Spellcaster by Claudia Gray

Author:Claudia Gray [Gray, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

so proud as the day that you said I

was like a mom to you. Well, you’re

like a daughter to me! I hope we’ll

always be this close.—Lauren

The date was only two weeks before her

suicide. Maybe she never got around to

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sending the card. Maybe she forgot about it,

because Elizabeth had wanted her to forget.

She hadn’t just made Mom crazy. She’d

made Mom love her. Some of the love that

should have been Mateo’s had been stolen

away by a girl who was “like a daughter.”

Mateo looked down at his pile of pictures

that he had colored for Mom long ago. None

of them had made his mother as proud as the

illusion of something Elizabeth was sup-

posed to have said.

They were friends. At least, Mom had

thought they were friends—the same way he

had. Elizabeth must have been hanging

around the house all the time when he was

little, but Mateo and his dad didn’t remem-

ber a bit of it … because Elizabeth wouldn’t

let them.

Damn her. Damn her.

Stuffing everything back in the box, Mateo

prepared to confront Elizabeth at last.

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He tore out of the house, got on his bike,

and sped toward Elizabeth’s neighborhood.

It was a gloomy day—the sky dark and low

with rain that wouldn’t quite fall. Mateo felt as though night had been draped over the

daytime to blot out the sun.

Elizabeth’s house stood out in the dark-

ness. He could see magic now, and wondered

how he hadn’t seen this before. How could

anybody not see that this house was deeply,

sickeningly

wrong?

It

glowed—no,

flickered—it was like firelight, in a way, but not comforting or warm. Instead it looked …

the way fever felt. Hot and sickly and

inescapable.

The words Mateo wanted to say kept bub-

bling up inside him, but they changed from

moment to moment, contradicting one an-

other over and over:

You killed my mother. You ruined my life.

I thought you were my friend. Make me

understand.

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I’m going to destroy you if it’s the last

thing I do.

Can you shut this Steadfast thing off?

Please just end the curse and leave us alone.

If I were ever going to murder any hu-

man being, it would be you.

Were any of my good memories of you

real? I want at least one to be real, so I know I had at least one real thing.

I hate you. I never knew what hate was

before, but now I do.

By the time he’d reached her front steps,

he still didn’t know what he wanted to say.

Standing this close to her house was like

standing within a bonfire; the sickly hot light surrounded him now. Mateo tried to imagine

it burning the halo away, but he knew that

wouldn’t work. In fact, it seemed to him that

he could almost feel the halo now—the circle

of thorns cutting into his flesh—

“Mateo.” Her voice came from within the

flames. He couldn’t actually see Elizabeth

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yet. She sounded as gentle and sweet as ever;

of course, she wasn’t in school either. “I’ve

been worried about you.”

All at once, he remembered Nadia so

strongly that it was like she was right there

with him—close enough to touch. She’d told

him that he’d reacted to Elizabeth, that his

Steadfast abilities had allowed him to see

something unearthly in her. Something true.

But when he’d reacted to that, she’d made

him forget.

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