Steadfast - Page 9/85

Mateo turned to Elizabeth. “What the hell are you doing?”

Elizabeth never even glanced sideways at him. “I told you I wasn’t here for you.”

With a gurgling cry, Mrs. Purdhy clutched at her throat and passed out. Nadia caught her and eased her to the floor.

To hell with Elizabeth. Mateo ran to Nadia’s side; somebody else had to help. As he knelt beside them, careful not to touch whatever that gunk was, he saw that Nadia had pillowed Mrs. Purdhy’s head on her knees—the better to take hold of her bracelet and cast some kind of spell. Mateo wrapped his arms around Nadia’s waist, knowing that the closer they were, the more she would be able to draw upon the increased power he gave her as her Steadfast.

But after a moment, Nadia whispered, “I can’t get at it. Whatever it is—it’s too strong.”

Mateo looked down at Mrs. Purdhy, who was beginning to convulse on the floor. As he pressed down her arms to keep her from hurting herself, he thought for a moment that the tarry stuff coming out of her had streaked all along her face and hands. Then he realized that the black streaks were beneath her skin, widening and darkening like grotesque veins.

What’s happening to her? He looked at Nadia, who shook her head in despair.

Then the school nurse came in, and she shooed them off, and it turned out Kendall had called 9-1-1 because the paramedics showed up about ninety seconds after that. Within a few minutes, they were running down the hallway with Mrs. Purdhy on their gurney, and in the panic nobody had thought to send in a substitute or anything else. People huddled in the room, crying, talking, or posting details on Facebook.

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.

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.”