Spellcaster

“What happened?” Mateo tried to plow on. “What made Grandpa do this?” He’d never known his grandfather, who’d been institutionalized long before Mateo was born. But Mom had always said he was a loving dad … at least, until that final year.

“The curse is what happened. Scoff all you like. I used to. Franklin Cabot was handsome, wealthy, kind, courteous—all the things a young man should be. So I ignored the stories I’d grown up with, the warnings of my own parents, and married him. Had his child. For the first decade, all was as it should be.” Her voice softened for a moment, like she was remembering what it had been like to be happy. “Then the dreams began.”

Mateo wished the butler had brought in another chair for him to sit on. “Dreams?”

“He thought they showed him the future. Or so he claimed. I noticed he never mentioned these predictions until after they’d come to pass. At first I thought it was no more than a mania—a terror of becoming what his mother had been before him—and that he would get over it. I told him all would be well. But he became more and more fixated on the dreams. Stayed up for days on end in an effort to keep himself from dreaming.”

He remembered that—the way Mom would pace for hours at night, and how he’d laid awake, pretending he didn’t hear her, that everything was actually okay.

Grandma, oblivious to Mateo’s unease, kept talking. “Your grandfather’s frenzies became worse and worse. Then came that day when he was up in the attic with the old oil lantern, and I dared to interrupt his ranting and pacing. That was the day he did this and set the rafters on fire.” She put two fingers to her ravaged cheek. “They acted faster to save the house than to save my face.”

Sleep deprivation could drive anyone crazy, Mateo figured. Maybe that was all it was. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Generation after generation, the Cabots try to convince themselves of that. And generation after generation, they’re wrong. I tried to end it with your mother, you know. I told her never to marry or have children, and for so long she obeyed. Then your father moved to town when she was forty—even I thought it might be safe by that point—but here you are.” Grandma leaned back in her chair, as though exhausted; this was probably the most talking she’d done in a year. “You can break the cycle, Mateo. You can end this by refusing to father children. Don’t adopt, either. It will only be crueler for them when you go mad.”

“I won’t.” The words came out louder than Mateo meant for them to, so loud that her eyes widened. He tried again. “I mean, it’s not going to happen to me.”

“But it will,” she said quite calmly. “You are the only one of your generation. There is no rescuing you.” Her bony hand reached out to ring the small silver bell that summoned the butler. “A pity, really. You were such a lovely child.”

Then she turned back to her window, and the butler came, and there was nothing for Mateo to do but leave, even more freaked out than he’d been before.

As he stumbled out into the sunlight, which now seemed too strong to his eyes, the countless other questions he had welled up inside: Why did Mom go on for so long without it happening to her? When did it begin? What were the first signs?

And why was Nadia mixed up in it all?

But there were no answers, only the sure knowledge that tonight, when he slept, he would dream again. Once the madness began, it never stopped.

Nadia hung around after school as long as possible, speaking to no one, in hopes of slipping back into the chemistry lab. Of course, she didn’t have her materials with her, the various powders and bones necessary for more complicated magical work … but there had to be some kind of simple spell that would reveal the force underneath more completely.

“Hey.”

Startled, Nadia glanced over to see Faye Walsh standing at the far end of the hallway, a patent-leather file folder in one hand. “Oh. Hi.”

“Looking for something?” In other words, Do you have a reason for loitering on school grounds, or do you want to get a move on?

She’d have to try again another day. “I was just … finishing some stuff up. I’m headed out.”

Ms. Walsh nodded. “Have a good evening.” At least she did Nadia the courtesy of not watching her the whole way out.

So Nadia started home; the walk wasn’t too far, and though she’d only traveled it once, she figured this town wasn’t big enough to get really lost in. It was kind of weird, though, being surrounded by trees and quiet instead of the bustle of city life. Nadia felt safer in crowds. This kind of setting—with nothing but the sky overhead, nobody much around—she associated with trashy true-crime TV. They always put the abduction reenactments in settings like this, showed the cell phone or purse abandoned on the ground.

Nobody’s going to snatch you. Besides, you could protect yourself if they tried. She knew those spells backward and forward, could do them if she was drugged or stunned or anything. That was basic witchcraft self-defense.

Nadia cut across the running track on her way toward the road that led back to her house. There was a little patch of trees back there—probably where the stoners hung out, though right now nobody was around. Somebody’s ancient car, a maroon land yacht from the 1970s or something, was parked nearby but empty. No sound broke the eerie stillness that surrounded her.

It’s not eerie, Nadia reminded herself. Outside Chicago, you can actually hear things like the wind through the trees. Or—wait, what is that?