Steadfast (2 page)

Verlaine had told them the story of how her parents had died—and even to her it was only a story, one she’d been told, because she was still a baby when it happened. She’d been found wailing in her crib; her parents’ dead bodies lay in their bedroom, both apparently so severely and suddenly ill that they’d been unable even to call for help before they perished. Now they knew Elizabeth was the one responsible. Elizabeth would have been there that day, ignoring baby Verlaine’s cries as she looked down on her two victims.

But why? Had Verlaine’s mother been a witch, too, someone Elizabeth destroyed for opposing her? If Elizabeth had killed the father out of spite, why leave Verlaine alive? Had Elizabeth kept people from caring about Verlaine so that, perhaps, nobody would investigate her parents’ deaths?

None of it made sense. Next Nadia would try spells to find out what had been done—that much, maybe, she could manage. However, she’d never be able to tell Verlaine why Elizabeth did it. That had died with Elizabeth.

She thought again of Mom walking out the door, leaving her family for good. Sometimes Nadia thought the worst part of it all was not knowing why.

Mateo took her hand as they both stepped closer to Verlaine. The touch was still new enough to send a thrill along Nadia’s skin. “Hey,” Mateo said quietly to Verlaine. “Are you okay?”

“Next time I’ll run by Jasmine’s first.” Verlaine brushed back her silvery hair; her hand was still bruised from the hospital IV. “That’s the florist in town, Nadia. I forgot you were new here and you might not know. I can run by there and pick up a dozen roses. Two dozen. Or—how many roses do you think they might have at any one time?”

Nadia wanted to tell Verlaine that everything would be okay, but she didn’t want to give her friend false hope. “Listen. I want to try something.”

“Another spell?”

“Yeah. I want to find out exactly what was done to you, and whether there’s some way to reverse it.”

Verlaine glanced up at that. “
Can
you reverse it?”

“Maybe. We won’t know until we try.” Nadia gave her an encouraging smile. As long as they remained near the bodies of her parents—the first victims of the spell, and thus the ones who bore the deepest marks of magic—Nadia thought they had a shot.

She raised her hand to her bracelet, ready to begin her next spell—

Verlaine screamed. Mateo grabbed Nadia and pulled her back—only moments before her hair stood on end. It was as if lightning struck, but instead of a second’s flash of lightning, a column of fire swirled up in front of them, twisting and writhing with its heat. The roar of it deafened Nadia, and she staggered into Mateo’s arms.

“My parents!” Verlaine cried. The flames danced on their graves. No, not danced—
consumed
. As Nadia watched in horror, the graves caved in, as though the coffins and bodies within them had instantly disappeared.

The fire vanished as quickly as it had come. For a few moments they all stood there, staring at the scorched earth, their quickened breathing the only break from the silence.

“What—” Verlaine had to stop and take a deeper breath before she could finish. “Nadia, what did you do?”

“That wasn’t me,” Nadia said.

From behind them came a voice: “No. It was me.”

They all turned as one. Standing beneath a stone angel was Elizabeth.

Alive and well.

Elizabeth smiled. “Just who I was looking for.”

2

THEY ALL SEEMED SO SURPRISED TO SEE HER. ELIZABETH
would have assumed they understood the full dimensions of her power by now, but apparently not.

“You’re dead.” Mateo’s eyes narrowed; every word he spoke was rougher than the last. “You died in the carnival fire. You were trapped there; I saw you.”

“I saw you in the carnival fire, too,” Elizabeth pointed out. “You seem to be alive and well. Why not me? And Nadia also, I see.”

Important though Mateo had been to her in the past, Elizabeth had come here for one reason only. Nadia Caldani was the one who interested her now.

Nadia found her voice. “We stopped you. I know we did. Halloween was the only night you could have pulled it off. That means you failed.”

How naive they were. “Did you think my plan was to destroy Captive’s Sound? That was only collateral damage. You were clever to find a way around it, Nadia.”

And I remain alive to help the One Beneath on His great journey into the mortal realm, to bridge the gulf between His world and this one, not just for a moment, but for all time.

“The deaths of all those hundreds of people—maybe thousands—was only
collateral damage
?” Nadia’s expression was disbelieving, though Elizabeth wasn’t sure why. It hardly signified.

“I’m sincerely grateful.” Elizabeth saw no reason not to be honest. “You’re a gifted witch. But you’re untrained in the higher forms of the Craft, and without a teacher.”

Nadia’s head jerked back, as though she had been struck. Reminding her of her mother’s abandonment hit a nerve.

Elizabeth continued, “You need someone to guide you as you complete your training. Without instruction, you’ll never fulfill your potential, which would be a crime. Don’t you agree?”

“It’s none of your business,” Mateo said, stepping between her and Nadia.

“It is,” Elizabeth said, “if I become her teacher.”

The effect of this was what Elizabeth had anticipated: flat disbelief. Several moments passed before Nadia managed to say, “You’re not serious.”

“Is it not one of the guiding principles of the Craft? To offer instruction and assistance to one another?”

“You’re not a member of the Craft—not any longer!” Nadia retorted. The bruises on her face must have hurt terribly; they made her anger look ugly, almost desperate. “You’re sworn to the One Beneath!”

“You mean I broke one of the First Laws?” Elizabeth cast a meaningful look at Mateo. “Like speaking of magic to a male?”

Nadia shook her head. “That’s different.”

“Is it? A coven wouldn’t think so. They’d throw both of us out, not just me. We’re outsiders together, you and I. You just haven’t realized it yet.” The wind pulled at Elizabeth’s curls, made her skin prickle into goose bumps beneath her thin cotton dress. Now that she was no longer immortal, she could feel the cold. It was a curious sensation, new enough not to be unwelcome despite the discomfort.

The world was fresh to her again. After centuries of boredom, Elizabeth found this an almost boundless delight.

“Think of it,” she said to Nadia. “I’ve lived longer than any other witch. I know magic nobody else can ever touch. I’m willing to teach you everything. What have you got to lose?”

“My soul, for one.” Nadia wrapped her arms around herself as she stepped closer to Mateo, who embraced her. “Serving the One Beneath is evil. I’ll never do that.
Never
.”

People who had never been immortal had some strange ideas about
never
. Elizabeth considered pointing this out, but at that moment, the gray-haired girl spoke.

“You destroyed my parents,” she said, voice trembling. “Even their bodies. That was all I had left.”

“Blame your friend for that,” Elizabeth replied. “I can’t have you undoing all my hard work.”

“This isn’t happening.” The gray-haired girl’s words were hardly more than a whisper, as though she lacked the breath to put any force behind them. And she was breathing fast—far too fast. “I’m not seeing you. This is a dream I’m having. A nightmare. That’s all. It isn’t real.”

Elizabeth cocked her head. “Why would you think nightmares aren’t real?”

The girl fainted, collapsing on the ground, her gray hair stark against the dark earth.

“Verlaine!” Nadia immediately kneeled by Verlaine’s side, followed by Mateo. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing. It’s the shock, I suppose.”

“Get away from us.” Mateo looked as though he wanted to get up and punch her in the face, as foolish as it would have been to try. “You’re pure evil.”

Elizabeth shrugged and left. As she walked away, she heard them trying to rouse their fallen friend, their words caught in the rustling of the autumn leaves. It didn’t matter what they were saying, just as it didn’t matter that Nadia had refused her. Elizabeth had anticipated no other answer to this first invitation.

But the One Beneath had seen Nadia. Valued her potential.

And what the One Beneath wanted would be His.

Elizabeth would see to it.

“What the hell is Elizabeth doing alive?” Mateo said as he drove, occasionally glancing into the backseat, where Nadia had Verlaine’s head pillowed on her shoulder. “That should be impossible.”

“Not impossible.” Nadia kept fanning Verlaine’s face; although Verlaine was awake now, she was in a sort of daze.
I should have known she was too fragile for this!
Nadia thought. “Everything I thought Elizabeth was trying to achieve—that wasn’t even her plan. Just the shadow of her plan. Obviously I didn’t understand what she was up to at all.”

Mateo peered around again. “But you stopped her.”

“I stopped her from destroying the town. I didn’t stop her from doing whatever she actually wanted to do.” Her ignorance stung as badly as her failure. But Nadia refused to give in to it. Okay, fine, Elizabeth escaped this time. Not next time.

“So how do we figure out what she’s really up to?” Mateo said.

“I go through every resource I’ve got, starting tonight—and oh, my God, Mateo, look at the road! We nearly hit that truck.”

“Okay, okay.” Mateo turned to the front again. Nadia imagined driving Verlaine’s enormous clunker of a car was a far cry from steering his motorcycle around, and the last thing any of them needed was another accident.

Particularly Verlaine.

“Verlaine?” She patted the side of her friend’s face. “Are you okay?”

Wearily Verlaine nodded. “Sure. Fine. Except for the suicidal ideation, I’m dandy.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Mateo said. He sounded harsh; no doubt he meant to. His mother had killed herself while in the throes of the family curse.

“I’m sorry,” Verlaine said. “Really. I mean it. I just—seeing Elizabeth, and knowing she killed my parents—I wanted it to be a bad dream. I kept thinking if I wanted it enough I could just make her
not be there.
Which doesn’t make any sense, but my brain wasn’t exactly in good working order at the time. I’m not sure it is now, either. By the way, I might throw up.”

“It’s your car. Hurl away.” But Nadia scooted her legs away just in case.

Her mind raced the entire time they got Verlaine back to her dads’ house, apologized profusely for overtaxing her, and helped her uncle Gary get her tucked in. Nadia had hardly had a chance to catch her breath since the Halloween carnival, or any time to analyze what had happened there. It had never occurred to her that Elizabeth might have another agenda besides causing death and destruction.

She glanced over at Mateo as they walked away from Verlaine’s house. The two of them had saved countless people in town, even if nobody else ever knew it. That mattered more than anything else.

Their last victory had only been a partial victory. Fine. Nadia decided it was also only her first victory. One way or another, Elizabeth was going down.

“I want to go straight to Elizabeth’s house with an ax,” Mateo confessed. “That’s a bad idea, right?”

“Very bad.” Nadia shuddered as she remembered the one time she’d broken into Elizabeth’s home. Elizabeth hadn’t been there; she hadn’t needed to be. Because her Book of Shadows was there—the spell book each witch created throughout her lifetime. With every spell added, a Book of Shadows would gain magical power until it could become a vital source of energy. Elizabeth had been around for about four centuries, which meant her Book of Shadows was so powerful it was nearly sentient. The book itself had trapped Nadia in cobwebs, attempting to keep her until Elizabeth could return to deal with her personally. Her skin began to itch as she remembered the spiders, and she swatted once at her jean legs. “Ax murder? Bad idea, the vast majority of the time.”

“Okay, fine, no ax murdering—but what
are
we doing? We can’t just let Elizabeth get away with it!” Mateo looked furious as he turned to her, but when their eyes met, his expression softened. He slid his arms around her waist and drew her near.

The touch surprised Nadia more than it should have. But they were still so new. She had to remind herself that he loved her
back
, and they actually had a chance to make this work. After everything they’d been through, this sense of possibility was completely unfamiliar. Something had gone right in her messed-up life, just this once. Love was dizzying, wonderful, even a little bit scary—

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Elizabeth makes me crazy.”

“Who could blame you?” Perhaps the cruelest part of Elizabeth’s manipulations was the way she had convinced Mateo that she was his best friend, even his only friend. He had loved Elizabeth like a sister until the moment he learned that every fond memory he had of them growing up together was false, a lie implanted to win his trust and make him easier to use. “Of course you hate her. You have the right. But we shouldn’t confront her until we know what we’re doing.”

“I know. I get that. It’s just hard to think about anything else, you know?” Mateo brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead; though he was careful, and his touch soft, he came too close to one of her cuts. The sensitivity crackled across her nerve endings. Nadia sucked in a breath; Mateo’s eyes darkened and he brought her closer. “Hey, Dad’s at La Catrina for another couple hours. You want to come by the house?” His smile was teasing, warm, hopeful. “Give us both something else to think about?”

“I can’t. Dad and Cole’s flight got in a little while ago. They’ll be here within the hour.”

The thought of going back to Mateo’s for a while—lying in his arms, kissing her fears away—warmed her from the inside.

But right now Nadia wanted to see her father and brother even more. After all, when they’d left for New York the day before Halloween, she hadn’t known whether she would ever see them again.