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.
Now she intended to get in the thick of it, too. Yes, the world of witchcraft was dangerous and terrifying, but it was also about a thousand times more interesting than anything else Verlaine had going on.
So Verlaine darted through the hallways with her books clutched to her chest, not even bothering to go to her locker, ducking and weaving around other students to reach the chem lab before Nadia and Mateo left. As she got near, she saw that the guidance counselor, Faye Walsh, was closing the room, using duct tape the way police might have used yellow crime-scene banners. Standing nearby were Nadia and Mateo, clinging to each other like . . . socks out of the dryer.
Oh, stop it. Just because you haven’t got anybody is no reason to resent Nadia and Mateo for falling in love.
But then she noticed guy who was not Jeremy Prasad standing right next to them.
“What happened?” she said as she ran up, trying to keep an eye on the not-Jeremy while not being obvious about it. Crowds of students kept hurrying past, trying to get a look at the scene. She kept hearing murmurs like seizure and overdose. “Is Mrs. Purdhy dead?”
“She wasn’t when the ambulance left,” Mateo said. His arm was around Nadia’s shoulder, and neither of them was bothering to hide the fact that they were staring at the dead person; Not-Jeremy seemed to be smiling, as though amused by their attention. “Beyond that, we don’t know.”
Nadia said, “Elizabeth did it. We know that much. I have no idea what kind of spell that was—or what the burning was about—but I doubt she did it alone.”
Verlaine gave in and stared at Not-Jeremy, too. He sighed, for a moment so put upon and annoyed that he seemed like his old self again. “You know, I should probably make you guys guess a while longer, but what the hell.”
With a grin, he brought his hands together, as if to clap—
—but the moment Verlaine heard the sound, all the other noise around her stopped.
So did all the movement. Everybody around her froze in place, midstep, midword. One girl’s blond ponytail levitated in air, midbounce. Ms. Walsh held the silver duct tape slightly above her head, like she was studying it in the light. Verlaine kept turning from one direction to another, trying to make herself believe what she was seeing. Nadia and Mateo were doing the same.
And the guy who was now definitely, positively not Jeremy leaned against the wall and folded his arms against his chest.
“There’s not that much I can do on my own,” he said. “But I can do this. Nice trick, hmm? You’d be surprised how often it comes in handy.”
“Who are you?” Verlaine demanded. “No. What are you?”
“You may call me—” His voice choked off for a moment, but then he smiled, casual again. “Asa.”
Nadia jerked backward, out of Mateo’s embrace, so far that she knocked into a frozen-in-place cheerleader. Her pom-pom rustled, but otherwise the cheerleader remained still. “You can’t say your true name.”
“Asa” sighed. “Elizabeth thought your training might not have gotten far enough for you to recognize my nature. I’ll enjoy telling her she’s mistaken.”
“What does that mean?” Verlaine demanded, looking from Nadia to Asa to Mateo to the weird stopped-time scene around them. Not even the hands of the wall clock were moving. “Why can’t he say his name?”
“Because he’s a demon,” Nadia whispered.
For a few moments, nobody spoke. Asa just shrugged, like, Yeah, you got me. Then Mateo said, “Since when did demons come into this? There are demons?”
“A demon demon?” Verlaine couldn’t stop staring at him. “From hell?”
“We call it hell sometimes,” Asa said. “Just a figure of speech, though I promise you, it’s appropriate. Where I’m from isn’t a collection of evil dead people, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve been down there for centuries—haven’t run into Hitler once.”
“Demons come from the realm of the One Beneath.” Nadia’s eyes were narrowed now, like she was mad as hell but still hadn’t decided what to do about it. “They’re souls bound to serve Him.”
Oh, okay. This was starting to make a little bit of sense. “You mean, he’s like Elizabeth,” Verlaine said, relieved to have put some of this together.
But Nadia shook her head, never taking her gaze from Asa. “No. Elizabeth chose her path; no one controls her but the One Beneath himself. A demon was either captured by the One Beneath or one of His servants, or brought into being by one of their spells. They don’t have a lot of power on their own, but once they’re summoned into service, they can perform levels of dark magic no human being ever could.”
“Like a Steadfast for a Sorceress?” Mateo said.
“Not exactly.” Nadia gave Asa a thin, mirthless smile. “More like a Sorceress’s slave.”