “She’s on the same page. That much I know for sure.” At least he didn’t have to worry about her touching him ever again.

  Mateo’s phone buzzed in the pocket of his black apron. He lifted it to see a text from Nadia. As the messages kept coming, line after misspelled, rushed line, his eyes widened.

  “Uh-oh,” Gage said. “Girlfriend drama?”

  Now Verlaine had just sent him video of—whoa. “You could say that.”

  “I should never have tried a brand-new spell in an emergency.” Nadia leaned against the side of the building, her face still streaked from her earlier tears. They stood in the alleyway behind La Catrina, in the harsh circle of light from a nearby streetlamp; everything else around them was dark.

  There were shapes and shadows around them only Mateo could see—like faces made of darkness, staring all the while—but he was learning to put those aside when he could. Right now Nadia needed him. “You were trying to help Mrs. Prasad. You did your best. You couldn’t have known that was going to happen.”

  “I could’ve known if I had enough practice.” She pushed her thick, black hair back from her face, like a little girl awakened from a nightmare. “Instead the exact same demon I was trying to expose? He had to fix everything.”

  “You said he just . . . gave you an extra minute. You’re the one who saved the day.”

  “If Asa hadn’t done it, Mrs. Prasad probably would have killed somebody, and it would have been my fault.”

  Mateo took her by the shoulders. “No. Nadia, come on. Snap out of this. You and I both know who’s really responsible. Elizabeth is the one who killed Jeremy. She’s the one who pu
t a demon in his place. This is her fault. Only her fault. So stop beating yourself up about it, okay?”

  Nadia shook her head. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yeah, it is.” He folded her close against his shoulder. His fingers were woven through the thick silk of her hair, cradling the back of her head. He tried to imagine all the thoughts within her brain, the countless strands of hope and grief and love and fear interwoven there, so infinitely more complex than he could ever begin to understand. And yet there was nothing he wanted more than this—to know her. His lips against her temple, Mateo murmured, “You try to take care of everyone, all the time. Then you get mad at yourself when it’s impossible.”

  “Someone has to stop Elizabeth, and there’s no one else.”

  “Which is why you need to relax sometimes. Let us take care of you for a change.” He kissed her forehead, then her cheek. “Tonight—okay, you made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. Yeah, there was a big scene, but it sounds like it’s going to blow over.”

  Nadia’s dark eyes gazed up into his, still so hesitant, so doubtful, that his heart ached to see it. Why did she keep taking the weight of the world onto herself, until she nearly broke under it?

  “It’s not just that,” she whispered. “Every time I run into something else I don’t know, it reminds me that I lost my teacher.”

  She said no more; she didn’t have to. He knew her only teacher in witchcraft was her mother. When they’d first met, Mateo had thought Nadia was coping reasonably well with her mother’s abandonment of the family. He’d slowly learned that wasn’t true. In some ways she had only just begun dealing with it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It sucks. I’d change it for you if I could.”

  “I know.” She wound her arms more tightly around his waist, and then brought their mouths together in a kiss. Mateo opened his lips, kissed her deeper, breathed in the scent of her skin.