Spellcaster

“Yeah. Let’s.” Mateo tossed his cup into the nearest can. No need to tell Kendall good-bye.

“Come on. Race you!” Gage took off, and Mateo tried to catch him. When Gage started laughing, it felt for one moment like everything was okay—like Mateo was just a guy, no different from anybody else.

But overhead, the stars twisted in the horrible, roiling sky.

“Draw Four!” Cole slapped down his Uno card, and both Nadia and her dad groaned in mock horror.

While her little brother cackled in glee, Dad said, “You sure you didn’t stack the deck?”

“Nope.” Cole’s feet swung back and forth beneath the dining table’s bench. “I’m just that good.”

As Dad laughed, Nadia heard her phone chime with a text message, but she ignored it for the moment. Cole hadn’t been sleeping well lately—not the nightmares, not like before. But he was restless, getting up two or three times a night to ask for water or turn on random lights. That was a bad sign, one Nadia recognized as well as her father by now. They were concentrating on Cole now, trying to get him back to the good place he’d been in just after the move.

And worrying about Cole meant she didn’t have as much time to worry about everything else.

“So tomorrow I thought I’d make chicken soft tacos,” she said as she threw down a card. “What do you say to that?”

She’d expected Cole to cheer and Dad to simply agree, but Dad was the one who answered first. “You’ve been spending too much time in the kitchen lately. You should be going out. Having fun. If you want tacos—why don’t we go to that Mexican place in town? La Catrina? That’s the one.”

Nadia felt it almost like a slap.

“And that guy works there, right?” Dad gave her a look as he played his own card. “Mateo. The superhero.”

“He’s not a superhero,” Nadia insisted, though even now she couldn’t forget how Mateo had looked in the first moment she’d seen him, his face illuminated by lightning.

“Ah, but he’s not available. I forgot.” There was no way she was going to correct Dad on that one; if he found out Mateo wasn’t dating anybody, he was likely to suggest Nadia should propose. “Well, we could eat out somewhere else. Drive over to the next town, get some pizza, maybe. If La Catrina is a, I don’t know, a sensitive subject.”

“Pizza!” Cole crowed, before playing his Reverse card.

Between her brother the cutthroat Uno prodigy and her dad in look-I’m-so-sensitive mode, Nadia thought she needed a break from the table. “Hang on. I’m gonna check my phone.”

Obviously the text would be from Verlaine. They weren’t friends, exactly—there was something about Verlaine that kept Nadia feeling oddly distant—but they got along, and they were partners in figuring out whatever it was Elizabeth was up to. So this text would be either about the weird patterns of disasters spreading through Captive’s Sound and what they might mean—or questions about Novels class. Everything had been quiet today, so Nadia figured it was about Novels class, even though it was weird for Verlaine to be worrying about homework on a Friday night.

Instead, the screen read, Message From Mateo Perez.

Nadia sucked in a breath. For a moment she just stared down at the screen. Then she thumbed the message open to see: Meet me tomorrow at the beach? By my house. My lunch shift ends at 3.

Nadia wanted to go there tomorrow and just smack him. Mateo didn’t get to ignore her for a whole week and then just command her to show up at his convenience. No way.

And yet—seeing the message made Nadia feel as if something tight around her chest had finally gone slack and let her breathe.

Even if she did only show up to give him hell—she knew she’d show.

It was the kind of a Saturday that felt like a Monday. The sky hung low with gray, rain-thick clouds that threatened to burst at any moment, and the gusty wind was a reminder that winter wasn’t too far away. Dad took Cole to see some movie with computer-generated frogs or something, so she didn’t have to make up an excuse about where she was going.

Of course, she could have just told her father she was meeting Mateo—but that would have led to more Mr. Sensitive. No thanks.

Nadia hugged her shearling jacket around her as she walked from Oceanside Road toward the patch of beach nearest Mateo’s house. The homes here weren’t like beachfront property she’d seen elsewhere; normally, only the wealthiest could afford houses with ocean views, and the architecture proved it—vast decks of gleaming wood, windows so huge they appeared to be glass walls, that kind of thing. But it was obvious that the homes here were as ordinary and weather-beaten as any others in Captive’s Sound.

Apparently there’s tons of summer vacation business in towns nearby, Dad had said, back when he was explaining the big move. But it’s never taken off in Captive’s Sound, for some reason. That makes it cozier. And more affordable.

Yeah, Dad probably got a bargain on the house in the town being eaten alive by dark magic. Nadia could imagine the real estate listing. Cursed Victorian! 3 bd/2 bth, zoned inside soul-sucking net of evil. Act now!

As she neared Mateo’s house, she heard the now-familiar roar of a motorcycle and turned to see him driving up. Nadia hugged herself more tightly and stood very still the whole time he shut off his bike and dismounted. She took not one more step toward him. He’d have to bridge the rest of the distance.

“Hey,” Mateo said as he took off his helmet. His expression was hard to read. “Thanks for coming.”