Steadfast

Best to say it as quickly and cleanly as possible, Nadia decided. “It’s not just an echo of an old spell. Whatever spell this was—it was cast a long time ago, but it’s still at work. It’s linked to your parents’ deaths. It’s unquestionably dark magic. And”—the next was just Nadia’s judgment call, but she was certain—“yes, Elizabeth was the one responsible.”

Verlaine didn’t react at first. Her pale face remained almost expressionless, and except for her wind-tossed hair, she didn’t move.

Mateo took a step closer to her. “Verlaine? Are you okay?”

“I could at least have brought some flowers.” With that, Verlaine crossed her arms and let her head droop, drawing into herself.

Verlaine had told them the story of how her parents had died—and even to her it was only a story, one she’d been told, because she was still a baby when it happened. She’d been found wailing in her crib; her parents’ dead bodies lay in their bedroom, both apparently so severely and suddenly ill that they’d been unable even to call for help before they perished. Now they knew Elizabeth was the one responsible. Elizabeth would have been there that day, ignoring baby Verlaine’s cries as she looked down on her two victims.

But why? Had Verlaine’s mother been a witch, too, someone Elizabeth destroyed for opposing her? If Elizabeth had killed the father out of spite, why leave Verlaine alive? Had Elizabeth kept people from caring about Verlaine so that, perhaps, nobody would investigate her parents’ deaths?

None of it made sense. Next Nadia would try spells to find out what had been done—that much, maybe, she could manage. However, she’d never be able to tell Verlaine why Elizabeth did it. That had died with Elizabeth.

She thought again of Mom walking out the door, leaving her family for good. Sometimes Nadia thought the worst part of it all was not knowing why.

Mateo took her hand as they both stepped closer to Verlaine. The touch was still new enough to send a thrill along Nadia’s skin. “Hey,” Mateo said quietly to Verlaine. “Are you okay?”

“Next time I’ll run by Jasmine’s first.” Verlaine brushed back her silvery hair; her hand was still bruised from the hospital IV. “That’s the florist in town, Nadia. I forgot you were new here and you might not know. I can run by there and pick up a dozen roses. Two dozen. Or—how many roses do you think they might have at any one time?”

Nadia wanted to tell Verlaine that everything would be okay, but she didn’t want to give her friend false hope. “Listen. I want to try something.”

“Another spell?”

“Yeah. I want to find out exactly what was done to you, and whether there’s some way to reverse it.”

Verlaine glanced up at that. “Can you reverse it?”

“Maybe. We won’t know until we try.” Nadia gave her an encouraging smile. As long as they remained near the bodies of her parents—the first victims of the spell, and thus the ones who bore the deepest marks of magic—Nadia thought they had a shot.

She raised her hand to her bracelet, ready to begin her next spell—

Verlaine screamed. Mateo grabbed Nadia and pulled her back—only moments before her hair stood on end. It was as if lightning struck, but instead of a second’s flash of lightning, a column of fire swirled up in front of them, twisting and writhing with its heat. The roar of it deafened Nadia, and she staggered into Mateo’s arms.

“My parents!” Verlaine cried. The flames danced on their graves. No, not danced—consumed. As Nadia watched in horror, the graves caved in, as though the coffins and bodies within them had instantly disappeared.

The fire vanished as quickly as it had come. For a few moments they all stood there, staring at the scorched earth, their quickened breathing the only break from the silence.

“What—” Verlaine had to stop and take a deeper breath before she could finish. “Nadia, what did you do?”

“That wasn’t me,” Nadia said.

From behind them came a voice: “No. It was me.”

They all turned as one. Standing beneath a stone angel was Elizabeth.

Alive and well.

Elizabeth smiled. “Just who I was looking for.”

2

THEY ALL SEEMED SO SURPRISED TO SEE HER. ELIZABETH would have assumed they understood the full dimensions of her power by now, but apparently not.

“You’re dead.” Mateo’s eyes narrowed; every word he spoke was rougher than the last. “You died in the carnival fire. You were trapped there; I saw you.”

“I saw you in the carnival fire, too,” Elizabeth pointed out. “You seem to be alive and well. Why not me? And Nadia also, I see.”

Important though Mateo had been to her in the past, Elizabeth had come here for one reason only. Nadia Caldani was the one who interested her now.

Nadia found her voice. “We stopped you. I know we did. Halloween was the only night you could have pulled it off. That means you failed.”

How naive they were. “Did you think my plan was to destroy Captive’s Sound? That was only collateral damage. You were clever to find a way around it, Nadia.”

And I remain alive to help the One Beneath on His great journey into the mortal realm, to bridge the gulf between His world and this one, not just for a moment, but for all time.

“The deaths of all those hundreds of people—maybe thousands—was only collateral damage?” Nadia’s expression was disbelieving, though Elizabeth wasn’t sure why. It hardly signified.