Free Spellcaster (Spellcaster #1) by Claudia Gray Page A

minutes, and you know your shift isn’t up for another fifteen. Not like you to ditch the job.”
    That was the problem with having your father for a boss; not only was he judging you as harshly as any other boss would, but he also wanted to psychoanalyze you in the bargain.
    And Dad was the absolute last person he could talk to about any of this stuff.
    At least he had a reason for wanting out that his father would understand. “One of the customers left her cell phone here. A girl I know from school. I wanted to run it by her house.”
    “Ahhh. There’s a lady in the case. Might have known.”
    “ Dad . She really left her phone. See?” Mateo held it up as evidence.
    “That’s why we have a lost-and-found box.” But his father seemed more amused than anything else. “About time a girl got your special attention.”
    Mateo went for the knife and the peppers. The quicker he finished up his side work, the quicker he could escape both work and the interrogation.
    “Here I thought you were going to play the field forever,” Dad said as he continued stirring the sopa Azteca . “Not that a handsome young fellow like you shouldn’t play, hmm? But there’s more to life than that.”
    Girls would “play,” sure. Mateo had learned that early. They were attracted to him, flirted with him. At a party, sometimes they would hook up with him, making out just long enough for Mateo to start to hope things were finally changing. But that was it. Girls in Captive’s Sound thought he was dangerous ; kissing him, letting him touch them, was something they did only for a thrill. Nobody was foolhardy enough to stay with him—to let herself care. After a beach bonfire early in the summer, when he’d realized this one girl had gotten with him only because her friends dared her to, Mateo hadn’t bothered trying again.
    “I spent my time as a bachelor,” Dad said.
    Oh, great . Mateo hoped he wouldn’t vomit on the peppers.
    But Dad wasn’t going to launch into stories about his swinging single days; it was worse than that. “From the week I moved to Captive’s Sound—the day I met your mother—it all changed. So beautiful. So lonely. Nobody in this damned town ever gave her a chance.” Bitterness had crept into his father’s voice; it usually did, when they talked about Mom. “Crazy, they called her. They drove her crazy with their stupid stories about a curse. That’s what did her in, Mateo. As far as I’m concerned, every gossip in this town has her blood on their hands.”
    This was the point in the speech where Mateo usually mouthed the final words along with Dad’s voice: blood on their hands .
    Today, though—with his own knowledge of the dreams Mom had seen, too, with his grandmother’s scarred face still fresh in his memory—that blood seemed way too real.
    Nadia had hoped she and Verlaine could slip up to the attic without being noticed, but there was a downside to having her father working from home.
    “Well, who have we here?” He smiled as he rose from his desk; already stacks of papers were spread around him like he was building a nest. Within a week, the chaos would be total.
    “Verlaine Laughton,” Verlaine said. She didn’t seem to mind meeting Nadia’s father; the weird defensive edge she had most of the time had vanished. “Nadia and I go to school together. Thanks for having me over. This house is amazing. Is it, like, a hundred years old?”
    “A hundred and fifteen, according to the realtor. Did you say your name was—”
    “Verlaine.” Obviously she was used to repeating it. “One of my grandmothers was named Vera, the other one was named Elaine, so my parents put them together.” Her cheery expression clouded. “I like to think they’d have chosen something else if they’d known Verlaine was also a famous poet who died of syphilis back in the day. At least, I hope they would’ve.”
    “At least it’s original.” Dad laughed, though he was clearly distracted; Nadia could