You could give him a few days to live as an ordinary human, Asa suggested. A small gift to remember you by.

“You think I care about mercy, beast?” Elizabeth said as she placed the bone back in its drawer.

I know you better than that.

Ignoring the demon’s japes, Elizabeth crossed the room to where a metal hook hung on one wall. If Nadia truly represented some sort of threat, the very first thing to do was to take away Nadia’s Steadfast.

Elizabeth’s fingers closed around Verlaine’s bracelet.

Dear Mr. Laughton and Mr. McFadden,

Congratulations! You have won an all-expenses-paid cruise to beautiful Jamaica. The boat leaves on Friday, October 30—

Verlaine paused at her laptop, not sure this sounded right. Wouldn’t people call them if the cruise were leaving so soon? She couldn’t disguise her voice on the phone, though, and she didn’t think either Nadia or Mateo could really make themselves sound like adults if they made the call for her. Maybe that guy Gage, whose voice was deep—but they weren’t friends yet. He wasn’t somebody she could ask for a favor like this. Could Mateo ask him, though? Once her dads believed they’d won the cruise, the rest was easy. Her parents had taken a huge life-insurance policy when she was born, meaning that Verlaine had way more money than most people at Rodman, including the teachers. She drove the land yacht and thrifted her clothes and lived off her allowance because that money was for college—but to save her dads’ lives, she’d dip into it and buy them the nicest cruise anybody ever took.

Besides, if they didn’t manage to stop Elizabeth, chances were she wouldn’t make it to college anyway—

She nibbled again at her fingernail. Her nails were starting to look like crap. Tonight she’d paint them again—that would stop her from biting them—but then she’d have to do something else to calm her nerves.

If only she could be sure Uncle Dave and Uncle Gary would be safe on Halloween. Then the rest wouldn’t matter. She could concentrate then.

Determined, Verlaine decided to go ahead and book the cruise. Later she’d call Mateo and see what he thought about the plan to get Gage on board. She surfed over to a travel site—then froze.

The pain arced up through her, so sharp that she first thought there was a knife hidden in the keyboard, one that had snapped up to stab her. That was crazy, but that was how it felt. But a split second later, Verlaine saw the white forks of electricity lancing up from the keyboard, searing her hands so that she thought she could see bone.

All she could hear was some high-pitched, hoarse sound all around her—was that her screaming? Her body seemed to twist away from her, one direction and then the other, jerking around wildly while her mind slowed down, second by second.

I’m being electrocuted, she thought, almost dully.

Then something flung her back from the computer, into the far wall, and she couldn’t see anymore, couldn’t even feel.

20

AROUND DINNERTIME, DAD ONCE AGAIN PROPOSED THAT they visit La Catrina. “Since Mateo is no longer somebody we’re trying to avoid,” he said, giving Nadia a playful glance. It was all Nadia could do not to roll her eyes.

“It’s his night off. But yeah, we should go.” It would be less awkward to eat with her family there when her father wouldn’t be watching her with Mateo the whole time. Way less awkward.

“Want to ask that friend of yours along?” He frowned. “Was it Vera? Veronica?”

“Verlaine.” She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

“Something always happens when we try to go to La Catrina,” Cole complained. “We never get in.”

“Don’t be silly. C’mon, guys. Nadia, honey, why don’t you tell Verla to meet us there? And invite her dads along, too. I ought to meet them sometime.”

Nadia texted: Hey, come eat at La Catrina with us if you want. My dad says to ask your dads, so—if you don’t want to, no prob.

So she wasn’t expecting to see Verlaine, and wasn’t surprised not to have heard from her by the time they arrived at the restaurant. But Nadia immediately overheard Verlaine’s name—from a table where Kendall was holding court among her friends.

“So, like, Verlaine was in the school library, but I think she was using the computers for something illegal, like downloading movies or something like that, and there’s this thing in the library computers that’s supposed to stop you if you do something illegal, like it gives you a shock, and that’s how they keep guys from watching  p**n  all the time, but this time it malfunctioned and it, like, electrocuted her, and so she’s in the hospital, not this one, the good one in Wakefield, and I heard she could die.”

“Oh, my God.” Nadia looked over at her father. “Can we—”

“Let’s go,” he said, like it was the only thing to do. Dad could be great like that sometimes.

Nadia had never felt worse in her life than she did when she saw Verlaine’s dads in the waiting room at the hospital. Uncle Gary tried to be polite and informative, even though his voice kept shaking; Uncle Dave could only sit there with his head in his hands.

“A coma?” Nadia whispered. “How long does that—would she—?”

“They don’t know.” Uncle Gary kept weaving his fingers together, clasping his hands, unclasping them, like he was trying to work all his nervousness out that way. “It’s not unusual, really. I mean, we hear about comas that go on for—for months or years—”