Spellcaster (Spellcaster #1) by Claudia Gray

Author:Claudia Gray
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: young adult
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

The date was only two weeks before her suicide. Maybe she never got around to 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 supposed 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 remember 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.

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 darkness. 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 bubbling up inside him, but they changed from moment to moment, contradicting one another over and over:

You killed my mother. You ruined my life.

I thought you were my friend. Make me understand.

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 human 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 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.

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