As Verlaine and Nadia walked away from La Catrina afterward, Verlaine said, “Is that possible, what you said? Someone being born over and over again?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I never heard of a spell like that.” If she could only talk to Mom for five minutes …
“If you never heard of that spell before, then why do you think that’s what’s going on?”
Nadia shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable in the early fall chill. Dark visions drawn from her mother’s few whispered warnings about black magic swirled in her mind, and it seemed to her that underneath her feet she could feel the unsteady shifting of demon-haunted ground. An illusion, of course—but an illusion that might have meaning.
To Verlaine she said only, “With powerful enough magic—anything is possible. Anything at all.”
That night, Mateo fell into bed, exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep.
As he lay there, stretched atop his covers with his jeans still on, his mind raced. Even walking down the streets of Captive’s Sound was different for him now; he knew the places he saw the glimmer were places touched by magic, knew the grime between him and the sky was proof that the entire town labored under some malevolent force. And even washing his face meant having to look again at the swirling, sickly blackness that haloed his head.
His curse was as loathsome to look at as it was to endure.
He shook a few extra Tylenol PM into his palm; he knew you could overdo these, and even trying not to have the dreams wasn’t worth frying his liver, but he’d looked up the maximum safe dosage online. With one fist he tossed them into his mouth, gulped them down with water, and hoped again to rest too deeply for dreaming.
With his brain in complete overdrive like this, though, he didn’t see how even regular sleep was possible. Mateo thought he could handle everything he’d learned about magic and witches; it was the stuff about Elizabeth that churned his guts and made him want to be sick.
No, Nadia’s weird theories couldn’t be true; he knew that. But all those pictures—all those generations of women named Elizabeth Pike—
Why had Elizabeth never mentioned that she had a family name? That she looked just like her mother and grandmother? It was the kind of thing people brought up from time to time, or told jokes about. And he and Elizabeth were best friends. They shared everything.
Slowly he took up his phone and hit her name on Contacts. As always, she answered on the first ring. “Mateo. What’s wrong? Did you have another dream?”
“Haven’t fallen asleep yet.” He curled on one side, imagining—like he often did—Elizabeth lying next to him. It wasn’t a sexual fantasy, merely comforting—the idea of her so gentle and sweet and close.
And yet now he envisioned her as “Liz Pike,” the sixties coed, or in old-timey Victorian clothes—
“I was thinking about when we were little,” Mateo said. “All the fun stuff we used to do together.”
“Those were good times, weren’t they? Maybe you can think about those while you try to fall asleep.”
“What was your favorite? Out of all those memories.” He needed to hear that—to remember it through her, to know that she treasured those experiences as much as he did.
Elizabeth said, “All of them, of course.”
“Pick one.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
Why was she being so vague? It couldn’t be that she didn’t cherish those memories as much as he did—that was impossible. Elizabeth had proved, time and again, how much she cared about him. If Elizabeth could forgive him for being a freak, then Mateo could forgive her for keeping a few secrets she felt she had to keep.
But I’m not a freak, he reminded himself. The curse is real. What happened to Mom, to all the other Cabots—that was something done to us.
Her soft voice said, “You’ll call me if you have another of the dreams, won’t you? Right away. I don’t want you to worry.”
If she is a witch, the way Nadia says, she knows the curse is real but won’t tell me about it. Not even to make me less afraid of going nuts and killing myself.
“Okay,” he said. He couldn’t picture her lying next to him any longer. “Good night.”
“Night,” she replied. Funny, how he’d never noticed before now that she never added the good in front.
That night, despite all the Tylenol PM, he dreamed.
The entire world was fire.
Floor. Ceiling. Walls. Doors. Every breath burned in Mateo’s lungs. Red, yellow, orange: They all glowed and flickered around him, strangely alive, as if heat itself could hate him enough to kill.
Nadia lay at his feet, her dark hair just another burn in the scorched world that now enclosed him.
Mateo wanted to go to her—to save her, to hold her, something, anything—but he couldn’t, because he was in someone else’s arms.
Why couldn’t he let go?
From her place on the floor, Nadia whispered, “You shouldn’t have kissed me.”
Desperately Mateo tried to reach her, but he remained held fast—those weren’t arms holding him, they couldn’t be—they were chains—
He awoke with a start.
Then swore.
Then rolled over in bed, punching his pillow, to wait out the long, sleepless hours until dawn.
“You’re positive?” Cole whispered, his covers drawn up under his chin.
Nadia closed the closet doors. “Inspected it top to bottom. No monsters. Absolutely, one hundred percent monster-free.”