Spellcaster

by Claudia Gray

  Congratulations! You have won an all-expenses-paid cruise to beautiful Jamaica. The boat leaves on Friday, October 30—

  Verlaine paused at her laptop, not sure this sounded right. Wouldn’t people call them if the cruise were leaving so soon? She couldn’t disguise her voice on the phone, though, and she didn’t think either Nadia or Mateo could really make themselves sound like adults if they made the call for her. Maybe that guy Gage, whose voice was deep—but they weren’t friends yet. He wasn’t somebody she could ask for a favor like this. Could Mateo ask him, though? Once her dads believed they’d won the cruise, the rest was easy. Her parents had taken a huge life-insurance policy when she was born, meaning that Verlaine had way more money than most people at Rodman, including the teachers. She drove the land yacht and thrifted her clothes and lived off her allowance because that money was for college—but to save her dads’ lives, she’d dip into it and buy them the nicest cruise anybody ever took.

  Besides, if they didn’t manage to stop Elizabeth, chances were she wouldn’t make it to college anyway—

  She nibbled again at her fingernail. Her nails were starting to look like crap. Tonight she’d paint them again—that would stop her from biting them—but then she’d have to do something else to calm her nerves.

  If only she could be sure Uncle Dave and Uncle Gary would be safe on Halloween. Then the rest wouldn’t matter. She could concentrate then.

  Determined, Verlaine decided to go ahead and book the cruise. Later she’d call Mateo and see what he thought about the plan to get Gage on board. She surfed over to a travel site—then froze.

  The pain arced up through her, so sharp that she first thought there was a knife hidden in the keyboard, one that had snapped up to stab her. That was crazy, but that was how it felt. But a split second later, Verlaine saw the white forks of electricity lancing up from the keyboard, searing her hands so that she thought she could see bone.

  All she could hear was some high-pitched, hoarse sound all around her—was that her screaming? Her body seemed to twist away from her, one direction and then the other, jerking around wildly while her mind slowed down, second by second.

  I’m being electrocuted, she thought, almost dully.

  Then something flung her back from the computer, into the far wall, and she couldn’t see anymore, couldn’t even feel.

  20

  AROUND DINNERTIME, DAD ONCE AGAIN PROPOSED THAT they visit La Catrina. “Since Mateo is no longer somebody we’re trying to avoid,” he said, giving Nadia a playful glance. It was all Nadia could do not to roll her eyes.

  “It’s his night off. But yeah, we should go.” It would be less awkward to eat with her family there when her father wouldn’t be watching her with Mateo the whole time. Way less awkward.

  “Want to ask that friend of yours along?” He frowned. “Was it Vera? Veronica?”

  “Verlaine.” She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

  “Something always happens when we try to go to La Catrina,” Cole complained. “We never get in.”

  “Don’t be silly. C’mon, guys. Nadia, honey, why don’t you tell Verla to meet us there? And invite her dads along, too. I ought to meet them sometime.”

  Nadia texted: Hey, come eat at La Catrina with us if you want. My dad says to ask your dads, so—if you don’t want to, no prob.

  So she wasn’t expecting to see Verlaine, and wasn’t surprised not to have heard from her by the time they arrived at the restaurant. But Nadia immediately overheard Verlaine’s name—from a table where Kendall was holding court among her friends.

  “So, like, Verlaine was in the school library, but I think she was using the computers for something illegal, like downloading movies or something like that, and there’s this thing in the library computers that’s supposed to stop you if you do something illegal, like it gives you a shock, and that’s how they keep guys from watching porn all the time, but this time it malfunctioned and it, like, electrocuted her, and so she’s in the hospital, not this one, the good one in Wakefield, and I heard she could die.”

  “Oh, my God.” Nadia looked over at her father. “Can we—”

  “Let’s go,” he said, like it was the only thing to do. Dad could be great like that sometimes.

  Nadia had never felt worse in her life than she did when she saw Verlaine’s dads in the waiting room at the hospital. Uncle Gary tried to be polite and informative, even though his voice kept shaking; Uncle Dave could only sit there with his head in his hands.

  “A coma?” Nadia whispered. “How long does that—would she—?”

  “They don’t know.” Uncle Gary kept weaving his fingers together, clasping his hands, unclasping them, like he was trying to work all his nervousness out that way. “It’s not unusual, really. I mean, we hear about comas that go on for—for months or years—”

  Uncle Dave made a small sound in the back of his throat, and Cole put a tentative hand on his shoulder. That was when Nadia lost it. Her eyes began to tear up, and she had to lean against her father.

  “—but that’s not what usually happens!” Uncle Gary added hastily. “Lots of people who’ve been through some severe shock go into a coma for only a few hours. Then they come to again and they’re fine. They’re just fine. All ‘coma’ means is that the person won’t wake up. That’s all they can tell us about Verlaine right now. She—she can’t wake up.”

  Nadia hugged her father tightly around the waist while she struggled against entirely breaking down. “How did it—” She had to gulp in breaths that threatened to turn into sobs. “What happened?”

  Uncle Gary shrugged. “They said her laptop electrocuted her, but a laptop shouldn’t even have enough voltage to do that—and the computer was acting fine when the medics got there. I mean, we’ve shut it down, and Dell is going to be hearing from our lawyers, believe you me, but how could that happen in the first place?”

  It hadn’t been the computer, or electrocution. It had been magic. Elizabeth.

  Why? Why go after Verlaine, and why now? None of this made any sense.

  “Can I see her?” she whispered.

  Uncle Dave nodded silently.

  “Are we going, too?” Cole asked.

  Her father said, “Nope. We’re going to get Verlaine’s dads something to eat.”

  Nadia went on tiptoe to kiss her father on the cheek—something she hadn’t done in what felt like a long time—before she made her way down the hospital corridors. They were all incredibly wide, so stretchers could get through; it made Nadia feel even smaller and more powerless than before.

  Then she stepped into Verlaine’s room, and that was definitely the worst.

  Verlaine was so pale, so still; as she lay there she looked more dead than alive. Machines were hooked up to her hand and her heart even though the little green and blue lines of data they sent up to the screens around her told the doctors nothing. A plastic mask covered Verlaine’s nose and mouth, giving her oxygen, making sure she would keep breathing. Otherwise, at any moment, she might stop.

  Nadia gripped the metal rail alongside Verlaine’s bed. “Hey,” she said, but the word hardly even came out. And it was pointless. Obviously Verlaine couldn’t hear.

  The door opened, and Nadia looked around for a nurse or doctor—but instead, it was Mateo.

  It was like she didn’t even move, didn’t even think. One moment she realized he was there; the next she was in his arms, hugging him as tightly as she could, stifling her tears against the reassuring warmth of his chest. Mateo stroked her hair, whispered wordless sounds of comfort into her ear, and just held her.

  When she could speak again, she said, “How did you find out?”

  “Kendall Bender was talking at the restaurant, one of the waitresses told my dad, my dad phoned me. I rode my bike out here.”

  No wonder Mateo looked drawn; a ride that far on his motorcycle in this kind of cold would have to have been exhausting. But of course, he was almost as worried for Verlaine as she was. Nadia could tell tha
t from the way he looked at her in her hospital bed.

  He said, “It’s like—it’s like I didn’t realize she was my friend until now.”

  “I know what you mean.” Maybe it was because they’d been so suspicious of each other at first, or because the stuff they’d been dealing with was so intense—but Nadia had never before thought about how funny Verlaine was, or how good some of her ideas had been. How she was one of the only people who had the sense to recognize magic when she saw it and not let anyone talk her into believing it was just a trick of the light.

  To have loved and lost. That was what Elizabeth had said, reminding her of the pain of Mom’s abandonment. Had Nadia unconsciously used that to keep herself apart not only from Mateo but also from Verlaine? If so, she’d been a fool; Nadia could see that now. You had to love people while you could, because you never knew how long you had.

  Mateo tenderly brushed Nadia’s hair back from her face—his fingertips seemed to paint lines of warmth along her cheek and temple—but his gaze remained focused on Verlaine. “I was wondering about this the other day. Wondering why I don’t think about Verlaine when she’s not there.”

  That was a harsh way of putting it, but Nadia knew what he meant. Then the realization dawned on her, and her eyes widened. “You mean—the magic you saw, the old magic that was done to her—you think it has something to do with the way we feel about Verlaine?”

  “Or the way we don’t feel about her. The way people are vicious to her when they aren’t to anyone else.”

  “If that was magic—then—that would explain why it’s not working now, keeping us apart from her. Because she’s in the hold of an even stronger magic.” Nadia’s mind started putting the clues together. She hadn’t cared for Verlaine, either, when she met her. But then she’d levitated Verlaine’s car and encountered her again—magic masking magic long enough to get her to be okay with Verlaine, if not to care about her as she should. As for Mateo, he’d spoken to Verlaine exactly when the Steadfast spell was taking effect … that, too, had provided enough of a crack in the wall around Verlaine for him to like her. Everyone else either tormented Verlaine, the way Kendall did, or kept forgetting about her, like Dad or Gage. Only now, in the grip of a spell so powerful that it threatened to end her life, could Verlaine be seen for who she was.

  “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, naked 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.

  All that remained for her to do was to free herself from the One Beneath’s service, so that she could again die—and, in her death, do Him the greatest service in all the history of time.

  The immort
ality spell would end—only slightly diminished, because the original magic was so strong that it wanted to endure through all eternity. But that tiny fraction of vulnerability would be enough for her to die, if she met a cataclysm great enough. Or caused one.

  Together they would destroy the lines that separated her world from His. Her death would be His freedom.

  “Shatter me,” she whispered. “Hallow me.”

  The broken glass spun closer and closer. She bit her lip against the first slash—her skin tearing open, blood beading upon her hip—but then the cuts came faster and faster, and the pain was too overwhelming and too glorious to resist. Elizabeth screamed, as long and loud as she could, and it was the most joyful sound she would ever make.

  Time blurred. The world went away. She shivered and shuddered—then gasped as the chains fell away.

  Elizabeth was free. The One Beneath had released her. Once again she could die.

  Tears sprang to her eyes as she knelt upon the floor, put her forehead down in the puddles of her own blood that congealed there. All but the last few cuts had healed, because of her body’s lingering regenerative power; she wept only for the loss. “My only liege,” she whispered.

  He cries for missing you, too, said Asa, in a tone of voice that suggested he would rather not have told her. Demons often resisted their servitude. It did not signify.

  Slowly Elizabeth rose to her feet again. She took up one of her bottles of water—but the thirst had diminished. Strange, not to have it there: She almost missed the craving. After a couple of swallows, she used the rest to rinse blood from her skin. Only a couple of scratches needed bandaging. As it had been centuries since she needed anything like that, Elizabeth wound up ripping some old cloths to tie around the cuts. Probably they were not clean—there was something about cleanliness and infection she dimly recalled from the past couple of centuries—but it hardly mattered. Her other magics remained in place, for now.

  “Only one errand left,” she said to the demon chained within her mind. “Finding you a place.”