Steadfast(74)

Sure enough, as Nadia reached for it, the pages flipped open of their own accord. “Whoa,” Mateo said. “Did it hear you?”

“Sometimes Books of Shadows do.” Nadia smiled almost fondly at it, then glanced at Faye. “Your mom must have been really powerful.”

For the first time since she’d come to them, Faye smiled. “She was something else. I wish you could’ve seen her in her prime.”

Nadia looked down into the Book of Shadows. At first Verlaine wondered if a light had come on somewhere, then realized the spell book was glowing. The gentle golden illumination revealed Nadia’s dawning excitement. “This isn’t a cure for illness. But it’s a way to ease pain, and end suffering. It’s pretty serious magic, but I think—I think I could do it.”

Wait. Had things suddenly gone from sucky to awesome? Verlaine brightened. “So you can stop Elizabeth from hurting Uncle Gary and all the others. When they stop hurting, she’s not causing them any more pain. And if they’re not in pain, she loses the building blocks she needs for the bridge. The bridge collapses, the One Beneath can’t get here, Elizabeth’s defeated, and it’s the best Thanksgiving ever. Right?”

“That’s the idea.” But Nadia only looked about one-tenth as excited as she ought to. “Verlaine, it’s dangerous.”

Of course it couldn’t be easy. Mateo leaned closer to Nadia. “You mean, you could be hurt?”

“Maybe, but that’s just part of working high-level magic.” Nadia didn’t even glance at him; it was Verlaine she spoke to. “I’m not talking about it being dangerous for me. I meant for Uncle Gary.”

“He’s in the hospital with about a zillion tubes in him and a crazy, evil witch keeping him in pain,” Verlaine said. “How much more dangerous could it get for him?”

Quietly Nadia replied, “If I do it wrong, he could die.”

Verlaine sucked in a breath. Faye put one hand on her shoulder, temporarily back in school-counselor mode.

It wasn’t like Verlaine hadn’t been afraid of this before now. She’d hardly been able to think of anything else since Uncle Gary’s collapse. But hearing it from the exact person she’d been counting on to save him—that made it much more real. She whispered, “Why would he die?”

“Right now the magic is holding him in this painful space between life and death.” The amber light from the spell book still played across Nadia’s face. “I’m going to ease his pain, which means easing the spell’s hold on him. He should come back to the side of life. But—I don’t see anything in this spell to guarantee that. I don’t know what kind of condition he’s in, or whether there’s more to what Elizabeth has done. So I’d be cutting all her ties at once, and anything could happen.”

“The spell is about easing suffering, right?” Verlaine demanded. “What kind of loser spell would only end suffering by killing people?”

“It’s probably more about helping people who are sick or injured through normal means, rather than suffering because of magic,” Faye suggested.

Mateo said, “Are we sure this is a good idea? There are a lot of people in the hospital. That’s a lot of lives to take a risk with.”

“I don’t know.” Nadia bit her lower lip. “Maybe—maybe I jumped to conclusions.”

They were jumping to conclusions about something that could kill Uncle Gary? And yet what was the alternative? Her brain was doing the calculations her heart was too weary to handle.

“We should think about it,” Mateo said.

“I know,” Nadia agreed. “I know. We just don’t have much time to think. And the spell has to be anchored—someone would have to be at the hospital, in the thick of it, wearing one of my own witching charms. The pearl. That person would bear the biggest part of the risk. Even if none of the patients died, this person might.”

“I could do it,” Faye offered. “If we decide to cast this spell.”

Verlaine made up her mind. “You have to do it. You have to try. And I’ll anchor the spell.”

Everyone stared at her. Verlaine couldn’t quite believe she’d said that herself. But she knew what she knew.

“I love Uncle Gary as much as I love anybody on Earth.” Her breath didn’t want to support her voice; it felt caught in her chest, waiting for tears she wouldn’t let come. “But I don’t just love him. I know him. And if we could tell him how much is at stake—that this could mean the deaths of thousands and thousands of people if we fail—then he’d say to take the chance. He’d do it himself if he could. I know that, for sure.”

It felt beyond horrible to risk Uncle Gary’s life like that. Just getting the words out seemed to have stolen the strength from her body.

But a life was more than a pulse, more than a breath. A life was also made up of what you believed and what you stood for. Of what you were willing to do—and who you loved. Protecting Uncle Gary’s survival at the cost of so much pain and suffering would betray his life more surely than anything else, and Verlaine knew it.

“I’ll take the chance with him,” she said, holding out her hand for Nadia’s pearl charm.

Mateo reached across the table and took her free hand. Verlaine was surprised how much it helped.