Steadfast(9)

There was no answer. Slowly Mrs. Purdhy lifted one hand to her throat, like she might be about to cough.

“Ma’am?” Kendall’s voice was a little quieter. “Are you okay?”

Mrs. Purdhy opened her mouth. A drop of liquid appeared at the corner of her lips and trickled down her chin—black as tar.

People started to swear. A few students in the front row shoved their desks backward or hurried to the rear of the classroom. One guy started filming it on his phone. Someone else dashed into the hallway and started yelling for the school nurse. Nadia pushed toward the front, to Mrs. Purdhy’s side. “Are you all right? Can you talk?”


Mrs. Purdhy showed no sign she could hear, or see, or take in anything besides whatever was happening to her. The liquid coming out of her mouth increased—a slow pour, thick as chocolate syrup, and getting thicker by the moment. Black streaks were beginning to rain down her shirt. When droplets hit the floor, the linoleum made a horrible sizzling sound.

Mateo turned to Elizabeth. “What the hell are you doing?”

Elizabeth never even glanced sideways at him. “I told you I wasn’t here for you.”

With a gurgling cry, Mrs. Purdhy clutched at her throat and passed out. Nadia caught her and eased her to the floor.

To hell with Elizabeth. Mateo ran to Nadia’s side; somebody else had to help. As he knelt beside them, careful not to touch whatever that gunk was, he saw that Nadia had pillowed Mrs. Purdhy’s head on her knees—the better to take hold of her bracelet and cast some kind of spell. Mateo wrapped his arms around Nadia’s waist, knowing that the closer they were, the more she would be able to draw upon the increased power he gave her as her Steadfast.

But after a moment, Nadia whispered, “I can’t get at it. Whatever it is—it’s too strong.”

Mateo looked down at Mrs. Purdhy, who was beginning to convulse on the floor. As he pressed down her arms to keep her from hurting herself, he thought for a moment that the tarry stuff coming out of her had streaked all along her face and hands. Then he realized that the black streaks were beneath her skin, widening and darkening like grotesque veins.

What’s happening to her? He looked at Nadia, who shook her head in despair.

Then the school nurse came in, and she shooed them off, and it turned out Kendall had called 9-1-1 because the paramedics showed up about ninety seconds after that. Within a few minutes, they were running down the hallway with Mrs. Purdhy on their gurney, and in the panic nobody had thought to send in a substitute or anything else. People huddled in the room, crying, talking, or posting details on Facebook.

Nadia curled into Mateo’s embrace. “I feel so helpless.”

“If anyone can help her, it’s you.” He stroked his hands through Nadia’s black hair. “Don’t blame yourself. We know who’s really to blame.”

As Mateo turned his head to glare at Elizabeth, he saw her walk through the other students to the black puddle on the floor where Mrs. Purdhy had fallen. Everyone else was leaving that gunk severely alone; no doubt a custodian would show up any second to mop the floor clean, but Mateo wondered if it would disintegrate the mop or something. Whatever that crap was, it wasn’t good.

Elizabeth went to her knees beside it and pulled her cardigan half-down, exposing her shoulders. Then she dipped two fingers into the stuff. Smoke rose from her nails as she raised her hand and painted two stripes on the very top of her arm. The skin there burned so quickly that he could smell it—the disgusting odor that came from cooking meat that had gone bad.

Nobody else paid attention. Nobody else could even see what Elizabeth was doing; she had willed them not to see. Her power was so vast that she could do her worst right in front of people, without them ever knowing a thing.

But once you knew the truth, Elizabeth’s power became easier to see. Mateo and Nadia both stared, and Nadia whispered, “She’s burned.”

The red streaks on Elizabeth’s arm bubbled, immediately blistering. A surge of sympathetic pain lanced across Mateo’s shoulder; his nerve endings didn’t understand that she didn’t deserve sympathy.

And the light that shimmered around her as she did it—the glow of it was febrile and sick. Mateo understood instinctively that this was something only he could see with his Steadfast power. So he stared at it long and hard, this orange halo that melted around her for a moment and was gone. Tell Nadia this. Tell Nadia everything.

Elizabeth simply pulled her cardigan back on and walked out of class. As usual, nobody noticed.

For a few moments, Mateo and Nadia could only look at the doorway she’d walked through. Mateo’s mind kept replaying that horrible gurgle Mrs. Purdhy had made—like she was both trying to breathe and trying to scream.

Whatever had happened to her was Elizabeth’s fault. Just like the curse, and Mom’s death, and everything else in Captive’s Sound. All because of Elizabeth.

Then Jeremy came up beside them, gesturing in the direction Elizabeth had gone. “What a bitch, huh?”





4


ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE ELSE IN VERLAINE’S PSYCHOLOGY class had been texted about Mrs. Purdhy’s sudden collapse . . . everyone, that was, besides Verlaine.

Not that she was upset about being left out. Between Nadia’s magical powers and Mateo’s hero complex, no doubt her friends were right in the thick of it. Like usual.