Ms. Walsh kept smiling, but it was obviously a struggle now. A deep sadness filled her eyes. “My mother has Alzheimer’s. No spells overcome that, I’m afraid. She held on as long as she could, but a couple of years ago, she turned over her bracelet and spell book to me. Said she couldn’t be trusted to use them any longer. Now she’s in a home up in Boston. I go see her as often as I can. Sometimes she even knows me. But she’s not a witch anymore, not in any meaningful sense. Still, the Steadfast bond—it endures. Through everything.”
Nadia’s eyes met Mateo’s, and they each smiled. As terrifying as it was to remember they were bound together forever, their whole lives long—it was even more beautiful. In some ways, it was just proof of something they’d sensed the first time their eyes had met.
Sometimes Verlaine tried to write news stories in her head about her own life, just to get practice at summarizing quickly, and putting the most important information as the lede.
As near as she could tell, the front page for the Verlaine’s Life Gazette would read something like this:
END SERIOUSLY NIGH
Area Sorceress Near Completion of Bridge to Underworld Locals Feel Magical Effects: Earthquakes, Mysterious Illness, Demonic Incursion
Captive’s Sound came even closer to apocalypse today when Sorceress Elizabeth Pike initiated the final steps of her plan to bring demonic overlord the One Beneath into the mortal world. Should she succeed in completing her bridge between the underworld and our town, only a thin seal will remain between the world we’ve always known and total destruction.
Local witch Nadia Caldani, along with Steadfast Mateo Perez and stylish sidekick Verlaine Laughton, has been working tirelessly to stop Elizabeth Pike, with only limited success. Now, however, the Gazette has learned that Rodman High guidance counselor Faye Walsh is also a Steadfast and may have new insights about the magic being performed—perhaps enough to turn the tide.
That about summed it up, Verlaine thought. All she had to do was add Horoscopes, Page Five. And the horoscopes would be easy enough to do: Every single sign’s forecast would read Pray Really Hard.
“My dreams of the future aren’t waiting for me to fall asleep any longer,” Mateo explained. By now they were all seated around one of the big circular booths in the strange stillness of the closed restaurant. Nobody had even turned on the overhead lights, so the only illumination was the grayish excuse for sunlight that came through the windows. “It’s okay right now, but earlier—the dreams were taking me over. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, could hardly even move.”
Nadia never took her hand from his. “Elizabeth’s deepened the curse. I’m not sure why she’d do that, though. Your dreams help us sometimes, even though they hurt you.”
Ms. Walsh—no, Faye; she’d told them they could call her that off-campus—shook her head. “Elizabeth may not have a choice. The level of magic she’s performing now goes beyond anything even she would have done before. Right now all her magic may be intensifying at once. She can’t strengthen her influence in the world without strengthening every one of her curses, every one of her spells, at once.”
So, are people going to be even meaner to me? Verlaine wondered, then felt bad about even thinking it. The fate of the world was slightly more important than her social life. Besides, if the world ended, it would kind of be a moot point.
“She needs these people to suffer,” Nadia said. “All the ones she’s put in the hospital. And I’ve learned—the One Beneath uses emotions, a lot. He steals them. He takes them in trade.” She went silent for only a moment. “So maybe He uses them to build. Maybe those people’s pain is exactly what He’s using to build the bridge. I think pain is what the bridge is made of.”
Faye nodded. She looked . . . well, encouraged was too strong a word, but like they might be getting somewhere. “I went through my mother’s Book of Shadows, searching for something like a remedy for illness caused by witchcraft, something like that. I didn’t see anything, but you might.” From her leather satchel she pulled out a clothbound book. The cloth was plain, faded black, the kind of thing that generally didn’t earn a second glance. But Verlaine reminded herself that Nadia had said every Book of Shadows was different. Every Book of Shadows had its own power.
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.”