Spellcaster

by Claudia Gray

  “Do you know, I’ve never been to this carnival before?”

  Mateo remembered being with her at the Halloween carnival when they were little kids. Remembered them riding the same carousel horse. Giving her his cotton candy. Each memory was just one more of her lies.

  He and Elizabeth walked through the carnival, hand in hand. The mere touch of her skin repulsed him, but over the course of the last day, he’d learned how futile it was to try to pull back.

  (“You consented to the binding spell,” she’d told him sweetly as he’d struggled against her on the beach, his clothes soaked and freezing. “The spells you consent to are always stronger for it.”)

  They’d dried off by now. To anyone else, they probably looked like a happy couple. He had on his letter jacket and jeans; Elizabeth wore her usual white dress, carefree of the cold. Twinkling lights had been strung from tent to tent, laced around the tree trunks and branches so that they stood out in the darkening twilight. All the little kids and about half of the adults were in costumes—vampires, Transformers, Disney princesses, a couple of ghosts here and there. People were munching on popcorn balls, drinking sodas out of “collector’s cups.” It was the exact same cheesy carnival it had always been, except this time Elizabeth was here, and she meant to kill them all.

  “You think I’m ruthless, don’t you?”

  “I know you are.” He could use his voice when he wasn’t trying to defy her; Mateo had learned that today, too.

  “If anything less could kill me, I’d do that instead. But it won’t. The One Beneath has released me, but the spell’s magic isn’t that easily undone.”

  “Wait. You’re telling me this whole disaster is just so you can die? This is a murder/suicide?”

  “Partly.”

  “Then what’s the other part?”

  Elizabeth gave him a sidelong glance, more openly flirtatious than he’d ever seen her before. “And ruin the surprise?”

  “Oh, hey, Mateo. Hey, Elizabeth.” Kendall gave them a wave; she was wearing something very form-fitting, very short, and very green. “So, Mateo, I want you to know that I thought really hard about what you said about racism and stuff, and, like, perspective is incredibly valuable, and so I didn’t go for the sexy geisha thing, and instead I went for sexy Robin Hood.”

  “You look wonderful,” Elizabeth gushed. Why had he never heard the mockery behind her “sweet” voice before?

  Kendall preened, striking faux-sexy poses that she probably memorized from the package. “Well, it’s sexy girl Robin Hood, obviously. Not that there’s a whole lot of difference, because really Robin Hood was wearing girl clothes back in the day, and I know they all dressed differently then, but get real, the guy had on leggings.”

  Mateo wanted to tell her to run. If he could save only one person from this mess, even if that person were Kendall Bender, it would be something. But Elizabeth’s spell held his tongue.

  “So where are you guys headed?” Kendall said. Her eyes darted down to their joined hands; no doubt she thought this was the gossip scoop of the year.

  “The haunted house.” Elizabeth leaned against Mateo’s shoulder, probably just for the pleasure of knowing how touching her would disgust him. “I like a good scare.”

  From Rodman High, at least from the top of the football-field bleachers, the carnival in Swindoll Park glittered on the far hill like a swarm of fireflies.

  Asa sat on the highest rung of the stands, watching the party far away. He would have felt bad for the people celebrating, if there were any point. At least he didn’t have to watch them die.

  No, his work would keep him right here.

  His gaze drifted down to the main school building, specifically to one spot that he’d been told was the location of the chemistry lab.

  Nadia made it to the carnival right after dark. She looked around frantically, but so far nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary—and there was no sign of Mateo or Elizabeth.

  Chest heaving, exhausted, she braced herself against a nearby picnic table and tried to think. Where would Elizabeth be? Dead center—right at the bull’s-eye of the target Verlaine had showed her. But where was that? When they’d looked at it before, Swindoll Park had seemed specific enough, but this park was pretty big, and now it was filled with hundreds of people. She should have downloaded Verlaine’s data onto her phone, something like that—

  “Whoa. Nadia.” Kendall stood in front of her, wearing a pointy hat and some kind of weird green minidress with a jagged hem. “Are you doing, like, a sexy zombie thing? Because it’s really more scary than sexy. Just FYI.”

  Her ripped dress and crazy hair probably would make people stare on any day but Halloween. “Kendall. Hey. No offense—gotta go.”

  “What, are you looking for Mateo? I mean, I’m not being insensitive, like, honestly, everybody could tell you were crushed out on him, so I think you should know about him and Elizabeth.”

  “I’ve been told.” Kendall must have heard the party gossip, too. Nadia pushed her hair back from her face.

  “Plus, you know, he’s got that crazy gene that runs in his family, and I hear they might have, like, stem cell therapy for it someday, but for now he’s bad news. I don’t know what Elizabeth’s thinking. Taking a guy like that into a haunted house? That is basically asking for a total psychotic break.”

  Nadia grabbed Kendall’s arm. “Did you say they’re in the haunted house?”

  “They said they were going that way.”

  All her spells, all her magic, all their desperate efforts to fight Elizabeth, and they’d gotten their single biggest break from Kendall Bender.

  “Kendall, thank you,” Nadia said, and then she took off running toward the gnarled old house with orange lights in all the windows—using her last strength to reach Elizabeth and Mateo, if she could only make it in time.

  But then the screams began.

  23

  MATEO STOOD IN ELIZABETH’S ARMS, WATCHING THE world catch fire.

  The walls of the haunted house browned, blackened, sparked into light and heat. People began to shriek; parents snatched up their children and started running for the exits. A guy in a Scream mask shouted, “Don’t panic!”

  Elizabeth never moved. So Mateo couldn’t, either. She embraced him tightly, closing her eyes in satisfaction as the fire leaped and crackled around them. “A Steadfast,” she whispered. “I’d forgotten how good that feels.”

  “You’re going to burn us alive.” Already the smoke stung his eyes and throat, made him cough.

  “We won’t have a chance to burn,” Elizabeth promised, and that was when the ground began to quake.

  Nadia ran toward the entrance of the haunted house—but already it was impossible to get in that way, with so many people flooding out. She dashed around to the side instead. The windows there were high, but she could climb in.

  As she pried it open, though, a middle-aged man grabbed her around the waist. “Get back from there!” he shouted. “It’s dangerous!”

  What was she supposed to say? “I know”? Nadia just let herself be pulled back, watched him run off to help others, and then made her leap for the window. It took most of the strength she had left to pull herself up, through, and over, but somehow she made it.

  For her reward, she was in a house on fire.

  Most everyone inside seemed to have fled by now, but Nadia knew that Elizabeth would still be at the heart of it, and there was no chance she would have let Mateo go. Pulling the neck of her dress over her mouth to filter the smoky air, she dashed up the stairs two at a time.

  On the second story, everything seemed to be burning: the walls, the ceiling, even parts of the floor. Nadia squinted against the bright light and the haze of heat—

  “Nadia!”

  Mateo. He was here. She’d found him in time. Nadia saw him through the blaze—in Elizabeth’s arms.

  Nadia had made it, she’d made it, they still had a chance—

  But even as Mateo drank in the s
ight of her, memories of his dreams came crashing in. There was that one dream—the one with the fire burning around them both—the one that ended with her dead at his feet.

  No, he thought. This can’t be happening. Elizabeth can’t win.

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “What is it you think you can do here?”

  “I don’t know,” Nadia shot back, “but we’re going to find out.”

  The ground twisted and bucked beneath them again; floorboards already strained with age and heat began to pop. How much longer could this building stand? Outside, people’s screams were only growing louder; the quakes must be starting up out there, too. Elizabeth was going to bring the whole park down, turn it into so much fire and dust. Bury everyone alive.

  Yet within him he felt a surge of something almost like hope—not an emotion, though. Something physical. Something real.

  Magic, Mateo realized.

  He was a Steadfast. Nadia’s Steadfast. Whatever power Elizabeth stole from him, he had more to give to Nadia, because he belonged to her, completely, in a way that Elizabeth could never match, not with all her curses and all her evil.

  Mateo never questioned whether Nadia could be strong enough to defeat Elizabeth. The only question was whether she’d get the chance.

  The spell was spreading around them now, so vivid and electric that Nadia could feel it as clearly as she would ever have been able to see it. Deep fault lines throughout Captive’s Sound were giving way as Elizabeth took away all the town’s dark magic, took it and buried it in the bottomless pit where her soul ought to be.

  And no—Nadia wasn’t strong enough to stop her.

  The trick was not to stop her in the first place.

  She’d never have seen this if she hadn’t been caught in the cobwebs. The answer there had been to stop fighting, to replace the spell imprisoning her with another that would at least appear to do the same thing.

  And yet Goodwife Hale had tried to tell her. In her spidery script, the old witch had written that the strongest opposing force was one that went in the same direction. This was what she’d been trying to say, but what Nadia hadn’t understood until now.

  So the answer now was not to block Elizabeth or to fight her. Not to do anything to keep Elizabeth from pulling the magic out from under Captive’s Sound.

  What Nadia had to do was replace the stolen magic with magic of her own.

  As the smoke swirled around her, Nadia met Mateo’s gaze for one last moment, then closed her eyes. What could be soft enough to slip into all the cracks but strong enough to hold them up?

  A spell of liberation. Nothing was as simple, or as powerful, as being free.

  Helpless laughter.

  Washing away what cannot come clean.

  A moment of forgiveness.

  Nadia grabbed her bracelet, found the ivory, and dove deep:

  Cole calling Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear a douche bag, and having to stagger into the kitchen to hide her laughter.

  Trying to clear her mind after reading that letter from Mom’s attorney, the one that said she refused to see them no matter how much Dad begged, and watching Toy Story 3 through eyes that kept filling with tears.

  Sitting on the kitchen floor next to her father, in the middle of a pile of rigatoni noodles, finally understanding why he fought her so hard about every single dinner—he only wanted to do something right for them, just once.

  The spell flowed out from her in every direction, almost uncontrollable, the way it had been when she first cast it in chem lab—but stronger now, because that darkness didn’t pull at her, and because Mateo was here. Before, they hadn’t known how to shape the magic they created together, but now she could feel him beside her.

  Like that day on the beach, she thought. Stronger together than apart.

  So Nadia found the dark places of Elizabeth’s magic—from Mateo’s map, from her own spells, and from the new levels of power unfolding within her—found the jagged gaps where Elizabeth’s dark work had been stolen and filled them once more. She left no hollows behind, made everything stronger than it had been before. The ground shifted beneath them, but already she could tell everything was coming right again—

  —everything except the house they stood in, which was being consumed by fire, and even now, the floor started to collapse.

  They all toppled sideways. Everyone shouted out—Elizabeth, Mateo, Nadia—and then there seemed to be nothing but smoke and horrible, searing heat. Each breath burned Nadia’s lungs, and she reached out blindly for something to steady herself.

  She found Mateo’s hand.

  He grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. As Mateo covered her body with his, trying to shield her from the burning debris falling around them, Nadia wondered if she’d saved Captive’s Sound but not their own lives.

  Mateo tried to shelter Nadia. Even though it seemed pointless, even though there was no way to run out of this place now, if he could give her a chance, buy her only a couple minutes, then he had to try.

  As he cradled her head against his chest and closed his eyes tightly against the stinging smoke, he heard Nadia whispering, “Love unbreakable—hatred implacable—hope—”

  The floor gave way. Or the world gave way. All Mateo knew was that there was no up, no down, only the fire and the feeling of Nadia nearly torn from his arms. And—and this strange blue light, which seemed to surround them all of a sudden.

  Guess that’s heaven, he thought, just before he passed out.

  When Mateo opened his eyes again, he did not seem to be in heaven, unless heaven looked a lot like a burned-out version of the caramel-corn stand.

  He took a deep breath, then coughed again so hard his ribs ached. But he pushed himself up on his arms to look around. “Nadia?” he whispered.

  Mateo couldn’t see her. What he did see was the smoldering ruin that had been the haunted house; it had burned down almost to the foundation. And around the ruins—firemen, bystanders, the smoke-stained remnants of the carnival in a town that seemed to be very much still here. Unless someone had been injured in the fire itself, nobody else even seemed to be hurt. Elizabeth’s apocalypse hadn’t come to pass. Nadia had won.

  But had she survived?

  He managed to stagger to his feet and start wandering through the debris of the carnival. There were people injured everywhere—minor injuries, to judge by the fact that almost everyone seemed to be conscious and ambulatory—but everything was so chaotic that it would be easy to miss one girl.

  But wait.

  She might have been a shadow on the ground with her black dress and sooty skin, almost lost in the night. Mateo ran to her, ignoring every ache and cut that told him to stop. As he came closer, the vision from his dream flooded through his mind again: Nadia lying dead at his feet.

  It had come true. Elizabeth’s curse held. He’d seen the future, and he’d failed to stop it, and now Nadia—

  Now Nadia was rolling over onto her back. She looked up at him groggily. “Mateo?”

  He fell to his knees and gathered her into his arms. Nothing he’d ever known felt as good as holding her close and knowing she was still alive, still here. The curse might still hold him, but he’d know for the rest of his life that the futures they showed him, no matter how true they were, could be defeated if he only held strong. “You’re okay. Nadia, you’re okay.”

  “Everybody—”

  “Everybody’s fine, I think. You did it.”

  Nadia gave him a crooked little smile. “We did it.”

  “Uh-uh. That was all you.”

  Then he kissed her, with all the desperation and fear he’d felt when he thought she was gone, and all the love, too. Nadia made this soft little sound in her throat, and then kissed him back so hungrily that he forgot everything else in the world.

  “You’re sure you’re all right now?” the old lady said. “Hate to leave you by yourself.”

  “I’m fine. Thank you.” Elizabeth waved the woman off and continued on her way home.
>
  Her body was blackened with grime, and her hair smelled of cinders. But she couldn’t stop smiling.

  As she reached the porch of her house, the door opened and Asa came out to meet her. “Well, well,” he said, in Jeremy Prasad’s voice. “I can’t help but notice that you’re very much still alive. Failure?”

  “Not at all. Not if it worked.”

  Asa nodded once. “It worked.”

  This went beyond Elizabeth’s wildest dreams. She had left the service of the One Beneath, been willing to die for him, because the devastation would be enough to crack the Chamber. And she had ripped out all the magic from Captive’s Sound, just long enough to accomplish this one most important task. Nadia had replaced it, though, which meant—

  Elizabeth lived. No longer immortal, no longer aging backward, but young, healthy, with her strength and her magic still at the ready. She had not had to die to liberate her lord and master; instead she could swear herself to his service again and help the entire rest of the way.

  The disaster she’d created, the one that would have consumed Captive’s Sound, had only taken place for one split second. It had destroyed only the first and most important thing she had wanted it to destroy: the bars of the prisoner’s cell.

  “What does it look like?” she asked Asa. “Our glorious work.”

  “Like an enormous crevasse ripped through the chemistry lab. Like a huge mess, basically.” He crossed his arms and looked at her sourly. “Were you expecting something grander?”

  “Its grandeur comes from its purpose.”

  First the bars are removed. Then the bridge is built. Then the One Beneath can finally enter the mortal world and reign supreme.

  Elizabeth had been willing to die to accomplish only the first of these tasks. Instead, it was done, and thanks to Nadia Caldani’s interference, Elizabeth remained alive, well—and ready to take on the next two tasks herself, as soon as possible.

  Nadia deserved all her thanks, really. She would have to think of something special.