Spellcaster

At first she had been merely distracted. Staying up late at night, mumbling over breakfast with dark circles under her eyes. Yet over the next few months, Mateo’s mother had … disintegrated. There was no other word for it. Her temper had become quicker; she said things that didn’t make any sense. Mom stopped bothering with dressing nicely or brushing her hair, and when she came to pick him up from school, he was ashamed of her. He hated himself for that feeling now. She was his mother, and he shouldn’t have cared what anyone else thought.

Before long, Mom didn’t remember to pick him up from school in the first place. Dad would try to talk to her, tell her to get help, but she’d sob brokenly, telling him there was no help for her and they both knew it. They’d known it from the start.

She’d taken a rowboat out on the ocean. There was no telling for sure whether it was an accident; Mateo thought she’d planned it that way, so maybe he wouldn’t know what she’d really done. He knew anyway.

Elizabeth turned toward him, more intent now than she had been before. “Focus. It’s important. If you saw this girl—what did you see? Have you seen anyone else you know? Have you seen me?”

“Not you. Not since that dream I had a few weeks ago.” It had been a weird one, something about them running through a haunted house; he wasn’t even sure that was one of the visions, since it could have been only a regular dream like any other. Mateo leaned his head back against the tree. Weak sunlight filtered through the elm’s spindly branches. “I see a lot of things I don’t understand. Rainstorms that seem to have been going on for weeks. Hospital rooms—lots of those. Jeremy Prasad trying to have a serious conversation with me, which absolutely can’t be the future, right? Because that would never happen. That girl with the gray hair, what’s her name, except maybe she was also glowing? That one was probably just a weird dream like any other weird dream. But Nadia—I’ve definitely seen her, and more than once. In one dream, she’s lying at my feet in the aftermath of this blazing fire. In another, I see her being sucked down into—mud, maybe quicksand, I don’t even know what it is, but it has her. I see her fighting something—something not human. But in a lot of the dreams, she’s in danger. Elizabeth—sometimes I see her dying. And when she dies, I’m with her.” He sought Elizabeth’s blue eyes. “What if I’m the reason Nadia’s going to die?”

She shook her head sadly, and he leaned his head on her shoulder. Neither of them said any more; what else could there be to say? The future was rushing toward him—his future, and his curse. Nothing Elizabeth or anyone else could do would stop it.

But maybe—maybe if he stayed away from Nadia—he might have a chance to save her.

A large crow landed on the grass near them, cocking its head. It flew away in another instant, so Mateo couldn’t be sure, but for a moment it had looked as though there were milky cobwebs where its eyes should have been.

Crazy, he told himself. You’re going crazy. It’s already begun.

3

“SO, LET’S SEE—NADIA CALDANI.” THE GUIDANCE counselor shuffled through the file quickly. “Transfer from Chicago. For your senior year only?”

“Unless I flunk.”

The counselor—whose desk nameplate read FAYE WALSH—gave her a glance that clearly meant, we can joke around, but not right now. “I meant, it’s unusual for students to move to a new school and new state for their senior year. Work thing for your parents?”

“My dad wanted to quit working for a big law firm. Sick of the crazy hours, the corporate crap, all of that.” Was she going to get lectured for using the word crap? Apparently not. Ms. Walsh remained unruffled. She was unexpectedly chic for a school counselor, or really for anyone Nadia had yet seen in Captive’s Sound: close-cropped hair, big silver jewelry, and a white sheath dress that set off her dark skin. This was somebody who had a life outside Rodman High; Nadia could respect that. “He took a job here in Captive’s Sound—public-interest law. Representing lower-income workers who have disputes with their employers for back pay, workplace injuries, things like that.” Dad always claimed to be a do-gooder at heart, but Nadia had been kind of surprised when he stopped talking and did something about it. “And they’ll let him work from home sometimes, so he can be around for me and my brother.”

“That’s a definite plus,” Ms. Walsh said. She ran one perfectly manicured nail along the edge of the papers spread out on her desk. “Your dad’s the one who signed all the forms and consents.”

Oh, great—this was one of those counselors who expected to actually counsel you instead of just handing you college brochures. Nadia decided the quickest way out was to explain it all and move on. “My mother left my father several months ago. Didn’t ask for custody or alimony or anything. So she’s out of the picture.”

“How often do you see her?”

“Never,” Nadia said. “I see her never. She doesn’t want visitation. She doesn’t pick up the phone when we call, and I don’t think she so much as listens to our voice mails. I used to email her some; I think my little brother still does. But she never answers. Mom is—gone. Past tense. So Dad’s the one handling all the college stuff.” Hopefully that would be enough to shut Ms. Walsh up.

Usually it wasn’t, though. Other people who had heard this story, like her former friends back in Chicago, would pile on the questions: Really? Never? That’s so awful. That’s so weird. Did she have a nervous breakdown? Did your father hit her when he got mad? Was there, you know, somebody else? These questions always made Nadia want to scream. She had no answers, none, and Nadia didn’t see why she was responsible for explaining why her mother was such a loser.