Spellcaster

by Claudia Gray

  “I keep telling you, I’m capable of making dinner.”

  Nadia frowned. “Then why do I smell smoke?”

  Her father made a face. “Let’s say that maybe turkey tetrazzini was … overly ambitious.”

  Despite everything weighing on her mind, Nadia had to laugh. “Come on. Let’s see if we can save it.”

  Nadia.

  Standing alongside the road, her hair fluttering in the breeze—so black it was nearly blue, shining even in the dim light. Behind him on the bike, her tiny frame snug against his and so warm—

  Mateo groaned as he flopped back onto the bed. He’d stayed up for hours past the point when his father would think he was asleep—late enough that the alarm tomorrow was going to seriously hurt—but maybe this way he wouldn’t dream.

  And yet when he spent those hours thinking about Nadia, it was just another kind of torture.

  He’d known from his dreams that she was beautiful, with the kind of quiet beauty that most people wouldn’t see right away. He’d known she would have enormous dark eyes and a heart-shaped face. Some of the dreams had even told him what the heavy silk of her hair would feel like in his hands.

  So many of them had showed him how she might die.

  Why did I stop for her today? The temptation had come over him, even though Mateo knew better. None of the dreams showed her dying on a motorcycle, so that was probably safe, he’d decided. Everything had turned out fine. But when would he make one excuse too many to be near her, and put her in danger?

  If the dreams showed him there when she died, and he refused to be anywhere near her, then Nadia would be okay. At least, none of those dreams could come true—not if he didn’t let them.

  Mateo tugged his blanket over his head, closed his eyes, and willed himself not to think about her any longer. He’d done that at least a dozen times that night.

  This time, though, he was finally exhausted enough for it to work. He fell asleep.

  And dreamed.

  Their surroundings were so murky he could barely make her out amid the green-gray swirls. Nadia drifted above him, her black hair streaming out all around. In that first instant, Mateo could only think how amazing she looked—like some kind of angel descending to Earth—until he saw the chains.

  Were they chains? Whatever they were they were heavy, and dark, and wrapped around her ankles. Nadia was reaching upward, her fingertips straining toward something overhead and out of sight, but she couldn’t escape.

  Nadia’s eyes met his, a silent plea for him to help her, to save her. Mateo grabbed the chains, but they were loose, slippery, and they fell from his fingers—

  He awoke with a start, panting, desperate for air. His head buzzed and his ears rang; Mateo realized he’d been holding his breath in his sleep.

  The next day, in chemistry, Nadia was determined to ignore Mateo.

  Well, not ignore. It would be rude to ignore a classmate who had given you a ride home, not to mention rescued your whole family a week and a half ago. But she was going to be friendly. A just-friends kind of friendly. That was how you treated a guy who had a girlfriend.

  Yet she knew the minute he walked in. Her head lifted from her lab table at that moment, her eyes drawn to Mateo as if by some irresistible force. Whatever it was, he felt it, too; their gazes met, and in that first second, she couldn’t even breathe.

  Nadia broke the glance, though, and Mateo went quickly to his lab table, where Elizabeth was waiting for him.

  She pushed aside her disappointment and tried to focus … not on chemistry, but on the magical power she felt within this room. Beneath it.

  Something is buried here, Nadia thought. Buried deep under the foundation of the school—so there’s no chance I can find out what it is.

  Whatever it was, its power was almost eerie. Not unlike the weird barrier they had collided with on the edge of town. Magic, but twisted and gnarled from its rightful shape. This wasn’t a power Nadia or any other witch could call upon. It was a power that … drained. Subtracted. Withered. A power that wanted something it didn’t have.

  She thought again of the gray skies and dead trees in Captive’s Sound. Was this why? Because the town was near—this, whatever it was?

  And, of course, if something was buried, someone had done the burying. At one point, there had been witches in Captive’s Sound. Surely they couldn’t be here any longer, but back in the town’s history, there had to have been powerful witches at work. A coven, even.

  Nadia sat up straighter in her seat, suddenly energized. There’s going to be a whole history of magic here. I don’t have any idea how to find it yet, but there has to be a way, and—it’s something I could learn, right? Something I can teach myself.

  It was the first time since Mom’s departure that Nadia had thought about striking out on her own. Always, before, the task of training herself in the final, most complex stages of witchcraft had seemed impossible. She still thought it was impossible. And yet—even if she couldn’t take herself all the way, maybe she could at least take herself further.

  Yes, there had to have been many witches here, and gifted ones, to control, capture, and bury something this powerfully dark....

  Witches, or a Sorceress.

  A chill swept through Nadia. Then she told herself she was being stupid. There had only been a handful of Sorceresses in the whole history of witchcraft, which went back to the dawn of civilization at Uruk. A Sorceress broke the One Absolute Law. She was outcast, soulless, beyond what anyone could call “wicked” or “evil”—so complete was her dedication to destruction.

  A Sorceress had sworn allegiance to the One Beneath.

  Once again, Nadia shivered.

  “Cold?” murmured a tall, good-looking guy who sat near her. Before she could answer, he smirked. “Nice thin T-shirt shows that off. I like it.”

  Gross. “Die in a fire,” Nadia muttered.

  She hugged herself and tried, belatedly, to pay attention to her chemistry teacher, even to the sniggering jerk next to her, to anything at all besides the idea of a Sorceress and the horrible writhing power lurking underneath her feet.

  5

  VERLAINE FLATTENED HERSELF AGAINST THE WALL, where she was hidden by the lockers. Then she wondered if she looked like an insane person.

  Well, it wasn’t like people at this school could hate her any more even if she were crazy. Everybody knew Mateo Perez was basically a big old ticking time bomb of crazy, but nobody went out of their way to be unkind to him.

  Maybe she actually was nuts—but there was only one way to find out.

  Peering out from behind the lockers, Verlaine could again see Nadia Caldani, who was putting away her books. She looked like any other girl in school, getting ready to go home like everybody else, and about the only thing that stood out was her really great hair. Verlaine glanced down at her own prematurely gray locks and sighed.

  Was she really going to challenge Nadia about this? Was she willing to stand up and say she believed something that bizarre?

  My car flew, Verlaine thought, and decided to trust her gut.

  Just as she darted forward into the crush of people in the hallway, Nadia lifted her head and saw her. As soon as she did, she turned away from Verlaine, obviously eager to escape, but Verlaine quickened her steps to catch up.

  Then Jeremy Prasad appeared. Verlaine’s heart did that thing it did whenever she saw him—that stealthy thing that felt like turning over and constricting at the same time. It wasn’t that she liked the guy; Jeremy’s personality defied any reaction but total contempt. But oh, God, that face—those shoulders—

  “So you’re the new girl,” he said to Nadia, who was now glancing back and forth between Verlaine and Jeremy like she was trapped. “Need someone to show you around? We ought to be friends, you know. The benefits—we can add those later.”

  Sensing her opportunity, Verlaine pounced. “Sorry, Jeremy. Nadia and I are headed out.” She folded her arm possessively in Nadia’s, and Nadia was ei
ther too surprised to resist or too desperate to get away from the oily sheen of Jeremy Prasad.

  “Hanging with the freaks already?” Jeremy said to Nadia. He shrugged, and damn it, the movement of his muscles showed through every inch of the tee he was wearing. “Have it your way.”

  As he wandered off, Nadia muttered, “Who is that loser?”

  “Jeremy Prasad? He’s pretty much the king of the hill around here, and he knows it. As rich as his family is, and with a face like that, I guess he figures he can pick up any girl he wants, no matter how disgusting he is.” Verlaine hated that she’d said anything nice about him. “It’s not like I like him or anything. I just wish—sometimes—it were possible to pour somebody else’s soul inside that body. You know?”

  “It would have to be an improvement.” Then Nadia tensed, and Verlaine knew she was about to try to dodge her again. Maybe it would be good to get her off her guard.

  “How do you like the Piranha?”

  “The Piranha—oh, is that what people call Mrs. Purdhy? I can kind of see it. The thing with the teeth—” Nadia made a face instantly recognizable as Mrs. Purdhy’s clenched jaw. She seemed to have decided that talking about anything but what happened yesterday might be a good idea … as if Verlaine would just forget about it. “Hey, cool dress.”

  “Oh … thanks. Glad you like it,” Verlaine said, genuinely surprised. Most people in Captive’s Sound didn’t understand vintage style, though of course that meant Verlaine got to comb through the local thrift stores and secondhand shops without having to compete for their treasures. Today she was wearing a mod dress from the 1960s with big black-and-white squares, exactly the kind of thing most people here made fun of. Verlaine had told herself she didn’t care about the ridicule anymore, but all the same, it was nice to have someone actually get it.

  Obviously Nadia thought the danger was past, because she had begun to relax. “The shoes are kind of different, though.”

  “I stick to Converse.” Today’s pair was black. “Real period shoes are expensive, and they never turn up in sizes big enough for my boat feet. Besides, if I wore heels, I would go from being the third tallest person at this school to the actual tallest, and yes, I’m including everyone on the men’s basketball team.” They were out on the quad now, away from some of the other students; Verlaine decided it was about time to make her move. “So, yesterday, what was that?”

  Nadia whirled toward her, too caught off guard to hide her shock. She tried to recover, though: “What are you talking about?”

  “Last night, I narrowed it down to three possibilities.” Verlaine counted them off on her fingers. “One, you have some kind of superpower, but you’re trying to hide it because you have a secret identity; maybe there’s a Justice League scenario, et cetera. Two, this is more supernatural or occult, like witchcraft, maybe. Three, you’re an alien. I know that’s a long shot, but then all of these seem like long shots even though they’re the only possible explanations. So, can’t exclude aliens. If you are from another planet, I want to say, welcome to Earth, and if you have a starship or a transporter beam or whatever, as long as I can still call my dads once in a while, I’m totally ready to ditch this planet and try it somewhere else.”

  After a long moment when they stared at each other and Verlaine’s heart thumped crazily in her chest, Nadia breathed out in a sigh. “Not here, okay?”

  “Okay.” Wait. Did that mean—she was right? This really was something out of the ordinary? The surreal was becoming real, at last? Yes. It was all Verlaine could do not to jump in the air and cheer.

  Glancing around nervously, Nadia said, “Is there someplace we can talk?”

  “Not at school. Let me think—someplace quiet—”

  “No. Someplace loud.” Nadia seemed very sure about this. “People overhear you in quiet places. Nobody overhears when it’s loud. Mom—my mother would talk about it in the mall, or at Cubs games, places like that.”

  Her mother was a—whatever she was—too? This was getting better and better. And for once, Verlaine was absolutely sure she knew the right thing to suggest. “If you want loud, we should go to La Catrina.”

  La Catrina turned out to be the only Mexican restaurant in town, or at least the busiest. Even though Nadia had yet to taste the food, she could understand why everybody came here; this was pretty much the first cheerful public place she’d seen in Captive’s Sound. It was warm and welcoming, with pressed-tin panels on the ceiling, dark gold walls, and tons of woodwork stained a deep red. Brilliantly painted carvings hung on the walls—all of them skeletons, though they were the happy kind, grinning merrily, wearing sombreros or colorful dresses, and apparently having the time of their afterlives.

  Verlaine leaned over the table, obviously starting to digest everything Nadia had told her. “So, you don’t look like a witch.” She glanced around, but the din of laughter, conversation, and jukebox music made it obvious they wouldn’t be overheard. “Either the haglike, warty, green variety or the mystical pagan sexpot variety.”

  “Uh, thanks, I guess.”

  “You’re not going to try to recruit me, are you? Is this one of those things where you learn about the witchcraft and then, that’s it, you’re trapped in it for life?”

  “No. I can tell you about it, and that’s fine. But you really shouldn’t tell anyone else.” There were spells Nadia could use to make sure Verlaine didn’t tell anyone—spells of silencing or forgetting—but they were drastic measures. Messing with another person’s head that way was nasty work, something you only did if you had no other choice.

  But Verlaine said only, “Who could I possibly tell? Nobody would ever believe me.” Then she frowned. “Wait. You can teach me some spells, right? Without me being sworn to witchcraft for eternity or anything. I really want to stress that last part.”

  “It’s too late for me to teach you,” Nadia said.

  “You mean—too late today, or what?”

  “I mean, too late ever.” Nadia made the words as gentle as she could. What would it be like, to discover that witchcraft was real but you were left out? “You have to start learning in childhood. The earlier the better, my mom always said. And not every girl can be a witch. If witchcraft doesn’t run in your family, you probably don’t have the blood for it. And even if you did, by now, you would have lost the potential.”

  “Oh.” Verlaine frowned. “That leaves you with the power, then, doesn’t it?”

  “Pretty much.” It was the truth; why should she apologize for it?

  “How do I know you won’t turn me into a newt or something?”

  “Honestly, where are you getting this? Listen. Most of what’s in pop culture about witchcraft is crap. What I practice doesn’t have anything to do with being Wiccan, either; that’s a religion of its own. I think the Craft I practice might have been linked to it way back when, but they parted paths a long time ago. And in neither of those is there any turning people into newts.”

  Verlaine didn’t seem comforted in the slightest. “I wasn’t specifically afraid of newthood. What I mean is, it’s kind of freaky to know somebody has power over you that you can’t understand.”

  Nadia shrugged. “Yeah. It throws a lot of people off. Which is exactly why we try to keep it secret. But you wanted to know. And now you do.”

  After an awkward pause, Verlaine said, “Okay, no newts. But what kind of stuff can you do?”

  Nadia felt weird—beyond weird—talking about this with someone who wasn’t a witch herself. Mom was the only witch she’d ever known well; Grandma had been in the Craft herself, of course, and had taught Mom, but she’d died when Nadia was eight and had learned only the basics. Not every witch was so isolated—some cities and even small towns had active communities—but Mom had stuck to her one secret coven in Chicago. Nadia had never been introduced to them, and had not expected to be; usually you only met witches outside of your family once you were grown and fully possessed of your power. And while it wasn’t forbidden to reveal
witchcraft to a woman who didn’t practice, it was something you were supposed to do as little as possible … which Nadia now understood completely.

  Secrecy is important, Mom always said. Secrecy is what protects us from the ignorant and the hateful. Secrecy is the first and most precious rule.

  Well, Mom always said she loved us forever, Nadia thought savagely. So who cares about her rules?

  “The only real limit on what a witch can do is how much she’s learned so far,” Nadia said. “Well, that and the First Laws, of course.”

  “What are the laws?” Verlaine asked. But that was the moment the waiter strolled up to their table.

  “Hello there and welcome to …” Mateo’s voice trailed off as he recognized them; his eyes widened as they met Nadia’s. But he barely paused in his spiel. “La Catrina.”

  “You work here?” Nadia asked, then felt stupid. He wasn’t walking up to their table in a black apron because he was trying to set a fashion trend.

  “This is my dad’s restaurant. I help out after school, on weekends—that kind of thing.” Mateo took out his order pad and stared down at it as if he was unwilling to meet her eyes one moment longer. “What can I get for you guys?”

  “Not dinner, sorry. Maybe some salsa and chips, though,” Verlaine said cheerfully. “Oh, how about two virgin margaritas? What do you think, Nadia?”

  “Sure.” Nadia never stopped looking at Mateo; he never looked back at her.

  “Got it,” Mateo said, scribbling it down. “Have that right out to you.”

  As he walked away, Nadia said, “Did it seem like Mateo was, I don’t know—trying to ignore me?”

  “He always ignores me. Which makes him one of the nice guys. I mean, at least he’s never mean to me.” Verlaine stopped. “Wait. How do you know Mateo? I thought you just moved to town.”

  “I don’t know him, really. But I met him when—when he pulled me out of a car accident.”

  “What?”