Steadfast(53)

In the past, both Mateo and Verlaine had suggested trying to steal it. Nadia had told them it was far too dangerous to consider, and she still believed that.

But what if she didn’t try to steal it?

What if she tried to destroy it?

As Verlaine shouted their orders into the tinny drive-through speaker, Nadia sank deeper into thought, coming up with a plan.

“If you’re taking too much of a loss on the margaritas, what’s the point?” Mateo said. He was driving the truck, just in case his dad was able to talk the package-store owner into a free tequila tasting.

“The point is, we make it up by getting people back in the door. After all this craziness? Tonight, they’re going to panic. Tomorrow, they’re going to want to drink; trust me on that one. They come in for the two-for-one margaritas, but then they order dinner.”

Mateo couldn’t see it. Virtually everyone in Captive’s Sound now had a friend or family member in the hospital. Nobody was going to go out for margaritas and nachos. Still, if Dad wanted to buy the retail-price cases of tequila at the place one county over, in the end, it was his call to make. “Sure, okay.”

“Sure, nothing. You’re itching to argue with me, but something’s got you down.” An approaching car’s headlights briefly illuminated his father’s face; he was studying Mateo intently, so much so that Mateo wished he could squirm out of the way. “You know I heard about the sleepwalking, right?”

He didn’t want to talk this over with his dad. Not even a little bit. But he had to talk about it with someone, and there wasn’t anybody else. “I was hoping it kinda got lost in the mass hysteria.”

“Nothing gets past me. You hear that, Mateo? Nothing.” This was almost laughable, considering that Mateo was now Steadfast to a witch, and one of his “oldest friends” had been outed as a Sorceress, and Dad had missed all of it. But Dad’s voice was gentle as he continued, “Anybody can sleepwalk. Lots of folks do it. Doesn’t mean anything, except I’m going to put on another set of locks, because I don’t want you tripping on the steps. Are people giving you a hard time?”

“Only slightly harder than usual.”

“Listen to me. It’s all crap. Everything they say about that curse. Pure. Crap. I watched your mother go through this. All those years she had to take it alone—alone except for your grandmother, which if you ask me, was worse—but you don’t have that problem, okay? You’ve got me. You’ve always got me.”

Mateo knew a lot of guys didn’t get along with their parents; sometimes he was extremely grateful to be the exception to the rule. “Okay. Good to know.”

“And not just me! You’ve got your friends: Gage and that girl, the one with the weird hair—”

“Verlaine.”

“Something like that. Plus you’ve got your girl, huh?”

Mateo remembered how Nadia’s dark hair felt in his hands, the way she smiled at him, how she’d fought through the cold waves to save him from drowning—the memories shone inside Mateo like a shaft of light. “Yeah. I’ve got Nadia.”

“Then hang in there.”

Just when Mateo thought he might be able to stand telling his father a little more, he saw headlights approaching on the road—on both sides of the road. “Hey. That guy, is he passing or what?”

“Watch it. You get crazy people on the highway these days.”

Ahead of them, blue and red lights began to flash. The police? They weren’t speeding, so why would anybody try to stop them?

Mateo realized then that the cops weren’t pulling over the truck. They were blocking off the road completely.

As they reached the blockade, he also saw that these weren’t just police cars. Behind them was a line of vans and trucks. Mateo pulled over to the side, and Dad rolled down his window. “Officer? What’s going on?”

“Return to your vehicle,” said a stiff voice through a megaphone. “This county is under quarantine, under orders of the Centers for Disease Control.”

Quarantine.

The government thought Elizabeth’s dark magic was a plague or pandemic. They were going to rope off Captive’s Sound from the rest of the world to protect people from a disease that didn’t exist.

But that meant every single person in town was now trapped there, within Elizabeth’s reach, unable to escape.





18


VERLAINE HAD THE STORY UP ON THE LIGHTNING ROD home page by eight a.m.

Town Under Quarantine said the headline in the largest type that would fit on a standard page view. People could click through to see the photos she’d taken last night; since she couldn’t sleep anyway, she’d driven along every road that led out of town as far as she could, until she reached the vans and barricades. The sight of government people in white coats conjured up a few conspiracy theories, but while they were fairly rude about making her go back, they didn’t stop her from taking pictures. So apparently no top secret, illuminati-type stuff was going down.

Verlaine hadn’t been able to nail down an interview yet, but she’d been able to find other records of CDC quarantines and how they worked. That gave her material for an info box about how nobody was allowed to leave town, but how these things normally only lasted a few days—until the scientists figured out just what kind of disease they were dealing with.