Steadfast

“For now.”

Elizabeth released his arm. Asa fell to his knees, clutching at the wound. She thought idly of infection, of the possibility of losing him to illness, but mortal concerns were distant to her, especially now that the end was so very near.

Mateo felt the change even before he saw it. The sensation was like static electricity crackling along his skin, but only on one side of his body. He turned into it and felt it grow stronger.

“Looks like our last night for a while,” his father was saying as he surveyed the nearly empty freezer. “Not that anybody’s coming in these days.”

La Catrina had turned as ghostly as the rest of Captive’s Sound. Fearing infection by the mysterious “disease” that had struck down so many, most people stayed home as often as they could. Rumor had it school would be canceled after Thanksgiving.

Right now, though, Mateo’s main concern was that strange, flickering energy he felt—the one he knew wouldn’t be evident to anyone who wasn’t a Steadfast. The magical forces at work had shifted yet again.

If only he could ask Nadia . . . but he couldn’t, and he had to begin to rely on his own new powers instead of always leaning on hers. Mateo squared his shoulders, ready to take control. “Dad, I need to head out for a little while. Is that okay? If anyone comes in, Melanie can cover.”

“Big if,” his father said, never looking away from the empty stores. “Go ahead. Take the whole night off. No point in both of us wasting the evening.”

Mateo nodded and hurried out of the kitchen, taking off his black apron as he went. Just as he went out the front door, he nearly ran into someone coming in—Verlaine.

“Hey.” She managed a smile for him, but it was clearly a struggle for her. “Listen, I’m kind of driving myself crazy at the house, and right now I don’t think I can deal with the hospital, so I was wondering if I could just hang—”

“Drive me to the ocean.”

Verlaine blinked. “Huh?”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her out with him. “Something’s going on. I don’t know what, but—it’s by the beach. That direction. I can tell. When we get closer, I can see it.”

“Oh, yeah, Nadia has your motorcycle.” Verlaine’s steps quickened to match his. “I was able to gas up the car today. So let’s go.”

For the first part of the drive, Mateo wasn’t able to see anything out of the ordinary—at least, for a Steadfast. The same strange magical flickerings that marked the town were still there, though it seemed to him they burned more feverishly than before.

Really, if anything was unusual, it was Verlaine herself. She was back in vintage mode with her leopard-print coat and a white silk scarf tied around her hair, but the attempt at glam didn’t disguise how exhausted she looked. Yet something had energized her, too. It reminded him of the way he felt when he was cramming for exams and drank coffee all night long. “You okay?” he said.

“I’m questioning the nature of love. I don’t know whether I’m strong enough to do all the things I have to do. Also I’m wondering whether it’s worth breaking into one of the houses on the Hill to get something to eat that’s not canned beets. How are you?”

Mateo thought about that for a moment. “Uh, the same, actually.”

They rounded a hill that brought them within sight of the sea, and then he couldn’t think about anything else any longer, because something was taking shape beneath the water. Something vast, immeasurable, and awful.

“Can you see that?” he said, pointing at the darkness beneath the waves. It looked so substantial that he wondered whether it could be made only of magic.

“The lighthouse? The water? What?”

“Never mind. It’s something only a Steadfast can see: this weird, huge shape under the water,” Mateo said. “But trust me. It’s not good.”

“Crap crap crap crap,” Verlaine muttered, flooring it.

They pulled up alongside the beach, not that far from Mateo’s house. Together they dashed onto the sand, as if getting any closer would help Mateo understand what was going on. It was low tide, and they were well out into flat, drying sand before he stopped running.

Verlaine came to a stop beside him. “Tell me what you see,” she said. “Describe it.”

“It’s like—like video you see on TV of whales. You know, this huge, huge shadow in all the blue. But this isn’t alive. It’s solid; I’m sure of that. But it’s also like a hole. A hole so deep there’s no bottom.”

“We’ll just pretend that made sense,” Verlaine said. The wind whipped the edges of her white scarf, which was brilliant in the deepening night. “Magic. It’s weird. Okay. Where is this thing?”

“Underneath the sound. Almost the entire sound.” The strange glimmering of energy he could see under the surface illuminated the outline of this shape. It came very close to shore, and went very far out to sea.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” Verlaine said. “Are we talking about the bridge the One Beneath crosses to get into our world?”

“No idea. But yeah, that would be my first guess.” Nadia, I need you. When didn’t he need her? Right now, though, Mateo felt it so sharply it was an almost physical pain.

Then a woman’s voice came from farther down the shore: “Steadfast.”

He turned to see Elizabeth striding toward him. She looked even more ragged than before; it was as though she didn’t remember how to brush her hair, or maybe even bathe. Her gray cloak whipped in the cold wind. Behind her was Asa, who followed haltingly, as if it was difficult for him to walk. His arm was wrapped in something, and clutched to his chest.