“You must never cast a curse.”

“Switch tables with me, will you, Melanie? Trade you eight for eighteen.”

Melanie Sweeney, the senior waitress at La Catrina, glanced past him and frowned. “Eighteen’s just two kids. Girls. Cute ones, too. So why do you want to wait on those six jerks at eight? Wait, don’t tell me. You asked one of the girls out; she shot you down.”

“Love hurts,” Mateo said, which was enough like a yes without being a lie.

“No worries, buddy. I got ’em.” Melanie grinned. “But you better take those guys their empanadas PDQ.”

As he hurried to table eight, Mateo’s mind remained focused on one thing alone—Nadia. If his dreams were really telling him the future—and because of the car crash, they had to be at least partly true, didn’t they?—then the danger surrounding Nadia was very real. And whatever it was, Mateo himself was a part of it.

But his plan—“Stay Away From Nadia for Her Own Good”—was clearly useless. What had he been thinking? This was Captive’s Sound, a town the size of a flash drive. He ran into almost everyone in town at least once a week; with Nadia in his chemistry class, he was guaranteed to see her almost every day. Now that she turned out to like Mexican food—forget it. Game over.

So what the hell was he going to do?

Would Nadia believe him if he tried to explain? Most people wouldn’t, even if they hadn’t grown up in Captive’s Sound thinking he was guaranteed to turn out insane. And even if she believed, did he know enough to protect her? If he frightened Nadia, convinced her that she should fear for her life, then failed to prevent any of his nightmares from coming to pass—that would be worse than anything else he could do.

No, he decided. That’s not the worst thing I could do. The worst thing I could do is nothing.

There have to be ways I could look out for her without talking to her about the visions. I can … watch from afar. Guard her as best I can without putting her in danger.

But is that even possible?

Right as he was trying to work it all out, table eight decided they each had a complicated special order—no refried beans here, extra guacamole there, so on and so forth—and Mateo was too busy to do anything but hurry back and forth between his tables and the kitchen for the next half hour. By the time he was able to look back at Nadia’s table again, she was gone, and Melanie was wiping it down to get it ready for the next customers.

Okay, fine. She was home. That had to be safe, right? Maybe not, though. He hadn’t taken a close enough look before to see whether it resembled the setting of any of his dreams. Why hadn’t he done that?

“Hey, Mateo.” Melanie held up a cell phone. “One of them left this. You too brokenhearted to take it to her at school tomorrow?”