Spellcaster

by Claudia Gray

  “Ginger.”

  “What?”

  “Ginger Goncalves. The woman who cuts my hair. Either she’s a witch or she knows about them, but either way, she’s cursed, too.” As he hurried along the sidewalk, free hand balled in the pocket of his letter jacket, Mateo described her version of the halo—the coiled black noose around Ginger’s neck. “Maybe I should have asked her about it differently—I don’t know.”

  “You did the best you could,” Nadia said. Her voice was soft. “She wouldn’t have been able to understand why a guy was talking to her about it. You’re the one and only man in the club, remember?”

  Mateo thought about that for a second. “You mean, you’re pretty sure Ginger’s a witch, too?”

  “I always knew there would be more in Captive’s Sound. Even if Ginger’s not a witch herself, she knows about the Craft through … her mother, maybe, or a close friend. And she has to know someone who teaches. I’ve got to talk to her!”

  “I’d give her a day or so to calm down. She was about ten seconds from coming after me with the scissors when I got out of there.”

  “Oh—okay.” Obviously it was killing Nadia to wait even a day. But then the whole tone of her voice changed. “But if Elizabeth cursed her, took away her voice—”

  Nadia didn’t finish the rest. She didn’t have to.

  If Elizabeth had torn the voice out of one witch, what might she do to Nadia—to all of them—if they got in her way?

  The points and edges of the broken glass shimmered in the light from the stove, creating the illusion that Elizabeth sat in a lake of fire. Legs crossed, bottle of water at her side, she carefully drew one finger along the nearest shard until blood beaded up fresh.

  With her cut finger, she finished drawing the final arc of her design amid the glass. Then, with the last droplets of blood, Elizabeth completed the final letter of a name neither she nor any other mortal could ever speak aloud:

  ASAEL.

  The name of a demon. Of a sworn servant and vessel of the One Beneath. Keeper of his will, walker of his domains—

  —and now, her bonded ally.

  You summon me again, he said inside her mind. Possessing no earthly body, he could not speak any other way. It’s been a long time. Aren’t you an infant yet?

  “I did not summon you for conversation.” Elizabeth took a deep gulp of water. Already, her fast-regenerating body was healing the cuts on her fingers, leaving only faint pink lines behind to show where she’d shed the blood for the elaborate pattern in front of her. “I have need of you, Asa.”

  You taunt me. So, so close to saying my name, and yet you never will. But you could, you could—

  “The One Beneath himself is releasing me from his service!” Elizabeth snapped. “I serve him now for loyalty, not as a mere slave. So remember your place.”

  I am his slave, not yours. I will work with you, not for you. There is a difference, Goodwife Pike. Remember it well.

  Elizabeth did not need a demon underling to tell her the finer divisions of power among the servants of the One Beneath. She knew her place with him. He treasured her beyond all his others, was freeing her in resignation and understanding. Her last act for him would be her greatest. They would be united again when at last, at long last, her work here was complete.

  “You know what I am trying to do,” she said. “You know how close I am to success.”

  On Samhain the end comes.

  “Yet there is a strange energy at work here. Another witch—more powerful than she should be. A shift in the balances.”

  One you don’t understand. Asa sounded positively delighted. And the other witch is only a girl.

  “She has changed the structure beneath Captive’s Sound!” Elizabeth snapped. “Nadia Caldani knows something of what I am, but that alone would not give her such power.”

  She possesses two things you do not.

  Elizabeth refused to ask. If the demon was fool enough to tell her that Nadia possessed faith or hope or love, any such token from a children’s story, she’d beg the One Beneath to send him to the deepest torments, and it would be done for her. As a gift. As a blessing.

  But in the past century, she’d forgotten how useful Asa could be. Nadia possesses Goodwife Hale’s Book of Shadows.

  How? How had she found it? Elizabeth herself had no need of it—formidable witch though Prudence Hale had been, her knowledge counted as nothing compared to Elizabeth’s own. But the book was so old, so powerful that it had served as a kind of anchor of the magical energies in this town. No wonder the balances had been thrown off. Nadia had not only moved it, she had taken possession of it—begun to learn from it.

  Then Asa said, And Nadia possesses a Steadfast.

  Elizabeth frowned. “Who?”

  You know a Steadfast is shielded from the eyes of a demon. I cannot see her face. But I sense the presence and the power of a Steadfast behind Nadia’s witchcraft.

  A Steadfast was normally a woman known well to a witch—a deep friend, a relative, a lover, someone whose loyalty went beyond measure. But Nadia Caldani had only recently come to Captive’s Sound. With her were only male relatives, neither of whom could serve as a Steadfast. So she had drawn upon someone new.

  “The gray-haired girl,” Elizabeth said. She looked at the glow of her stove and smiled.

  15

  “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HAIR?” DAD THRUST AN apron at Mateo. Obviously Mateo was still On Dad’s List—which he expected to live on forever, given how many absences the school had reported. “Never mind, tell me tonight at home. Another three minutes late and I’d have docked your pay!”

  “Sorry, Dad.” Mateo pulled himself together for the dinner shift. He was almost relieved; after dealing with magic and curses and evil witches and destruction, waiting tables counted as a break. For the next few hours, he wouldn’t have to worry about anything more complicated than whether to serve the guacamole on the side. It already looked like it was going to be a crazy night at La Catrina—most of the tables filled even though it was only five p.m.

  Mateo glanced over his area on the floor, then paused as he saw who was at the two-top by the back.

  He walked to her first. “Hey, Verlaine.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk to you about it,” she said very quickly. “I mean, I didn’t come here to not talk to you. It’s just—I feel like I’m not ready to talk about this with anybody. And I didn’t want my uncles asking me why I was acting strange. But I didn’t want to be alone, either. And I thought I wanted to be near at least one person who would understand why I’m like this. You know?”

  Weirdly, he got it. “Yeah.”

  “And I’m sorry if I was weird with you about—taking off for a while. I get it now. I really, really get it.”

  Mateo shrugged it off. “You need anything?”

  “A virgin piña colada and more of these chips. Way more. And later I might need to go into a veggie-fajita coma.” Verlaine leaned back in the booth, her pale skin stark against the red leather. “Did something happen to your hair?”

  “I’ll check back with you,” Mateo promised. He started on his rounds—waters for this table, the next already wanted their nachos yesterday, and then—

  —then Ginger came in.

  She seemed much more together than she had in the barbershop: calm, steady, even smiling. Ginger came to La Catrina a lot, always ordering by pointing to the menu. But she rarely came alone, and he would never have expected to see her again today.

  Their eyes met as she took a seat, and even though she wasn’t in his section, Mateo figured he needed to go over and say something. Quickly he dished out the waters and nachos and put in the order for Verlaine’s drink; while he had that moment at the bar, he quickly grabbed his phone and texted Nadia. Ginger’s here at La C.

  Keep her there! Nadia sent back almost instantly. I’m coming over.

  It made more sense for Nadia to talk to her, Mateo figured, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t acknowled
ge what had happened at the barbershop. Besides, that would be part of making sure Ginger stuck around long enough for Nadia to reach La Catrina. But Ginger would want to stick around, wouldn’t she? Now that she’d calmed down, she had sought him out; that had to mean she wanted to help, or share what she really knew about Elizabeth. Or maybe she just wanted somebody to finally understand. Mateo knew exactly how that felt.

  Maybe Ginger would know a weakness they could exploit—some way for him to start getting back at Elizabeth for all the evil she’d done to him and his family. To Mom.

  So the first free moment he had, he went to Ginger’s table. She sat there, head held high; once again he saw the sooty, coiling collar of the curse wound around her throat. Mateo imagined he could feel the weight of the thorned halo bearing down on his head.

  “Hey there,” he said, trying to keep it light. “I think I need to get this haircut finished sometime.”

  Ginger wrinkled her nose and nodded.

  “That bad, huh?” Mateo laughed, but the self-consciousness wasn’t totally faked. How weird did he look? He now avoided mirrors as much as possible, but he’d have to brave one to see precisely how lopsided this was. “Sorry if I, uh, startled you today.”

  She shook her head and looked up at him, her eyes so sad that it choked off anything else he might have said. Ginger held out her hand, as if she needed someone to hold on to—as if she was as desolate and afraid as Verlaine, or even more.

  What must it feel like, not to be able to speak to anyone, not one word, for ten years?

  Moved, not caring who could see, Mateo took Ginger’s hand and squeezed it tightly.

  Lightning-fast, with her other hand, Ginger grabbed his wrist.

  The floor fell out from under him. Mateo felt the ground slam against his back, saw the twinkling lights strung along the ceiling rafters, and then he didn’t know anything any longer.

  “Slower, honey.” Nadia’s father sat in the passenger seat, leaning a little too close to her. “Technically you don’t have a learner’s permit in Rhode Island. If the cops stop us—”

  “What cops? I think Captive’s Sound has, like, one guy. Part-time.” Nadia slowed down a little anyway. It wasn’t like she couldn’t try talking to Ginger later on, if she missed her tonight. And since her dad had insisted the whole family should go to La Catrina for dinner as long as she was headed that way, it wasn’t like she’d have much opportunity for an in-depth discussion.

  But she could at least make contact with another witch.

  Okay, maybe Ginger wasn’t a witch. Maybe she was just cursed, the same way Mateo was. That wouldn’t explain how she’d recognized Mateo’s hints about magic, though—and definitely wouldn’t explain away Ginger’s panic at the mention of Elizabeth Pike’s name. If Ginger knew enough to be afraid, Nadia thought, then she definitely at least knew about witchcraft … and few women outside the Craft were ever told about it. So the chances of Ginger being a witch were good. Really good.

  Finally, a witch in Captive’s Sound who isn’t evil. Someone who knows what’s going on—someone older, who could maybe teach me all the stuff Mom never got around to—how long can it take to get to La Catrina! This town isn’t big enough for a drive this long!

  It was hard to be patient.

  Then Nadia turned the corner and saw La Catrina—and the ambulance in front of it.

  From the backseat, Cole whispered, “Did somebody die?”

  “You don’t know that,” Dad said. “But maybe this isn’t the best night to eat out after all.”

  “But did they die?” Cole’s voice had begun to shake. Nadia wanted to turn and comfort him, but she couldn’t; fortunately, Dad was right there.

  “Hey. Come on, buddy. People have minor accidents all the time. Remember how the ambulance came for us? And we’re okay.”

  “We have to find out if anybody died,” Cole insisted, and now it sounded like he was crying.

  It’s nothing to do with Mateo, Nadia told herself, even as her pulse quickened and her hands tensed on the steering wheel. Probably somebody choked on some food, or had a heart attack.

  But wouldn’t Mateo have texted her about that? Maybe he hadn’t had a chance. Maybe he was doing CPR, being a hero again.

  Even as she hesitated, unwilling to drive away but unable to think straight, a tall, skinny figure darted out from the crowd of onlookers—Verlaine, her silvery hair streaming behind her. She was running toward them as fast as she could, brilliant green Converses slapping the pavement, and her eyes were wide with terror. Nadia’s whole body went cold.

  Verlaine called out, “Nadia!” as she waved a hand in the air. Nadia snapped down the window as Verlaine reached them, panting. “It’s Mateo. He collapsed.”

  “You mean—he fainted. Passed out,” Nadia said. Those things could happen to anybody who got overheated or didn’t eat enough; it didn’t mean anything serious. They’d called an ambulance just as a precaution.

  Mateo was okay. He had to be.

  But Verlaine shook her head. “He’s unconscious, still. Mateo’s dad is freaking—they’re shutting down the restaurant early. Nobody can tell what happened.” Verlaine’s eyes widened, clearly suggesting that she knew more but couldn’t say it aloud in front of other people. She said only, “Oh, hi, Mr. Caldani. Hi, Cole.”

  Dad nodded, but he spoke to Nadia next. “Honey, why don’t you go with Verlaine to check on Mateo? We owe that guy a lot. I’ll get Cole home. He could use some quiet time.”

  “Are—are you sure?” If Cole needed her—

  But Dad had him. And Nadia couldn’t take her eyes from the ambulance, from the stretcher she could barely glimpse being slid into the back. The red and blue lights seemed to beat against her eyes, to blind her to the rest of the world.

  Before waiting for her dad’s reassurance, Nadia threw the car into park and leaped out. “I’ll call!” she shouted as she dashed toward the ambulance, Verlaine at her side, without ever looking back.

  Her father’s “Okay!” behind her was very distant.

  They couldn’t run fast enough; even as they reached La Catrina, the ambulance doors slammed shut. The paramedics peeled out so fast that the tires squealed. Nadia clutched at Verlaine’s arm. “Oh, God. Something’s really wrong with him. They’re scared.”

  “It all started when he went to talk to her.” Verlaine pointed, and at the far edge of the crowd Nadia saw a stout woman in her fifties with long, ash-blond hair. The woman looked deeply worried—and, to Nadia’s eyes, guilty. “That’s Ginger Goncalves.”

  Nadia pushed through the still-murmuring crowd, straight for Ginger, whose eyes widened. She turned to go, but Nadia called out, “Ginger! Wait!”

  Ginger just walked toward her car faster, but Nadia caught up with her, running too fast to stop easily; she had to catch herself against the side of the car with both hands. Verlaine was right behind her, but she grabbed one of Nadia’s arms as if to pull her back. “Nadia, think,” she whispered. “Whatever she did to Mateo—what if she does it to you, too?”

  “She won’t,” Nadia said loudly. “I bet she can’t even if she tries.” Every protective spell she’d ever learned seemed to flood into her mind at once, and she raised one hand—the hand with her bracelet, all its pendants and stones promising that the power was hers if she only chose—

  But Ginger’s eyes widened as she saw the bracelet. Different witches kept their materials close in different ways—jewelry, bands on belts, stones in small sacks kept in pockets or purses—but each way was easy enough to recognize if you knew what you were looking at, and Ginger did.

  For a few moments they simply stared at each other. Then Ginger grabbed a pad of paper from her handbag and scrawled a note, which she defiantly held straight in Nadia’s face: You told a man about the Craft.

  “He had to know,” Nadia said. But she couldn’t explain that Mateo was her Steadfast; Ginger wouldn’t believe her, and since even Nadia didn’t yet understand how it was possible, she didn’t want
to get into it, particularly with a witch she wasn’t sure she trusted. “Because of the curse on his family.”

  Ginger shook her head; clearly that wasn’t a good enough reason.

  Verlaine huffed, “Why are you explaining yourself to her? She’s the one who hurt Mateo!”

  “I broke one of the First Laws,” Nadia said quietly, never taking her eyes from Ginger’s face. The ambulance’s siren was too far away now, almost gone. What was happening to Mateo? “I have to answer for that. Always. Forever. But I’ve never used my powers to harm another human being. Ginger, what did you do to him?”

  Ginger’s face crumpled, like she might cry. With a shaking hand, she jotted out another note: It was only a spell of forgetting. Amnesia—for today, maybe a few days before—no more. So he wouldn’t know about me.

  Nadia held the note as she and Verlaine read it together. “But that shouldn’t have made him collapse. Dizzy for a second, maybe—confused—not anything that would make them call an ambulance.”

  Quickly Ginger wrote: I don’t know what happened. It wasn’t meant to hurt him.

  But already Nadia’s mind was working fast. With a warning glance at Verlaine, who seemed to understand she should remain quiet, Nadia said, “I—I have a Steadfast, one who was near you when you cast the spell.”

  Ginger’s eyes widened, and Nadia knew that they’d both seen the same thing. A spell of forgetting, on its own, was simple but strong; it could erase a day’s events beyond any recovery. But if a Steadfast amplified that spell—even a Steadfast not sworn to that particular witch—then it could be far more devastating. Mateo would have forgotten everything about himself. Everybody he’d ever known, every place he’d ever been. He probably no longer remembered how to speak or stand.

  At this moment, his body might be forgetting how to breathe.

  Nadia steadied herself against Verlaine as she said to Ginger, “Drive us to the hospital now. You have to lift that spell on Mateo as soon as possible. If you don’t—”