Her father’s “Okay!” behind her was very distant.

They couldn’t run fast enough; even as they reached La Catrina, the ambulance doors slammed shut. The paramedics peeled out so fast that the tires squealed. Nadia clutched at Verlaine’s arm. “Oh, God. Something’s really wrong with him. They’re scared.”

“It all started when he went to talk to her.” Verlaine pointed, and at the far edge of the crowd Nadia saw a stout woman in her fifties with long, ash-blond hair. The woman looked deeply worried—and, to Nadia’s eyes, guilty. “That’s Ginger Goncalves.”

Nadia pushed through the still-murmuring crowd, straight for Ginger, whose eyes widened. She turned to go, but Nadia called out, “Ginger! Wait!”

Ginger just walked toward her car faster, but Nadia caught up with her, running too fast to stop easily; she had to catch herself against the side of the car with both hands. Verlaine was right behind her, but she grabbed one of Nadia’s arms as if to pull her back. “Nadia, think,” she whispered. “Whatever she did to Mateo—what if she does it to you, too?”

“She won’t,” Nadia said loudly. “I bet she can’t even if she tries.” Every protective spell she’d ever learned seemed to flood into her mind at once, and she raised one hand—the hand with her bracelet, all its pendants and stones promising that the power was hers if she only chose—

But Ginger’s eyes widened as she saw the bracelet. Different witches kept their materials close in different ways—jewelry, bands on belts, stones in small sacks kept in pockets or purses—but each way was easy enough to recognize if you knew what you were looking at, and Ginger did.

For a few moments they simply stared at each other. Then Ginger grabbed a pad of paper from her handbag and scrawled a note, which she defiantly held straight in Nadia’s face: You told a man about the Craft.

“He had to know,” Nadia said. But she couldn’t explain that Mateo was her Steadfast; Ginger wouldn’t believe her, and since even Nadia didn’t yet understand how it was possible, she didn’t want to get into it, particularly with a witch she wasn’t sure she trusted. “Because of the curse on his family.”

Ginger shook her head; clearly that wasn’t a good enough reason.

Verlaine huffed, “Why are you explaining yourself to her? She’s the one who hurt Mateo!”

“I broke one of the First Laws,” Nadia said quietly, never taking her eyes from Ginger’s face. The ambulance’s siren was too far away now, almost gone. What was happening to Mateo? “I have to answer for that. Always. Forever. But I’ve never used my powers to harm another human being. Ginger, what did you do to him?”

Ginger’s face crumpled, like she might cry. With a shaking hand, she jotted out another note: It was only a spell of forgetting. Amnesia—for today, maybe a few days before—no more. So he wouldn’t know about me.

Nadia held the note as she and Verlaine read it together. “But that shouldn’t have made him collapse. Dizzy for a second, maybe—confused—not anything that would make them call an ambulance.”