Steadfast(28)

The quartz ring on her finger felt warmer against her skin as she called up ingredients for her spell:

Death in ice.

Hatred forever hidden.

A child never born.



Old memories sliced through her, so familiar that she could bear them without flinching.

“Please,” the young man whispered. He was lost in the woods, a blizzard freezing the world around them, while Elizabeth stood and watched him from within a protective fire. “Please help me.” He had no more strength to speak after that, could only lie there as his skin turned blue and the tears in his eyes froze.

“You will not raise your voice to me,” her husband growled, lifting his arm in a way that meant only a threat, not a blow. Elizabeth wanted to use her spells to strike him down, but no man could ever see magic, could ever know that it existed, and so she meekly nodded and gave him a smile, that he might believe himself loved.

“Why won’t it come?” The girl writhed in her childbed, trusting Goodwife Pike to help her. There were tisanes of certain roots that might have brought the baby, certain spells that would have done more, but Elizabeth knew she would need this memory someday, and so she merely mopped the girl’s brow and waited for the hours and pain to bear her down to death.

Elizabeth turned her hand upside down and opened her fingers. The bone dust remained suspended, a small, swirling cloud. She stepped back and let it rise until it steadied at eye level.

Asa looked bewildered, as well he might; this magic was obscure even for her. “What is that?”

“Something for Nadia Caldani,” Elizabeth said.

“Another warning?”

“Indirectly. Call it a sign of things to come.”

Mateo was dreaming.

He knew when he was in one of the visions by now. But that didn’t make them any less immediate, less real—or less frightening.

The waves churned beneath the boat, twisting his gut with nausea. Overhead lightning split the sky. Mateo hung on to the sides of the boat and screamed, “Nadia!”

She didn’t hear. He could see her in the distance, a dark, small shape almost lost in the whirling gray clouds and water. Her hair whipped and snapped in the wind, like a scarf of silk streaming behind her.

He had to get to her somehow. He had to get to her in time.

In time for what?

The boat suddenly rocked as though it had struck a shoal, but when Mateo turned he saw Gage sitting next to him. Gage’s dreadlocks didn’t blow in the breeze; his expression was stoic. It was as though nothing happening around them had the power to move him.

They were going too fast now. Their boat was slicing through the water at a speed so great it seemed to steal Mateo’s breath away. Nadia was coming closer, closer—but soon he would race by her and she wouldn’t even see him—

“Drop anchor!” Mateo shouted to Gage. “Drop anchor now!”

Gage lifted the heavy metal anchor, raised it high, then smashed it down toward Mateo’s head—

Mateo woke with a start. In that first moment, he could only think, Vision.

But it still felt very real. Too real. Like, for instance, the flat, hard surface beneath his back—and, when he opened his eyes, the night sky above.

Cold wind made him hug himself tightly as he sat up and stared in disbelief. He was no longer in his bedroom. Instead Mateo lay in the rowboat tethered to the nearest dock. His hands were scraped and raw; even in his dreams, he’d tried to undo the ropes, to actually live out the vision playing within his head.

Was it a vision or was it real? Terror seized him at the thought of Nadia out there on the water alone—


No. It had to have been a vision. His boat had never left the dock, he was wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants that left him shivering in the cold, and Gage was nowhere to be seen.

But the vision had drawn him out of his house. Made him do something dangerous. If someone had come upon him during the vision—someone Mateo might have thought was hurting Nadia—

I could have done anything. Anything. And I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.

Mateo shuddered as he realized: This was how people began to go mad.





10


AS PEOPLE PUSHED PAST THEM IN THE HALLWAY, HURRYING to their morning classes, Nadia smoothed Mateo’s hair back with her hands. “Night terrors can happen to anybody,” she said. “Lots of people try to act out parts of their bad dreams. You don’t know that it had anything to do with your curse.”

“It wasn’t a regular nightmare,” Mateo insisted. “It was one of the visions, but this time it made me do something dangerous. Almost crazy.” He still looked shaken, and Nadia caught others staring and whispering. The mad Cabots, the ones who always went insane—that was the reputation Mateo had had to live with his whole life. Now he’d come to school with his clothes slightly askew, his entire body tense, going on and on about his rude awakening that morning. Nadia realized now that this was one of the ways the curse worked against its victims: It scared them. Then when others saw how unstable they looked, that began the cycle of alienation, whispers, rejection. Someone left so alone while scary things were happening to them—well, no wonder they freaked out.

But Nadia knew the truth. Mateo wouldn’t have to bear this alone.

“Listen to me,” she said, reaching up to take his face in her hands. “The curse dies with Elizabeth’s power. Got it? When we take her down, you won’t have to worry about the dreams getting stronger. You’ll never have to worry about them again.”