Spellcaster

“Did you hear me? I’d have to break all my ties. I wouldn’t be a witch any longer. Wouldn’t be able to cast any spells, ever again.”

When had she gone from assuming the Craft was lost to her to wanting to hold on to it with all her strength? Was she just fooling herself now? Nadia couldn’t be sure—of anything. Magic itself had changed around her. Who knew what would be next?

After school—and a few more hours during which he was able to cool down—Mateo sought Nadia again. She and Verlaine were in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of Verlaine’s enormous maroon car. Verlaine was the one who waved at him cheerily, like they were pals and this was any other day. “Hey! We were wondering if you’d show!”

“I’ve showed.” He glanced around, but people were emptying out of the parking lot, and the school itself, as fast as possible. Usually Mateo did the same. If you wanted to be left totally alone, hanging around Rodman after 3:30 p.m. was a good way to go. The only person who seemed to be paying them any attention was Ms. Walsh—but after a glance in their direction, she slipped into her car to drive away. “Sorry for freaking out.”

Nadia shrugged. “No worries. The news was pretty freak-worthy.”

The wind played with her shining black hair; she could look so casual discussing this, a literal matter of life and death. But it wasn’t that she didn’t take it seriously—Mateo could tell that much. It was more that Nadia could handle it. There was a center to her—a purpose, a definition—that Mateo had almost never sensed in anyone else. It drew him as strongly and inexorably as gravity pulled them to the earth.

Nadia continued their lunch conversation as if they’d never broken it off. “Like you said—yeah, I’ve already been in town long enough to hear about the family curse. I’m afraid curses are very real. Witches aren’t ever supposed to cast them, but it can happen. If your family has been cursed for generations, then a very powerful witch laid this down long ago. Can you tell me more about how it works? I know it’s supposed to lead to insanity, but there could be lots of reasons why.”

Mateo straightened. Nobody had ever given him a chance to explain. “We start seeing the future. Or, up until recently, I thought it was that people believed they saw the future and that was the first sign they were losing it. But—I’ve been having dreams, and they’ve started coming true.”

“Oh, this is unbelievable,” Verlaine breathed, but she wasn’t trying to move away from him. She only wanted to hear his side of the story. She wasn’t so bad, really. “This is not good news. Nadia was explaining this just last night! Seeing the future makes people go loco.”

“Tell me about it.” Mateo’s mother had rowed out to sea so she could drown. His grandfather had died in the house fire he himself had started, the one that had scarred Grandma for life. His great-grandmother committed suicide in City Hall with a shotgun. So it went—on and on, further and further back—a string of suicides, homicides, and self-destructive behavior that had marked at least one Cabot in every generation all the way back to their arrival in the New World when Rhode Island was still a colony. They’d all gone crazy—because each and every one had seen the future, just like him.

“You dream of the future. Okay.” Nadia still seemed totally calm. “What are your dreams?”

Mateo couldn’t speak at first. I’ve seen you lying dead in my arms.

But he couldn’t say that to her. Not yet and maybe not ever.

So he went for the simplest thing first. “The night of the wreck? I dreamed about your family’s car going into that ditch. That’s why I was there. I had to see if the dream would come true, and it did. I knew I’d have to pull you out.”

Once again Nadia brushed her hand along his forearm. She had such small hands. “Half the burden is not being believed. Maybe not believing in yourself. But you know the truth, and now we do, too. And you’re strong, Mateo. Strong enough to take this.”

He had to laugh at her then, though he instantly regretted it. “Sorry. I mean, it’s nice for you to say that. But you don’t actually know me. So you don’t have any idea whether I’m strong or not.”

“You have to be. Your whole family has to be. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to bear it at all. That’s probably why your family was cursed in the first place—because you guys could endure what nobody else could.”

All his life, Mateo had heard people speak of his Cabot blood as tainted, sick, even twisted. Never before had anybody said that they might be strong. That he might be.

As she absentmindedly tried to work a tangle out of her long hair, Verlaine said, “So why did somebody curse the Cabots?”

“So they’d know the future and reveal it,” Nadia said slowly. “That way, the witch gets to know what the future holds, and the Cabots are the ones who endure the consequences. Mateo, who do you tell about your dreams?”

“Nobody. I mean, nobody besides you guys, today, and Elizabeth, of course.”

Nadia’s hand instantly went tense, and she pulled back from him, suddenly rigid. “About Elizabeth—”

“What about her?” Was there something magical after her, too? Mateo wasn’t sure he could take it if anything happened to Elizabeth. He’d have to warn her. The next time they talked, he’d be able to tell her all of this—that the visions of the future really were true, that the curse was true, too, but there might be a way for him to deal with it. Being able to say all this to his best friend felt like the greatest relief imaginable.