Steadfast(6)

And I thought Chicago winters were bizarre, Nadia thought.

Mateo kissed her again, sweet and swift. “Okay. Come on, let’s get you home.”

“We went to Chelsea Piers!” Cole said as he towed his little backpack upstairs, Nadia by his side. “We got to go wall climbing and ice skating both!”

“Awesome!” She ruffled his hair. “You had a good time, huh?”

“Definitely.”

Her father called from the hallway, where he was hefting the suitcase to his room. “Velma’s totally all right?”

He could never recall Verlaine’s name correctly. Dad wasn’t very absentminded; in fact, he was pretty sharp. Nadia wondered if his inability to remember his daughter’s best friend was part of the strange spell that surrounded Verlaine.

She said only, “Apparently Verlaine’s fine. The hospital says there’s no permanent damage. She’s still kind of weak, though.”

“Well, thank goodness she woke up. Scary stuff.” He appeared in the doorway of Cole’s room, where Cole was “unpacking” by taking his stuff from his backpack and throwing it on the floor.

Nadia thought her dad looked completely wrung out; a few straight days of handling Cole on your own could do that to you. She laughed. “Did you get a moment to yourself the whole time?”

“Oh. Well.” His face colored slightly. “Remember how the Paulsons moved to New York just before we moved here? I, ah, called Ethan’s mom while we were in town, so he and Cole could get together and play. Thought it would be fun for him to see one of his old friends, you know?”

Never pausing as the mess around him increased, Cole said, “We all went and got pizza.”

Nadia wasn’t quite seeing the reason for her father’s awkwardness until, with a start, she remembered that Mrs. Paulson had been widowed a couple of years ago. “Wait. You went on a date?”

Dad gave her a look that clearly meant Not in front of Cole! but her baby brother was oblivious. In a low voice he said, “No, it wasn’t a date, but—once we got there, I realized Gretchen maybe thought it was, and . . . I think she felt rejected, and it kind of put a damper on the evening.” He frowned. “That’s too much information, isn’t it?”

“No,” Nadia replied in a small voice, though she profoundly wished she’d never heard a word of it. Okay, Dad hadn’t been MILF-hunting in New York, but how long would it be before he started dating?

Even though Mom was long gone, even though she’d made her desire for the divorce emphatically clear, Nadia couldn’t imagine seeing her father with someone else.

Obviously Dad had picked up on her mood, and blessedly changed the subject. “How was the Halloween carnival? You made it, right? Not snowed under by homework?”

“Oh, did you not hear?” Nadia had thought it might make the news, but that had been stupid of her. Like anywhere else in the whole world would pay attention to Captive’s Sound. “The haunted house burned down.”

“What?”

“To the ground. Nobody knows what happened.” Which was putting it lightly. “There’s some big town meeting about it soon.”

Simon Caldani shook his head in disbelief. “Well, thank God we didn’t go. Wow. You were right about that being unsafe.”

“Mmm-hmmm.” Nadia nodded. Before they’d gotten home, she’d loosened her ponytail so that her thick, black hair fell around her face and hid the small cuts and bruises. “Good thing Cole was nowhere near it.”

“At least nobody died,” Dad said as he went to stand by Cole and the pile of dirty clothes he’d created. “Hey, buddy, remember how we talked about the laundry hamper?”

She hugged herself as she turned away. Someone had died—not as a result of the carnival fire, but by Elizabeth’s hand. A guy from her class, Jeremy Prasad, had been murdered; Mateo had been there, enchanted by Elizabeth and unable to stop her. It was weird that she hadn’t heard any town gossip about it; even the somnolent newspaper, the Guardian, had roused itself enough to cover the haunted-house disaster, but had reported nothing about the suspicious death of a seventeen-year-old.

Maybe the body hadn’t been found yet. They’d been on the beach; maybe Jeremy’s corpse had been carried away by the tides.

Nadia closed her eyes, overcome for a moment by the horror of it. She hadn’t liked Jeremy Prasad much. Nobody could. He’d been a snob, a sexist, and a bully. But in the end, he’d been cut down for no reason at all.

Mateo had said Elizabeth gouged out Jeremy’s eyes.

Why the eyes? What magic is that a part of? Was it part of what she was really up to on Halloween, or something else?

She didn’t know, couldn’t guess. Once again she had to deal with the fact that she’d never completed her training—and with her mother gone, totally incommunicado, her chances to learn anything more about witchcraft were severely limited. The secrecy surrounding witchcraft meant she didn’t even know another adult witch who was willing to train her.

Except Elizabeth herself.

If I had one more chance to talk to Mom, what would I say? Ask her why she left? Bitch her out for abandoning us? Make her find me another teacher? Find out why she doesn’t love Dad anymore? Get her to explain Elizabeth’s real plan? Tell her Cole’s had nightmares ever since she walked away?