As he stood in the bathroom, steam from his shower filling the air, he took a moment to admire his new possession. This body was exceedingly well made, wasn’t it? Long and lean. Taller than either of his parents, thanks to a trick of genetics. Thick, black hair that curled slightly; tawny skin; angled brows that strongly framed large, dark eyes. Sculpted muscles that gave him strong arms and good abs—and the magic that ensnared him here kept this body from aging or degenerating, so he didn’t even have to work out to keep this. Jeremy had done all the sit-ups for him.
Then he felt it—a sickening dip and sway as though he were at sea in a storm. Asa tried to right himself, but the sensation wasn’t coming from the room or the chair; it was coming from within.
It was as though something was turning him inside out, blinding him to his real surroundings, stretching him thin and forcing his attention on one point, one thing—
Elizabeth. She sat cross-legged on her floor, surrounded by glinting points of broken glass. It was as though he were with her, and yet he wasn’t.
He realized she had conjured this, making at least a shadow of him appear before her. But why did it have to hurt so much?
“Would it kill you to get a cell phone like everyone else?” he snapped.
She ignored this. She ignored pretty much everything she couldn’t use. Even the fact that he stood na**d in front of her was meaningless to Elizabeth. “There was a disturbance tonight. Magic far too strong for its purpose. You were near it, weren’t you?”
“But not responsible.”
“Nadia?”
“Even though her Steadfast was nowhere near her. It turns out she’s significantly out of her depth.”
Asa told her the whole story, exaggerating Nadia’s panic slightly; it made the telling better, and it seemed to amuse Elizabeth, insofar as anything that ancient and evil could be amused. When he got to the part where his mother had started swinging an ax around, she actually laughed out loud.
“Good,” she said. “The sooner she recognizes her own limitations, the sooner she’ll understand that she has to turn to me.”
He didn’t understand the urgency behind Elizabeth’s desire to convert Nadia Caldani into her apprentice, but it wasn’t his to question. “What next?”Elizabeth smiled slowly. “She won’t come to me for her own sake. Nadia will only turn to me to save another. The question is who.”
7
ELIZABETH WALKED THROUGH THE STREETS OF CAPTIVE’S Sound—ignoring those who waved and smiled at her, knowing they would remember her smiling back anyway—until she reached the old blue Victorian house on Felicity Street. There she knocked and waited for an answer.
Nadia’s father opened the door, and this time she really did smile.
He returned the smile, but vaguely. Her protective glamours would allow him only to think of her as one of his daughter’s friends, a sweet girl with chestnut curls. “Elizabeth—that’s the name, right? Nice to see you.”
“Hi, Mr. Caldani. Can I come in?”
“Sure.” For a moment, his expression clouded; probably he was wondering why she was here in the middle of a school day. But Elizabeth knew that confusion would resolve in an instant. Her glamours would make him sure that she’d never be anyplace she wasn’t supposed to be. Mr. Caldani stepped back, allowing her to come inside. “You weren’t mixed up in that carnival business, were you? Sounds scary.”
“I saw the fire.” It had surrounded her. Elizabeth had meant for it to kill her—had meant to die for the liberation of the One Beneath. Such glorious light. “Honestly, it was kind of exciting.”
“It wouldn’t have been as exciting if you were in it, trust me. Now, what can I do for you?”
“Nadia said I could borrow her copy of Sense and Sensibility. It’s in her room, but she couldn’t get away to come here with me. Can I get it?”
“Sure. No problem.” He paused again. Was he wondering if Nadia even had a copy of that book? Elizabeth didn’t know whether it existed, nor did she care. All that mattered was that Simon overcome his natural resistance to allowing a near-stranger into his daughter’s room, even when that daughter wasn’t home. He would, of course; he couldn’t help himself. “Come on. I’ll show you the way.”
Together they went up the narrow, winding stairs, the ones illuminated by sunshine through an old stained-glass window. The house was a comfortable one, and—she could sense—it was beautiful in its ramshackle way. Elizabeth remembered when the only houses in towns had been the ones settlers built themselves, when she had lived behind paper windows, atop dirt floors. She had heard of a concept called nostalgia—a longing for how things used to be—and thought it was merely further proof that humans were fools. No one with any sense would want to go backward. You could only look ahead.
“Here you go,” Simon said as they went through a door at the top of the stairwell. “Nadia’s bedroom.”
Elizabeth smiled as she turned around. The walls were a soft, warm orange, the bedspread plain white and immaculate. Pressed flowers and leaves filled simple silver frames hung upon the walls. To anyone else, this would look like a simple, pleasant space; to her, it was a sign of an intelligent witch’s work. Orange was a color neutral to spells in a way that blue, red, black, and white weren’t; the neatness indicated a dedication to both Craft and secrecy. But the plants in the frames—that was a brilliant touch. Elizabeth lifted her delicate hand in front of the frames in turn. “Willow. White sage. Lavender. These plants are all for protection, you know.”