“To me?” That seemed to amuse her, for all the wrong reasons. Though she didn’t turn her head, showing him only her perfect white cameo profile, she smiled coolly. “That would be a first. Don’t tell me your father’s restaurant has failed to be profitable enough to build up a college fund for you.”

Mateo balled his fists in the pockets of his letter jacket. Later. He could let his temper out later. “We’re doing great.” Great was overstating it—Captive’s Sound never had anything like the kind of summer business it should have had—but they more than paid the bills. Mateo had been helping with the books since last year.

“Then why are you here? The pleasure of my company?” The acid in her voice made it clear she knew precisely how unpleasant she was, and liked it.

This was harder to get out than Mateo had expected. He swallowed hard, shifted his weight from foot to foot, swallowed again. “I—I wanted to talk to you about—about the curse.”

Grandma sat up very straight in her chair. “Has it come upon you, then?”

“No!” Mateo lied. She’d throw him out of here if he said anything else. “No way. I don’t even believe in it. You know I don’t.”

Until he’d seen Nadia that stormy night, he hadn’t.

“Then why talk about it? If it’s just a story, like you pretend.”

“Because I want to understand. Because every kid in school acts like I’ve got AIDS or something.” Only Elizabeth and Gage treated him like a human being, and in Gage’s case, that was only because he’d moved to Captive’s Sound too late to grow up with all the stories about the mad, dangerous Cabots.

“The children have heard the stories from their parents. Who heard them from their parents. It’s always the same.” She laughed mirthlessly. “They are frightened of the Cabots. Then they get older, decide the stories are only folklore. Tales to scare the foolish. Then the next Cabot goes insane, and they see the truth for themselves. Just as they saw when your mother degenerated so abruptly, and drowned herself in the sea. Just as they saw when your grandfather did this to me.”

She turned toward him then, showing him her full face, not only the profile. While the left side of her face remained pale and normal—smooth for a woman of her age, maybe because she never went outside—the right side was a ruin. Deep red slashes ran through her skin like fault lines; crinkles of scar tissue surrounded gouges in flesh that had never healed. Her blind right eye showed milky white, with one twitching red spot of blood that never, ever went away.

“You look pale.” Grandma smiled. It was a terrible smile. “I should think you’d be used to it by now. But I’m still not used to it myself, so how can I blame you?”

“What happened?” Mateo tried to plow on. “What made Grandpa do this?” He’d never known his grandfather, who’d been institutionalized long before Mateo was born. But Mom had always said he was a loving dad … at least, until that final year.