Spellcaster

Mateo considered that in silence, but there was something hovering beneath the surface—Verlaine could see how badly he wanted to speak. Finally he said, “What if we just destroyed the book?”

“How would we do that without finding it?” Verlaine said.

He shrugged. “I could burn her house down. I … might have thought about that anyway.”

Nadia put one hand on his arm. “Don’t.”

That was all she said, but the anger seemed to flow away from him.

Did they not know yet that they were crazy about each other? Verlaine had to wonder. But her curiosity was only a little moth darting about in her mind, around this great big flame that felt a lot like fear.

Elizabeth was evil and ancient and up to no good, and all they had to go up against her with was Nadia’s power and Mateo’s Steadfastness or whatever you would call it, and Verlaine’s own … newspaper internship. Wow, Elizabeth was probably throwing up from pure terror right now, only not. What were they going to do? Was there any point in doing anything? Should they just try to get their families to take cruises around Halloween? Verlaine tugged at the tips of her hair, then frowned as her fingernail caught in yet another tangle. It was a nasty one, practically matted. One of these days she was going to cut this whole mess away and go for a pixie cut. Anxious and frustrated, Verlaine hopped down from the ladder, her black Converse shoes slapping against the tile floor, and grabbed a pair of scissors to snip the tangle off.

As she did so, Mateo gasped.

Verlaine turned to look at him; so did Nadia, who frowned. “Mateo? What is it?”

“Verlaine’s hair,” he said.

She stared down at the little tangle still drifting down into the trash can. “It was never going to comb out. Besides, when it’s this long, nobody notices if it’s a little uneven on the ends.”

“I’m not talking about your hairstyle,” he said, like that ought to have been obvious, which it probably should have been. “I mean, when you cut it, there was this little … shower of sparks. Only for a second. Now it’s gone.”

“No, there wasn’t.” Why would there be?

Then it hit Verlaine: Mateo could see things other people couldn’t. He could see magic.

Nadia’s eyes widened. “What color were the sparks?”

“Dark red. Really dark. Nearly black,” Mateo answered. “The same as the ones—” His expression changed as he said, more slowly, “The same as the ones I saw the night I became Nadia’s Steadfast. They were surrounding you then, too.”

“What does that mean?” Verlaine grabbed a handful of her hair and stared at it, like suddenly she’d be able to see the magic for herself. “Did Elizabeth curse me? Or was it something with the Steadfast thing going wrong?”

“With that color, I’m guessing it’s old magic,” Nadia said, as if that were remotely comforting. “Something that happened a long time ago but still left—traces behind. And red probably means dark magic. Mateo, how come you didn’t mention it before?”

“I thought it was just part of the spell you were casting then,” Mateo said. “I wouldn’t have known the difference then, or even now, if you hadn’t just explained.”

Nadia stepped closer to Verlaine and stared like she’d never really seen her before. “Verlaine … when did your hair go gray?”

“Since I was little. It’s almost always been this way.” She was the only gray-haired person in her first-grade class photo. “It was brown when I was a baby. Not after that. The only pictures where I have dark hair are the ones when I’m little bitty, with my—”

Verlaine couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. The possibility pushing into her mind didn’t leave room for anything else.

Mateo took her arm as if he was afraid she might fall over. “Verlaine? What’s wrong?”

“With my parents,” Verlaine whispered. “I had dark hair while my parents were alive.”

The Guardian was always quiet, but now the silence seemed like another presence in the room, something so enormous and ominous that it surrounded them all. Nadia and Mateo exchanged a look before Nadia said, “How did they die?”

Legs trembling, breath weak in her chest, Verlaine braced herself against the front desk. “They said it was viral pneumonia. Had to have been. We—we all went to Uncle Dave’s house one night, and apparently everything was fine. Then he didn’t hear from them for a couple of days and got worried. He came over and found them; they’d died in their bed. I was in my crib crying. They had been dead for at least a day. It was like they both got so sick so fast they couldn’t even call a doctor.”

“Oh, Verlaine.” Nadia put an arm around her, which was the first time anybody besides her dads had tried to comfort Verlaine in so, so long. But she couldn’t really remember her parents, couldn’t remember that weekend she’d been trapped in a house with dead people. The pain she felt was for their absence even from her memories—and now, for something else besides.

“It wasn’t viral pneumonia, was it?” Verlaine whispered. “Was it magic? Did Elizabeth do something to them? Did she do something to me?”

“I can’t say. Not without”—after hesitating, Nadia finished—“visiting the graves.”

Verlaine grabbed her books. “I have to go.”