“Thanks for asking me.” Nadia didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands all of a sudden, so she stuffed them in her jacket pockets. “How are you doing?”
Mateo opened his mouth, closed it, then shrugged. “Great. Terrible. Both at once, most of the time.”
“Yeah. I know how that feels.”
For another moment they just stared at each other. This was worse than the few haunted glances they’d exchanged in the halls at school, on the days when Mateo bothered to show up. Then Mateo finally said, “Come on. Let’s walk.”
They went to the shoreline, where the sand was no longer loose enough to drag against their shoes but packed hard by the departing tide. The ground underneath was still soft enough to hold the faint impressions of their footsteps, side by side.
“The worst part is what I feel when I see Elizabeth,” Mateo said, staring out to sea. “I didn’t know I could hate like that. Maybe I have the right to hate her, but inside it feels like—it feels like that sky looks.”
He pointed upward. All Nadia could see was an ordinary gray sky, but she knew Mateo’s Steadfast ability showed him its true nature. “Describe it to me.”
“It boils. With a film across it, a scum—like soup that’s gone too hot on the stove. Except whatever this is drains the light. Sucks it in. It’s like watching poison poured over us all, over and over again. Be glad you can’t see it, Nadia.”
She was. But she wouldn’t say so. Her spell had done this to him; that meant what he had to see was her responsibility, and always would be.
He continued, “But there’s a good part, too.”
“Yeah?”
It took Mateo awhile to find the words—a long silence between them that was broken only by the crashing of the waves and the shrieking of gulls. “I don’t know if I can make you understand what it’s like to know that I’m not crazy. That the visions are true. No matter how evil that reason is, it’s real, and now I can fight it. At least, I can if you help me.”
Their eyes met; as one, they slowed their steps and simply faced each other. Nadia finally said, “Does that mean you—you trust me?”
“I have to.”
It was like another slap in the face, but how could she blame him?
Then Mateo added, “And you’ll have to decide whether or not to trust me.”“Why wouldn’t I trust you?”
He glanced down at the sand, breaking eye contact, like he was ashamed. “Because I haven’t told you everything.”
“What else is there to tell me?”
“I’ve seen you in my dreams. My visions of the future.”
Nadia frowned. “You told me that part.”
“I didn’t tell you the part where I’ve seen you die.”
The ground seemed to drop out from under her. “ … What?”
“More than one dream. More than one way you might—it might happen.” Mateo paced back and forth in front of her, talking with his hands as he struggled for words. “So it’s not like I know exactly when, or how, or even for sure. You’re not the only one I dream about, either—but you’ve been showing up more and more, and I know you’re in a lot of danger. I knew that before I ever laid eyes on you. Once I thought—I thought if I stayed away from you, if I weren’t there to see any of the stuff my dreams said I would see, then you’d be safe. Right? But one of the visions showed you struggling underwater, and I didn’t even get what that was until we went diving in the sound. Then I realized what kind of trouble you were in, and what I had to do to help you. So maybe some of the dreams let me protect you. I don’t know. All I do know is that I should’ve told you this a long time ago.”
It was creepy. And then some. Nadia took a deep breath, then another, making sure she felt steady.
Mateo now looked like he expected to have to catch her when she fainted. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“I should’ve said something. I was trying so hard not to believe it—”
“We have to believe in your dreams. That’s how you saved me from the wreck, and on the night of the dive.” Yes. That was what she had to hold on to. Nothing else mattered. “Your dreams are a curse to you—I know that. But they might be the only thing that keeps me safe.”
“Then they’re worth it,” he said, as if that were as obvious as day following night. Something warm and stealthy turned over inside Nadia’s chest.
In truth, though, she wasn’t particularly frightened of the visions themselves. Yes, it was unnerving hearing that a guy who could see the future mostly saw her in a whole lot of trouble. But the dreams could be symbolic rather than literal; the one where she had been “floating” rather than drowning proved that.
No one vision worried her as much as the fact that he’d seen lots of ways she might die—that she played such a large part in the dreams he’d had so far. Why should she be so central to whatever was happening here in Captive’s Sound—in whatever danger seemed to be approaching? October thirty-first wasn’t far away now. That was frightening enough to think about, especially whenever she looked at Verlaine’s careful maps and the target drawn over the town. But why would it focus so strongly on her?
Worst of all: He’d talked about his dreams with Elizabeth. Maybe Nadia didn’t know why she mattered so much—but by now, Elizabeth might.