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"Hey, wait Don’t run off like that You’re upset" Mateo put an arhly pushed hi for an answer, Verlaine ran out into the chilly gray afternoon She didn’t want to think about Nadia, or Elizabeth, or ic, or her parents But the reray, a part of Verlaine forever

"Nobody ever brought it up," Mateo said a fewthe street that led to the heart of don … at least, as much don as Captive’s Sound had

"Hoo healthy people, not old or anything, and they die of the flu overnight without even calling somebody? That didn’t strike people as bizarre?"

When Nadia was trying to figure soot this little worried look--so serious--and Mateo already felt like he knew that look by heart

He said only, "Weirder stuff happens all the tiuess that ht be … warped But I wish Verlaine hadn’t run off like that"

"Sometimes you need soet to apologizing for the way he’d acted recently But Nadia didn’t seey When she looked at hi about him, even the parts he barely understood hi the tih he’d tried not to think about the Craft or the curse or anything like that, it was the subtler things Mateo had ot when she focused on a probles The way she doodled cubes and pyrains of her chem notes How she always looked down at the cafeteria food with fresh despair, its horribleness a surprise to her every single ti better

When Mateo thought of all those things together, sohtened within his chest, and felt very like the emotion for her that had alelled up in his dreaer able to meet Nadia’s eyes, Mateo turned his head away and looked into the far distance Verlaine was nowhere to be seen She must have sprinted for her car, driven off like a bat out of hell "What do you think happened to her family?"

"I’m not sure All I know is that she still bears the scars Whatever that ic was, it still has some kind of hold on her, even now"

"Now? You mean, Verlaine’s--is she cursed? Like me?"

"Did you see that halo around her?"

The dark, thorned shape that circled his reflection in the mirror still had the power to turn Mateo’s stoht "No So, not a curse, then"

"But what? I have to figure this out I’ll keep working with Goodwife Hale’s book, see if there’s anything there" Nadia hesitated "Which is about five hours of lish than anything norh he realized how badly he didn’t want to leave her "Gotta get ht? Tell "