Then again—Mateo had stopped telling Elizabeth about his dreams. Nadia had taken away Elizabeth’s window into the future, which at this point was more a moral victory than a real one. But still, that could be her motivation.

Was it reason enough to tell him about the Craft? It wouldn’t be for most witches. But Nadia was apparently far more ruthless than Elizabeth had realized. Mere girl though she was, primitive though her magical skills might be … she was a fighter. A worthy opponent.

Gulping down the last of her water, Elizabeth tossed the bottle onto the floor amid the shards of broken glass. She made her way through her home to the bright light of her stove, by now the only heat in a very cold house. Neither heat nor cold mattered much to her any longer, but some spells worked better by the light of this unearthly fire.

First she went to the ancient, half-rotted chest of drawers leaning against the far wall. Slowly she pried open a small drawer she hadn’t gone into for a decade, not since Lauren Cabot had committed suicide.

There, amid the dust and stained wood, was a human finger bone, yellow with age. This she had possessed even longer than her immortality. George Cabot, the first of his family she had known, the first to serve her: This was all that remained of him. It was all she needed to keep the curse going forever.

Elizabeth’s first impulse was to crush it. Mateo Perez would never again share his dreams with her; that made the curse useless. He would only have been able to assist her for another few days at the most anyway, and had already done his last and greatest service by showing her how dangerous Nadia had the potential to be … by showing her that many of her plans, in the future, would be dedicated to Nadia’s destruction. So why not end the curse?

But no. The curse on the Cabots was part of the magic that underlay all her works; by now it was as much a part of Captive’s Sound as the beach or the sea. It would be foolish to disrupt that so profoundly, so close to her goal. No, that curse would die only with her.

You could give him a few days to live as an ordinary human, Asa suggested. A small gift to remember you by.

“You think I care about mercy, beast?” Elizabeth said as she placed the bone back in its drawer.

I know you better than that.

Ignoring the demon’s japes, Elizabeth crossed the room to where a metal hook hung on one wall. If Nadia truly represented some sort of threat, the very first thing to do was to take away Nadia’s Steadfast.

Elizabeth’s fingers closed around Verlaine’s bracelet.

Dear Mr. Laughton and Mr. McFadden,

Congratulations! You have won an all-expenses-paid cruise to beautiful Jamaica. The boat leaves on Friday, October 30—

Verlaine paused at her laptop, not sure this sounded right. Wouldn’t people call them if the cruise were leaving so soon? She couldn’t disguise her voice on the phone, though, and she didn’t think either Nadia or Mateo could really make themselves sound like adults if they made the call for her. Maybe that guy Gage, whose voice was deep—but they weren’t friends yet. He wasn’t somebody she could ask for a favor like this. Could Mateo ask him, though? Once her dads believed they’d won the cruise, the rest was easy. Her parents had taken a huge life-insurance policy when she was born, meaning that Verlaine had way more money than most people at Rodman, including the teachers. She drove the land yacht and thrifted her clothes and lived off her allowance because that money was for college—but to save her dads’ lives, she’d dip into it and buy them the nicest cruise anybody ever took.