She glanced over at Mateo as they walked away from Verlaine’s house. The two of them had saved countless people in town, even if nobody else ever knew it. That mattered more than anything else.
Their last victory had only been a partial victory. Fine. Nadia decided it was also only her first victory. One way or another, Elizabeth was going down.
“I want to go straight to Elizabeth’s house with an ax,” Mateo confessed. “That’s a bad idea, right?”
“Very bad.” Nadia shuddered as she remembered the one time she’d broken into Elizabeth’s home. Elizabeth hadn’t been there; she hadn’t needed to be. Because her Book of Shadows was there—the spell book each witch created throughout her lifetime. With every spell added, a Book of Shadows would gain magical power until it could become a vital source of energy. Elizabeth had been around for about four centuries, which meant her Book of Shadows was so powerful it was nearly sentient. The book itself had trapped Nadia in cobwebs, attempting to keep her until Elizabeth could return to deal with her personally. Her skin began to itch as she remembered the spiders, and she swatted once at her jean legs. “Ax murder? Bad idea, the vast majority of the time.”
“Okay, fine, no ax murdering—but what are we doing? We can’t just let Elizabeth get away with it!” Mateo looked furious as he turned to her, but when their eyes met, his expression softened. He slid his arms around her waist and drew her near.
The touch surprised Nadia more than it should have. But they were still so new. She had to remind herself that he loved her back, and they actually had a chance to make this work. After everything they’d been through, this sense of possibility was completely unfamiliar. Something had gone right in her messed-up life, just this once. Love was dizzying, wonderful, even a little bit scary—
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Elizabeth makes me crazy.”
“Who could blame you?” Perhaps the cruelest part of Elizabeth’s manipulations was the way she had convinced Mateo that she was his best friend, even his only friend. He had loved Elizabeth like a sister until the moment he learned that every fond memory he had of them growing up together was false, a lie implanted to win his trust and make him easier to use. “Of course you hate her. You have the right. But we shouldn’t confront her until we know what we’re doing.”
“I know. I get that. It’s just hard to think about anything else, you know?” Mateo brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead; though he was careful, and his touch soft, he came too close to one of her cuts. The sensitivity crackled across her nerve endings. Nadia sucked in a breath; Mateo’s eyes darkened and he brought her closer. “Hey, Dad’s at La Catrina for another couple hours. You want to come by the house?” His smile was teasing, warm, hopeful. “Give us both something else to think about?”
“I can’t. Dad and Cole’s flight got in a little while ago. They’ll be here within the hour.”
The thought of going back to Mateo’s for a while—lying in his arms, kissing her fears away—warmed her from the inside.
But right now Nadia wanted to see her father and brother even more. After all, when they’d left for New York the day before Halloween, she hadn’t known whether she would ever see them again.
When Mateo nodded and smiled, she knew he understood without her even having to explain. He whispered, “Then give me a good-bye kiss.”
Their lips met gently at first, but then their mouths parted slightly and the warmth and taste of his mouth seemed to be the only thing in the world. Nadia leaned into his embrace, clutching him closer. The kiss deepened—but then a rush of cold wind raked across them, rattling tree branches and chilling them to the quick. Leaves swirled up around them so fast and thick that for a moment Nadia thought they were being rushed at by a flock of birds. She and Mateo stepped back from each other in their surprise, then laughed at how weird that had been.
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?”