She leaned against him and whispered, her breath soft against his lips, “If you kiss me, we’re both lost.”
It didn’t make any sense. Dreams didn’t have to make sense.
Just as he bent toward her, though, there was light—“Time to check your vitals!” in a chipper voice—and Mateo wasn’t awake but he wasn’t dreaming any longer, either. He let the dream go easily; the fog wouldn’t let him hold on to anything for long.
At three a.m., about when Verlaine was starting to think she might have calmed down enough to go to sleep, she thought again of Ginger’s note.
RUN.
“Forget it,” she groaned, throwing back the covers to grab her phone again. Even as she did so, Nadia texted again: Sorry if I woke you up—can’t sleep.
Me either. Hey, are we considering fleeing as a possibility? I would be good with fleeing. She really should have put that in the PowerPoint as Option D.
Nadia didn’t seem to be thinking about escape—at least not enough, in Verlaine’s opinion. Tell me more about that church fire. The one where Ginger lost her voice.
I was little. I don’t remember much about it. As Smuckers jumped up on the bed, Verlaine absentmindedly petted him, trying to remember anything Uncle Gary had ever said about the fire. He was the one who knew pretty much everything that went down around here. It was the Catholic church—they were in this really old building then, not far from the beach. There was some group meeting in the basement, but just like a women’s club or something. Most of them died. Ginger got out but she never talked after that.
That wasn’t a club. I’d bet anything that was a coven.
What? Are you sure?
Ginger’s a witch—and that fire can’t have been targeted only at her. There are more specific spells you could use against one enemy.
What kind of spells were those? Verlaine wondered if she really wanted to know.
Nadia kept typing. If Elizabeth only wanted to hurt or warn Ginger, the curse alone would have done it. But the fire striking a whole group of women who met alone … to me, that says coven.
A whole group of witches—right here in town—and Verlaine had never suspected. Someday soon, she figured she wouldn’t even be capable of being surprised anymore, but not quite yet. Why would a coven be meeting in the Catholic church? Isn’t that, like, a conflict of interest or something?
They probably said it was a knit night or a book club or something. It’s always easiest to hide in plain sight.
Her phone screen was the only light in her room; the shadows it cast made everything look unfamiliar. Verlaine realized she was shivering and clutched Smuckers closer, though the fat old cat meowed once in protest. So Elizabeth just goes around destroying other witches in town, whenever, wherever?No, because she hasn’t come after me, and she could. I wouldn’t be able to stop her, Nadia replied. That wasn’t exactly reassuring.
Why had she let herself get sucked into this? But Verlaine knew now—witchcraft had played a part in her life long before she’d ever met Nadia Caldani. She wound a strand of her waist-length hair around one finger, over and over, coiling it all; in the phone’s light it shone silver.
Uncle Gary and Uncle Dave kept the one formal portrait of her and her parents framed in the hallway, bigger than any of the many pictures they’d all taken together over the years. So she wouldn’t forget, they always said, like she remembered back that far to begin with. Verlaine was hardly a year old in that picture, chubby and grinning with her dark curls as her mom and dad hugged her tight. She’d lost everything she could see there—the parents, the baby fat, the dark hair, and even the smile.
Was Elizabeth the one who had taken it all away?
Her phone chimed again in her hand. Verlaine looked down to see Nadia’s text: The witches must have been planning on challenging her. That’s why Elizabeth killed them. She must have left Ginger alive but mute as a kind of warning.
Warning who?
Anyone else who was coming after Elizabeth.
Um, isn’t that us? Verlaine was starting to wonder whether “teen runaway” was the worst thing she could put on her college applications.
But as scared as she was, there was no erasing what she’d learned. Her whole life, Verlaine had been wearing the scars Elizabeth had given her; now, at last, she saw them for what they were.
Her uncles said that Mom had a fantastic sense of humor and had crocheted Verlaine’s baby blanket herself. That Dad used to sing Beatles songs to her when she was a baby to put her to sleep.
They deserved justice.
And if going after Elizabeth Pike was the only way to make that happen—then no matter how scary it was, no matter how dangerous, Verlaine had to try.
Sorry, Nadia typed. I didn’t mean to scare you.
Verlaine’s reply popped up on her phone almost immediately. Hey, if I need to be scared, scare me. We know what we’re getting into now. Right?
Right, Nadia said, hoping it was true. But Elizabeth was so ancient—wielded such unfathomable power—that she might be able to come after them in ways Nadia couldn’t even begin to guess. Their only hope was that she’d underestimate them, and that could only take them so far.
Besides—how could Elizabeth underestimate her? With so few skills, so little knowledge, no mother, no teacher, Nadia couldn’t be any real challenge to Elizabeth, and they both knew it.
Then she heard a high, wavering cry from her little brother’s bedroom.
Cole’s awake, she typed quickly. Gotta go. Then she dropped her phone and hurried to Cole before he could wake her father. Her bare feet padded against the old wooden floors, the one loose board squeaking underneath as she reached her brother’s door. “Hey, buddy. You all right?”