Nadia kept struggling. Kept fighting. She pulled the cobwebs from her face, freed one hand, then the other, then the first again. Her feet could kick the tendrils loose for a second before they ensnared her once more. Some of the spiders had found the holes in her tights and were crawling inside them now. Long ago, she’d given up screaming; she couldn’t even spare that much breath, and she didn’t want to give the Book of Shadows the satisfaction.

No matter how hard I fight, it’s not enough, she thought. Elizabeth’s got me, no matter how hard I try.

How hard I try.

An idea flickered into flame, and Nadia gasped.

A spell like this, meant to entrap—it would naturally wrap itself around someone trying to get away. The harder she fought, the harder it clutched at her.

What if she stopped fighting?

Merely lying still wouldn’t work—no spell of protection could be that easily fooled—but there were other spells that might be more convincing.

Such as a spell that would keep her right here.

Nadia pulled against the cobwebs wound around her upper arms to bring one hand to her bracelet. Two fingers found the quartz charm, and quickly she assembled the ingredients:

Love unbreakable.

Hatred implacable.

Hope eternal.

She had to think it, feel it, believe it more powerfully than ever before —

Hugging her father as he left for New York City with Cole, knowing she might not ever see him again.

The moment she’d realized that Elizabeth had tried to kill Verlaine—then the moment she knew Elizabeth had Mateo in her grasp.

Her own hand reaching for the shards of mirror, hour after hour, despite exhaustion and terror, because there had to be a chance; there had to be.

The spell of encirclement sprang to life around her. Immediately the spiderwebs slithered back. A few of the small crawly guests in the legs of her tights followed suit. The circle spread around her, a soft blue glow, a sphere that was meant to hold her in position against any force. It was what she would have cast the night of the wreck, if she’d had time; it would have kept her and her family almost motionless as the car flipped down around them, protecting them from every blow. Lacking independent thought, Elizabeth’s Book of Shadows knew only that another spell now held Nadia in place, that its protections were no longer required, and so the spiderwebs inched away.

No Book of Shadows, not even this one, could know that Nadia controlled the spell herself, that she would be able to use the sphere to move away as she wished.

Her whole body shaking with exhaustion, Nadia began stumbling toward the door. Now she didn’t have to worry about the broken glass; the blue sphere around her kept it from touching her feet. She did, however, stop in the middle of the room and rip off the remnants of her tights. A last spider tumbled down and scurried away. She shuddered.