Steadfast

“Happens to be? There’s no ‘happens to be’ about it.” Her mother sighed and stepped into her apartment. “You might as well come in. I’m only going to explain this once, and it’s going to take awhile.”

The apartment was nothing like Nadia would have expected. Mom loved color and texture, making things beautiful; she always spent enough on decorating and redecorating their condo that Dad sometimes got annoyed. But this space was bare and joyless. The furniture seemed to have been purchased from secondhand shops almost at random, because nothing matched, and while everything was in good condition, none of it seemed pretty or even cozy. Her walls were bare, the floor uncarpeted. Her witchcraft materials lay out in the open; apparently her mom didn’t expect anyone to come in, ever.

It was strange not even to feel comfortable taking a seat. Nadia had been more at ease in a doctor’s office.

For her part, Mom didn’t seem to care whether Nadia sat or stood. She made herself comfortable on the sofa, hardly even glancing at her daughter. “It’s no coincidence that you’ve been confronted with a Sorceress. The One Beneath has more influence in the mortal world than we’d like to think. Probably He . . . aligned the forces. Smoothed the way. Made it more likely your father would wind up there, dragging you along.”

“I was brought to Captive’s Sound? On purpose?”

“You’ve been put in the way of temptation. I expect they’re tempting you now; that’s the only thing that would bring you here.”

“I’m not tempted,” Nadia insisted.

“They’ve offered you power, though, haven’t they?”

Nadia’s temper snapped. “They offered to teach me. I don’t have anyone else, not now that you abandoned our whole family. You know that. I won’t ever turn to Elizabeth—never. But it would be nice if I could actually learn everything I need to know about witchcraft. You walked off without thinking about that, didn’t you? Left me half-trained, forever. Do you have any idea how much that sucks? No, you don’t. Mom, do you even know that Cole has nightmares, all the time, and Dad—he doesn’t—”

“Stop this,” Mom said. “No, Nadia, I didn’t know any of that. And I don’t care.”

It felt like rage could actually make her head explode. “You don’t care?”

Mom held up one hand. “You can scream at me pointlessly. Or you can get the answers you came for. Which do you want?”

Nadia took a deep breath, then another, then another. “Answers.”

“I broke one of the First Laws.”

So, she could still be shocked. She’d never thought her mother would do something like that—even after leaving her family. Yes, Nadia had broken one of the First Laws herself when she told Mateo about witchcraft, but that was different; she’d had to tell him when he became her Steadfast. “What—why did you—”

“I didn’t know I was breaking it, you see. But it turns out there are good reasons for the law that tells us we must never bear a child to the son of another witch.”

“Wait. You mean Dad?”

“Normally witches know enough of each other to warn people away from relationships they shouldn’t be in. Witches learn to recognize one another; you must have picked up on that by now.” Mom sighed. “There are female relatives and coven members around to provide warnings if a mother has died, usually. But if that mother emigrated far from her native country, if she passed away long before she could find a new circle of witches, and she had only male relatives to survive her, men who could never have been told anything about the existence of witchcraft . . .”

Her father had told them the story. His mother had never really recovered after being uprooted from her native Iran. The political situation made it impossible for her to go back and visit, and both Nadia’s pedarjoon and Dad believed her grandmother’s sadness had robbed her of the fighting spirit she would have needed to recover from the sudden infection that had killed her.

Covens were secretive. Several existed in a major city like Chicago, but even those were wary of one another and unsure whether more lurked in the shadows. The likelihood that any American witch would have strong ties to a coven from Tehran in the 1970s—it was beyond remote. It was impossible.

“It’s so stupid,” Nadia said. She still stood in the center of her mother’s living room, like the unwelcome guest she was. “The secrecy about witchcraft. It cuts us off from knowing even the most basic things we should know about each other.”

“That secrecy has kept us alive,” Mom replied.

Nadia would have liked to argue that; at this point, secrecy was creating more problems than it solved. But she had to get her answers first. The rest could come later. “Okay, so, you broke one of the First Laws. It’s not like there are Witch Police who come and shut you down.” She paused. “Are there?”

“No. But these things carry their own penalties. Have you never asked why that would be one of the First Laws, Nadia? Why it’s forbidden for witching bloodlines to intermarry?”

“I always figured it was so we wouldn’t die out. So there would be more witches instead of fewer, like there would be if we intermarried all the time.”

“A good guess, but it comes from a modern understanding of genetics. The First Laws are far older than that.”

Something in Mom’s voice was familiar now in a way it hadn’t been before. She was in Teacher Mode, which Nadia had sometimes found frustrating, but now it encouraged her. Maybe, instead of the vacant-eyed shell who had greeted Nadia at the door, her mother would start acting like herself again. “Well, then, what?”