Steadfast(31)

“It is!” Nadia grabbed the piece of paper and bolted for the stairs. “Dad, can you take Cole Patrol for a minute? I’ll be right back down!”

She took the steps two at a time, yanked down the attic ladder, and climbed up as fast as she could, pulling the ladder up behind her. Goodwife Hale’s Book of Shadows sat there next to her jar of Hershey’s Miniatures, and Nadia helped herself to a Mr. Goodbar as she started flipping through.

Slowly, slowly—the pages are fragile—there. Nadia’s eyes widened as she smoothed out the crumpled paper she and Cole had both drawn on. Although she couldn’t yet be sure, it looked a lot like this symbol Goodwife Hale had sketched four hundred years ago. If this was what Elizabeth was trying to create—

Nadia quickly copied the symbol into her own Book of Shadows, making sure she matched every line, every angle. Beneath it she wrote the same words Goodwife Hale had written:

This sign shall mark His path.

The whole next day, Mateo could hardly pay attention in class. Part of that had to do with how people were still staring at him; more of it was the memory of waking up outside in the cold, alone, damaged from nightmares he knew would soon come back.

But as the hours wore on, as he slammed through homework right after school, his excitement grew. Nadia felt so sure about this spell of forgetting. Mateo knew firsthand just how powerful that spell could be. Yeah, it seemed almost too simple—but sometimes the most complicated problems had simple solutions. In fact, the simple ones were often the hardest to see.

If they could take Elizabeth out, lift this curse, protect everyone, make sure Nadia would be free from her corrosive influence forever—

And then what? Elizabeth would still be alive. She wouldn’t have her powers anymore; she might not even remember being a witch. What if she just turned into an ordinary girl?

Could he stop hating her? Could he even . . . help her?

His entire mind recoiled from it. Elizabeth had murdered his mother. He could never forgive her, not for that.

They all met out by Davis Bridge just after dark. The wind was even sharper than usual, and Mateo shivered in his jacket.

“Guys—” Nadia stood there, gaping at the warped wood planks and battered metal frame that was, or had been, Davis Bridge. In several places, he could see through the wood to the churning water of the sound beneath. “You said this was a bridge. Not . . . an ex-bridge.”

Verlaine shrugged, apparently comfortable in her leopard-print coat. “Over the water, you said. Over the water, we provided. Besides, yeah, it looks scary as all get-out, but it’s stood for more than a century. What are the chances it’s going to plunge into the ocean tonight?”

The wind blew harder, and the entire bridge shuddered in the gale. For a few long seconds all three of them stared at the bridge. Finally Mateo said, “Maybe we should get a boat after all?”

“No.” Nadia squared her shoulders. For someone so little, she could look fierce when she made up her mind; Mateo loved that look. “We’re here. This is the time. Let’s try it.”

Verlaine was the one who suggested they should spread out, so the bridge didn’t have to support the weight of all three of them in any one spot. Although Mateo wondered for a moment whether Verlaine needed to be out there at all since she wasn’t a Steadfast, that hardly even took shape as a conscious thought within his mind. Nadia was going to do something dangerous; they were going to be by her side. That was all there was to it.

He drew Nadia close and gave her a quick kiss. When she smiled up at him, he whispered, “For luck.”

He went first, inching out along one of the steel beams that seemed less crooked than the others. The last light of day clung to the edges of the clouds on the western horizon; otherwise inky blue had claimed both sky and sea. Mateo glanced down to see the whitecapped waves beneath him, then decided not to look at them again. Nadia came next, walking more confidently on the battered old boards than Mateo thought was wise—but she didn’t fall through, didn’t even stumble. Verlaine took up the rear, barely edging out onto the bridge. But she was far enough for Nadia to reach in a few steps. If any one of them ran into trouble—or, God forbid, the bridge started to collapse—they could form a human chain to keep them all safe.

The wind snatched at Nadia’s hair, sending her black locks swirling upward, away from her heart-shaped face, as she closed her eyes. Mateo found it fascinating to watch her cast a spell. No, she didn’t utter spooky incantations in Latin or anything like that—but still, there was something about her expression at that moment. That ultimate concentration, the way she seemed to forget all the cares of this world and become part of the next: It captivated Mateo. Sometimes it frightened him a little. But it was always, always beautiful.

Then he saw magenta light spiraling out from her, like a flower unfolding amid the storm, and Mateo knew his Steadfast power had revealed her true power at work—battling Elizabeth at last.

Elizabeth was depositing the eyes of her latest crow in her jar when she heard a rustling from the back room.

Cocking her head, she walked through her house to find her Book of Shadows fluttering on the floor, like a dying bird. As she knelt by its side, however, it fell open to almost the first page, to one of the spells she’d learned as a child: a spell of forgetting.

Even as she looked down at it, she felt a strange fogginess descend upon her thoughts—as though she were sleepy, or dizzy, or—