“That’s not what I mean.” Mateo’s thumb brushed along the crook of her elbow, back and forth, the smallest, gentlest touch she could imagine. “You said I had to stop believing in you. Well, I can’t.”

Nadia refused to cry. She wouldn’t. Even if her eyes were blurring and she couldn’t get a word out because her breaths were coming hard and fast, even if Mateo kept looking at her like that, she wasn’t going to cry.

Mateo kept going. “You’ve already done the impossible. Remember? I’m a Steadfast. Shouldn’t happen. But it has. You’ve already figured out more about Elizabeth than just about anyone else in town ever did. I don’t know enough about all this to say whether you could ever be stronger than her, but—I think you could be strong enough. Nadia, you could be strong enough to do anything.”

She gulped down something that was either a sob or a laugh, and although she still wanted to pull her arm away, she couldn’t bring herself to. She could only look back at Mateo and wish she were anything like the person he thought he saw.

“Okay, so, you two are having a moment.” Verlaine jerked her backpack onto her shoulders in a huff. “Mateo, good luck getting through to her. Nadia, call me when you’re talking sense again.” With that, Verlaine stalked off across the grounds, her silvery hair seemingly a tangled part of the gray fall sky.

Once they were alone, Nadia whispered, “Mateo, you aren’t listening.”

“You’re not talking. Your fear is.” He breathed out. “Listen. Can we go somewhere? Hang out for a while? We could talk about this better if we weren’t about forty feet from cheerleader practice.”

“My house. Dad’s at his hearing, and Cole’s over at a friend’s for a while.” Nadia realized that she needed to be at home; more than that she needed to be in her attic, surrounded by the tools of her Craft. It was the Craft that had shaped her life so much so far, that had brought Verlaine and Mateo to her. It was the Craft she was coming close to abandoning.

So it was the Craft she needed to confront now—and when she did, she wanted Mateo beside her.

“The last time I was here I thought it was bigger,” Mateo said as he stooped his head; the sloping roof of the attic meant that he could only stand up straight at the very center. “Of course, the last time I was here I was seeing my first magic spell. So I guess I got distracted.”

Nadia sat cross-legged on one of the oversize pillows on the floor; normally she popped her phone into the dock she kept in the corner, both for the music and to make sure her father and Cole wouldn’t overhear anything they shouldn’t. Doing that now felt like trying to set a mood or something, though, so she didn’t. But that meant Mateo took his seat across from her in a silence that felt heavy and strange.