Her hands shaking, Nadia went to the kitchen and poured Cole his ginger ale, then went back into the living room with a smile plastered onto her face. “Here you go, sweetie.”

“Sweetie?” Cole wrinkled his nose. “I’m not a sweetie. How come you’re talking all weird?”

She curled back onto the sofa and drew her knees up to her chest. If she hugged them against her tightly enough, it made her feel less sick inside. “No reason.”

Verlaine realized she didn’t get a vote on whether or not Mateo got to come back on board. For one, he was the Steadfast, which meant he brought some mojo to the table. For two, he was the one Elizabeth had cursed to see the future, which both made him Victim Number One and added to said mojo.

Still, he’d totally ditched them for a whole week. Instead of working on the huge enormous crisis threatening their whole town, he’d been—well, okay, he’d been dealing with massive personal betrayal and renewed grief for his dead mother. Which was actually a valid distraction.

But Verlaine? She’d been working. Carefully she’d put together a file of her findings about the sinkholes, complete with a PowerPoint presentation, and sent it to the city council; even without any mention that magic was responsible, they ought to be able to figure out that something was seriously wrong, something centered on Swindoll Park. Maybe that would be enough to get them to cancel the Halloween carnival or at least move it. But she hadn’t heard anything from the council office. Apparently reading mail from high school students wasn’t their top priority. Idiots.

Besides, now that Mateo was here in the Guardian offices with them, ready to be productive again, Verlaine was ready to give the guy another shot. Then again, was he even here to be productive?

Because he wasn’t going through the records she’d spent all weekend pulling. No, he was staring at Nadia all rapt and gooey, like he was seeing a rainbow for the first time, or something about that sappy. And, of course, he was currently engaged in the oh-so-important task of drawing something in pen on the side of Nadia’s sneaker—a tree, maybe. Verlaine was torn between thinking it was completely irritating and feeling the familiar ache of wishing that some guy, any guy, would look at her that way.

Anything can change, she reminded herself fiercely.

“Okay,” she said. “The big question here is, how do we stop Elizabeth in her tracks?”

Nadia and Mateo shared a look; apparently they hadn’t realized that Verlaine intended to take over the meeting. Well, that was what happened when certain persons were too busy being twitterpated to concentrate on the business at hand. Certain other persons had to seize control. And put together the PowerPoint presentations.

She turned her laptop around so that it showed a white screen with the header: Operation Stop Elizabeth. That slide dissolved into the next, which had three columns: A—Face her directly. B—Secretly undermine her plans. C—Provide alternate action/distraction.