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"We know one thing," Mateo said, folding his arms "You don’t like Elizabeth much more than we do"

"Are you honestly surprised? With that char personality of hers" Asa just set: She’s the boss"

With that, he clapped his hands together--and ti past theht into that cheerleader’s path, and she huffed and said, "Excuse you" before sweeping by the three of thelanced over her shoulder at the she is," Asa whispered in Verlaine’s ear His breath was so hot--like stea into the crowd

Mateo turned to Nadia "Demons?"

"What do they do?" Verlaine asked "What is Elizabeth going to use him for?"

Nadia shook her head "I--I don’t know There’s too much I don’t know" She bit her lower lip, so obviously troubled that Verlaine didn’t have the heart to ask her anyinto Goodwife Hale’s Book of Shadows tonight Go overelse But deic The kind of stuff I don’t know nearly enough about"

Well, that wasn’t encouraging Mateo responded to Nadia’s disquiet the way he responded to her happiness, or her absenthtly

Verlaine was sure of only one thing: The situation had just gotten worse

Elizabeth opened the door to her back room She had not entered it in years, but knew that until very recently, it had not looked like this

Spiderwebs shivered as the wind blew through the roo her chestnut curls The roo The one chair in the corner was nothing but silver white now, as though it werewood Soled in the webs, wrapped in cocoons as though they were prey Elizabeth stretched her hand forward, her long fingers breaking web after web; spiders skittered along her skin, and she paid them no mind

Here her Book of Shadows had attempted to trap Nadia Caldani--and had failed

The webs thickened, breaking across her face, sticking to her hair Elizabeth bent to kneel on the floor; through the rayness of the webs she could see the Book of Shadows She smiled, al since forgotten what that felt like The affection she felt for this book, and the priave her in return, were the closest Elizabeth would ever coht you could hold her," Elizabeth ently all the sa I ers closed around the Book of Shadows Its leather was dark with age, but not brittle in the way any ordinary binding would have been after nearly four hundred years Instead it felt rough, too thick--like scar tissue that had never quite healed When she lifted it froular space where it had long been, free of dust or cobwebs But one long-legged spider, as large as her palh to fill it up

Elizabeth folded the book close to her chest For so many years she had not consulted it, only drawn on its power

But this close to the coo wrong She would have to draw on every resource she had Permit no interruptions No mistakes

She walked back into the area of the house where she spent most of her time For a moment, Elizabeth saw it as a hulamours: a derelict place, furnished with only a few threadbare chairs and a sofa that had not been sat in for decades and probably would no longer bear weight Faded walls Water bottles left over fro racked her but had now departed along with her immortality (Elizabeth found that she still drank from them often, but it was now merely a matter of habit) Her old stove, the same one that had once burned wood in the nineteenth century, which noith a very different kind of fla her blue floor, the shards so fah them easily, without hesitation

Nadia would have had to wind her way through all this to reach the back rooed in the middle of her floor, book in front of her, then unbuttoned her dress far enough to allow the shoulders to slip down her arms The burned flesh there stuck to the fabric, and she had to tug it away; the pain was as less as the stray spider at the he to speak, or even consciously think of what she wanted, the Book of Shadows fell open to a syo The One Beneath had showed her thisa victis He needed She had pressed this page against the symbol, and the maroon stains still held every line perfectly

She held two fingers to the sy the sweep of those two lines--then lifted her hand to her upper arh Elizabeth knew this by heart, when it came to this, she wanted to make utterly, completely certain

The front door opened

Elizabeth was only startled that sowith her Book of Shadows could have that effect "Enter, beast"