Spellcaster

“Mateo, look,” Nadia insisted. “Really look.”

It was almost as if he had to force himself to do it. Why? But slowly the realization crept in as he focused on one figure in the back of the family group, standing slightly to the side—an older woman whose long, curly hair was half-chestnut, half-gray, and there was something about the eyes—

He whispered, “Elizabeth.”

Even this far back, she’d always been there, like a leech or a remora on the side of his family, sucking them dry.

“You’re important to her.” Nadia never took her eyes from the portrait. “All of you. Her magic may be linked to your family in some profound way we haven’t yet guessed. The visions—as horrible as they are, as devastating as they can be—that’s not all she’s done to the Cabots. Not all she’s done to you. We’ve only just started to figure her out.”

Mateo’s mouth felt dry. The rage spiked within him again, white-hot and blinding, but he refused to give in to it. Going crazy over this, no matter how understandable it might be—that was just what Elizabeth wanted.

The parlor door opened, and the butler said, “Follow me.”

He led them back into the music room, where Grandma always saw him when he came. Never once had she invited her grandchild to so much as come upstairs. Despite the fairly early evening hour, she was already in a nightgown, around which she’d bundled a heavy quilted robe. Though her hair was mussed, she remained as haughty as ever. Of course she was angled so that the scarred side of her face was in shadow.

“The butler told me you did not seem crazed,” Grandma said, instead of hello. “But I should warn you that he is armed.”

“Great to see you, too.” Mateo gestured toward Nadia. “This is Nadia Caldani, my—friend.” He didn’t yet have the right to call her more than that. “Nadia, this is my grandmother. Grandma, Nadia has some questions only you can answer.”

“If you are here to ask if it’s safe to become romantically involved with a Cabot,” Grandma said to Nadia, “the answer is no.”

Nadia stepped closer. “What do you know about Elizabeth Pike?”

The question obviously caught Grandma off guard. “ … Elizabeth Pike? Good Lord. What do you need to know about her?”

“Everything you can remember,” Nadia insisted. She was the first person Mateo had ever seen who wasn’t intimidated by Grandma at all.

If Grandma hadn’t been so completely bewildered by the question, Mateo thought, she would have thrown them both out. Instead she sat there searching for what to say. “She was—fast, we used to say. The kind of young girl who went around throwing herself at men, including my husband. Not that there was anything improper between them. He told me that and … I still believe him, despite everything else. But the way she hung around him! It was shameless. And he was weak in the way most men are weak. A pretty young girl paying him attention—well. He never strayed, but he confided in her. Told her of his dreams, his thoughts, that sort of thing. No doubt it propped up his ego. Whatever can that matter now?”

“You’d be surprised,” Mateo said. His thoughts tangled together and buzzed in his head like a swarming hive. Elizabeth had used his grandfather the same way she’d used him.

Nadia nodded. “And how did Elizabeth know your daughter? Mateo’s mom?”

“Lauren took that girl on as if she were a little sister, or perhaps even a daughter.” Grandma said it automatically, without any curiosity about how someone she remembered as a teenager with Grandpa might still be a teenager years after his death. She doesn’t let us remember, Mateo thought with a chill. Elizabeth doesn’t let us recognize the evidence in front of our own eyes. “And Miss Pike was a bad influence. I’m convinced to this day that she was the one who told Lauren it wasn’t too late to have a child. Talked her into trying for a test-tube baby.”

Mateo could have reeled. It wasn’t that Grandma regretted his ever having been born; she’d already made that clear plenty of times. What killed him was that Elizabeth was the reason he’d been born. He was her … invention. Her possession, in more ways than he could ever have guessed.

“Test-tube baby,” Nadia whispered. “That’s what they used to call IVF, right? In vitro fertilization?”

“I have no idea what the technology is called.” Grandma sniffed. “All I know is, it made possible what should have remained impossible. It allowed a woman past childbearing years to give birth to a son who will carry on the curse of the Cabots.”

Nadia turned to Mateo, almost wild with excitement. “Mateo, don’t you see? This is why you’re my Steadfast! No man conceived of woman!”

Mateo’s eyes widened as he realized what she meant. Technically, his cells first started dividing in a petri dish somewhere. Did that mean he wasn’t “conceived of woman,” for the purposes of whatever old curse or spell kept men from holding magic? That had to be it.

“What are you blabbing on about?” Grandma said, her good eye narrowed.

Clearly excited by the revelation, Nadia said, “You’ve actually given us a lot to consider. But there’s just one more thing I need to know—did your husband or your daughter ever mention any—weak spots or vulnerabilities Elizabeth Pike might have? Places she absolutely had to go, possessions that were overly important to her?”