Besides, if they didn’t manage to stop Elizabeth, chances were she wouldn’t make it to college anyway—

She nibbled again at her fingernail. Her nails were starting to look like crap. Tonight she’d paint them again—that would stop her from biting them—but then she’d have to do something else to calm her nerves.

If only she could be sure Uncle Dave and Uncle Gary would be safe on Halloween. Then the rest wouldn’t matter. She could concentrate then.

Determined, Verlaine decided to go ahead and book the cruise. Later she’d call Mateo and see what he thought about the plan to get Gage on board. She surfed over to a travel site—then froze.

The pain arced up through her, so sharp that she first thought there was a knife hidden in the keyboard, one that had snapped up to stab her. That was crazy, but that was how it felt. But a split second later, Verlaine saw the white forks of electricity lancing up from the keyboard, searing her hands so that she thought she could see bone.

All she could hear was some high-pitched, hoarse sound all around her—was that her screaming? Her body seemed to twist away from her, one direction and then the other, jerking around wildly while her mind slowed down, second by second.

I’m being electrocuted, she thought, almost dully.

Then something flung her back from the computer, into the far wall, and she couldn’t see anymore, couldn’t even feel.

20

AROUND DINNERTIME, DAD ONCE AGAIN PROPOSED THAT they visit La Catrina. “Since Mateo is no longer somebody we’re trying to avoid,” he said, giving Nadia a playful glance. It was all Nadia could do not to roll her eyes.

“It’s his night off. But yeah, we should go.” It would be less awkward to eat with her family there when her father wouldn’t be watching her with Mateo the whole time. Way less awkward.

“Want to ask that friend of yours along?” He frowned. “Was it Vera? Veronica?”

“Verlaine.” She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

“Something always happens when we try to go to La Catrina,” Cole complained. “We never get in.”

“Don’t be silly. C’mon, guys. Nadia, honey, why don’t you tell Verla to meet us there? And invite her dads along, too. I ought to meet them sometime.”

Nadia texted: Hey, come eat at La Catrina with us if you want. My dad says to ask your dads, so—if you don’t want to, no prob.

So she wasn’t expecting to see Verlaine, and wasn’t surprised not to have heard from her by the time they arrived at the restaurant. But Nadia immediately overheard Verlaine’s name—from a table where Kendall was holding court among her friends.

“So, like, Verlaine was in the school library, but I think she was using the computers for something illegal, like downloading movies or something like that, and there’s this thing in the library computers that’s supposed to stop you if you do something illegal, like it gives you a shock, and that’s how they keep guys from watching porn all the time, but this time it malfunctioned and it, like, electrocuted her, and so she’s in the hospital, not this one, the good one in Wakefield, and I heard she could die.”