by Claudia Gray
Finally Nadia reached the street where Elizabeth lived. She’d been here before—had jealously spied on Mateo and Elizabeth together. That felt so childish now, so pointless. But even then she’d known that approaching Elizabeth’s house might be dangerous. Waiting inside could be protective spells, wards, and watchers, omens Nadia might not even recognize.
But Mateo might be inside, too, in danger, and that left her no choice. Nadia went up the steps without hesitation and tried the door. It was unlocked. What she saw was … a completely normal, nicely furnished house. Like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Not what she’d been expecting.
No. This wasn’t right. It had to be a glamour at work.
Nadia touched her bracelet, went through the simple thoughts necessary to construct a spell of disillusion, and watched as the Pottery Barn facade melted. In its place was—a ruin.
Holding her breath, Nadia carefully stepped between the shards of broken glass and mirrors. Her feet—now effectively bare, as her tights had been all but shredded away—could feel a layer of thick, oily dust underneath. If she put even one foot wrong, though, she’d feel even worse when glass stabbed through her foot.
She heard nothing, but that was meaningless. Elizabeth might have taken Mateo’s voice the same way she had Ginger’s; even now he could be trying to warn her but unable to speak a word. In any room, around any corner, Elizabeth could be waiting. Watching.
The house was almost entirely dark; the light Nadia found her way by came from an old-fashioned wood stove in one corner of the large front room. Yet the light it cast didn’t flicker like flame—it was almost eerily steady, and there was a strange cast to it, as if the yellow were too close to green. And the heat of it almost seemed to sear the skin, though it was a dozen feet away.
Don’t look at it, Nadia told herself. Whatever it was, however unnatural that burning might be, that couldn’t matter now. All that mattered was finding Mateo if he was here, and getting out again as fast as possible if he wasn’t.
Carefully she edged her way along one wall, trying to push some of the broken glass out of the way with her toes. There were the stairs—but they were so rotten, more spiderweb than wood by now, that surely Elizabeth and Mateo couldn’t have climbed them.
Here was a back room. Hand trembling, Nadia reached out for the doorknob and turned it slowly, so slowly.
She pushed the door open. Hinges creaked, and her breath caught again in her chest. The stove’s light barely reached this room, its heat, either; the chill of the shadows inside turned Nadia’s breath to a cloud.
If they’re in there, they know you’re here. Elizabeth knows. Step inside and find out. At least there was no glass on that floor.
Nadia walked inside. The room was completely empty except for spiderwebs—countless spiderwebs, so thick they’d covered the windows, and a couple of the walls, completely. She breathed out, a sigh of both relief and disappointment. If Elizabeth hadn’t brought Mateo to her house, then where might they have gone?
But wait, there was something in the far corner. Nothing Mateo would have left behind, though, just a—
—a book.
Elizabeth’s Book of Shadows.
A spiderweb brushed against her arm, making her jump. Nadia flicked it away.
But it stuck. As did another. And another.
The spiderwebs were weaving around her, so fast she couldn’t even kick them away, so fast that already Nadia could hardly move. She lunged for the door, but it was too late; already she was tangled in the stuff, spiders crawling among the silvery threads that bound her on every side.
She was trapped. There was no saving Mateo, no saving herself.
Elizabeth had them both now.
22
“COME ON,” NADIA WHISPERED, TEARS OF SHEER EXERTION rolling down her face. “Just—a few more inches—”
She reached desperately for the doorway of the room where she was trapped, fingers extended, every joint in her hand and arm aching. If she could only get hold of one of the shards of glass lying right outside, maybe she could start to hack away at the cobwebs surrounding her. Already she could hardly see the lower half of her body, and her left leg was going numb. Nadia had let herself fall to the floor, knowing the glass was her best chance, but now she wondered if she’d wind up mummified here, swaddled in gray filmy stuff, spiders all over her.
Already Nadia had tried to cast spells to liberate herself, but the Book of Shadows’s protections were ancient and primal. Her magic skittered across it like a raindrop across the windshield of a car, without any chance of getting in and changing anything.
Worst of all, she felt as if it were staring at her. Enjoying her fear and pain.
Nadia clutched desperately at the spiderwebs, trying to pull them away; little legs scrambled through her hair, and she screamed. How long had she been screaming? It seemed like forever, and it seemed like she pulled away handfuls of cobwebs every second, but there were always more around her, bearing her down.
Elizabeth walked into the ocean again; her blood would still be strong here. It would work.
Mateo followed her. He couldn’t help it. The frigidity of the waters affected him more than it did her. As the tides splashed over their waists, up toward their shoulders, he said, voice shaking from the severe cold, “Are you—going to—drown us?”
“We will die by fire,” she promised. “Silence. I have work to do.”
The eyes in her hand were smooth against her palm. They knew her blood, and again they would see.
“You might as well kill me,” Mateo said. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? What you did to Mom, my grandfather, Jeremy. What you tried to do to Verlaine. You use us up and throw us away.”
“Yes. But I haven’t used you up yet. Your curse is a part of me, Mateo. As long as I live, so does the curse.”
Enough distractions. This spell—even for her, this was difficult. Elizabeth had to bring all her concentration to bear, though she knew it would mean her hold on Mateo lessened for a moment. No matter. She knew her duty.
As the eyes drifted away into the tides, she felt the cord between her and Mateo—not break, but bend and stretch, giving him slightly more liberty. He felt it, too, or saw it; he was a Steadfast, after all.
Mateo threw himself at her, bearing them both down underwater. A wave came in, tossing them hard against the shells and sand; Mateo struggled for purchase, trying to get enough grip with his feet to anchor her against the ocean floor and drown her. Elizabeth could have laughed at his foolishness.
Another wave—and this one knocked them both into a roll. Now Mateo dragged her from the water by her wrist and hair before clutching her around the throat with both hands. His knees pressed down on her legs, pinning her.
“I can kill you.” His voice shook. “Don’t think I can’t. After what you did to my mom—I’m going to enjoy killing you.”
“No, you won’t.” She could still whisper. He wasn’t even bearing down hard enough to cut off all her air. Angry as he was, justified though he thought himself, Mateo was not the kind of man who could easily take life, not even to end the curse that kept him prisoner. “You’ll hate yourself for it.”
Mateo paused. Water dripped from his hair, from his eyelashes. His entire body shook with the tension. “You’re right. I will. But if I can protect Nadia—protect everyone—then I have to do it. I have to.”
He was talking himself into it. So, he had more resolve than she’d thought.
Too bad he was only a human.
Elizabeth pulled the spell taut again, sent him staggering to the side, then to his knees in the sand. No matter how hard he struggled to rise again, he couldn’t. She ruffled his hair as if he were a small boy. “You only had a second,” she confided. “And you’ve lost your chance.”
Oh, the despair in his eyes was sweet. Elizabeth warmed herself by it.
The first thing Asa felt was pain.
Not the agonies of hell, not any longer—that would have
been familiar to him. No, this felt more like … like he’d banged his nose on something.
He had a nose?
He opened his eyes and looked around. Apparently he was lying on a beach, sand all over him (scratchy—he also felt scratchy! Even that was a treat after so long without a body). A puddle next to him smelled strongly of beer.
Pushing himself into a seated position, Asa looked down at the body the Sorceress had provided for him. He was male—not that it mattered so much, but he’d been male before, when he had been what you’d call “alive,” so at least he was familiar with the equipment. Apparently he was tall. His skin was a deep, tawny shade of tan.
Something uncomfortably bulky was in his pocket. He pulled out a wallet and flipped through it. Cash—quite a lot of it, if his understanding of human economics was up to date—a set of car keys, a Starbucks card (he’d been wanting to try this coffee he kept hearing about), a Rodman High ID, and what appeared to be a driver’s license.
“Jeremy Arun Prasad,” Asa read aloud. “Sorry about your untimely death. And thanks for the ride.”
Nice voice, really. Not very deep, but—mellifluous. Pleasing to the ear. And even the flat, awkward photos on the ID and driver’s license suggested his new form was pleasing to the eye as well. That would make his brief sojourn in the mortal world simpler; such shallow virtues carried more weight than they should here. That was something you could see very clearly from hell.
Carefully he got to his feet. Balance came back to him more easily than he would have thought. Brushing the sand from his clothes and face, Asa wondered how best to begin. He knew his role here—was sworn to it by unbreakable bonds—but the town looked different from above than it did from below. First he had to get his bearings.
“Jeremy!” A tall man with braided hair and even darker skin than his own came jogging up to him. His memories of the people he had seen while observing Mateo Perez supplied the name Gage Calloway. “Hey, man, are you all right?”
“Yeah, sure. I just—I think I passed out.” The puddle of beer would support that story.
Gage paused. “You gonna be sick? Do you need some coffee or some water or something? I have a strong antipuke policy.”
“I feel fine now.” Fine. What a word for the ecstasy of having legs, arms, a voice, eyes—well, eyes of a sort. They did the job of the real thing. He was whole again. A person again. And this miracle he could only call fine.
“Yeah, you look okay, I guess. But I’ll give you a ride home.”
“What are you doing out here?” Asa thought this time of day—this, with the light beginning to emerge over the water—was sunrise, and that meant it was either too early or too late for most people to be up.
“Some people took my aunt’s patio furniture so they could hang out on the beach. I’m still missing a chair. If I don’t find it, Aunt Lorraine’s gonna kill me. This is the last party I ever have at her place, I swear to God.”
It would be, of course. Tonight Gage would probably die, just like most of the residents of Captive’s Sound.
Asa felt a wave of pity for the young man, who seemed friendly and kind. He wished he could say, Get in your car. Go. Drive as far as you can, as fast as you can.
But Asa belonged to the One Beneath. Working against Him was impossible. If he even tried to speak one word that would go against Elizabeth’s plan, so much as attempted to perform an act that might save one of the lives that needed to be ended, not only would he fail, but he would also be immolated in a flame that would make hell look like a top vacation destination. And that fire would outlast even hell, because death was a mercy he would never receive.
Yet at least a few of his actions could be his own, if they were harmless enough. “Come on. I’ll help you look for the chair.”
Gage stared at him. “Uh, okay. That’s—nice of you.”
Apparently Jeremy Prasad hadn’t spent much of his life being nice for no reason. It hardly mattered. No one here would have time to realize that Jeremy was dead, or who—no, what—was walking around in his skin.
So Asa enjoyed what freedom he had, walking along the beach with Gage to look for a plastic patio chair and reveling in the beauty of the last dawn this town would ever see.
Nadia kept struggling. Kept fighting. She pulled the cobwebs from her face, freed one hand, then the other, then the first again. Her feet could kick the tendrils loose for a second before they ensnared her once more. Some of the spiders had found the holes in her tights and were crawling inside them now. Long ago, she’d given up screaming; she couldn’t even spare that much breath, and she didn’t want to give the Book of Shadows the satisfaction.
No matter how hard I fight, it’s not enough, she thought. Elizabeth’s got me, no matter how hard I try.
How hard I try.
An idea flickered into flame, and Nadia gasped.
A spell like this, meant to entrap—it would naturally wrap itself around someone trying to get away. The harder she fought, the harder it clutched at her.
What if she stopped fighting?
Merely lying still wouldn’t work—no spell of protection could be that easily fooled—but there were other spells that might be more convincing.
Such as a spell that would keep her right here.
Nadia pulled against the cobwebs wound around her upper arms to bring one hand to her bracelet. Two fingers found the quartz charm, and quickly she assembled the ingredients:
Love unbreakable.
Hatred implacable.
Hope eternal.
She had to think it, feel it, believe it more powerfully than ever before —
Hugging her father as he left for New York City with Cole, knowing she might not ever see him again.
The moment she’d realized that Elizabeth had tried to kill Verlaine—then the moment she knew Elizabeth had Mateo in her grasp.
Her own hand reaching for the shards of mirror, hour after hour, despite exhaustion and terror, because there had to be a chance; there had to be.
The spell of encirclement sprang to life around her. Immediately the spiderwebs slithered back. A few of the small crawly guests in the legs of her tights followed suit. The circle spread around her, a soft blue glow, a sphere that was meant to hold her in position against any force. It was what she would have cast the night of the wreck, if she’d had time; it would have kept her and her family almost motionless as the car flipped down around them, protecting them from every blow. Lacking independent thought, Elizabeth’s Book of Shadows knew only that another spell now held Nadia in place, that its protections were no longer required, and so the spiderwebs inched away.
No Book of Shadows, not even this one, could know that Nadia controlled the spell herself, that she would be able to use the sphere to move away as she wished.
Her whole body shaking with exhaustion, Nadia began stumbling toward the door. Now she didn’t have to worry about the broken glass; the blue sphere around her kept it from touching her feet. She did, however, stop in the middle of the room and rip off the remnants of her tights. A last spider tumbled down and scurried away. She shuddered.
Still Elizabeth’s house remained empty. Wherever she had taken Mateo, it wasn’t here. But wait—was that daylight outside? She’d been in the grip of a powerful enchantment; time could get lost during an enchantment, making hours seem like days, or years seem like minutes.
I can’t have been here all night. Please, no.
Nadia looked out the window and her heart sank. Not only was that daylight—it was late afternoon. No, evening. The sun would be setting any moment. She’d lost nearly twenty-four hours.
The Halloween carnival would already have begun.
She hadn’t prepared any more spells. Hadn’t thought any more about how to defeat Elizabeth’s plan of ripping away the entire magical framework of Captive’s Sound. She hadn’t even bathed or slept.
Didn’t matter. She was out of time.
Nadia saw a pair of Elizabeth’s shoes next to the door,
simple flats, and quickly slipped them on. She could run in these if she had to, and she had to.
Just then she heard a chiming from her pocket—her phone ringing.
Dad! Nadia thought. Oh, crap, he’d probably tried to call or text a dozen times last night, and she hadn’t answered or even heard it over her own screams. Now he was no doubt on his way home to find out what the hell was going on.
But when she looked down at the screen, it was Verlaine’s face she saw smiling back. Was one of her dads calling from Verlaine’s phone? Please, she thought, please don’t let her have gotten worse. Don’t let her be— “Hello?”
“Hey, stranger.” The voice was hardly more than a whisper, but it was definitely Verlaine.
“Oh, my God. You’re okay!” Nadia could have wept. At least one thing had gone right. “What—where are you?”
“Still in the hospital. Can’t talk long.” Verlaine’s tremulous words made it clear she could hardly talk. “Couple hours ago—just woke up.”
“How?” Elizabeth wouldn’t have released Verlaine from the spell she’d used to attack her—
—unless she was already beginning. Bit by bit, she was undoing her own magic. A spell here, a spell there, until the great collapse came.
“Managed one thing,” Verlaine said. “My dads are here in Wakefield with me, not in Captive’s Sound. Tonight—you and Mateo—”
“Elizabeth has Mateo. I have to get to him, now. But I’m so glad you’re all right.” At least one of them got out okay. At least in this one small way, Elizabeth hadn’t won.
Or—had she? Verlaine’s survival, amazing and wonderful as it was, might be only a sign that Elizabeth’s final plan was under way, and the end was even closer than Nadia had feared.
But Verlaine was safe. Her dads were safe. Her own father and brother were safe. Gratitude for at least that much flooded through Nadia, giving her courage, pushing back the exhaustion until she knew she could run again.
Verlaine whispered, “Nadia, be careful.”
“Good-bye,” Nadia said, and hung up. She couldn’t have answered any other way. What she had to do now, to go against Elizabeth—careful couldn’t have anything to do with it.