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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.”
    Nadia said, “Elizabeth did it. We know that much. I have no idea what kind of spell that was—or what the burning was about—but I doubt she did it alone.”
    Verlaine gave in and stared at Not-Jeremy, too. He sighed, for a moment so put upon and annoyed that he seemed like his old self again. “You know, I should probably make you guys guess a while longer, but what the hell.”
    With a grin, he brought his hands together, as if to clap—
    —but the moment Verlaine heard the sound, all the other noise around her stopped.
    So did all the movement. Everybody around her froze in place, midstep, midword. One girl’s blond ponytail levitated in air, midbounce. Ms. Walsh held the silver duct tape slightly above her head, like she was studying it in the light. Verlaine kept turning from one direction to another, trying to make herself believe what she was seeing. Nadia and Mateo were doing the same.
    And the guy who was now definitely, positively not Jeremy leaned against the wall and folded his arms against his chest.
    “There’s not that much I can do on my own,” he said.