And Kendall was also mean to Verlaine.

Come to think of it, everybody who didn’t ignore Verlaine was mean to her, even the people who weren’t mean to anyone else. Mateo knew he’d always ignored her; Gage had, too. Why had he ignored someone who was—now that he thought about it—actually great? It didn’t make any sense.

Before he could really think about it, though, Nadia said, “The night before Halloween, huh?”

The night before disaster struck Captive’s Sound if they didn’t do something to stop it—yeah, not the ideal time for going out. “Are we, um, busy?”

But Nadia surprised him. “Who knows? If we aren’t—it might be good to take our minds off everything for a couple hours.”

He could see that. In fact, if Elizabeth was now watching Nadia so closely that she could pounce at any moment, going out might be the only way to throw her off. “So you’ll come with me?”

Nadia’s eyes met his, and he realized he’d just asked her out for the first time. It wasn’t that he hadn’t meant to ask her sometime; they’d become so close, so fast, that it was hard for him to remember that they hadn’t been out before. That he hadn’t even kissed her yet—

She hesitated. That moment in her attic, when he’d thought they might—Mateo had wondered whether she was holding back then but had decided he’d imagined it. Maybe he hadn’t.

But Nadia nodded. “Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “I’ll come.”

“In case anybody remembers I’m still here, I’ll come, too,” Verlaine said.

“Definitely. Come on along.” Gage gave them finger guns, trying to be deliberately dorky so it would be ironic but really just kind of being dorky, before strolling off to invite more people.

Verlaine took her sandwich up. “I like that guy.”

“He’s okay.” Mateo couldn’t look away from Nadia for long. “Yeah, Gage is great.”

Which he was. But Mateo wasn’t thinking about anything but the fact that Nadia had said yes.

The warmth of that moment stayed with him throughout the afternoon. Forget trying to concentrate on classes. Even the sickening haze of magic that clung to so much of Captive’s Sound didn’t have much hold on him today. He’d spent the last couple of months being either scared or furious; this was the first time he’d truly felt happy. And if he felt like that only knowing that Nadia was going to the party with him, what would it be like when they were together?

Less than a week—

Oh, crap. Chemistry lab.

Walking by that place put the damper on his good mood. He couldn’t think of why, exactly, but lately chem lab gave him that creepy feeling like there were eyes watching him from behind, or as though he’d heard an odd sound in the house while showering alone: watchful, jittery, tense.

But it got a whole lot worse when Elizabeth walked into the hall.

She was right next to the Piranha, who didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. To her, Elizabeth probably looked the way Mateo had always thought: clean-scrubbed and natural, with fair freckled skin and chestnut curls.