Spellcaster

“Confronting my mortality?” Gage didn’t look too thrilled about that.

Dad, though, seized on the idea. “This is definitely something you kids should think about. Come on. We’ll get snacks in the cafeteria. Healthy snacks!”

“Absolutely,” Verlaine said, shepherding them both out the door. “Mmm. Fruit.”

As soon as the hospital-room door swung shut, both Mateo and Nadia burst out laughing. “How does she do that?” Nadia said.

“No idea.” But already Mateo’s attention had returned to Nadia, and to whatever witchcraft had brought him here. “Nadia—what happened? How did you save me?”

She pressed her lips together in a thin line for a moment before answering. “Ginger tried to cast a spell of forgetting. So you wouldn’t remember what you’d learned about her. Of course, she didn’t know you were a Steadfast. You boosted the power of the spell, and basically—you forgot everything. Your body forgot how to live. It was dangerous, way more than she meant it to be.”

It helped a little to know that Ginger hadn’t really tried to kill him. They were hardly friends, but still—she’d given him his first haircut, back in the days when he was so little he’d thought it would hurt. “But you made me remember, huh?”

“I was going to try,” Nadia said, “but I didn’t get the chance. The spell was lifted as soon as I reached you.”

“How?”

But he knew. He knew even before Nadia said her name: “Elizabeth.”

Why? Why would she save him? She was trying to destroy him.

It made him angry, so angry he wanted to stalk out of the hospital right now, go straight to Elizabeth’s house, and demand the answers.

He wanted to shake her by the shoulders until her chestnut curls tumbled around her blank, beautiful face. Wanted to scream at her until he didn’t have any breath in his lungs. Why did you curse me? Why did you make me believe you were my friend? Why did you do all that and then save my life?

The black rage made him tremble, and he lay back on the bed, trying to slow his breathing. If a doctor came in now, they’d think he was having another “seizure” and he’d be stuck in here for another day.

“Hey.” Nadia put her hand on his shoulder, but he was so angry he couldn’t even appreciate the touch. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I mean, no. Physically I guess I’m fine.”

Mateo knew he wouldn’t have to say the rest.

Nadia’s hand slowly slid from his shoulder as she hugged herself. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said absently.

“Isn’t it?”

He shook his head, but at the moment, his fury eclipsed everything else—even Nadia sitting next to him.

Confronting Elizabeth was the worst thing he could do. If she’d restored his memory, she could probably steal it again. And if she started to wonder how he knew about magic, she’d realize Nadia had broken one of the First Laws to tell him. That could only put Nadia in greater danger.

But he knew he’d never feel complete—not for one second of one day—until he’d had some kind of revenge.

Elizabeth had ruined so many lives. She was trying to ruin his. No way was he going to let her get away with it.

No way in hell.

“So, I heard that they were, like, going to put him in the psych ward, but then they figured out the collapse was, like, physical instead of mental—who knew, right? And so they thought maybe he had a brain tumor, and they were going to do emergency surgery, and they were starting to shave his head, and that’s why his hair looks like that.” Kendall Bender led her crew of girls down the hallway past Nadia, who was stashing her stuff in her locker. “But then he didn’t have a tumor and maybe it was a seizure, and I was thinking, maybe there’s something in the food, like, at that restaurant? Because I like the burritos there and all but you can never tell with stuff that’s, like, you know, foreign.”

Nadia didn’t bother contradicting Kendall. Her mind was too full of what she had to do today. Right now, beyond anything else, she needed to get to Mateo.

All last night, she’d tossed and turned. There was only one thing she could do—only one responsible choice she could make—and as much as she hated it, Nadia knew what she had to do. She couldn’t put this conversation off one moment longer.

When she finally saw Mateo, he was walking across the gravel area of the quad. His haircut really was lopsided—Ginger had freaked out midsnip, apparently—but otherwise Mateo looked fine. Amazing, really. When he saw her, his face lit up in a smile that warmed his brown eyes and made something inside her melt.

Just get it out, she told herself. Walk over there and say it.

Already Mateo was coming over to her. Brown leaves caught in the wind skittered across the gravel, in front of her feet. Nadia clutched her hoodie more closely around her and tried to find her strength.

“Hey,” she managed to say as he reached her. “You’re back.”

“When you’re glad to be at school, it’s a bad sign.” He grinned at her, but she couldn’t find the strength to smile back. Instantly Mateo leaned closer. “What’s wrong? Is it Elizabeth?”

“No. I mean, yes, but—not exactly.” This wasn’t doing either of them any good. Nadia forced herself to meet Mateo’s eyes as she said, “I can’t do this.”